Paige Ellis is feeling energized for Council collaboration on parks, climate and mobility in 2025

If Paige Ellis had to sum up City Council’s work this year in one word, she said she would choose “momentum.”

Ellis, who represents Southwest Austin’s District 8, has served on Council through a series of challenges that were truly unprecedented – a pandemic, severe winter storms accompanied by sweeping power outages and contentious, generational policy debates on issues like public safety reform, homelessness and land use.

After several challenging, divisive years, Ellis told the Austin Monitor she was pleased with how much Council had been able to accomplish in 2024.

“We’ve actually wrapped up a lot of loose ends lately,” she said. “With the way the Legislature is working, with the way that national politics are working … maybe there’s an incentive for the dais to work in tandem … and to see each other as brothers and sisters as opposed to adversaries. … We can do big things when we are streamlined.”

Ellis also credited some of the successes of the past year to City Manager T.C. Broadnax, who joined the organization in May.

“I’m very impressed,” she said of his work so far. “He cares a lot about the end result, the end user. … He can put himself in the position of someone who is navigating the city government. … He’s very practical.”

Alongside a new city manager, three new Council members will join the dais in January. With six years of service under her belt, including one year serving as mayor pro tem, Ellis will be one of the most experienced members of the next Council. She told the Monitor she wants to make the onboarding process as easy as possible for incoming members Krista Laine, Mike Siegel and Marc Duchen.

“I think it’s going to be quite seamless,” she said of the transition. “I want … to make sure that whatever initiatives [the new members] want to lead on, that I can guide them and make the road a little quicker and shorter.”

Reflecting back on 2024, Ellis says she delivered on her top priorities of parks and mobility, but she has more work to do on these issues in 2025.

“I’m fortunate that my passions overlap where my constituents’ passions are,” she said. “I really have found my niche is in this conversation around parks space and trails planning and multimodal [transportation]. … That’s a great spot for … me to be focusing on for the next two years.”

Much of Ellis’ parks-related work has centered around the department’s budget. During the August budget cycle, she partnered with Council Member Alison Alter to allocate $730,000 for equipment and more than $1 million to support 16 new parks maintenance positions. She also secured funding to pilot a new off-leash dog park in District 8, and worked with Alter and Council Member Chito Vela to prevent proposed fee increases at several city pools.

“We’re clearly in a space of identifying more funding for our parks space[s],” Ellis said. “There can’t be enough dollars allocated to this specific part of the city budget. … Parks funding is definitely going to be one of the highest priorities for us.”

Parks advocates have been debating the value of the Parks and Recreation Department’s partnerships with nonprofits as a way to mitigate the parks department’s funding challenges. Ellis says she supports these relationships. “We can’t do it with just the General Fund alone,” she told the Monitor. “We have to find ways to do this in partnership.”

Ellis has also been engaging on some of the city’s ongoing mobility projects. One of her favorite programs is Living Streets – a pandemic-originated initiative which empowers residents to use neighborhood blocks for walking, cycling and socializing. She is also excited about the CityLeap program, a plan to implement bus or bike lanes on Austin’s arterial roadways.

“We have to make sure that we are the leaders in mitigating climate change. … CityLeap is a great example of what we’re doing moving forward,” Ellis said. Additionally, she has launched several Safe Routes to School projects in her district.

Part of Ellis’ mobility work has been expanding access to public transportation – particularly in her district. She recently authored a resolution directing the city manager to work with the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority and other agencies to identify a park-and-ride location along MoPac South, to align the MoPac South project with Council mobility and environmental plans and to create a Project Connect Southwest Austin action plan. She is also eager to ramp up the Oak Hill Metro Rapid service.

“There’s not enough bus service for the people that want to use it, and the service that is available needs to increase ridership,” Ellis said, adding that her office was primed to announce some new deliverables related to mobility soon.

Ellis noted that one unexpected policy passion of hers has been working with the Austin Police Department to address vehicular burglary. This overlaps with another policy area she has worked on: preventing gun violence. “A stolen gun is four times more likely to come from a vehicle than a home,” she said. “That’s a major issue that came to me that we have tried to focus on pretty robustly.”

Another surprising development for Ellis has been the shift in Council conversations around land use and parking minimums. Like the majority of her colleagues, she supported the recent, contentious, HOME amendments and the elimination of parking requirements.

“If you had asked me in 2019 … I would not have guessed that [2023 and 2024] were the years that we would accomplish those initiatives,” she told the Monitor. Ellis credits this shift to housing affordability issues that were exacerbated by the pandemic.

“That is something that’s changed since 2020 … seeing who can afford to rent here and who can afford to buy here and seeing the pressures change,” she said.

Also in the vein of land use, Ellis is enthusiastic about the Site Plan Lite initiatives, which aim to streamline some permitting processes. She believes this will increase the availability of “missing middle” housing in Austin.

“This is something I’m really excited to get across the finish line in January … [and to] have a streamlined process to get housing units into the market,” she said. “If there’s not a key in a door, that housing unit doesn’t exist until somebody lives there. That’s when the impact is made.”

In addition, Ellis is planning to engage in conversations around allowing small businesses (like coffee shops) on corner lots, a topic that’s been discussed recently with the Planning Commission. “District 8 has a lot of really big neighborhoods,” she said. “It’s nice for people to … have a destination when they walk their dog in the morning or when they’re helping their kids bike to school.”

Looking ahead, Ellis wants Council to prioritize climate resilience and heat island mitigation.

“I would like to put my input into the climate bond,” she told the Monitor. “We can’t be able to deliver everything, but we can put things into a climate bond that are going to make a meaningful impact in each part of town. … There’s an obvious need for flood mitigation and stormwater drainage. … [These are] high-priority issues here that are a matter of public safety.”

Ellis also discussed some of the local projects she has been working to bring to her district. The final phase for the construction of the Botanical Garden Pathway is underway, and she supports the concept of the city’s new consolidated public safety headquarters, which will be located in District 8. She hopes to create more affordable housing in or around the ACC Pinnacle Campus.

“It’s important to me that the city is stepping up for District 8, that it’s maintaining its electric and water utility services,” Ellis said. She added that one of her challenges on Council is advocating for the needs of her district while balancing the needs of other parts of the city with more under-resourced residents. Her office hosts a community resource fair to highlight public services each year in the district’s only city-owned meeting space: the Hampton Branch Library.

“My goal has always been that the government … should be responsive to your needs and it’s something that’s fighting for you every day,” she told the Monitor.

Ellis’ other priorities on the horizon for 2025 include expanding access to public transportation and bike lanes in denser downtown areas, overseeing the airport expansion and allocating more funding for sidewalks and urban trails.

“This is a growing city. I think it’s important for us to … stay ahead of the needs,” she said.

As part of her longer-term legacy, she wants Council to implement Project Connect, to activate more parks spaces and to deliver on road safety projects started for the district.

“We have some big priorities that we want to deliver on,” Ellis said of the next two years. “I still have a lot of energy left in me.”

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Posted In: City Council, District 8