AUSTIN — Four people are battling it out to represent District 9 of the Austin City Council.
KVUE sent questions to each candidate to bring you more information before the election.
Kathie Tovo - Incumbent
Why are you running for the Austin City Council?
I first ran for office because I wanted to stand up for our communities and lead us forward on the issues that matter to our city – and that is still what drives me today. With Donald Trump in the White House, Ted Cruz in the Senate, and Greg Abbott in the Governor’s Mansion, we need strong, progressive local leaders who share our Austin values and also have the experience needed to successfully fight back and move us forward. I believe I am that candidate.
I was involved in our community, advocating on city and school district issues and serving on city boards and task forces for years before I considered running for office. As a Council Member, I have built strong relationships with our communities and with the many progressive leaders we have here in Austin – and have worked with them to make real progress on issues like affordability, homelessness, transportation, clean energy, equal rights, worker protections, immigrant rights, gun control, and more.
This year’s election is crucial. We need leaders who have the experience necessary to successfully and effectively protect our progress and fight for our communities. I am proud of my record on this and believe that my depth of experience and long track record of hard work and commitment to our community position me best to successfully represent District 9 and stand up for our values.
On the basis of my record of effective, progressive leadership, I have received the endorsements of an overwhelming number of Democratic and progressive clubs, as well as every labor organization and every environmental organization that has endorsed in District 9 so far. These include: AFSCME, Asian American PAC, Austin Central Labor Council, Austin Environmental Democrats, Austin Firefighters Association PAC, Austin Neighborhoods Council, Austin Tejano Democrats, Austin/Travis County EMS Employees Association PAC, Black Austin Democrats, Capitol Area Progressive Democrats, Central Austin Democrats, Clean Water Action, Education Austin, Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 1095, NxNW Democrats, Sierra Club -- Austin Regional Group, South Austin Democrats, Texas Alliance for Retired Americans, Austin Chapter, UNITE HERE Local 23, and the Workers Defense Action Fund.
What do you believe are the most pressing issues for the people in your district?
Our District 9 communities are facing a number of key challenges. Market-driven development pressures are causing affordability and transportation problems. Climate change is causing more intense droughts that threaten our water supply, interrupted by more extreme storms that cause destructive floods. State and federal officials are threatening our residents and our values. And many of our residents, such as those experiencing homelessness, are at risk of being left behind.
As a Council Member, I have worked together with the community to take action on each of these issues. There are no easy solutions to these challenges. However, by being persistent and building coalitions, we can – and have – made important progress. I have worked to manage our growth equitably and focus on our corridors and activity centers, rather than targeting Central and East Austin residents for redevelopment and turning our housing policies over to the market. I have taken action to improve affordability and transportation as described in the following two sections, by fighting utility rate increases, preserving and creating affordable housing, calling for innovative city strategies to address the state’s escalating property taxes, making important investments in our mobility infrastructure, and advocating for mass transit. I have led on addressing climate change through efforts that established ambitious goals for renewable energy, will nearly triple our solar usage, and initiated a 100-year plan for sustainably managing our water resources. I have fought against state and federal attacks on our values by standing up for local control and ensuring we support our residents through health services, paid sick leave, immigrant legal services, non-discrimination policies, and more. And as the Council Member representing the district with the largest number of residents experiencing homelessness, I led on developing the Action Plan for Ending Homelessness, supporting the development and expansion of the Homelessness Action Street Team (a program through which a multi-disciplinary team of officers, social workers, and paramedics provide a holistic response to people experiencing homelessness), establishing an innovative private-public partnership model that can help fund homeless services, and funding permanent supportive housing, among many other efforts.
What do you think is the key to addressing affordability in Austin?
There is no silver bullet to our affordability challenges. The key is persistence and working on a broad range of different strategies to ensure we are moving in the right direction – and that is exactly what I have done as a Council Member.
