(upbeat music) - Hello, and thank you for joining us for this ATX Decides event, the 2024 Austin Mayoral Forum.

I'm Francheska Castillo, news reporter with Univision 62 here in Austin.

Today's forum is a collaboration by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin PBS, Univision, KUT Radio, and The Daily Texan.

We'll introduce our panel of journalists, then the five candidates seeking the office of mayor, and then I'll share a brief overview of our format, followed by questions and answers with the candidates.

Joining me as moderators are, city government reporter for KUT Radio, Luz Moreno-Lozano, news editor at The Daily Texan, the student newspaper at the University of Texas, Kylee Howard, and Ed Bryson, Director of News and Public Affairs here at Austin PBS.

And now we'll introduce our candidates who are positioned on stage in alphabetical order.

They are Jeffery L. Bowen, a longtime Austin resident and construction company owner, Doug Greco, an organizer with Central Texas Interfaith, a coalition of 35 congregations, labor unions, schools, and nonprofits.

Carmen Llanes Pulido, a community organizer and Native Austinite.

Currently executive director of Go Austin/Vamos Austin.

Kathie Tovo, a former District 9 City Council member and Mayor Pro Tem.

She's currently an adjunct faculty member at the University of Texas.

And lastly, incumbent Mayor, Kirk Watson.

Currently serving his third term as mayor.

He also served more than 13 years in the Texas State Senate.

Before we get underway, here's the format for today's forum.

Since this is a policy forum, we'll ask candidates to talk about specific approaches and solutions to problems and issues Austin is facing.

This is not a political debate.

We will not have opening or closing statements, or rebuttal.

Candidates have 90 seconds to respond to questions.

We have a timer with visible green, yellow, and red lights to guide the candidates as they respond.

We hope you find this discussion worthwhile and informative.

And with that we'll get underway.

I'll kick things off with a question for all of the candidates, and let's start responses on my left with Jeffery Bowen, and then move down the row of lecterns.

All right, Jeffery, let's begin.

Austin is the 11th largest city in the US with just under a million people and currently the police department has over 500 unfilled positions.

Just last night it was announced that the city and the Austin Police Association agreed to a five year labor contract, which includes 28% in raises over five years for police officers.

Do you think the city council should approve the contract, and how would you address the staffing issues?

- Well, at this point, really haven't been able to see what's all in the contract.

So the fact that we've been without a contract for several years, yes, I'm leaning very much towards the approval of it, but we need to find out what are the devil in the details in there.

So until that information is out there, it makes it very difficult to say yes, no.

Just what is all in that whole package?

The 28% over five years seems fairly reasonable, but again, not knowing what all of the details since we just recently found out about this, that's gonna be very interesting to sit down and look at that document.

- Thank you, Jeffery, we will now move on to Doug.

- Thank you and thanks for the opportunity to be here.

I'm the former lead organizer with Central Texas Interfaith stepped down to run for mayor and a former high school teacher here in AISD.

I think our police need to be paid well as all public safety officers do, especially for the type of work they do, and paid competitively in the top of our peer cities, number one.

And we should have implemented fully the resoundingly approved 80% Austin Police Oversight Act, and that should have been implemented already.

It has been affirmed by the voters and in the court.

In this particular contract, we have not seen the details, all the details, but based on initial reports, it appears that the city is proposing to trade away the public will on transparency in a key measure.

There was a piece in the Police Oversight Act called the g-file, which voters proved should be done away with.

The courts affirmed it, and the city has now put that back in the contract.

You know, I know the mayor supports this contract.

I think voters were very clear.

We wanted transparency and we should not trade that away for a police contract.

We should be able to pay our public safety officers well and support the voters' will, and what the courts have backed up.

So I wanna see more details, but I'm very concerned about that piece.

- Thank you very much, Doug, Carmen.

- I have had the privilege of learning from intergenerational organizers, and being active in many of these issues, including police community relations and safety, public safety and holistic approaches to public safety for the past 20 years.

