In 2024, Travis County Commissioner Jeff Travillion approached his work with a clear conviction: The challenges facing East Austinites are deeply interconnected. To truly serve his constituents, he recognized that solving these issues required a multidimensional approach – what he calls the integration of public services – rather than tackling them one by one.
“If you’re growing up in poverty, oftentimes there is no one thing that interrupts you,” Travillion said, emphasizing that barriers to access are often interdependent. “We want to have access to affordable housing, but affordable housing in and of itself is not enough. We need to have access to public transportation; that public transportation needs to get me to work, to the doctor and to the grocery store.”
A central question frames his policymaking efforts: “How do we take a very complicated set of resources – that grow in different silos of public policy – and integrate them in such a way that we make them easy and accessible?”
Travillion emphasized that investing in Precinct 1 meant creating a strong, sustainable community by addressing essential needs like food access, child care, transit and health care. Rather than focusing on isolated issues, his approach in 2024 aimed to build a solid foundation that supports every aspect of community life.
Travillion reflected on the collaboration between Travis County and the city of Austin to develop and adopt the Austin/Travis County Food Plan, an asset map of food resources and strategy to build a more equitable, sustainable and accessible food system for Austin and Travis County residents.
“This food plan gave us an opportunity to put an asset map together and then to focus on places that had historically been underserved,” Travillion said. “More people are being served with food support today than were served during the pandemic … because this plan gave us the opportunity to identify where underserved communities are, to build our volunteer base and also to start having the conversation about how we turn Title I schools into food pantries so students can take home food not just for themselves for also for their families who are part of the community.”
In addition to expanding food access, Travillion is focused on improving community health through better support for families. He celebrated the 2024 passage of a Travis County tax rate increase as a major victory, securing funding to expand affordable child care, after-school enrichment and summer programs for lower-income families across the county.
Travillion explained that these services will “give (children) a safe place to be for several hours after school when often parents are at work.”
“I know about this personally because I was a teacher’s son,” he said, “My dad kept his school open in a very poor neighborhood and it created an ethic of community inclusion. If we are able to train more people to go into child care and increase employees’ access to child care, the community as a whole benefits.”
Travillion also pushed for more public health resources to serve people across the community.
“We challenged Central Health to provide more resources in the community with clinics, and also in our jails,” he said. “We also worked to ensure that the health system we have in place is listening to the community.”
Travillion has advocated for increased mental health supports, such as mentorship and peer-counseling, to be included in child care plans and after-school programs. He highlighted the interconnectedness between these issues of health resources, child care and food access as it relates to safety.
“We’ve been able to show a direct link between hunger and violence, so creating food accessibility can help break a cycle,” he said. “The child care programs and mental health initiatives can hopefully offer mentorship and peer counseling for students so that we deal with the prevention of issues rather than the aftermath of a violent event because a child didn’t have someone to talk to or because a child was hungry and didn’t have access to food.”
With 2025 on the horizon, Travillion remains committed not only to the continued integration of public services, but also to prioritizing stakeholders in decision-making processes.
“We often rely on our community organizations with lived experiences to tell us what we need,” he said, saying he plans to keep these channels of communication open. “Decisions should not be made in an ivory tower. Decisions should be made because we take the time we need to listen to the stakeholders.”
“It is important to make sure we are effectively using all of the tools that are available through the government,” Travillion said. “In 2025, we will build upon the projects we’ve invested in and continue to focus on wraparound services for the community.”
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Travis County Commissioners Court: The legislative body for Travis County. It includes representatives from the four Travis County Precincts, as well as the County Judge. The County Judge serves as the chair of the Court.