I have led the way on initiatives to improve affordability for all members of our community by fighting to lower proposed utility rate increases, providing an independent consumer advocate to represent residents and small businesses during the electric rate review, creating a strike fund to preserve existing affordable housing, increasing our investment in the Housing Trust Fund for creating affordable housing, supporting every affordable housing bond that has come before Council during my tenure, creating financial mechanisms to help form affordable housing cooperatives, establishing tenant protections in private activity bond developments that require city approval, and exploring a “right to return” policy for residents at risk of displacement and opportunities for tenants in repeat offender properties to purchase and renovate their homes, among others.
Another major challenge to affordability in Austin is the state. Through its “re-capture” school finance system, the state now takes more property taxes from the average taxpayer within the Austin Independent School District than does the city; over the last five years, the state has been responsible for roughly 70% of the increase in the average property tax bill. We need— and I support—reform of our school finance system. In the absence of that, the City of Austin should collaborate on exploring creative solutions such as a “tax swap” which could increase revenue available to AISD while potentially lowering property tax bills for many Austin taxpayers.
How can Austin address its growing traffic and transportation challenges?
I have been a strong advocate for addressing our transportation challenges by improving our mobility infrastructure – such as our major corridors, sidewalks, intersections, bridges, bike routes, and more – and supporting mass transit.
I supported the voter-approved 2016 mobility bond, which is now investing $720 million into improving our major corridors (including Lamar, South Congress, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and Guadalupe), providing roughly 50 miles of new sidewalks, and making key improvements to pedestrian safety, urban trails, and bike infrastructure. This year, I supported the 2018 bond, which would invest an additional $160 million in sidewalk repairs, street reconstruction, bridge safety, signal improvements, pedestrian safety, and more.
I have also consistently stood up for mass transit and urban rail – even when it was unpopular. In 2014, I was one of the only candidates who spoke out in favor of the urban rail bond, and though it failed citywide, I was proud to see it pass with large support in District 9. Now, CapMetro and the city are starting up a new effort to bring mass transit to Austin – and I look forward to taking real action to get us there.
For the next set of questions, please tell us if you are For or Against the following propositions and why.
Prop A: $250 million for affordable housing
FOR. I support and voted for the affordable housing bond because I believe we need to ensure people of all means and backgrounds can continue to live in our communities. Through this bond, we will be able to help low income residents of our city repair their homes, acquire and develop affordable housing, and provide rental assistance for our most vulnerable residents.
As I discussed in the affordability question above, I have led on many different initiatives that are helping to address the very real challenges our community is facing. I am committed to continuing to fight for progress on affordability going forward.
Prop B: $128 million for libraries, museums and cultural centers
FOR. I support and voted for the library and cultural centers bond because these important community assets deserve our investment and maintenance. I have been a strong advocate on the City Council for ensuring that we can keep our cultural and community assets open and available to our residents.
This bond will help us ensure we can do so and will make key investments in a number of District 9 assets, such as the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, the Mexic-Arte Museum, the Dougherty Arts Center, the Faulk Library, and more. These critical investments also complement a lot of the other work I have led on at Council, such as establishing a dedicated source of funding for maintaining and improving our historic cultural assets through our hotel tax revenues.
Prop C: $149 million for parks and recreation
FOR. I support and voted for the parks and recreation bond. Past City Councils have often underinvested in our parks and pools – a problem that I have led the way on addressing. We must take action to repair these important community assets to ensure they are accessible to all Austinites and that future generations can continue to enjoy them.
This bond will help us take critical action on acquiring and improving parkland, repairing and renovating our pools, and generally improving our parks infrastructure. It also builds on a lot of the work I have done during my tenure on City Council to invest in our parks and pools, including efforts to: establish a dedicated source of funding for maintaining and improving our historic cultural assets through hotel tax revenues, develop a system-wide transition plan to bring our parks into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), increase the Parks and Recreation Department’s budget by $13 million over the last three years alone, resist a push to focus on pool closures through our Aquatics Master Plan and instead re-focus on making important investments to keep our pools open, and establish a consistent annual investment for providing lighting at our city parks, among many other initiatives. I look forward to continuing to push to keep our parks and pools open and accessible to residents of all ages and abilities.