And I had my whole adult life to observe the results of our current mayor's previous administration in agreeing to a hundred million dollars to the police department over many years with very few requirements related to long-term maintenance of our culture, of our staffing, and particularly our accountability.

Some of the darkest years of strife between police and community, especially as it relates to racial profiling and officer involved shootings occurred in the mid 2000's after our current mayor left office.

And since then, unfortunately we've had a series of policies and a lack of understanding about the police budget that has led us to a very divided place.

I think we need a leader that is fearless in bringing all directly impacted people, including police officers, shedding light on our extremely difficult to understand police budget, asking tough questions like the reserves in our police department from years of funding vacant positions and implementing the will of the people without having to be sued to do so.

There is a way forward because most of us, regardless of where we are, we want the same things.

A good response to 911, and to feel safe at the root cause in our communities.

- Thank you for that response, Carmen.

Now we will move on to Kathie.

- Thank you very much for the question.

It's great to be here with you today.

Thanks for taking time out of your morning to participate in this conversation.

So our police officers deserve a multi-year contract.

I'm glad that our city manager prioritized that, and has been able to get that done.

They've been out of, our officers have been out of contract for a long time.

They deserve a fair and competitive wage, and the voters deserve to make sure that the contract that's approved by the council has the accountability measures in it that the voters approved and that the court has affirmed.

And so I would say number one, we need to make sure that the city manager makes that available as soon as possible so that the members of the public and the members of the council can really take a look at it and understand what is in that contract in terms of the accountability measures.

And there needs to be a very full conversation with the public about the financial investment.

28% over five years may require a tax rate election, and we need to make sure that the city manager and the council is having that conversation in a very full and transparent manner with our community.

In terms of other ways to increase presence, we need to continue our support of community policing.

We need to continue to support something that the council I served on did, which is to create a mental health response that's available through 911, through our EMCOT Team.

And continue to invest in those Office of Violence Prevention solutions that are going to work to prevent violence before it happens, thank you.

- Thank you so much, Kathie.

We'll now move on to Mayor Watson.

- Thanks, thanks for the question.

Thanks for everybody being here.

I do support the contract and when I came into office in January of '23, inherited a badly understaffed police department.

And we went to work on doing things to try to increase the number of officers we could attract and retain.

We also made sure that we didn't do anything with regard to a contract that would preempt the right of the public to vote on the Austin Police Oversight Act, which passed in May of '23.

But we took action, passed an ordinance early on to guarantee salaries and benefits, that was renewed a year later.

And when we got clarity from the court, we are now absolutely able to say that the contract that's coming forward will have Prop A in it and it will be certified by the city attorney as having those oversight provisions.

In addition to that, we're very careful to make sure that we have the kind of pay that allows for those police officers to live in a city that we are working every day to put affordability first.

We need our police officers to be able to live in the town we ask them to serve.

And I'll also mention that in terms of public safety and what we're attempting to achieve in terms of increasing our public safety, I'm very pleased that we have a new police chief.

She's gonna be first class, and we're going to be happy about that.

And the second thing is we have recently brought in through the manager's office a new assistant city manager over public safety who has great experience.

- Thank you all for your responses.

Kylee, would you like to proceed?

Yes, we'll start responses to this question with Carmen.

Late last month, a district judge ruled city officials unlawfully failed to perform their mandatory duty to end the city of Austin's use of the g-file, which is the police department's file containing conduct complaints and internal investigation results.

Three days later, mayor Kirk Watson said he sees no reason to appeal the ruling for the Austin Chronicle.

Does the contract agreement that made news last evening comply with the district judge's order regarding the g-file?

And overall, what does the future of police transparency in the city look like?

- While I'm not prepared to comment on the specific legal implications of the g-file and the Austin Police Oversight Act, because I haven't read the full ruling, I will say that the clearest part we needed to know is what was obvious all along, which is that this oversight act, which was written with intel from our legal department and our current police contract, made a way for us to have somebody of community visible oversight when something goes wrong.

It doesn't mean giving all of the personal details of an officer away, it simply provides a degree of transparency to where an independent community review panel can actually give feedback.

