AUSTIN, Texas — The City of Austin will welcome a new city manager on Sept. 1, 2024 – more than 18 months after the city council and Mayor Kirk Watson voted to fire former city manager Spencer Cronk.
A timeline of the process was recently released by the City. Officials will start by picking out a professional search firm, which will then list out potential candidates. After that, the community will be asked to provide its input.
According to Watson, there is no rush in the search.
"We need to make sure we get it right, and we'll take the appropriate time to do that," Watson said in an interview with KVUE on June 22.
The reason September 2024 was chosen as the deadline is because the city council usually starts the budget process during the summer time – a process council members are currently in – and bringing a new city manager in at the beginning, middle or end of that process "is probably not fair," according to Watson.
Cronk, who had been in the position since 2018, was fired in a 10-1 vote in February over his response to the ice storm earlier that month. He had also faced backlash over the City's contract with the Austin Police Association.
While Watson did not directly comment on Cronk, he mentioned the person who will eventually be selected will be someone who has "competence" and "common sense."
"We want to have taken care of many of the problems that we felt like needed to be addressed, so that the new city manager will be someone that can look to the future and not have to repair problems that we've had in the past," Watson said.
After Cronk's departure, Jesús Garza quickly took over the role as interim city manager. Garza previously served as city manager from 1994 to 2002, while Watson was mayor from 1997 to 2001.
Under Garza, the City has had a series of leadership changes, including announcing a new general manager of Austin Energy.
However, when KVUE asked Watson whether Garza would be in the running for the permanent city manager position, the answer was simply "no."
With no one currently in the running for the job and the search still in its infancy, Watson explained the only vision he has is toward the future – rebuilding trust with the people who call Austin home.
"We need to do the kind of job that we said we were going to do, and I think we're doing that. I think sometimes it's slower than – certainly slower than I would like. And I know it's slower in some instances than the public wants," Watson said. "But we want to make sure we get things right."
Watson said aside from clearing the path for whomever will be Austin's newest city manager, there are several other issues that are being assessed, including homelessness, expanding Austin's airport – which, according to Watson, is six years behind – and conducting a performance review on the Development Services Department.
"We're making progress on all of those things in a pretty aggressive way," Watson said. "If you stop and think that it's only been five months or five and a half months now, we're moving pretty aggressively. But we want to turn over the local government in a way that's stable so that we can focus on the future and not have to be fixing a bunch of stuff."
See the full interview with Watson below: