In her eight years on Austin City Council, Ann Kitchen has navigated both the thrills and the growing pains of the second-fastest-growing city in the country. Kitchen has spent 2022 refining policies she hopes will continue to address Austin’s housing crisis well after her departure, when she’ll hand over the reins of District 5 to incoming […]
Ann Kitchen
Austin City Council member for District 5, first elected to Council in 2014. Kitchen also represented southwest Austin from 2000 to 2002 as a member of the Texas House.
Posted inEnergy
Workers demand labor protections at Austin Energy base rate rally
It was an unusually lively morning outside Austin Energy Headquarters last Saturday, as a coalition of workers, environmentalists and community leaders gathered to air their grievances with the publicly owned utility. With a potential increase to residential rates on the horizon, the Texas Climate Jobs Action Fund led the diverse group of unions and civic […]
Posted inCity Council
Kitchen: ‘We could write a whole book about the last year’
Ann Kitchen thrives from the many challenges of being a City Council member. “It’s a combination of being really proactive and trying to address the problems that we’re having as a city,” she told the Austin Monitor. “It’s always new, it’s always challenging and it really is an opportunity to help out people and the city […]
Posted inCity Council
Ann Kitchen: Building better solutions
Council Member Ann Kitchen has spent the year juggling difficult decisions – about the Covid-19 pandemic, reallocating police funds, finding solutions for homelessness, improving mobility and preserving the arts. “Covid has highlighted disparities in our community and highlighted problems that we already have and made them worse,” the District 5 Council member said. “So, in terms […]
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
Land trust and incentives for arts appear headed for Council
The creation of a land trust – a potential first for the city – is one of the tools City Council will consider next month in an attempt to keep artists and musicians from getting priced out of Austin. Council Member Ann Kitchen is completing language for the resolution that would include four components to […]
Posted inCity Council
City parkland could vanish from soccer stadium consideration
A resolution is in the works that would remove two city parkland sites from consideration as possible locations for a proposed soccer stadium. Council Member Ann Kitchen is sponsoring the resolution, out of concern about and growing opposition to Butler Shores Metropolitan Park and Roy G. Guerrero Colorado River Metropolitan Park as stadium sites. The […]
Posted inCity Council
In 2017, Kitchen worked on the big issues
For Council Member Ann Kitchen, 2017 was a year of progress. In an interview with the Austin Monitor, she highlighted some of the ongoing work her office has done over the past year that deals with some of the city’s weightiest issues. Like others on City Council, Kitchen is particularly proud of the progress she […]
Posted inCity Council
Kitchen hopes for longer budget process, shorter meetings in 2017
After two years in office, City Council Member Ann Kitchen, who represents District 5’s long stretch of South Austin, is happy with what she has accomplished for her district and the city but says that Council could stand to improve the way it operates in a few key ways. Kitchen is the only member of […]
Posted inAustin
Onion Creek residents voice desperation over flooding
Flood-battered residents voiced despair over the future and frustration with City Hall at a Tuesday night forum at the Onion Creek Club featuring Mayor Steve Adler and City Council members Ann Kitchen and Delia Garza. “We feel like we’re trapped here,” said one man in the crowd of over 100, explaining that he and his […]
Posted inRadio
Austin Monitor Radio: CM Ann Kitchen on a potential 2016 transportation bond
Austin City Council Member Ann Kitchen joins Austin Monitor reporter Caleb Pritchard for her take on a potential 2016 transportation bond. Post is embedded below. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/273025190″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]
Posted inTransportation
Mobility Committee balks at Adler’s bond recommendation
In the race among the growing list of proposals for a November bond referendum, City Council’s Mobility Committee jockeyed into the lead on Tuesday evening a dark-horse recommendation. With a vote of 4-0, the committee endorsed Council Member Ann Kitchen’s $300 million proposal, which she unveiled to little fanfare on Council’s online bulletin board on […]
Posted inCity Council
Kitchen steps into planning personnel issues
Last fall, City Council Member Ann Kitchen asked Planning and Zoning Department Director Greg Guernsey to remove the staff member who had been overseeing the formation of one of the South Austin Combined Neighborhood Plan’s contact teams because she did not like what that staff member had said to a community newspaper about the status […]