And if the police chief doesn't go with that feedback, they simply have to state to the public why.

And so it's really important to understand that we wasted many years avoiding this conversation.

And I had the privilege of being on a community panel that interviewed Lisa Davis, our new chief of police.

I was very pleased with the values she brought around accountability and transparency and that more data is helpful.

And that good policing absolutely requires accountability.

So once again, I think this was a place where we could look at where can community fill gaps and actually get city resources and services to help make the police's job easier.

And that accountability is going to help us increase trust community-wide and restore some of the morale with our police department today.

- Thank you Carmen.

Kathie.

- Thank you, so the question about whether or not the proposed contract complies with the court ruling, I think is one for all of us to determine once that contract has been made public, which is why I think it is critically important that the city manager make that document available as soon as possible.

We know that the court ruled that the g-file may be must be public, and the voters, you know, had overwhelmingly supported that.

In the last day since the proposed contract has been announced, there's been some difference of opinion about whether the contract is making that g-file available going forward or whether it applies retroactively.

And so, you know, as I understand what the voters supported and as I understand what the court ruling is, and of course I don't have the benefit of hearing the city legal's opinion on this matter at the moment, but I understand the voter's will to be all g-files, both retroactively as well as going forward.

And that's, you know, that's what I think the contract should embody and codify.

I wanna just touch on a couple other things with regard to the last question.

In addition to some of the things that we talked about as crime prevention opportunities and opportunities to increase public safety, I wanna also mention we need to continue to pursue really innovative strategies.

As a council member I had helped lead in opening the Sobering Center, which is a criminal diversion program that diverts individuals who are publicly intoxicated away from jail, and away from emergency rooms.

And this is a great savings of police officer time, and it also helps connect those individuals if they're in need of them and ready for them to longer term resources.

And I'm very excited about Travis County's plan to do a mental health diversion center, thank you.

- Thank you so much.

Mayor Watson.

- The g-file has been a point of contention because there was a lack of clarity about whether or not the city would be preempted by state law on being able to say, even though the voters overwhelmingly supported that.

And I overwhelmingly supported that.

That's one of the reasons I said as quickly as I did that I don't think there's any reason to appeal and supported the Oversight Act.

I supported that as well.

But there was a lack of clarity and one of the concerns, just to give you an example of what the repercussions would've been had we been wrong, and it was in fact preempted, was there was even concern about would a public official that provided the information somehow be exposed to criminal liability for turning over something they shouldn't have turned over.

The good news is that the court has now ruled, and has provided us the clarity that we need.

So I've always taken the position, and will continue to take the position that the contract with our police officers and the police union needs to contain Prop A, that needs to happen.

This tentative agreement does that.

It would not be even brought out, and the clarity has been to the city attorney staff, don't bring back any contract that doesn't meet Prop A.

It needs to meet Prop A meaning no g-file.

No g-file, and so I look forward to that passing.

I'm glad we've gotten to that point and it will be brought before the council, and the public will have a lot of opportunity for input.

- Thank you Mayor Watson, Jeffery.

- Thanks.

This is part of that devil in the detail from the first question.

We do need to make sure that the public is aware and that the public gets that opportunity to voice their opinions on this contract.

And I agree with the mayor that you have to make sure that you're following what the will of the people are when it comes to this case.

The overall purpose of making sure that there's transparency and there's actually some accountability should always be, we should always hold our officers to that higher standard.

We should hold all of our public officials to that higher standard.

There's no reason for somebody to be slipping somebody else a note that says, "Oh, this officer did such and such."

Whatever the case is under some other different feeling that they want to do harm to the whole process.

This police department or all police departments are there for one thing, and that's to protect those of us that's the citizens.

It's not an easy job and we shouldn't pretend that it is, but if you're going after somebody based upon something that happened a long time ago and has now been excluded, then let's move on from here.

Hopefully the new police chief will step up.

And I've found that Austin police, in many cases has been very, and held their own officers accountable.

And that should not be overlooked.

But the public needs to be able to look at this entire process and see how they're gonna deal with it.

- Yes, thank you Jeffery, Doug?

