Council Member Krista Laine opts to discontinue District 6 field office

As she prepares for her first City Council meetings later this month, newly elected District 6 Council Member Krista Laine will represent residents of Northwest Austin and a portion of Williamson County without the use of a satellite office that has been available for constituent relations for 10 years.

After her November win over former Council Member Mackenzie Kelly, Laine decided that the $18,000 yearly lease on the commercial space on Anderson Mill Road near the Balcones Greene neighborhood wasn’t an effective use of the $844,878 budget to cover her staff’s salaries and all other operating expenses. The office, which was opened by inaugural D6 Council Member Don Zimmerman when he took office in 2015, was seen as necessary to allow constituents to meet with Council staff without traveling approximately 40 minutes to City Hall.

The office was the sole satellite operation while it was open, with other Council districts located closer to the city core and not presenting as much of a travel challenge. The renewal rate Laine was given was higher than the roughly $1,200 per month Kelly said she was charged, or the $1,000 per month that Kelly’s predecessor Jimmy Flannigan said his office paid for the space.

“$18,000 a year just for rent, plus other expenses, it’s a cost that comes out of our office budget that doesn’t come out of any other district office budget,” Laine said told Austin Monitor, adding that the office was due for tenant-cost improvements to make it suitable for regular use with district residents.

“It’s really important to me to have a robust community engagement program,” she said. “I heard again and again on the campaign trail that people did not feel connected. I know that is the stated purpose of that office, but it’s a lot of money for it not to be working.”

Acknowledging the challenges of traveling downtown, Laine said she and many of her staff live in the district and are planning on holding regular gatherings throughout the area at libraries, nonprofit organizations, churches, homeowners association meetings and cultural events. Laine said one of her first priorities is working with city staff to identify all city real estate holdings in the district to explore making basic services like recycling more accessible.

Another goal: improving transportation services that she said run only sporadically and make it difficult to efficiently use park-and-ride lots near transit lines or the CapMetro Red Line route.

“It has gotten so expensive in central parts of Austin and all of Austin, but that has pushed more people out into District 6, and what that has looked like is the construction of a lot of apartment complexes not near the (former) district office,” she said. “They are on major thoroughfares and near highways and Lakeline Station, 620. There are a lot of transportation challenges for people and to add on visiting a district office that may be not that accessible from where they live, realistically, once we look at actual transit time, it’s just another challenge.”

Kelly said she was surprised to learn Laine had decided to close the office, which she and the staff who worked there multiple times a week saw as a valuable space to hold meetings or accept visitors looking to discuss issues with city services.

“The field office made it easier for District 6 residents to connect directly with me and my team, which eliminated the need to travel to City Hall,” she said. “It became a resource hub. We would have meetings there and talk about different topics, and so I found that more people were engaged. If they just want to know about city services, ongoing projects or resources that they may have specific to their needs, they were able to just drop in.”

Flannigan, who said he relied on volunteers to keep the office open to the public in a part-time schedule, said he considered closing it each year when looking at the budgetary needs for his staff and office as a whole.

“We used the office sometimes for constituent meetings, although frankly, they were fairly infrequent. We tried to hold some events there, but it was, while fun, kind of undersized for events. And then on occasion we would do some kind of these fun constituent meet-and-greets, like the Boy Scouts have to meet an elected official,” he said. “I don’t recall the drop-ins by people being really frequently used.”

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Posted In: City Council, District 6