City Council has shut the door on 2024 with a meeting that had the body approve a generational Austin Energy plan and then bid farewell to three departing Council members – Leslie Pool, Alison Alter, and Mackenzie Kelly.
With Pool’s departure, Council’s inaugural 10-1 class of elected representatives has officially ended. Hailing from North Central Austin, Pool has been a fixture in Austin’s political scene for decades; she was elected as the first-ever District 7 CM in 2014 during the madhouse election that saw dozens of candidates seeking office in the city’s first-ever single-member district elections (following voters approving an amendment to the City Charter that switched the City Council from at-large representation to the SMD model).
With Leslie Pool’s departure, Council’s inaugural 10-1 class of elected representatives has officially ended.
Alison Alter joined Pool on the dais two years later after defeating D10 incumbent Sheri Gallo. Alter and Pool became key figures in a minority alliance on Council (former CMs Kathie Tovo and Ann Kitchen being the other members) that successfully slowed or defeated a slew of housing reforms that would have relaxed development restrictions. Pool and Alter prioritized reforms that would have allowed less building and required more construction of income-restricted units.
Pool more or less abandoned that cause in 2022 when she began a polarizing pivot that ended with her on the other side of Alter on housing policy. In the end, Pool helped pass some of the most far-reaching reforms to Austin’s housing rules Council has advanced in years – while Alter voted against them.
The year also marks the end of Mackenzie Kelly’s single Council term representing D6. Kelly, a Republican, was defeated in November by Krista Laine, a Democrat. Kelly took the kind of votes you’d expect from an Austin conservative – she was a budget hawk, public safety champion, and consistent opponent of issues that Republicans push to the forefront of the culture war (like transgender and reproductive rights). Though, Kelly was much less bombastic and militant than Don Zimmerman, the first Republican to represent the Northwest Austin district. As a result, Kelly was much better liked by her colleagues – and more effective in getting stuff passed.
Kelly also aligned herself with neighborhood groups in the district that opposed housing reforms, leading to her voting with Alter against many of the policies Council approved last year. Interestingly, those votes may put Kelly out of step with the Texas GOP, which has increasingly shifted toward opposing local housing development rules and is poised in the next legislative session to adopt statewide rules that could deregulate housing development in Texas cities.
This article appears in December 20 • 2024.