- I don't think it does.

Part of the problem is that the last two years transparency has been lacking in our city government.

And that starts with, that starts with the mayor.

This is the first time that drafts of the police contract have not been made public throughout the process.

So we have to go by folks who are in the room, reporters that are in the room, but nothing in writing yet.

And so we're forced to guess, but based on the reporting, and based on the experts that I've talked to that were in the room, this does not comply with the Police Oversight Act.

And it does not comply with the court order, because the issue is, voters, whatever you think of the g-file, voters resoundingly approved a measure that would have gotten rid of that, which means those files are subject to public information.

They don't just get thrown out there, but they're subject to a process.

And there was a stalemate in the negotiations.

Obviously we need to pay our officers well and I agree with Jeff, that's the purpose is to keep our communities safe.

But I think what happened was there was a stalemate in that negotiation and I think a deal was taken back, and I think the mayor traded away our public will on transparency, what we voted for and the courts affirmed to get a police contract before the election.

- Thank you Doug, for our next question, Ed, do you wanna?

- All right, thank you, I'll take the next question then.

Recent changes to the Land Development code, known as HOME Phases 1 and 2 were meant to increase density and lower housing costs while avoiding displacement of historically underserved communities.

Two questions about that.

Will the new policy in fact help reduce the cost of housing and for whom?

And what steps should be taken to protect middle and low income families from the impacts, negative impacts of gentrification including displacement?

And this question begins with Kathie.

- Thanks for the question.

You know, as I talk with folks around the city, this is probably one of the top issues people mention because while most people support increasing housing and they're aware that the City of Austin has created more housing in the last couple of years under the existing policies than most other large cities, they have significant, and I think very valid concerns about what the council passed because it had, there was no provision within it for affordable housing, not even an affordable housing contribution.

And so I don't, you know, as I looked at some of the early data, and you can see this too, you'll see that some of the permits that are being pulled are resulting in the demolition of the existing structures, and the construction of new housing, which is not gonna be cheaper.

And again, without a measure to require that that housing be affordable, the market will not provide affordable housing.

Secondly, the council did not take care to make sure that if folks are building under the home permit three units that they're prohibited from constructing short-term rentals, and the staff affirmed this in one of their work sessions, that if there are three units on a property, two of those can be short-term, at least two can be short-term rentals, 100% of the time investor owned short term rentals.

That doesn't create housing for people, that creates hotels.

That certainly wasn't the intent of the council, but they didn't take the care to really listen to the concerns of the public and make sure that they were addressing them.

And it will, I suspect, increase displacement because they did not adopt equity overlay that had been long contemplated by the community as far back as code next.

- My goal has been affordability first, and this council has delivered when it comes to addressing affordability.

And a key part of that is that previously we had been stalemated and stagnant in terms of making changes to a land development code that had not had major reform to it since the mid eighties.

And so we came in and we made the changes so that you would be able to get more housing stock, and impact the affordability curve.

We're also doing a great deal in terms of what I would call big A affordable, or when we sometimes think of affordable housing specifically, and we've been working on that consistently for the past 21 months.

If you look at where it's worked in other places, Pew for example, has a study that reveals that when you increase the amount of housing stock and make more housing stock available, you do see a decline in the affordability curve.

In addition to that, you see a decline in displacement.

And that goes to the second part of your question.

One of the things that we've done is we've said that we also have to look at the speed with which we put this in place in those areas where we're worried about displacement and gentrification.

But a key part of this is if we're providing greater supply, we're also having a positive impact on displacement.

In addition to that, I put in as part of all of this, a performance review on at least an annual basis so we can see if we're having unintended consequences that requires to fix things.

- Okay, HOME 1 and HOME 2, the amount of unintended consequences, which I actually spoke regarding HOME 1.

And as somebody that builds, I do a lot of small projects, so I'm not one of those big developers out there, but there was a lot of, again, the devil in the detail that the council actually came out and said, "Well, you'll be able to do this or do that.

Add this unit to your property."

Yet we did not change the impervious cover, which is good.