Prop D: $184 million for flood mitigation, open space and water quality protection
FOR. I support and voted for the flood mitigation, open space, and water quality bond – and have taken action on these pressing issues during my time on Council.
We have significant flooding and water quality needs that, if unaddressed, will only get worse as climate change continues to cause more extreme storms in Central Texas and growth continues to result in more impervious cover and run-off. This bond is an important step forward for addressing our flooding and water quality issues – but it is not the only answer to our problems. I have stood up for efforts to mitigate our flooding issues and protect the quality and sustainability of our water supply by co-sponsoring the Flood Mitigation Task Force, opposing unnecessary variances to the Save Our Springs Ordinance and other means of circumventing our watershed standards, and launching the ambitious effort to create a plan for managing our water resources responsibly over the next 100 years.
I look forward to working to oversee implementation of these key bond investments and continue to push for progress on climate change, water quality and sustainability, and flood mitigation.
Prop E: $16 million for health and human services
FOR. I support and voted for the health and human services bond. Early on in my tenure on Council, Dove Springs neighbors identified a health services center as a need, and I am eager to see that community resource become available in a part of our city that has historically not received enough public investment. More generally, I have been a strong and consistent advocate for making key investments in health and social services, voting to increase Austin Public Health’s budget by $20 million over the past four years alone. I look forward to continued progress on health issues, both through a bond-funded Dove Springs facility as well as other Council initiatives.
Prop F: $38 million for public safety
FOR. I support and voted for the public safety bond because we need to repair and renovate our emergency medical services facilities and fire stations to ensure that we can continue to keep our residents safe and meet their needs. I have stood up for our public safety needs during my time on Council and am proud to have been endorsed by the Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services Employees Association PAC and the Austin Firefighters Association PAC.
Prop G: $160 million for transportation infrastructure
FOR. I support and voted for the transportation bond because I believe we need to invest in mobility improvements that serve residents of all ages and abilities, including the sidewalk repairs, street reconstruction, bridge safety, signal improvements, and pedestrian safety projects this bond would provide.
As I discussed in the transportation question above, I have taken action to support a number of ambitious initiatives helping to address the very big mobility challenges we face as a city – and I look forward to continuing to do so.
Prop H: Amend the city charter to state the term of service and process for removal of members of the Planning Commission would be determined by ordinance.
FOR. I support and voted for the Charter amendment regarding the Planning Commission because it is a step toward remedying a problem that currently exists in the Charter in which there is no clear process for removing Planning Commissioners after Council has voted to appoint them.
This past year, we faced an issue in which the Planning Commission was arguably in violation of our City Charter’s prohibition of having too many members who are connected to the real estate and development industry. Despite this issue, the City Charter did not provide any process for Council to remove members to restore the membership balance and bring the Planning Commission into compliance with our laws. This amendment would help fix that problem and address any other situations in which City Council would need to remove a member of the city’s Planning Commission.
Proposition I: Amend the city charter to make non-substantive corrections to grammar, typographical errors, capitalization, punctuation and sentence structure to the city charter and remove language that is obsolete.
FOR. I support and voted for the Charter amendment regarding non-substantive corrections to our City Charter. As a former college writing and interdisciplinary studies professor, I definitely support ridding our charter of grammatical errors.
Prop J: Shall a City ordinance be adopted to require both a waiting period and subsequent voter approval period, a total of up to three years, before future comprehensive revisions of the City's land development code become effective?
FOR. I support and voted for the CodeNEXT initiative ordinance because I support our community’s ability to be able to vote on changes of this magnitude that could have an impact on their quality of life.
CodeNEXT sought to re-write our development rules – but failed to adequately reflect community feedback or many aspects of our existing Council-adopted, community-supported plans. Because of these concerns, I opposed CodeNEXT as drafted, and I am the only candidate in the District 9 race to have done so. I believe we need to have a truly community-driven process that returns to our Imagine Austin vision of managing growth equitably and focusing on our corridors and activity centers, rather than targeting Central and East Austin residents for redevelopment and turning our housing policies over to the market. This proposition would provide an additional check on efforts to completely re-write our development rules and help ensure there is robust community engagement and real consensus.
