Council will face tough budget decisions on parks, animal services and homelessness

City Council is anticipating a tight budget ahead and will have to balance funding for the Parks and Recreation Department as well as the Austin Animal Center, the Homeless Strategy Office and Human Resources.

The Austin Animal Center is over capacity, with a shelter population of 123 percent of capacity for kittens and cats, 129 percent for small dogs and puppies, and 122 percent for medium and large dogs, Chief Animal Services Officer Don Bland told City Council at its budget session on Wednesday. As of July 2, the center is taking in pets only on an emergency basis.

Bland said the city had a contract with Austin Pets Alive!, but the group shelter had lowered the number of animals it would accept from Austin, particularly animals with behavioral problems. Instead, the organization started taking more animals from outside the five-county Central Texas area. He explained that Austin has maintained 96 percent live outcomes for the pets it has, but other cities have much lower numbers. Another problem is that Austin has in the past sent animals to other parts of the country for adoption, but that is no longer happening, presumably because of Covid-19 concerns.

“We have used these boarding facilities,” Bland said, which charge $500 per day for large dogs and $250 for small dogs and cats. He estimated the cost of such an arrangement at APA for the upcoming budget at “no more than $2 million.”

“We have secured Shelter Planners of America, and they actually were here all day yesterday with us working on what we need to do from a facility standpoint and staffing standpoint,” Bland told Council. “And they’re crunching those numbers. And in about eight weeks we’ll get the results.”

Although that will help the Animal Center for planning in the future, Mayor Kirk Watson pointed out that the budget will be voted on in August.

Currently, 514 animals are in foster care, and only one full-time employee and one part-time employee act as foster and rescue coordinators. Watson asked how many more foster coordinators the shelter needs. Bland said the shelter has asked for one part-time and two full-time additional foster/rescue coordinators in the upcoming budget.

The city’s Parks and Recreation Board had already voted to seek additional funding for maintenance of the city’s parks by the time Council met to discuss the budget on Wednesday.

Budget Officer Kerri Lang told Council an analysis by city staff compared parks maintenance levels in 2014 to maintenance levels in 2023. They estimated that in 2014, restrooms in 69 percent of the city’s parks were cleaned every day and the other 31 percent were cleaned five days a week. In 2023, 3 percent of restrooms in the city’s parks were cleaned every day and 97 percent were cleaned five days a week. Staff removed litter and trash and provided recycling services in an estimated 45 percent of parks in 2014, and that figure fell to 10 percent in 2023, she said.

City staff submitted a request for an additional $1.5 million that would be used to hire 16 new full-time ground maintenance employees. That would help restore the frequency of service to the Fiscal Year 2014 levels.

Council members Ryan Alter and Paige Ellis asked numerous questions about funding parks, including the most difficult question about how the city can afford to purchase new parkland, especially given the new state law that prevents the city from collecting parkland dedication fees from commercial properties and delaying collection of fees from other property developments until there is a certificate of occupancy.

Council members asked about what funding is “permanent” and what should be considered one-time funding. Council Member Alison Alter said, “We hear a lot of complaints about what the restrooms are like. We’ve all walked by the park and seen the grass, you know, up above, well above our ankles, and people trying to play on it. And I think that we really do need to find a way, at minimum, to get back to 2014. And we need a plan moving forward, city manager. You know, we talked and you said you were ready and you were going to tell us how we were going to do this. … So I would like to know what the plan is moving forward.”

City Manager T.C. Broadnax responded, “I think this demonstrates, at least to me, that there probably needs to be a greater conversation around basic and ordinary levels of service across all operations and how we fund those in some cases, as opposed to funding new items. And starting to focus on the unmet needs areas. And so in this regard, you know, having a conversation around temporary staffing, particularly around homeless encampments and cleanup, which I know is a big issue outside of parks, but oddly, in trails and other areas where in some cases you can’t see and find places to enjoy the outside, I think we probably need to figure out how we fund that now. Trying to get back to 2014 levels in 2024 is an odd statement and comment in and of itself to have in 2024, as if that is an unfound and unrecognized need and experience.

“I want to put on our realistic goggles and make sure that people understand those choices and priorities come at some deficit to some other area. And if those are things that you’d like us to go back and explore, we will do that.”

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