We did not change our tree ordinances, but the negative impacts are still there because there was no affordability in either one of those.

Just for HOME 1, the act of being able to put like, an ADU in your backyard, nobody really knows how much it's going to cost, which are impacted with these costs until you've gone through the process.

I would like to see some type of neighborhood department that a resident can go to and say, "Am I going to be able to do this to meet impervious cover or the tree ordinances?"

But we've also got in HOME 2, the fact that you wanted to split up a lot into three separate lots.

That's gotta go through a different process, and there's certain sections of HOME 2 that are not even being incorporated right now because of the wild land urban interface.

So I have a lot of concerns with it and even the Heyman report that the city paid for also stated that there were unintended consequences and it may not work out the way it needs to be.

It's a very diverse subject.

- I grew up in the coal region, a coal region town, in a working class town in the eastern Pennsylvania.

I, like most Austinites, came here by choice, came here right after college.

I tell the story that my mom bought the house that she raised three sons with, as a single mom, for $30,000 in 1985, and sold it in 2008 for $15,000.

It lost half its value.

And at least she was able to buy a home.

Many people can't because of discrimination, because of income, but that's my lens into the housing issue.

Since 1997, since the mayor was first elected, Austin, our cost of living has gone through the roof.

Since I was a teacher on the east side, rented a room on the east side, saw gentrification.

It has been going on for decades and much longer.

The forces of downtown development, condo development, and unchecked development it has become a million, we have the fastest growing city for millionaires.

Our income inequality continues to increase.

So, you know, I'm glad that, you know, we're addressing affordability now, but it has been a challenge.

And I think Celia Israel deserves credit, almost winning the last election and forcing the issue because you changed on this issue, mayor.

So I think she deserves her due.

I do think the land use code needed to be updated.

We need more housing at all levels of income.

I would have fought for more anti displacement measures and curbing the role of institutional investors that buy 40% of homes in Austin.

But yeah, we needed to update our land use code.

I would've done it in a different way, but I wouldn't, I would have put those measures in place.

And I would've made sure we fought for anti displacement and to curb the role of investors.

- Of all of the candidates, I have been the most closely entrenched in this issue with directly impacted people.

I served four years on the planning commission during the post code next land development code rewrite, pre-law suit, I have studied this issue.

I have talked to people on all sides of the issue, and it's time for us to cut through the spin.

Affordability first is a simple lie.

It's been affordability last from the very beginning because those of us who are advocating for ways to increase our housing supply but actually to do it affordably.

Real solutions, allowing climate friendly manufactured housing for low income homeowners actually adjusting our drainage criteria manuals and putting all those needed updates to the land development code.

Our floodplains, counting our impervious cover, looking at our heritage trees, looking where existing affordable housing is.

I have studied macroeconomics at the University of Chicago.

I am a scholar of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, but I've also had my entire life to see how small lots on small, small homes on small lots and all of these giveaways when they don't have protection.

What happens in East Austin neighborhoods like Chestnut, like Rosewood, we can see what's happening in Travis Heights and all of our central areas where modest homes are scraped, lots are subdivided and these properties are sold for millions of dollars.

You have to look at submarkets and if we actually let people in, we could craft these policies in ways that bring us real affordable housing.

We have plenty of units that are too expensive for people.

We need to keep people where they are, and produce truly affordable housing.

And there is a way to do it.

- Luz, next question, wanna take it away?

- Sure, Mr. Bowen, we're beginning with you for this one.

More and more businesses and longtime Austin staples have closed in recent years.

Business owners blame high rent cost and redevelopment among other factors.

Is this something you're concerned about?

Why or why not and what is your vision for Austin's economic future?

- Yeah, there's a lot of that.

I have a small business, my wife has a small business.

In her doing trade shows we're constantly asked, "Do you have a storefront in Austin?"

And we honest, we always have to go back and say, "No, we can't afford it.

We cannot afford to have a storefront."

Recently, one of our favorite restaurants, we were talking to the owner at La Posada and she was telling us that she now has to take care of all of her air conditioning needs.

