In 2009, Austin City Council adopted the urban parks initiative, setting a goal to provide parks within a five- to 10-minute walk of all residents. As of 2025, only about 70 percent of Austin residents live within walking distance of a park. The Austin Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) wants to get that number to 100 percent through the city’s 2026 comprehensive bond package.
The 2026 bond package would be Austin’s first since 2018. But the city will not be able to fund everything it wants to, with a $3.87 billion wishlist from city departments being well over five times the recommended limit. As each city department’s wishlist continues to be whittled down, PARD told Council’s Parks Committee on Wednesday morning that its top priority is funding for parkland acquisition.
PARD is requesting $100 million — a relatively small chunk of the proposed package. Transportation and Public Works is seeking more than $925 million, and Watershed Protection is seeking nearly $600 million for proposed drainage and stormwater infrastructure. Climate initiatives are leading the package as well, with $300 million requested for flood and wildfire mitigation, water quality protection and other conservation uses.
PARD says it needs this money because of the effects of a state law from 2023, House Bill 1526, that prohibited any fees on commercial development and limited the fees cities could impose on new development in order to fund parks.
In 2018, PARD established a long-range goal to have 24 acres of parkland per 1,000 people.
“At best, the new state legislative parkland dedication ordinance meets about 12 percent of [Austin’s] 24 acres per 1,000 goal, with 3 acres per 1,000 people in the suburban area,” explained Robynne Heymans, principal planner with PARD’s parkland acquisition team. “Downtown, that percentage plummets to just point 3 percent of our goal, with just 1,000 people crammed into an area less than a 10th of an acre. For reference, that’s 1,000 people crammed into the footprint of Joe’s Coffee on South Congress.”
The 2018 bond package included $45 million for parkland acquisition, of which PARD has spent $31 million, acquiring over 100 acres of parkland and 30 new parks.
In a presentation to the Parks Committee, Evergreen Austin’s Dr. Amanda Masino said “we relied too heavily on our parkland dedication fees,” which were producing about $20 million a year until 2023. “Meanwhile, the price of land soared.” If the city does make up the difference with a bond package, Masino argues, it’s in Austin’s best financial interest to buy the land now: “For every $100 million invested in parkland today, $150 million will be saved over the next 10 years due to land value appreciation.”
It’s also in the best interest of Austin’s climate resilience, Masino said.
“Council passed a comprehensive Climate Equity Plan in 2018, but as is often the case, failed to fund it,” she said. “These four areas in particular stand out: land acquisition, urban forests, agricultural lands and sustainable land management of city lands.”
Masino asked the Parks Committee to not only acquire parkland, but to use some of it as carbon sinks.
“You can sequester 20 to 30 metric tons of CO2 over 10 years. Not only can we afford to maintain these lands, we can make them work for us,” Masino said.
Heymans added that parks can contribute to urban cooling and “proactively manage wildfire risk with fuel reduction … [and] undeveloped parks are also an opportunity for ecological restoration in the management of erosion hazard and water quality zones.”
“What’s important to know is that the management of the land to yield these benefits costs very little,” Heymans explained. “Maintaining undeveloped parkland comes at a very low cost of hundreds of dollars per acre annually, compared to the rapid land appreciation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre annually over the course of 10 years. We are saving the public millions per park by prioritizing purchasing land today, rather than delaying the investment to the future.”
Should the bond pass, PARD staff estimated that the amount of new parkland would expand greenbelts by about 200 acres, destination parks by about 60 acres and pocket parks throughout the city by about 60 acres. In 2024, a facility assessment gap analysis showed that Southeast Austin is lacking a recreation center, which would become another priority, as well as continued acquisition of the Colorado Riverfront for the trail corridor and closing gaps in trail systems like Onion Creek, Williamson Creek, South Boggy Creek and northern Walnut Creek, among others.
Council Member Ryan Alter questioned how PARD will balance its priorities of parkland usage for carbon sequestration and water conservation versus public recreation, and suggested that stormwater infrastructure could double as public recreation, “when it’s not flooded, however many days a year. I’m trying to put all these pieces together of how we think about the maximum benefit — both from a climate perspective and a public enjoyment perspective.”