Interim City Manager Quietly Unveils Budget Proposal

The newly proposed budget would raise all city employees' pay, while adding more to the police department than last year (data via City of Austin / photo by John Anderson)

Interim City Manager Jesús Garza was officially unveiling his $5.5 billion budget for the city of Austin's 2023-2024 fiscal year as the Chronicle went to press Wednesday, July 19, but already the manager's proposed budget has made news.

Last week the budget document, which clocks in at over 1,000 pages, was made public – but not accessible. A single print-and-bound version of the budget was delivered to each Council member office around 4:30pm Friday, July 14. The binders that held the budget came with a note indicating that a digital version of the document would be available the following week, one day before a 196-item City Council meeting and one week before the only Council meeting devoted to a public hearing on the budget, held to allow community members a venue to provide comments on the city's spending priorities.

Council adoption of the budget is scheduled for Aug. 16-18 and every day leading up to that vote is valuable; Council offices and advocacy organizations need time to analyze the details of the proposed budget, talk with constituents, and consult with stakeholders so they can offer thoughtful amendments. Following an outcry from CMs, community advocates, and the media, the city relented and published the budget online on Sunday, July 16. But delaying publication of the budget online, as a digital file, where it could be accessed by anyone and efficiently analyzed – even by two days – means Austinites will have less time to meaningfully engage with what is a complicated, often opaque document.

So what's actually in the budget that Garza, apparently, didn't want members of the public to see Friday? As always, our focus is on the city's $1.3 billion General Fund – the pot of money funded primarily through property and sales taxes that pays for public safety functions, libraries, parks, and other nonenterprise city departments (those such as Austin Energy and Water that pay for their own operations through the service fees they collect).

The budget also proposes a 3.5% property tax rate increase, the highest possible before triggering the state law requiring voters to approve a tax rate increase.

The manager has proposed a 4% across-the-board raise to all of the city's civilian employees, at a cost of $39 million, along with increasing the city's minimum wage to $20.80 per hour (costing $1.5 million). The three public safety departments – police, fire, and emergency medical services – account for about 62% of GF expenditures and each will receive budget increases compared to what Council approved in FY 22-23. Both fire and EMS should get new sworn positions (16 and 15, respectively), most of whom will staff the new Goodnight Ranch Fire/EMS station, set to open in February.

But the Austin Police Department's budget is proposed at $476.5 million – about $32 million higher than last year. The manager's budget keeps the number of sworn officer positions level at 1,812 (Garza decreed that funding for new positions would not even be considered in departments that have a 15% or higher vacancy rate – i.e., positions they are budgeted for but haven't filled).

A large chunk of the budget increase at APD stems from an incentive package Council approved in February, midway through FY 22-23. A 4% base wage increase for all sworn personnel and a 3% increase to the pay step for sworn employees who have worked in the department for 23 years will cost the city $8.3 million, a one-time retention bonus offered to all sworn personnel (to be paid in January) will cost the city $4.1 million, and a new financial incentive offered to cadets who graduate from the academy will cost $2.5 million. The proposed APD budget also adds 11 civilian positions (costing $731,310) to improve training and data reporting at the Austin Police Academy.

Two curious APD line items that the budget document does not explain are the transfer of 25.5 employee positions from the Human Resources Department ($2.9 million) and eight positions from Building Services ($1.9 million). The departmental transfers are not new expenditures, but they do grow the size of APD's budget, so the decision is not arbitrary. State law prohibits municipalities from decreasing the size of their police budgets unless an exception is granted by the Governor's Office – so the two transfers, whatever their purpose may be, will add nearly $5 million in funding that the city may never be able to claw out of APD's budget.

The budget also cements – and sets up – more organizational restructuring by Garza. First, it finalizes the resplitting of the city's Housing and Planning depart­ments. The split was announced this spring and has mostly gained acceptance among Council and housing advocates. There is concern, however, over the mere $250,000 that Garza has allocated for emergency rental assistance and tenant relocation services. Last year, these programs received that level of funding just for the legal services required to pay lawyers to work on eviction cases; the city allocated another $5 million just to pay back rent for people facing eviction. Though that funding was made possible through one-time federal funding, housing advocates say providing rental assistance is a community priority and the city should find a way to make $16 million of it available, permanently, through the GF.

More Garza restructuring, revealed in the budget, that has some around City Hall perplexed is the proposal to merge the Small and Minority Business Resources Department, the Equity Office, and the Civil Rights Office into a new Civic and Business Equity Department. It's unclear why Garza has moved to merge these departments, or how their functions even relate to each other, or why he is choosing to do so in the budget, which requires Council approval, when his prior restructuring maneuvers have been carried out administratively.

We've just barely scratched the surface of the manager's budget. It has raised many questions, and we'll answer as many as we can before the lone budget public hearing, scheduled for July 26. Check back for more in the coming weeks.