The landlord is not doing any fixes whatsoever.

And so that's a great burden to, they're not only paying the rent on that, but now you're gonna have to pick up if you lose an air conditioner, you know, anywhere from five to $10,000 or more just to replace a unit.

The small business is really one of the main drivers for our economy, whether they wanna believe it or not, because they've been giving tax incentives to some of the bigger companies.

I would like to see more emphasis and more economic development, or even some minor assistance if needed for those small businesses to help keep them open, because they do generate the sales tax revenue that comes back in that helps fill the budget.

We have a lot of businesses that just start up and then they're shut down very, you know, within a year or so.

I mean, I think we're also known here in Austin for how many restaurants close down within a year after just opening up because nobody really realizes what it costs to actually run a business.

And that would help if we had people on that development that understood that concept.

- Thank you, Doug?

- Yeah, this is absolutely a concern.

We talked about the cost of living, and that affects all of our small businesses, which have always made Austin unique.

And made us a city of neighborhoods and neighborhood businesses.

Anyone who knows my work knows that economic incentives is something that I have spent much of my career on.

The organization I led shaped the policy on economic incentives to make sure they lead to good jobs in Austin.

And I led the organizing effort to kill the state's largest corporate tax break program.

Took a billion a year from schools and gave it to wealthy oil and gas companies and microchip companies.

We give all of these incentives to major businesses.

And since the late nineties in your first term, Mayor, you know, hundreds of millions of incentives to major corporations.

Now we may need to do that as a city at some point.

It's part of the game of the day, but we need to make sure they pay good jobs.

But we need to do that with small businesses, okay?

We're subsidizing major manufacturers, why shouldn't we subsidize small businesses?

And that's in terms of startup costs, loan programs, ongoing support and if they have to relocate some type of assistance to locate to a neighborhood in which they might be more viable, okay?

So I, you know, like I said, I mean general, no fan of incentives.

They may be part of the game of the day when it comes to, to our cities.

I kill the state program but for small businesses, absolutely we need to incentivize and protect and preserve our small businesses in Austin.

- [Luz] Thank you Doug, Carmen?

- So this is an anti displacement issue, whether people think of it that way or not.

And that hasn't been so politically popular, but we could talk about it as an economic development issue, as a part of preserving Austin's culture.

I always like to remind people the Keep Austin Weird slogan actually it was initiated as a small business, a local business campaign and many of us seem to have forgotten that.

I wanna tie this back to the land development code, even though it's not specifically about housing, and that's part of the problem.

By the way, I want everybody to be very clear that the millions of new units that have come on and the increased supply came on under our previous land development code before any of these deregulatory changes that were brought on.

So that's very important to understand.

And much of the commercial development was incentivized while I was on the planning commission with giveaways of entitlements to developers during the great resignation when hardly anybody was going to work.

As a result, we have many vacant commercial buildings, and we have businesses that are getting displaced by the current up-zonings that we're seeing by the dozen at council with no notification.

We need to include our local business owners into our anti displacement strategies, into our economic development strategies.

Our businesses need actual caring people who are going to look at how to pave the way for some of these programs.

Most small business owners don't really wanna get involved in municipal funds because it's so difficult to navigate.

But we have champions in the economic development department that just need the agency and leadership to work directly with our small businesses to preserve that culture that is going to ultimately help Austin thrive economically.

- Thank you Carmen, Kathie?

- Yeah, small local businesses are really the lifeblood of our community and every time one of them closes, you know, not only is that owner impacted, but of course all of the folks who work there and their families are impacted as well.

And certainly the city has some policies that can contribute to that.

Zoning, zoning changes certainly can, and being more deliberative about how some of those changes will impact not just businesses but also residents is part of that solution, is part of that equation.

And there can be solutions that can be helpful in preventing that displacement.

We also need to pay attention to policies like rate making.

And this is something that came up in every single Austin Energy rate case, and I and others were trying to come up with commercial rates that were helpful for local businesses with the help of community champions like Judy Pfaff and others who were really had some solutions that we haven't yet fully implemented.

