Commissioners urge Council to increase public safety budgets

Members of the city’s Public Safety Commission voted unanimously on Monday to recommend that City Council adopt a budget this summer that will support needs outlined by representatives of the Austin Fire Department, Austin-Travis County EMS and the Austin Police Department.

Representatives of each of the departments talked about their unfunded needs, stressing the importance of new funds to care for residents of a growing city. In addition, representatives of the unions for each of the public safety agencies added their voices to the call for more funding.

Assistant Police Chief James Mason told commissioners the department has forecast a budget of just over $490 million, a 2.7 percent increase over the current budget. He said the main increase will be for personnel. As for City Council initiatives and unfunded priorities, Mason listed $4.8 million for department needs. That number includes 16 new 911 call takers and 10 new dispatchers, for a total of about $2.3 million. Police are also requesting six more employees to handle public information requests, four police digital audio/video specialists and another six such specialists to comply with Senate Bill 111, the law requiring disclosure of certain information to criminal defendants.

Mason said APD is also seeking an additional $500,000 for its marketing campaign to interest the public in joining the force, $408,000 related to sex crimes response and $150,000 for a leadership training program.

Michael Bullock, president of the Austin Police Association, criticized the city for putting in new electric charging stations at the APD South substation when the department does not yet have electric vehicles. Under questioning from Commissioner Pierre Nguyen, Bullock admitted that he did not know whether the new charging stations were being paid for by APD, by grant funding or by Capital Metro. However, he went on to complain that APD does not have a well-run fleet of vehicles. He said part of the problem is that APD is forced to use the city’s Fleet Mobility Services Department, arguing that they could probably get better, less expensive service somewhere else.

Assistant Director for EMS Carlos Ledesma outlined $8.6 million that the department needs in order to provide the services the public relies on. The total includes $1.7 million for basic life support trucks and $1.9 million for an advanced life support truck. The latter would serve the growing North Burnet/Gateway neighborhood, he explained. The department also needs to create a new command district in downtown Austin, which would cost an initial $3.4 million. The figure includes pay for 14 full-time employees on an ongoing basis and a one-time cost of about $1.9 million, he said.

Selena Xie, president of the Austin-Travis County EMS Association, talked at length about the need for more paramedics and better planning. For example, she said during South by Southwest, EMS worked with police downtown and were a constant nighttime presence. If EMS were able to station an ambulance and personnel downtown during weekend nights, they would not have to bring in ambulances from elsewhere in the city, she said. She also said the experiment with putting EMS personnel in the Rainey Street area prevented some intoxicated people from falling into Lady Bird Lake. She said that pilot project had ended because it had no more funding, but the need still exists.

Fire Department Assistant Director Ronnelle Paulsen outlined the department’s needs, including three firefighters to work as aides to shift commanders because those commanders are currently working without such assistance. In addition, Paulsen said the department needs more than $600,000 for two full-time employees to coordinate pursuit of national accreditation. She explained that the department has not been accredited since 2002. Accreditation would be beneficial to the department because the agency, the Center for Public Safety Excellence, shares its ideas about more efficient ways to do things.

The department has been asking for several years for new aerial trucks. One truck costs about $200,000, but the department also needs to pay 16 full-time employees to operate the trucks for three shifts a day. The total cost for that is estimated to be $1.9 million.

Bob Nicks, president of the Austin Firefighters Association, said the department is already stretched too thin and needs more equipment and personnel. In 2017, Austin was spending 68 percent of its General Fund budget on public safety. That number has declined to 62 percent, Nicks said. He urged the commission and Council to support AFD by budgeting more for new aerial trucks and the firefighters to operate them. But most importantly, he said, he wanted to urge Council not to cut anything from the proposed budget.

Commissioners also heard a presentation from representatives of Equity Action and the Austin Justice Coalition urging them to devote more funding to expand crisis response activities and add more funding to mental health services. Chris Harris and Kathy Mitchell said the city does not provide mental health counselors 24 hours a day when those services are clearly needed. They asked the commission to recommend that Council add more funds for those services.

All the commissioners present except for Paul Hermesmeyer voted for a resolution urging Council to “do your best to incorporate” ideas from the community investment budget into the city’s final spending plan.

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