Public Safety
In our three public safety departments, we have among the best firefighters, paramedics, and police officers in the country. We consistently rank in the top quintile in key performance data, like: response time, violent crime rates, and fires contained to room of origin. Incidentally, we also have among the highest paid public safety professionals in the country. Nearly 70% of our tax resources go to pay the hard-working folks in AFD, APD, and EMS. So how do we continue to make Austin safer without spending vast sums of tax dollars to hire ever more personnel? Focus on preventing public safety issues rather than simply responding to them.
Austin Police Department
Building on twenty-five years of police-work research and officer training, I support using Problem-Oriented Policing (POP), a methodology that emphasizes understanding the causes of persistent crime problems and addressing them through a variety of police-community strategies. In other words, the best answer to an on-going crime problem isn’t always more “boots on the ground” or putting cops in the hotspot area, but rather using data and information to strategically focus our police and community resources on proven efforts that will reduce crime. Currently, I am working with community leaders and the police department to develop a POP strategy targeting reducing property crime at multi-family properties.
Austin Fire Department
AFD does a fantastic job of containing fires once they start. Among a group of peer cities studied in 2010, Austin FD kept 20% more fires from spreading beyond the room of origin than the average. And this is despite the fact that we had on average about 40% more fires per year to respond to, according to this study. Without backing down from our excellent response and training protocols, I would like to see a greater emphasis be placed on our prevention efforts. I will advocate for increased funding for current prevention programs and will work with local professionals and national researchers to explore new prevention models that could be applied here.
Emergency Medical Services
There’s a real dichotomy in the kind of service our paramedics provide: on one side are the medical emergencies, life and death situations; on the other are the public health services offered to residents who lack access to traditional health care. Both are critical components for the City to offer, but each requires a different kind of response. I want the department to diversify its response offerings to enable our highly trained medical professionals to react appropriately to the different types of calls. This involves greater coordination with the public health services offered by the City, Travis County, and the healthcare district, and developing better call-taking protocols that more accurately differentiate between true emergency calls and equally important but less urgent calls for assistance.
Mobility Issues
As we all know, traffic has become a major concern for all of us as we try to get around in Austin. I am a strong supporter of increasing capacity through alternative means of transportation, as well as increasing road capacity where it makes sense and working to keep our roads in the best possible condition.
Transportation Bond
In 2010, City of Austin voters approved a small transportation bond which included “fixes” for many trouble spots around town, as well as finishing the boardwalk around Lady Bird Lake. City transportation staff has been working feverishly to prepare a second, larger transportation bond for the 2012 election which will likely include urban rail. The new rail system will link up to other transit options, including the Red Line, trails, and bus lines and eventually the Green Line and Lone Star Rail, resulting in a complete transit system. I believe rail has the capacity to significantly improve our traffic woes, as well as improving our air quality.
Bike-friendly Austin
I supported the City of Austin Master Bicycle Plan to help make Austin a more bike-friendly city. This effort is critical also to encouraging alternative means of transportation in order to alleviate some of the traffic congestion we have all been experiencing.
City Planning and Infrastructure
City Planning is one of the fundamental responsibilities of the City, and as a Council Member I take these decisions very seriously. Frequently I am called to strike a balance between whole-city interests, such as encouraging infill development, with the desires of individual neighborhoods. I believe these compromises, while sometimes difficult, usually result in the best possible outcome. It is my hope that our Comprehensive Plan will help us with a framework for addressing these issues. Major city infrastructure projects, from roads to libraries to utility assets also require careful planning and review, and are a major portion of our City budget.
Environment
The role of a municipal government in the environmental movement is to encourage research and development, be an early adopter of sound technology and practice, and create an ecology that supports environmentally-friendly and business-sound methodologies for protecting our environs. It’s the difference between heavy-handed governmental regulation and making it OK for folks to profit off of protecting the environment.
Plastic Bags
Over the last couple of years, some businesses in town have made decent progress on limiting the number of plastic bags that circulate in town and eventually get dumped at the landfill. An education campaign detailing the benefits of reusing plastic bags over and over again alongside a minimal charge – perhaps $0.03 per bag – could really help us to decrease the number of plastic bags that get used once and tossed in the trash or worse yet, simply get discarded on the ground.
Water Conservation
It’s astonishing to think that we use nearly 50% of our drinking water to water our lawns. We pull raw water out of Lake Austin, spend millions of dollars making it safe to drink, spend millions of dollars moving to our houses, and then put half it on our yards. That just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. (And how much more do we flush down our toilets?) Wouldn’t it be better if we used reclaimed water to irrigate our lawns and fill our toilets? I want Austin to invest in a reclaimed water distribution system that would move our treated wastewater back to irrigate our properties, and I want new development to incorporate reclaimed water line tie-ins so that we can readily connect them to a future reclaimed water distribution system.
Carbon Footprint
In 2010, Council Member Chris Riley and I squared-off to see which office could reduce its overall carbon foot print by the largest percentage. We used the city’s carbon footprint calculator to track our progress. It’s a great tool developed by folks in the Climate Protection Program and you can find it here: http://www.cityofaustin.org/acpp/co2_footprint.htm (Our office decreased total emissions by 26.78 metric tons, a 32% decrease.)
