In 2024, Paige Ellis will focus on her two main loves: mobility improvements and parks

The past year has been a busy one for City Council Member Paige Ellis, who served as mayor pro tem throughout 2023. She described the extra duties of the position as “a great experience.” Noting that Mayor Kirk Watson is very detail-oriented, Ellis said she never had any question about what needed to be done. But she had to be ready to jump in when he was ready to leave the dais, a significant difference from her job as a Council member.

Since her first election in 2018, Ellis has championed mobility projects, particularly expanding trails and improving roads and streets, as well as lowering speed limits through neighborhoods and parks. She chairs the Council Mobility Committee, frequently expressing the need for the city to promote alternative forms of transportation. In particular, Ellis wants to make it easier for people to move around the city on bicycles.

Ellis sponsored an amendment to the ordinance eliminating parking requirements except for handicapped parking for most businesses. Her resolution calls for additional bicycle parking at businesses. Right now, she said, businesses are required to provide safe parking facilities or racks for only four bikes. The proposed ordinance also says, “A commercial use parking lot or garage must provide not less than one bicycle parking space for every 10 motor vehicle parking spaces.”

“We’d like to make it easier for people to bicycle if they want to,” Ellis said, noting that a lack of safe parking spaces has been the main deterrent for people who might otherwise ride their bikes to commercial establishments. The finished product is due to come back to Council in the spring.

Ellis worried about the city’s firefighters and EMS workers when she learned that multiple stations did not have heat during February’s ice storm, known as Winter Storm Mara. She and others sponsored a resolution in March directing interim City Manager Jesús Garza to do an inventory of backup power generators for fire and EMS stations and report back to Council by July 1.

As a result, Council learned that only 11 generators were in good operating condition and not scheduled to be replaced. Adding up sites with no generators, sites with generators that were not operational, sites with generators in poor condition and other generators that needed to be replaced, the Building Services Office determined that 72 sites required new generators.

During the budget adoption process, Council approved a $10 million transfer from Austin Energy to Building Services, reducing the amount that AE would transfer to the General Fund. In addition, Council approved an intent to reimburse itself from the proceeds of $6.1 million in certificates of obligation to further fund the new generators. The estimated total cost for procuring and installing the new generators and docking stations is about $21 million.

Bob Nicks, president of the Austin Firefighters Association, told the Austin Monitor that the city is making good progress on getting the generators. In addition, he expects many fire trucks that have lacked air conditioning to have A/C by sometime next spring before temperatures soar once again.

Ellis is passionate about getting people outdoors to enjoy Austin’s many treasures, including parks and trails. The Living Streets program, which she promoted – an expansion of the city’s Healthy Streets program started in 2020 – is now fully functional.  The program now includes the well-known Christmas lights display on 37th Street.

Ellis and others have been working to make it easier to maintain Lady Bird Lake Trail, which is done by the Trail Conservancy. The conservancy has an agreement with the Parks and Recreation Department that includes planting vegetation along the trail. Ellis was concerned when she learned that a city ordinance required new vegetation to be planted 50 feet away from the shoreline.

“There are places where it doesn’t work,” she said, naming the part of the trail by the Hyatt Regency hotel and the area where the river boats dock. She said staff members from Watershed Protection are set to bring up an ordinance that would help stabilize the trails as they currently exist.

“There’s a handful of segments on the trail that are very tight, they’re pinch points and people may run into each other,” Ellis said, “so we’re trying to make sure the conservancy” can still plant in those areas.

The expansion of Interstate 35 has been a major source of controversy for many Austinites, and that includes Ellis. In early November, she joined Council members Zo Qadri and José Velásquez in a demonstration against the Texas Department of Transportation’s plan to expand I-35 through downtown Austin. That plan threatens the dislocation of numerous businesses and disruption of the homes of East Austin residents.

Ellis said the Austin area has an emission reduction plan for I-35 that is supposed to be done by March. CAMPO also just approved a 12- to 18-month contract for drawing up a carbon emission plan.

“We’re trying to make sure that plan is backed through CAMPO so TxDOT can incorporate the best practices,” she said. “But the city is looking at having our climate emission reduction plan done in the spring and we’re hoping to be able to qualify for EPA grant dollars” to build the highway caps and connective “stitches” the city wants in order to protect parts of downtown and East Austin.

She is worried that TxDOT will move too fast to allow the city to get federal grants to build caps and stitches and plant street trees. The city is facing a $543 million bill for the eight caps and stitches the city wants to see built.

Ellis was pleased that Council approved the recommended alternative to replacing the historic Barton Springs Road Bridge at its final meeting of the year. She said staff had been considering replacing the bridge over Barton Creek for more than 10 years and that she had been aware of it for eight years. The new bridge is designed to have significantly wider sidewalks and will accommodate a considerably larger number of people for major events in the park, Ellis said. She said the new bridge will be aesthetically pleasing, an important consideration for people using it and the surrounding park.

Not everyone was in favor of the bridge replacement. Bill Bunch of the Save Our Springs Alliance spoke passionately against replacing the historic bridge, but most of Council voted in favor of the change.

Asked whether she thought Austin Energy was doing a good job, Ellis agreed that it is.

“Running any energy company in Texas right now,” she said, involves a lot of considerations. “I’ve asked people on Pedernales Electric and they have said it has had higher rates and lower rebates for solar (than Austin Energy) for many years. So even if Austin Energy has had to raise rates, they’re still more competitive than other providers.” She added that private utility customers have even higher rates.

As for her plans for 2024, Ellis said, “I am still going to focus on mobility improvements and parks. Those are the two things that I love working on the most and my constituents ask for the most. Our parks system is constantly in need of maintenance and improvements. We all love them and want to make sure that they function for many more years.”

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Posted In: City Hall, District 8