As a council member, one of the first things I did was to serve on and help lead the transformation of our economic incentives plan to include community benefits, really important community benefits like living wages.

And then toward the end of my term on council, we revisited the economic incentives plan and actually made it available and applicable to smaller businesses.

It has not worked out all that well and needs to be retooled.

I brought forward a measure that helped create a short term fix for the one business that was participating.

But as we've seen this week with one of the memos, that needs to be retooled to really support our small businesses and be able to access it.

I also, as a council member, started the Economic Development Corporation, which is now called Rally Austin and they are working with small businesses to help address some of these real estate and support challenges.

- It's a really important question and of course it, the iconic older businesses like the Hole in the Wall and Peter Pan Golf, those things mean something to those of, to us in Austin because they represent the Austin that we fell in love with, and decided we never wanted to leave.

And that's one of the reasons I've taken specific action.

For example, with regard to Peter Pan, the Economic Development Corporation helped with Hole in the Wall and made sure that they're gonna be open for at least another 20 years.

But importantly, we are bringing forward a small business incentives program.

In fact, it was just two weeks ago tomorrow that we had the full briefing from our Economic Development Department about how to do that because there's a recognition that we need to get ahead of this so that we will be in a position to preserve those small businesses and incentivize them in a way that meets Austin's values when it comes to economic development incentives.

The question also asks about how do I see economic development.

And one of the key things I've been attempting to do during this term in office is to shift or mature our economic development model, where it's not something where at the end of every year we just congratulate ourselves on the number of new jobs Austin created, but we start looking to how we get people into those jobs.

And I don't have time to go into it, but one of the things that we have done is we have created the Austin Infrastructure Academy so that we are going to be training people to be able to get into those mobility and infrastructure careers that are being created by all that's going on in Austin right now.

- All right, thank you.

We've talked a lot about housing affordability already.

I want to to address that question or that issue again in this question.

The median household income in Austin is just over $90,000 per year, but about 25%, that's more than 100,000 households earn less than $50,000 per year.

There are a lot of obstacles like program funding limits, closed waiting lists for vouchers, and landlords that don't wanna take tenants who have actually secured a voucher.

These are hard to overcome for low-income families.

So what can be done to close that gap and make more affordable housing for more low-income families available in Austin?

And we start with Carmen.

- This is an issue very near and dear to me.

As I may have mentioned, I've worked with over 25 different elementary schools in the neighborhoods surrounding them.

I just use schools because they tend to be centers for neighborhoods even if you don't attend them.

And I think this is a really important issue to get clear on the problem we are solving for.

We have been politically pedaled an argument that we need more housing supply with no qualifier, but we're not looking at the affordable units that we are losing in that redevelopment.

And the fact that if we destroy our affordable units of housing or pass policies that drive speculation to increase their land value, we actually set the goalpost further away.

And just building more supply doesn't actually make anything more affordable.

Most realtors will tell you objectively that Austin has a high inventory market.

That it's difficult to get the highest price if you're selling, but it's very difficult for the majority of people who need housing.

So there are immediate fixes we can do to preserve the existing units we have, protect the rights of tenants and homeowners to negotiate new development, and produce deeply affordable housing, which we can do with the largest amount of federal subsidies we have coming in our lifetime, with the existing investments we've made in affordable housing bonds.

There are many ways, and I have a track record in my own neighborhood, in my dad's neighborhood of one of the fastest redeveloping areas in Austin.

We have negotiated hundreds of new deeply affordable units that do stabilize housing markets and don't have to destroy neighborhoods.

But we have to be solving for the affordability problem.

- Thank you, Kathie?

- Yeah, I want to agree that we need to preserve the existing affordable housing that we have, both subsidized and non-subsidized, and the majority of the affordable housing that is out there is market affordable.

It's not subsidized and we need to be careful not to lose it and to make plans for helping shore up those owners if their properties fall into disrepair.

We need to create more affordable housing.

You know, this community has supported multiple affordable housing bonds that have helped leverage other kinds of funding and have built housing across our city.

And it's critically important.