Water Treatment Plant 4
I voted against building a new water treatment plant because I couldn’t rationalize spending $500 million plus interest on a massive piece of infrastructure that we might need some day. Looking back over the past 30 years, Austinites have consistently decreased their per capita water use. While more and more people continue to move to the region, we have enough capacity in our current water system to handle our needs for the next 5 to 10 years; and only now have we started on a major water conservation campaign that’s meant to bring down our daily per capita water use from 180 gallons per person per day to 140 gallons per person per day. I’ve always agreed that we might need a new treatment plant in the future, but I would have rather used our limited resources on infrastructure and programs that we need today. Climate Protection Plan I’m proud to support the City’s Climate Protection Plan and voted last year to approve Austin Energy’s Resource and Generation Plan which outlined a goal of using 35% renewable energy by 2020. It will be no small feat to achieve this objective, especially as we committed to maintain the utility’s relative affordability as compared with other Texas electricity providers. I will continue to encourage leadership at the utility to creatively plan for increasing energy efficiency measures and develop opportunities to lead the nation in smart grid research and development. Going forward, I would like to see a greater emphasis on transitioning our fleet of police cars, garbage trucks, construction vehicles, and street sweepers to alternative and low-emissions fuels. This will be an important step for the City to take especially in light of potentially stricter air quality controls imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Accountability & Transparency
The City Council is supposed to be your direct link to the programs and operations of the City of Austin. The council’s governance should provide transparency of and accountability for how the City uses your tax and rate dollars.
Council Work Sessions
Over the past year, I have initiated strong governance measures by instituting Council work sessions on Austin Energy and the annual budget. AE is the city’s $1.5 billion electric utility and provides the city with approximately 15% of its general fund revenue each year. The Council is the utility’s board of directors, and I want to ensure that we maintain control over the myriad transitions AE faces: our first rate design change in 14 years, a new general manager, and increasing emphasis on conservation and renewable energy. The utility’s 450,000 customers need that kind of accountability and the city’s 800,000 shareholders want that kind of transparency. In years past, the City’s annual budget was drafted outside of the public eye – and at times, beyond the Council’s view as well. Since our current City Manager took the helm at City Hall, we have seen an increasing effort to shed light on the budget making process: we now have a plethora of community input opportunities prior to the release of the final budget recommendation in July. This year, I launched a policy that gives Council the same kind of opportunity the public has received for the last few years. Starting this spring, Council and City Management will discuss the city’s future needs and budget priorities in open sessions. We will give the kind of crucial policy guidance that any budget making process needs to ensure that the City’s programs and operations respond to what its citizens need and want.
Budget Priorities
We need to spend smarter in order to meet our community’s expectations, not necessarily just spend more. For instance, we’re spending $500 million on a 100-year old water service model – a model that has us literally pouring half of our drinkable water on the ground. Instead of spending millions of dollars to clean water to level where it’s safe to drink only to use it for irrigation, we should look for opportunities to use reclaimed water for our non-drinking water needs. It’s cheaper, more environmental friendly, more efficient for capital infrastructure, and meets the needs for our community. That would be spending smarter. Or, for example, the City is proposing to spend about $4.5 million on hiring 47 more police officers next year. Why are we hiring 47 more cops? Because an old Council policy says we should have 2 officers for every 1,000 residents. But history will show us that it’s not the number of cops on the street, it’s what they do that keeps the community safe. So let’s not hire 47 cops just because that keeps some arbitrary ratio valid. Let’s look at our problems, our needs, and devise a plan to address them. That’s smart spending.
Progressive Social Policies/Equality Work
I am committed to working on policies that positively impact the traditionally disenfranchised and minority groups in our community, and have been a leader on moving these issues to the forefront of the City’s agenda.
Anti-discrimination resolution
I sponsored an item to require companies that do business with the City of Austin to adopt a non-discrimination policy covering all categories of people that have historically experienced discrimination. It is a strong statement of values that I believe will help us to create a more diverse, welcoming business community in our city.
Domestic Partner Benefits
When the City finally adopted domestic partner benefits several years ago, the policy that allows survivors of city employees to access COBRA health insurance was not changed to allow domestic partners to continue to receive health insurance. When I was approached by the partner of a former employee of mine for help on this issue, I spearheaded the effort to get this benefit extended.
CPC Ordinance
I sponsored the second-in-the-nation ordinance requiring so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers to be honest about the services they provide. CPCs are now required to post signs that say they do not provide nor refer for birth control services or abortion, so that women know if they require those services that they will need to seek them elsewhere.
Community
Homelessness
Homelessness is a chronic problem in our city that has been very hard to address. I support the effort to increase the number of permanent supportive housing units that are available in the City. I am also supportive of exploring and adopting new models for providing housing and services to difficult to serve populations that have proven more successful than traditional models.
Historic Preservation
The City of Austin Historic Preservation Program was in need of some revision in order to continue to work for our community. I sponsored the stakeholder process to make changes that protect the city’s interest in preserving our community assets, and honor our city’s culture and history while making adjustments that support the sustainability of the program.
Financial Empowerment
The widening gap between the rich and poor has left many Austinites without access to the mainstream financial world. Around 140,000 households in Central Texas don’t have bank accounts and instead use check cashing and payday lending services to meet their difficult cash flow needs. This is an extremely expensive – and sometimes treacherous – way to manage your finances. I’m proud to have led this City Council on several initiatives that address this problem. In the summer of 2010, we helped United Way of Central Texas launch the Bank on Central Texas project – a partnership of non-profits, the City of Austin and local financial institutions that designed financial products, like bank accounts and small dollar loans, with the unbanked in mind. Thousands of accounts have already been opened and we’re looking forward to continuing the progress over the next year. Later that fall, I sponsored an initiative that would have the City of Austin work to increase the percentage of our employees who get paid through an electronic fund transfer. Using direct deposit or prepaid debit cards to pay employees can especially benefit lower-income employees as fees charged for check cashing or for checking account maintenance dramatic reduce with the introduction of electronic fund transfers. These fees add up over time and represent a significant loss of income for some of our most needy. It’s my hope that the City can take its lessons learned and help other large employers in Austin figure out how to improve its percentage of employees receiving electronic fund transfers. In the early spring of 2011, my staff and I launched a collaborative of non-profits and local government agencies to identify a community-wide financial empowerment goal. These partners are busy drafting up plans to help all Central Texas establish savings equal to three months of household expenses. By working with folks outside of the financial mainstream, we hope to help decrease their reliance on costly and dangerous alternative financial services, like payday lending, and improve their overall household financial stability. It is an immense effort that will take some time to develop, but early indications are that this could be a ground-breaking project in the field. In August of 2011, I began a campaign to curb the rise and impact of payday lending in Austin. Following the lead of several Texan cities, we drafted new zoning rules that would limit the location of new payday lending institutions across town. I also sponsored a new ordinance that would require payday lenders to verify their client’s income, cap the maximum amount of a loan, limit the number of refinances they offer, and require them to refer their clients to non-profit entities with financial education and cash assistance programs.
Work Place
Workers of every kind fuel our economy. Strengthening workplace protections and improving benefits for workers is not only the right thing to do, it also protects our economy. My commitment to workplace safety and to Austin’s workers has resulted in some significant leaps forward, but we still have work to do, and I will continue to push for improvement.
Construction safety
After learning from the Workers Defense Project about the dismal safety record of construction sites in Texas, I have sponsored several items to make construction workers safer. These items include a mandatory rest break for construction workers and increased requirements for safety training on city projects. I have also worked together with city staff to increase OSHA enforcement of unsafe working conditions in our community.
Employee Retirement Board
I serve on the Employee Retirement Board representing City of Austin employees. This Board is critically important to city employees, as we are the stewards of their retirement benefits. The system was approaching severe problems with sustainability when I began to serve, and I feel that we have managed to turn the ship around and are now going in the right direction.
Employee Benefits
When the City finally adopted domestic partner benefits several years ago, the policy that allows survivors of city employees to access COBRA health insurance was not changed to allow domestic partners to continue to receive health insurance. When I was approached by the partner of a former employee of mine for help on this issue, I spearheaded the effort to get this benefit extended.
Efficient Austin
By-Product Synergy
By-product synergy (BPS) is a process that assembles regional networks of businesses, regulatory agencies, and non-profit corporations to match under-valued by-product or waste streams with potential users. BPS is an industrial ecology strategy that strives to promote efficient use of resources, avoid pollution, and generate new revenues by creating a legally protected forum for organizations to explore opportunities to reuse waste product. BPS networks convene regional corporations and agencies to discuss a wide range of collaborative opportunities – from materials exchange to product redesign to new market opportunities. Helping our regional corporations, agencies and governments find ways to make money by saving the planet makes sense.
Animal Welfare
It’s going to take a lot of collaboration and hard work to reach a level where 90% of the animals that come to our shelter ultimately find a permanent home. It’s a good thing there is a vast array of non-profits working on improving the range of services our community can offer its animal companions. Everyone from rescue and adoption agencies to community outreach programs to medical procedure agencies will be needed and relied upon to collaboratively tackle this initiative.
No-Kill
We should find a permanent home for every adoptable animal with which the City shelter comes in contact. That means some animals will be euthanized because they are too sick or too aggressive; national research suggests that number is around 10% of the total number of animals taken in. I am encouraged that our new shelter director has the experience and vision to help our community achieve this goal. Through strong partnerships and best practices shelter management I think we can take our good progress of the last several years and build excellent progress on top of it.
Spay & Neuter
Unless you are a seasoned breeder of show animals, I believe every owner should spay or neuter their pets. Research shows that dogs and cats lead healthier and happier lives once they are neutered or spayed. It also keeps unwanted pregnancies from occurring and helps better control an escalating population of unwanted companion animals. I strongly support our trap-neuter-release program that targets the city’s feral cat population. And I continue to support our puppy mill ban and regulation of the sale of unneutered companion animals. These combined spay/neuter efforts reduce our overall shelter intake and help preserve city resources for addressing the many other needs in our animal services program.