Beer, BBQ, Movies – and Mayoral Politics

Leffingwell talks to reporters at his campaign opening (Photo by Michael King)

Several hundred people gathered Saturday night for the official opening of Mayor Lee Leffingwell's Manor Road reelection campaign headquarters – and free beer, BBQ, music, and a chilly outdoors showing of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." The mayor even warbled a (mercifully) little Wayne Newton.

The evening partly followed the Ferris Bueller theme of Leffingwell's kickoff YouTube parody of the film, featuring Hizzoner in the shower lip-synching "Danke Schoen." The mayor wanted reporters to know that he was wearing a swimsuit in his cinematic shower debut, and opened his campaign speech promising "not to take my shirt off" Saturday night. He did, however, volunteer a few bars of the venerable Newton tune, confirming that neither Newton nor Tom Jones has anything to worry about from the competition.

More seriously, Leffingwell touted his record on jobs, traffic, helping Austin schools, "clean and affordable energy," and open government, and he promised more if reelected, pointing specifically to the fall charter revision election. "In November," he said, "you’re going to get an opportunity to vote on geographic representation, which I think is very important – that’s something I’ve supported since I first ran for City Council in 2005. And we want to permanently move our elections from May to November, so more people can vote, and more people can participate in local government. … the more people that can participate, the better it’s going to be."

Leffingwell also noted the "big challenges" of both the charter election and the prospective city bond package (now in development), and promised "great strides" in transportation: "More roads, certainly, but we also need pedestrian and bicycle facilities, and we need more and better mass transit." He closed by introducing his family members, and said his primary goal is to "leave Austin a better place than we found it.

Earlier in the evening, in a brief conversation with NewsDesk, the mayor discussed the prospective bond package, and said that he would be advocating holding the total to current bonding capacity of $385-400 million, so as not to require a property tax increase. (The current city "Needs Assessment" is at $1.5 billion, but that list includes every potential project proposed by all city departments.) "I’m going to be pushing to put a cap on it, and hold it to that," Leffingwell said. "It’s going to be kind of an austere bond package." He noted, for example, that one of the "wish-list" projects is a new police headquarters station (est. cost, $78 million), and acknowledged, "It's needed sometime down the road, but it's not going to happen in this cycle."

Asked where that left pending plans for urban rail (not currently contemplated in the bond projects) he answered, "There are a lot of ways, potential ways, to fund something like that, and we’re looking at that right now. I don’t anticipate seeing a huge amount of money in bonding for rail."

On the current debate over Austin Energy rates, Leffingwell said he's hoping for "a consensus – that doesn't mean everybody" – on AE's actual revenue needs, which he thinks may have been overestimated, and move from there to a plan for rate allocation. "I know it’s going to be very difficult," he continued, because we’ve had disparities among various rate classes for at least 17 years … and it may be something that we have to work out in phases. I just don’t know yet. But I do think that we need to speed up the timetable and make it more like three months than six months" (as proposed in recent Council discussions).

Finally, NewsDesk asked if Leffingwell had any response to charges by challenger Brigid Shea that his administration has not been sufficiently protective of Austin's environment (for example, by constructing Water Treatment Plant No. 4), and has been too quick to grant financial incentives to corporations considering relocation. He answered, "First of all, WTP4 is an environmental project. It’s much more environmentally sound than what we have right now, it mitigates the risk factor, it reduces the carbon footprint because of the higher elevation … So it’s an environmental project, that’s number one.

"As far as economic agreements – since I’ve been mayor, I believe we’ve signed, I believe, it’s seven economic agreements. Every single one of those has been positive in cash flow for our taxpayers. they’ve provided good jobs with good benefits, and they’ve been benchmarked along the way to do what they say what they’re going to do as far as job creation and so forth. Six out of seven of those were unanimously approved by the City Council. … U.S. Farathane was the only one that didn’t pass unanimously. … The thing about that one was – it passed 5-2 – but it provided jobs for a class of people that we’ve really never looked at before. We had people from the Eastside who were saying, please do this deal. I supported it, and I still support it."

Shea has particularly pointed to the Council's waiver of $4.3 million in construction-related fees for a planned Downtown convention hotel that "would have been built anyway" as especially wasteful. Responded Leffingwell, "Here’s a little tidbit about the hotel. Four million dollars in fee waivers, no money ever changed hands, and here’s what we got for that – we got prevailing wage on that job, for all the workers who worked it. Now if somebody wants to argue about that, I’m willing to talk to them."