It’s almost cruel that City Council should come out of its July respite and immediately dive into the second-thorniest discussion it’ll encounter all year. (Nothing trumps CodeNEXT.) Nevertheless, members return on Monday, Aug. 6, for City Manager Spencer Cronk‘s first-ever budget presentation. Cronk has traversed the city during the first half of this year collecting community budget priorities during sessions in each district. Between those town halls and surveys, the CM has heard from more than 1,000 Austinites about how they’d like to see the city spend its $3.9 billion.
Cronk and his budget team kicked off the public engagement period in April. In early June, about 50 of my neighbors in District 4 attended a session at the Gus Garcia Recreation Center. There, Deputy Chief Financial Officer Ed Van Eenoo said it’s an exciting time for the budget process, because staff is implementing a major change in how the final product is organized. Rather than the usual department-by-department model, staff will base budget recommendations on six strategic outcomes adopted by Council back in April: economic opportunity and affordability; mobility; safety; health and environment; culture and lifelong learning; and government that works for all.
If those sound sort of vague, don’t fret. “There’s a lot more meat on the bones than just those six high-level outcomes,” Van Eenoo explained. “Those are indicators. How will we know that we’re successful at improving mobility? Well, we’ve got indicators of success, which is what we’re going to want your help prioritizing later on.” Below the indicators were a wide array of metrics – about 150 “growing specific, tangible metrics that we’re going to be tracking over time, so we can be accountable to the community and Council.”
As we weighed in on the indicators via app, it became clear that the results would generally be molded by the specific issues facing each district. Our group, in answering health and environment, said access to quality health care is the area in most need of improvement; groups in other parts of town with easier access to clinics and hospitals might have a different answer. For economic opportunity and affordability, the crowd overwhelmingly voted that the city needs to do a better job addressing access to housing. Staff said the previous six town halls produced the same response.
Cronk has used that intel to prepare a presentation of the final product to Council (and open to the public), 3:30pm on Monday, Aug. 6, at the Mexican American Cultural Center auditorium, 600 River St.
This article appears in July 27 • 2018.