City Council Member Mike Siegel believes the city budget that Council hammers out over the next four weeks must respond to the political moment in which Austin finds itself.
“We’re in this moment of authoritarianism and austerity,” Siegel said. “And I think what the city needs to do most of all through this budget process is make sure we’re taking care of one another. These cuts to social service and safety net programs by Congress – cutting health care, cutting food benefits, cutting all these safety net programs – put our people at risk. So we need to address that as a community through the budget process.”
Siegel’s comment is something of an opening salvo in the deliberative process that began last week, when City Manager T.C. Broadnax unveiled the city’s preliminary version of the budget. Broadnax’s budget is balanced, despite an expected $33 million deficit, and includes $6.3 billion in spending. According to an analysis by the Statesman, it would increase property taxes for the average Austin homeowner by about $150 a year. It does not include funding from a possible tax rate election this fall – which would ask voters whether they support raising taxes to fund more city spending. Mayor Kirk Watson strongly suggested that such an election is coming in a Saturday morning post to Council’s online message board.
City employees get a 4% raise in Broadnax’s budget. Police officers get a 6% raise; EMS personnel get a 3% raise. Raises for fire department employees aren’t included in the document because AFD will renegotiate its contract with the city later this summer. The proposed budget moves around expenditures in the city’s general revenue fund and eliminates $17 million in costs by reducing overtime for firefighters and police.
“These cuts to social service and safety net programs by Congress – cutting health care, cutting food benefits, cutting all these safety net programs – put our people at risk.” – City Council Member Mike Siegel
Watson laid out a timeline for the budget process in his Saturday morning message. The city will hold a budget work session on July 23. It will hold another budget session the following week and hear public comment about the tax rate election. Watson wants all proposed amendments to the budget from Council members filed by August 4. The next week, on August 13, Council will adopt the budget.
In his message, the mayor mentioned specific budget items he supports. These include providing $1 million for the Homeless Strategy Office’s street outreach coordinators and $11.5 million for the Eighth Street Shelter and the Marshalling Yard shelter. Watson also approves of $4 million budgeted for an emergency rental assistance program and $375,000 for maintenance on the Parks & Recreation Department’s athletic fields.
Siegel told us he supports a tax rate election for this fall, saying he believes that when Austinites see the budget they will want to “dig a little deeper to maintain our quality of life.” Council Member Mark Duchen, on the other hand, is skeptical about raising taxes. “A lot of residents and homeowners here, their bills went up $1,000 last year on average, or about 14% in just one year,” Duchen said. “So I’m just very wary about a TRE at a time when we already know that we have an affordability problem and a base budget that acknowledges that.”
Siegel said his constituents in District 7 are asking that he focus on emergency response, climate resilience to extreme weather events like the recent flooding, and affordability in housing and city services. He provided a couple of examples of amendments he’d like to propose.
“The budget gets rid of the Housing Trust Fund, which was created as a response to the affordable housing crisis, and that is something that I think our community wants us to continue to do,” Siegel said. “Another thing you’ll see when you look into the budget is that it increases the amount of revenue we expect to get from parking tickets and traffic enforcement. I don’t think we should be using parking and traffic enforcement as a revenue generator. That’s going to be, essentially, a regressive tax that falls hardest on poor and working-class families.”
This article appears in July 18 • 2025.