Prop K: Without using the existing internal City Auditor or existing independent external auditor, shall the City Code be amended to require an efficiency study of the City's operational and fiscal performance performed by a third-party audit consultant, at an estimated cost of $1 million - $5 million?
AGAINST. I oppose this proposition due to concerns about the duplication of existing services, the potential implications for continuing to provide city services, and my concern that this effort appears to be part of a larger effort funded by ultra-conservative organizations to undermine city services. Austin has a City Auditor that reports directly to City Council; we also perform external audits with independent firms on a regular basis. I support the excellent work that our city – especially our City Auditor – undertakes to ensure efficient and effective government and have served as both the Chair and the Vice Chair of Council’s Audit and Finance Committee.
Isiah Jones
Candidate did not respond to our questions.
Linda O'Neal
Why are you running for the Austin City Council?
I felt a strong call to serve in a different way over the summer break. Austin has dramatically changed over the years, but the one change I cannot accept is that the people from here can no longer afford to live here. Everyone is running on affordability, but I believe that we need common sense government and accountability to make affordability a reality.
What do you believe are the most pressing issues for the people in your district?
Affordability
What do you think is the key to addressing affordability in Austin?
We must also demand that our taxing entities collaborate. Another reason why our property taxes are so high is because of our five taxing entities. We have the City of Austin, Travis County, AISD, ACC, and Central Health and they do not collaborate with each other. These taxing entities are doubling dipping. The city has very little oversight over where our tax dollars are going. In 2012, taxpayers authorized Central Health to give UT-Dell Medical Center $32 million a year to help cover the cost of health care for the poor. We are a giving community, but that money did not go to the poor. Instead, that money paid for the Dean’s faculty salaries, fundraising, and admissions.
We need to incentivize local landlords (both commercial and residential) to give longer leases. This is not rent control, this is rent stabilization. We need to protect renters from steep, unexpected rent increases. Affordability is a nation-wide issue. Austin, and other cities are promoting density and encouraging developers to build affordable housing. With little oversight and lack of transparency, there is a high potential for corruption. A special on PBS by Frontline: Poverty, Politics, and Profit,outlines how pervasive this problem is. Also, our incentives to developers to build affordable housing is weak. Austin offers developers, who build affordable housing into their units, an additional floor. Often building an additional floor is too expensive and developers opt to pay the fee in leu. Under this current program, only 1,450 units of affordable housing will be built over the next decade. If we want to meet the needs of the city, that number needs to be around 60,000. Real estate is market driven, especially in Texas, where there is very little protection offered to renters and buyers. This is why Code Next could never really offer affordable housing. Code Next is a market driven plan in a market driven state. Now, that said, we do need to change our land codes to accommodate our new residents. By 2030, it is estimated that the population of Austin will be three million. Doing nothing is not an option and doing nothing will most definitely make this city unlivable.
That said, we can make Austin more affordable by revisiting lease-to-purchase options. But we need to do so carefully, fiscally, and with complete transparency. During the nineties, Austin had a lease-to-purchase program called SCIP (Scattered Cooperative Infill Program). Pamela Franklin was the only resident who qualified for the program over the fifteen-year period. When she tried to purchase her home, the city denied that the program had ever existed. When the city was proven wrong, they still tried to deny her the purchase of her home over a technicality. Pamela Franklin had her day in court and won.
Although Austin tried and failed, we can look to Cleveland to get it done right. Cleveland has the largest lease-to-purchase network, and the program is working. Over 80 percent of those who participated in the program have transitioned into homeownership. This is how the program works. The Cleveland Housing Network (CHN) uses Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) to attract equity investors who, in exchange for the 15-year tax credits, help the Cleveland Housing Network to buy single-family rental properties. CHN then offers these homes for rent at an affordable price. At the end of the 15-years, renters who have successfully made it through the program are then able to purchase the home below the market value, usually for less than $20,000. The organization can keep the home purchase price low because the LIHTC credits allow it to buy the home without going into significant debt. Again, while I think that lease-to-purchase programs have significant positives, the city must be diligent and transparent.
How can Austin address its growing traffic and transportation challenges?
Shorter, faster bus routes.
For the next set of questions, please tell us if you are For or Against the following propositions and why.
Prop A: $250 million for affordable housing
FOR
Prop B: $128 million for libraries, museums and cultural centers
FOR (because it helps music)
Prop C: $149 million for parks and recreation
FOR
Prop D: $184 million for flood mitigation, open space and water quality protection
FOR
Prop E: $16 million for health and human services
FOR (Dove Springs)
Prop F: $38 million for public safety
FOR
Prop G: $160 million for transportation infrastructure
FOR
Prop H: Amend the city charter to state the term of service and process for removal of members of the Planning Commission would be determined by ordinance.
FOR
Proposition I: Amend the city charter to make non-substantive corrections to grammar, typographical errors, capitalization, punctuation and sentence structure to the city charter and remove language that is obsolete.
FOR
Prop J: Shall a City ordinance be adopted to require both a waiting period and subsequent voter approval period, a total of up to three years, before future comprehensive revisions of the City's land development code become effective?
FOR
Prop K: Without using the existing internal City Auditor or existing independent external auditor, shall the City Code be amended to require an efficiency study of the City's operational and fiscal performance performed by a third-party audit consultant, at an estimated cost of $1 million - $5 million?
Undecided (for it, but not if it involves millions of dollars in funds from the Koch brothers)
Candidate did not respond to our questions.
Danielle Skidmore
Why are you running for the Austin City Council?
I've been living in Austin and working on public sector projects for the past 24 years. But the reason I’m running really stems from a personal place… the most personal, seeing the world through the eyes of my son Peter, who’s in a wheelchair. We used to live in Clarksville until he got too big for us to lift up the stairs, so we moved downtown which was the most accessible option we found for our family. We are still very involved in our West Austin community, but the experience made me think about housing and who has access—physical, and financial—to our neighborhoods and the resources Austin has to offer.
In terms of solving some of these problems for my son and families like ours, our family spent a lot of time together at the Capitol together to increase newborn screening. If we had known when was born that he had this disorder, we could have avoided the brain injury that landed him in his chair in the first place, and we wanted other families to avoid that same fate. I spent even more time back at the Capitol last year to fight the bathroom bill, which—as a trans woman—hit very close to home. That's why I'm running; in this constant onslaught of attacks at the state and federal level, it's time to stick up for what we believe and defend Austin values.
What do you believe are the most pressing issues for the people in your district?
Transportation: The quality of life for those who live in District 9 and across Austin has diminished as our city becomes less and less affordable. Austinites are forced to move to less expensive housing that is farther from their place of work or school, imposing a large financial strain on their budget as purchasing a car is often the only viable option. Major employment centers (UT, the Capitol, downtown) are more accessible to those who live in central Austin, but youth and folks without unlimited income have been pushed out of these neighborhoods due to rising costs of living. Providing more, faster ways to bring workers to their jobs, or students to their classes, will improve their quality of life. As a civil engineer practicing professionally for almost 25 years, I have used my background to move transportation forward (pun intended) in a variety of ways. I have long been an advocate for more sustainable roadway designs, which enhance safety, reduce unnecessary impervious cover (i.e. reduce the need for new concrete!) and congestion delay. It is through this work that I deeply appreciate the challenges of helping elected officials make the most sustainable decisions about our infrastructure investments, and understand how building new roads—or expanding old ones—is not the answer. We must go big on transit, but for that to happen we need someone with not only the skillset but the political will to make expanding public transportation a priority that Austin is willing to fight for.
