It’s not just schoolkids who get summer breaks – City Council gets them too. Our local representatives sprinted through a 100-plus-item agenda last week and are now off until mid-July, when they can begin wringing their hands over next year’s budget. Here are a few of the items that got passed.
The most contentious item was whether to ask Austinites to vote for a new bond program this November. Mayor Kirk Watson has discouraged such a vote since Austinites rejected the tax increase known as Proposition Q last fall, pointing out that the city has violated its own guidance over the last decade by scheduling bond elections every two years, when they have historically been spaced six years apart. City staff recommended in May that Council delay a bond election until 2028, saying Austin still has over $1 billion from previous bonds left to spend.
However, despite Watson’s guidance and the staff’s recommendation, Council voted last Thursday to loosen city rules to make a bond election possible this year. It’s not certain Council will go forward with an election, but it did direct staff to work up a $390 million bond package that would fund improvements to transportation, parks, and community facilities.
Watson and CM Marc Duchen voted against the bond measures. The mayor offered one of his pithy, gruff rebukes. “If we only support financial guardrails until they become inconvenient, then we shouldn’t be surprised when the public questions whether we really mean them and, frankly, whether we can be trusted,” he said.
The Council members returned to their more-common unanimity on three measures related to the small, gas-fired energy plants, known as peakers, that Council approved over the objections of environmentalists the week prior. The peakers are meant to provide additional energy to the city during periods of high electricity use, like the hotter days of summer, but their adoption is at odds with the city’s effort to become carbon neutral by 2035.
Council Member Mike Siegel sponsored a proposal to limit the negative impacts from the peakers to the neighborhoods they will sit near. CM Ryan Alter sponsored a resolution to cap emissions from the plants, so they don’t climb higher than they are today. CM José Velásquez led passage of a proposal encouraging the city to place the new peakers in a part of the city other than East Austin, where most of the city’s energy is currently produced.
“Over the past hundred years, Austin’s Eastern Crescent has disproportionately shouldered the impacts of decisions imposed on them by a ruling class that devalued their health and well-being,” Velásquez said of the city’s placement of power plants. “In the interest of environmental and social justice, we are prioritizing a balanced range of sites across our city, bearing in mind that the 10 existing peakers are exclusively located in East Austin.”
Among the other items approved last Thursday, CM Chito Vela sponsored a resolution to develop a new “fee in lieu” approach to the creation of affordable housing, something that would allow developers who want to take advantage of the city’s density bonus programs to contribute money to a city fund instead of setting aside a percentage of units in their new housing developments for people with lower income levels.
Vela noted that the city has produced a significant amount of affordable housing for people making between 60% and 80% of the median family income with its density bonus programs, but has struggled to create units at 30-50% MFI, even though close to 200,000 households in the city fall in the 30-60% MFI range or lower, according to Housing Works Austin. Vela said the resolution would allow the city to use the money to deepen affordability in existing units and create new affordable housing altogether. “These are more of the creative, out-of-the-box solutions that this Council has brought that are going to allow us to chip away at our affordability crisis,” Vela said.
Vela also celebrated a trio of items that will finalize a multiyear effort, which he said was first begun by former Council Member Greg Casar, to construct a mixed-use development on city-owned land on St. Johns Avenue, at the site of a former Home Depot. Vela said the deal will increase St. John Park from 1 to 4 acres and create 500 housing units, 70% of which will be set aside for people making between 50% and 80% MFI. “There’s gonna be a lot of amenities there, too,” Vela said, “swimming pools, fitness rooms, community rooms, and then we have commercial [development opportunities], which was a big request from the St. Johns neighborhood.”
Council on Thursday also renamed the Colorado River Park Wildlife Sanctuary as the Daniel Llanes Wildlife Sanctuary, in honor of the legendary musician, curandero, community organizer, and social and environmental justice crusader who died last December after having shaped Austin’s civic life for over a half-century. CM Velásquez noted that in addition to his other passions, Llanes was fiercely devoted to preserving the natural areas around the Colorado River.
“From the 1980s, until his passing last year, he fought against commercial development that he felt threatened wildlife and the natural environment near the river,” Velásquez said. “And he did so relentlessly.”
This article appears in June 5 • 2026.
