Council: Dog Days Ahead

City budget planning gets serious this week, kicking off with a Wednesday morning work session at which Financial Services staff will unveil City Manager Marc Ott’s proposed FY 2017 budget, and update the various spring estimates. So begins a month of numbers – although not everybody will be on hand to hear them.

Although it appears there will be a quorum, at least four of the 11 members – Mayor Steve Adler, District 5 Council Member Ann Kitchen, D7 CM Leslie Pool, and D10 CM Sheri Gallo – will be absent, with the first three already posting selfies from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Mayor Pro Tem Kathie Tovo will be pro-temming the meeting – and the budget staff will be rolling out the new numbers.

Here’s a few of the inflationary prospects to ponder they gave Council in June:

• "Cost Drivers": These include $29.1 million in structural expenses built into the pending budget, based on existing contractual commitments (i.e., public safety personnel), hiring commitments, or prior Council decisions (e.g., employee raises, new library staffing, a new fire station).

• "Cost Escalators": These include another $27.5 million in additional costs either anticipated (e.g., a potential 12%, $10.1 million increase in employee health insurance) or other new expenditures pending Council review: IT expenses ($5.1 million), civilian employee wage increases ($4 million), AFD overtime while cadet hiring proceeds ($3.1 million), and so on.

Overall, the preliminary budget numbers reflect a total of $56.6 million in these combined "cost drivers" – not all set in stone, and staff provides conservatively high-cost numbers to allow themselves and Council to ponder worst-case scenarios. But the final number on these costs, after a couple of months of winnowing, is very likely to be closer to $50 million than to zero.

Those early estimates are ripe for revision this month, although the “cost driver” category is not readily amendable, as it includes money dedicated to negotiated contracts and decisions already made. And much depends on both sales tax receipts (early returns were lower than hoped) and the certified property tax rolls (yet to come).

At any rate, August will be a busy month, with Tuesday agenda work sessions, Wednesday budget sessions, and the regular Thursday meetings every week until September.

Next week’s draft agenda (Aug. 4) is already crowded, at 92 Items (and nothing yet listed from council members, generally not posted more than a week out).

Meanwhile, other matters loom: City Manager Marc Ott’s will-he-won’t-he announcement on whether he’s taking the executive director's job with the International City/County Management Association – anticipated in the next few days. The Transportation Department is also planning to get the November bond proposition finalized in the next two weeks. Even more urgently, there is the fallout from and response to the brutal Breaion King arrest, which took place in June of last year but only became widely known – and then locally and nationally denounced – only a few days ago.

Several council members have issued statements deploring the arrest, the Austin Police Department’s lack of adequate response, and promising further action. From Philadelphia, Mayor Adler said that he would be looking for “specific and concrete” actions to address the matter by the end of next week.

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