Housing: I support the Affordable Housing bond proposal and more workforce housing in
District 9. Workforce housing should include more multifamily housing: condos, townhouses, apartments, etc. I suggest three ways to help address the housing shortage: We must look at publicly owned land in District 9 being underutilized, create partnerships with local nonprofits (Affordable Central Texas, Habitat for Humanity, Foundation Communities, and community development corporations like Clarksville CDC), and we must ensure current tenants are able to stay in their homes. In order to do this, we need to expand the availability of ADUs (accessory dwelling units—think garage apartments) across District 9; the incumbent in our race has consistently voted against this effort to create more affordable units throughout the city. In addition to housing supply, we can protect vulnerable tenants by strengthening public information campaigns run through BASTA to notify residents of tenants’ rights. Housing access not only means bringing new people into new housing, but helping current tenants navigate and exercise their rights. I recommend reviewing a blog post my team recently put out on converting underutilized city-owned land into real affordable housing here: https://www.danielleforall.com/blog/turf-underfoot-roofs-over-heads
Equity: As mentioned, my son Peter and I have spent a lot of time together at the Capitol, starting in 2005 when we advocated alongside March of Dimes to increase newborn screening in Texas and help other kids like him avoid traumatic brain injuries and lead better lives. The fact that this legislation took two sessions to pass, against moneyed interests, showed me that we need to fight to promote and protect Austin’s values in the onslaught of state and federal attacks. Fighting the bathroom bill, which is on back on the agenda for our upcoming legislative session, only reiterated how much Austinites have to lead to protect our residents’ equity. Our local non-discrimination ordinance seeks to protect the rights of our most vulnerable citizens, but my time as a member of the city’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Quality of Life Advisory Commission has shown me that our Austin Equal Employment & Fair Housing Office is over-burdened and understaffed. As I helped to coordinate a coalition of businesses and organizations to fight the bathroom bill at the legislature, I would proposed a similar city-level coalition of advocacy orgs (Workers Defense, Equality Texas, AJC or Grassroots, etc.) and City Commissions (Human Rights, LGBTQ, etc.) to help ensure our ordinance has teeth and create a real enforcement mechanism beyond the current Office’s capacity.
What do you think is the key to addressing affordability in Austin?
As an engineer who sees the growth challenges our city is facing—and as a former full-time West Austin resident who faced accessibility challenges to stay in our own home, when Peter and his wheelchair outgrew the stairs— I know the current issues we’re facing in affordability and mobility are real, and are the result of the current land development code and its shortcomings; they’re the result of us leaving problems unsolved. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we should give up, and as we make room for more Austinites, both immigrants and those born within our city, we owe it to ourselves to struggle through resolving what we’ve set out to do. And that means connecting land development and mobility solutions, and implementing them in tandem.
We need more housing of all types and market rates, especially in proximity to our transportation corridors. In addition, reliable, robust public transportation is a key component of a affordability. Since housing costs in central Austin will always be more expensive, providing workers and students with quick transportation connections will dramatically help with family budgets.
But we also need to consider intersectionality of transit with other barriers to quality of life, in order to improve mobility more broadly within the city—such as ensuring childcare options are available at or adjacent to major employment centers or within neighborhoods. This will keep family commutes simpler, by reducing additional trips. One the most significant reasons people give for NOT choosing a transit option is the need to make that additional stop for childcare, so we can solve two major issues facing Austin’s families by thinking about these solutions intersectionally.
The bottom line is, for us to improve affordability in our city and reduce congestion, we need to make more room for people throughout Austin—remembering that we're not just talking about transplants from California or wherever, but new children being born in Austin all the time. We just have to make sure that making that space comes with a real and tangible commitment to community benefits; affordable housing, and minimizing displacement of current residents in our communities. For this to occur, the process must be inclusive and all voices must be heard… We must proactively reach out to all communities.
How can Austin address its growing traffic and transportation challenges?
For the sake of our environment, we finally need to go big on public transportation. That means embracing technology to ensure faster, safer movement around our city, but also going back to the basics: a robust bus service, and sidewalks that that allow our citizens to walk (or roll) to where they need to be. Less driving means more living. I envision a walkable, bike-friendly Austin, with transit options that fit within or improve families' budgets and lifestyles. In order to realize a more sustainable Austin, we must create more affordable and market rate housing in walking distance to transit corridors.
