Here at the Chronicle, we’ve lamented and complained for decades about the City Council’s weekly schedule, which puts their meetings on the day our print edition comes out, leaving us often guessing at what’s going to happen, and sometimes out of date by the second day of our time on the stands. Council has ignored repeated requests that they move their meetings to better fit our schedule, and they persist in scheduling their regular meetings on Thursdays. (And to add insult to injury, the Austin ISD Board has now moved their meetings to Thursday as well.)
But this week we got the reverse situation: a story about the police contract and the city manager, and as it developed in twists and turns all week, it became clear that things were moving toward a climactic special called meeting on Wednesday, the day we send the paper to press. Except we didn’t know what the story was going to be, or how much space Austin Sanders was going to need to tell it. What was planned as a 600-word News short when we started working on the issue a week ago was clearly a much bigger story by Monday morning, and the only logical thing to put on the cover (sorry, “Mama’s Girls”). In the end, some other copy had to make way as well; some of it’s already online, and some will be in next week’s issue. There was some extra scrambling to get everything in place, which I’m glad we could do, but I’m left wondering: Does it make this a better issue than it would’ve been if Council had been working on their usual Thursday schedule? Is the timeliness worth the extra hassle, and the lack of time for reflection? We’ll be back again next week either way. I honestly can’t tell; I’ll leave that up to you readers, and for now, we’ll put a hold on our demand that Council reschedule their meetings.
Austin’s City Council may wake up tomorrow morning with the same sort of “what now?” feeling about today’s actions – two bold decisions that both have the feel of driving a stake in the ground while simultaneously leaping off a cliff into the unknown. Shortly after their decision to dismiss City Manager Cronk (on a 10-1 vote, with Natasha Harper-Madison opposed), Council also voted not to consider the four-year police contract that city staff had just finished negotiating with the police union, and instead pursue a one-year renewal of the current contract, with an eye to starting up new negotiations after the May public vote on the Austin Police Oversight Act.
Both were part of the same decision, as Cronk had pretty much staked his job on the four-year contract, and a large Council majority had run for office on a promise to be tougher in negotiating police oversight. But there are a lot of unknowns here – starting with whether an untenable number of police officers will opt to resign in a few days and whether the union will agree to the one-year extension, and ending with the legality and enforceability of the proposed APOA itself. Acting City Manager Jesús Garza isn’t as much of a question mark – he seems unlikely to have an agenda of his own, but he also isn’t the guy this activist council wants leading the city into the future, so there’s a long and possibly contentious job search on tap there. And a lot of opportunity for the status quo to tighten its grip on the city bureaucracy while this new council is still trying to find the bathrooms.
But like I said, we’ll be back next week either way.
This article appears in February 17 • 2023.