It was a busy morning at City Council this morning – an extremely busy one – with a clutch of press conferences kickstarting the day. Leading things off was Will Wynn, flanked by several trail advocates, calling to set the path of the Lady Bird Lake boardwalk completing the LBL trail. It ultimately passed, over objections from a small, vocal minority of nearby condo owners, including one, Fred Schmidt, who called the proposal “an elevated concrete human highway” and “bicycle super roadway.” The 30 megawatt, $250 million Austin Energy solar array also passed, with the odd, seemingly industry placating addition of a task force to review similar future decisions.
However, the morning’s real drama was the fallout from Marc Ott‘s proposal cutting Fire Department overtime by going from four to three-person staffing on select engines. Austin Firefighters Association president Stephen Truesdell announced in a presser he was “very surprised to hear one of the first things proposed were cuts in fire department truck staffing … It doesn’t make sense to immediately cut core services. That’s something that should be cut absolutely last.” With regards to the union, getting on board with Ott’s proposal marks an auspicious beginning for new fire chief Rhoda Mae Kerr.
Kerr was standing with Ott and assistant city manager Michael McDonald some 90 minutes later, in an ad hoc press conference where Ott announced he was delaying implementation of the so-called “flexible staffing” changes. Noting his proposal would have only effected “one to three units out of the 50 to 60 on shift,” he nonetheless said he would defer implementation to allow “opportunities for the community to provide feedback.” Kerr said fire service would not be compromised “by the very minimum amount [of cuts] we were talking about,” but promised to proceed in taking public input. The format for public feedback, she said, is still being worked out.
This article appears in February 27 • 2009.