City Hall Hustle: No Ports in This Storm

There's a storm on the horizon, and this week, we got an early glimpse.

The Community Action Network has released its Community Dashboard 2011 report, giving a snapshot of the region's health across four key areas, as agreed upon by the interlocal organization: achieving one's full potential, meeting basic needs, public health, and being "safe, just & engaged." Tellingly, it was the assessment of basic needs that held the most sobering findings: The percentage of low-income Travis County residents – those with earnings below 200% of the federal poverty level, or about $44,000 for a family of four – rose from 32% in 2008 to 35% in 2009. And the percentage of households that find themselves "cost burdened" by housing – spending 30% or more of their income on rent – similarly rose, from 36% in 2008 to 38% in 2009.

That impact is being felt disproportionally among Austin's nonwhite residents, namely its burgeoning Hispanic population. "The poverty rate among His­pan­ics in Travis County in 2009 was 27%, compared to 21% for African Americans and 10% for Whites and Asians," the report states. Those statistics are echoed in the indicator gauging how "safe, just & engaged" we are, which pointed to disproportionate arrests of African-Americans – at 9% of the population, they made up 24% of jail bookings in 2009.

The report contains a little room for cautious optimism: slight improvements on health measures, including obesity and smoking. But overall, it hammers home two bleak findings: One, that "over the past decade, the low-income population grew at twice the rate of the total population"; and two, that "people who are low-income fare worse on most indicators" – from school preparedness to crime vulnerability to health (both physical and mental), with fully half of low-income residents reporting poor mental health.

Charting a Course

Of course, when the broader economic picture is this dire, municipalities are least able to provide assistance when it's most needed. Hence, the timing of the report's release – on the eve of the city's annual foray into budget season – is highly appropriate.

The yearly Five-Year Financial Forecast, an overview that informs the city's budgetary process, is due April 20. Admirably, the city looks to be getting an even earlier head start on budget considerations than in years past, addressing a persistent bugaboo of council members' that despite reams of community input, major, policy-level prioritization of programs doesn't occur until it's too late to be meaningful. "There have been concerns from council members in the past ... about the budget process and getting information earlier," said Audit and Finance Committee Chair Sheryl Cole at council's premeeting work session this week. "There's a feeling when we finally get [the final proposed budget] in August or so, we're scrambling for an impact."

Ostensibly under discussion was an item from Council Member Bill Spelman calling for the city manager to deliver an overview of budget performance measures and objectives to council in a slightly earlier and more formalized report. Calling his proposals "marginal improvements on an already very, very tight and very, very aggressive schedule," he said his resolution is written "not to engage the City Council in the making of the budget in terms of numbers, but to engage the council in the earliest stage," when departmental needs and issues on the horizon are being contemplated.

Issues addressed in Spelman's initial resolution, such as whether department presentations should be made to subcommittees or the entire council, plus an initial April 15 deadline, led Cole to ask for a postponement, a request that was never formally acted upon but which bodes some tweaking when the measure comes up today. Still, there was conversation about how council can set budget priorities earlier. Cole resurrected the specter of council 2006's priority-setting retreat, which was much maligned at the time for its tony setting (a day spa near Anderson Mill) and seemingly pre-K style (placing dots by council members' largest priorities). But despite the retreat's prefab punch lines, Cole said the undertaking was valuable "from a policy perspective" in that members could rank initiatives so that then-City Manager Toby Futrell could "get some priority as she was putting that into a budget" –an issue with which the council has consistently wrestled.

High Water Everywhere

"This is as good a place as any," Mayor Lee Lef­fing­well said of potential retreat locales, saying he didn't oppose the concept but "frankly thought we spent too much money on that resort place up on Lake Travis."

Wherever it happens –and it should –the bleaker findings in CAN's Community Dashboard report will provide fodder for discussion, as will the far more dire story unfolding in the Texas Legislature. One of four new issues outlined in a recent update to the city's Horizon Issues report is the Health and Human Ser­vices Department's potential loss of state and federal grant funding. "The current budget issues facing both the State of Texas and the Federal government have put funding of existing grant programs at risk of being eliminated or significantly reduced," the update reads, with grants funding 32% of the "core public health functions" H&HS provides. "These funds have allowed the department to build critical, needed infrastructure that is relied on to conduct everyday business .... In addition, the department's ability to respond to and investigate disease outbreaks would be compromised, potentially resulting in increased morbidity and mortality."

That report was drafted prior to the Texas House's passage of House Bill 1; the state budget bill's $23 billion in draconian cuts, even if tempered somewhat in the Senate, will certainly hasten these grim scenarios. And at the national level, the fact that the House Republicans' Medicare-destroying bill for the next fiscal year hasn't been declared dead on arrival represents the triumph of the GOP's "pain caucus" over any semblance of common sense or social contract.

Upon the CAN report's release Monday, Dashboard Steering Committee Chair Ashton Cumberbatch warned that "we almost see a tsunami" coming if the discrepancies they cite continue unabated. But one should remember such disasters are acts of God, while the afflictions at the state and federal levels, slowly but certainly rolling down to the city, are entirely man-made.

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Michael King is on vacation.