Watson touts moves toward stability, predictability for city services in 2024

Mayor Kirk Watson returns to the word “stability” frequently when discussing the moves and decisions inside City Hall in 2024 and what residents want headed into 2025.

For Watson, stability and predictability come in the form of things like the five-year contract the city reached with the Austin Police Association. There was also the hiring in the spring of T.C. Broadnax as the new city manager following more than a year with Jesús Garza serving in an interim role. Or there’s his goal of restructuring and optimizing spending related to homelessness services without relying on one-time federal funding windfalls that will soon be exhausted.

Along with the hiring of police Chief Lisa Davis and placing Assistant City Manager Eddie Garcia in charge of public safety, Watson said he sees the $218 million police contract as a way to remove future doubt or uncertainty over the city’s relationship with the union and larger police department.

“We did some specific things in 2024, including re-upping the ordinance that guaranteed salaries, guaranteed benefits for police. But that contract was pretty much universally seen as key to that stabilization and how we move forward,” he said. “One of the things that I most wanted was a five-year contract instead of the typical three- or four-year contract, because I wanted to maintain that stability for a period of time and send the right message about stability to those that we recruit and those that we’re attempting to retain.”

That contract received a 10-1 City Council vote and was approved by 90 percent of the police association membership, which Watson said signals both sides are ready to work together to make progress on filling vacancies within the department and addressing the oversight and transparency issues that were among the biggest concerns for critics of the agreement.

“With regard to the G file, you’re seeing very concerted efforts to meet the requests of people, even changing the way we do public information requests as it applies to that, so that we can cover the mass of requests and the size of the request, but that’s just one example,” Watson said. “The chief has been given this new (union) contract. … Now we have to do whatever we need to do to assure that we can do the hiring. The expectation should not be that that happens overnight. I’m going to rely on her to kind of set that expectation for us based upon what she’s able to do with recruiting opportunities.”

Asked about substantial capital priorities – such as the expected climate change bond package, spending for housing and services for homeless people and the proposed caps over an expanded Interstate 35 – Watson said City Council will need to begin 2025 with looking at long-term spending commitments, rather than having those discussions held mostly during budget sessions in the spring and summer.

With American Rescue Plan Act funding used toward homelessness needs coming to an end, he said the city will no longer be able to cover up the impacts of the state’s 3.5 percent cap on annual increases in property tax rates for cities and counties.

“We have to start 2025 looking at processes that will allow us to ask all of those questions on an ongoing basis … not waiting until we have some new thing that pops up and we want to address that,” he said, pointing to the work of the Bond Election Advisory Task Force that will shape the schedule and dollar amount of the city’s next bond election, which is expected to be substantially focused on spending related to climate change and sustainability.

“What we have to do is put together an ongoing process and not wait just until the budget gets here and we see a budget and now we’re discussing how we do that. That requires us to look at a number of things again starting early in the year,” he said.

Other 2025 priorities for Watson include moving forward with the Austin Infrastructure Academy that was created last year to boost incomes and job prospects for local households, and enacting the recommendations of the Mayor’s Task Force for Austin Women Entrepreneurs. He also expects Council to begin holding public hearings by mid-February that would lead to improved regulation and taxation of the thousands of short-term rental sites operating throughout the city.

With the state Legislature set to convene this year, he said feedback from state lawmakers suggests some of Austin’s policies and programs related to home construction and managing homelessness could lead to larger collaborations around the state. He also saw promising signs of making improvements related to mental health services via Austin State Hospital, but said there’s still work to be done before disclosing substantive details.

“Those in control of the Capitol have indicated that they’re very interested in what we can do about housing in the state and affordability and affordable housing. Right now, Austin is at the vanguard nationwide when it comes to how we have addressed housing and affordable housing, so I actually see us being in a situation where we can work with leadership in the Legislature and leadership at the Capitol in trying to help put together programs in that regard,” he said.

Coming out of an election season that saw Watson reelected by narrowly avoiding a runoff, he said voters and the larger populace suggested they want to avoid big shake-ups at the local level. That’s especially so since the election of Donald Trump as president has caused uncertainty around funding and other resources that were awarded by Joe Biden’s administration, such as a larger transportation grant for the roadway cap over I-35 proposed to run from Cesar Chavez Street to Fourth Street.

“I think people in Austin are wanting and will be rewarding stability and less chaos at the local level, especially as they look at chaos at a national level. When I came into office, people thought that City Hall was moving too slow and inefficiently … and I think that they rewarded that in the mayor’s race,” he said.

“You look at everything from our 911 (call time) improvement, which has been extraordinary, to how stable we handled the hiring of our permanent city manager to things like Development Services Department and the time frames that are down on that. People want to know that their government is working and working well.”

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