Austin needs a core network of high capacity transit, just like we have core highway network. With Senator Watson’s recent statements, I'm glad that transit is becoming front-and-center in people's minds and the city's conversations. As to what that looks like, we have modes of transportation that we know work—and we have room to innovate too. With the original advent of railroads across the US, tracks were made to guide the vehicles most safely and efficiently from point A to point B. Now we have new technologies to guide them, even in the form of autonomous vehicles. Considering this, it's not as important to me what what the ‘track’ looks like. What is essential is that our high capacity transit cannot be stuck in traffic! We absolutely need dedicated space for transit.
I would also say that for the highest capacity corridors, we should be considering a long-term solution that is fully separated from other vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic: https://www.danielleforall.com/blog/mobility-is-freedom-less-driving-more-living.
We should make the decision, but not based on which mode takes the least time to build build... it should be the right plan for the next 100 years, not simply the cheapest and easiest option over the next couple of years. This is our chance to make up for inaction in the past by building real, sustainable and affordable mobility options for Austin's future.
To implement this transportation reboot in Austin, we need someone with the both the technical skillset and political will to guide that process to fruition; we need someone with a long term vision that necessarily includes making policy changes to save the environment, such as going big on public transportation. If we want public transportation to be as big as it should be in Austin, we must give commuters these alternatives and provide relatively inexpensive incentives to use transit. Movability Austin is doing good work in this area. People make behavioral economic decisions all the time when it comes to commuting—whether it’s deciding whether or not to drive in the toll lane, or whether to take an Uber or Lyft. We’ve been talking about asking people to shift their behavior out of the goodness of our hearts, but why don’t we make it a decision that makes sense for our schedules and pocket-books. This will affect the change faster.
For the next set of questions, please tell us if you are For or Against the following propositions and why.
Prop A: $250 million for affordable housing
For; I am most excited about the ability to leverage this money with nonprofits through the city to maximum the community benefit.
Prop B: $128 million for libraries, museums and cultural centers
For; I agree with the bond’s focus to renovate existing infrastructure before building new.
Prop C: $149 million for parks and recreation
For; Parks are a key part of our community services and they need to be supported.
Prop D: $184 million for flood mitigation, open space and water quality protection
For; The impacts of climate change are real and the increased flooding hazards we are experiencing require wise investments for flood mitigation and open space preservation.
Prop E: $16 million for health and human services
For
Prop F: $38 million for public safety
For
Prop G: $160 million for transportation infrastructure
For
Prop H: Amend the city charter to state the term of service and process for removal of members of the Planning Commission would be determined by ordinance.
For; I support this proposition to avoid the ambiguities and arguments/lawsuits related to the makeup and terms of service for the Planning Commission.
Proposition I: Amend the city charter to make non-substantive corrections to grammar, typographical errors, capitalization, punctuation and sentence structure to the city charter and remove language that is obsolete.
For
Prop J: Shall a City ordinance be adopted to require both a waiting period and subsequent voter approval period, a total of up to three years, before future comprehensive revisions of the City's land development code become effective?
Against; I believe in robust and meaningful community engagement for the next steps at updating our land development code. I am concerned that a simple up or down ballot vote on zoning could violate Chapter 211 and 212 of Texas Local Government Code. As a matter of public policy, I also believe this is why we have a representative democracy. It is why I have chosen to run and serve in elected office... to listen to all voices on an issue, to make the most-informed decision, and to take responsibility for that decision with the constituent I represent.
Prop K: Without using the existing internal City Auditor or existing independent external auditor, shall the City Code be amended to require an efficiency study of the City's operational and fiscal performance performed by a third-party audit consultant, at an estimated cost of $1 million - $5 million?
Against; The city already has a process for both internal and external audits. However, I absolutely believe that the city should focus on continuous improvement for its operations, especially for our public utilities.
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