AUSTIN, Texas — Editor's note: The related video was published in June 2019.
Mackenzie Kelly, the president of Take Back Austin and a northwest Austin native, on Wednesday filed paperwork launching her campaign for Austin City Council, District 6.
“We could tell Councilman Flannigan to take a hike, but we don't have to – 'Downtown Jimmy' has been deeply embedded with his City Hall cronies ever since taking office,” Kelly said in a press release Thursday. “It's time for us to not just fix the city but take it back for all Austinites, starting with our many neighborhoods, and not just bureaucratic interests and the whims of urban planners.”
According to that release, Kelly is supporting a "top-down cleanup at City Hall."
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Kelly was appointed president of the nonprofit group Take Back Austin in March. The organization has been criticizing the Austin City Council's homeless ordinances, which it believes "threatened the lives of the homeless and the non-homeless alike."
If elected to the seat, Kelly aims to lower property taxes, reduce regulatory burdens on Austin's business community, and push for an external city audit.
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She says another focus of her time will be to support the law enforcement community, which is now facing an officer shortage. Kelly was recently elected the president of the 100th class of the Austin Police Department's Citizen Police Academy.
Additionally, Kelly served the Jollyville Fire Department from 2005 to 2013. She is now employed in the health care sector, working alongside frontline workers who care for the elderly.
You can learn more about her campaign here.
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