I've supported every affordable housing bond and helped campaign for them since, you know, long before I was on council.

We need to use our partnerships with other public entities and our resources that we already have, our publicly owned land, to build on that land.

One of the projects that I helped lead on was Health South.

We've got an incredible opportunity downtown, with this piece of downtown land to create workforce and affordable housing, and potentially to reserve some of it for city employees and others in the area.

So we need to use the resources we have.

Again, publicly owned land, the partnerships that we have with other entities like AISD who is moving forward and creating affordable housing on one of their campuses.

And when the city council and we did at times have some leverage, if people are building within a density bonus program, they should be required to create those units on site, not pay into a fee.

That was something I championed.

We very rarely have had the political will to really come through and hold them to it.

But when we have the leverage, we need to require developers to build that housing on site, and we need to make sure that they're creating housing that is gonna work for families of all sizes, including those with children.

- Thank you Kathie, Mayor Watson?

- Sure, a key part of what has happened over the last 21 months in the land development code, changes that got made are things that should allow for more housing at a cheaper price.

For example, being able to build three units on a single lot will allow for there to be more duplex, more triplex, more accessory dwelling units so that they're at a lower price, and people will be able to afford more of those.

The biggest cost when you're building something is the price of the dirt that you're building it on.

In Austin we had a required minimum lot size of 5,750 square feet.

That's very big.

We've now reduced that to 1800 square feet.

And by the way, that was passed at a time in the 1940s, the 5750, and we've now updated that to 1800 square feet because then you're going to be in a position to be able to afford to put a starter home on that piece of property, as opposed to having to build a big old house on that big piece of property.

The other thing is that we need, that Austin needs to get out of its own way when it comes to permitting and site plans.

The city of Austin was adding a huge amount of cost when I first came into office, because it was so hard to get through the permitting process and get a site plan.

We brought in a consulting firm and said, "Scrub it top to bottom and tell us what we need to do."

And then we're having them implement it and when that's making big change, which will also reduce the cost.

So there's a variety of things that we need to do, but there's a whole bunch of stuff we've been doing for the past 21 months.

- Jeffery, you may proceed.

- When you talk about housing affordability, this is a very broad topic that you can't settle in 90 seconds, we know that.

Several years ago we had this strategic housing plan that was adopted, and their plan said that they wanted 135,000 affordable type units to be built.

Pretty soon I would assume that plan is gonna come back up for some type of review, just like Imagine Austin.

I will agree with the mayor that the permitting process is difficult.

As somebody that has permitted for projects, it does make it very difficult to just permit one small project and it takes you, you know, 12 weeks or better just to get, to even get in the process or even to get them to look at it.

A lot of our apartments that are being built right now, out of the 26,000, which I recently read an article on, it said 26,000 we're going to be available by the end of the year.

Oh, for the year that they've had that many.

Many of those were are very high end apartments.

That does not resolve the affordability issue for those of lower income.

And those need to be focused on.

We do have this fee in lieu, which as far as I'm concerned, probably the price on that needs to be jacked up in order to make sure that the number of affordable units that are being proposed to that developers come with are coming with, and so that you actually have some leverage on that, either cost you too much for this or you're gonna put this affordable housing in, but it takes longer than 90 seconds to resolve this whole issue.

- Thank you Jeffery, Doug?

- I think there's nothing more important in this election than having a mayor after voters vote that is fighting for working folks.

Folks who are low income, moderate income, working families.

And Mayor, I started high school teaching the same year you started your first term as mayor 1997.

But since that time we're not only the fastest growing city for millionaires, our income inequality has continued to increase, and our percentage of Black and Latino residents has continued to decrease.

We have lost our working class.

And the reason my organization that I organized with for, you know, much of the last 20 years went from Austin Interfaith to Central Texas Interfaith is because that working class has been pushed out of the city and we had to organize in Bastrop, Buda, and all the surrounding counties.

And we have fought for, during the time I was there, about half a billion dollars in community investments at the local and state level.

And we need to double down on that.

That includes rental assistance, that includes mortgage assistance, down payment assistance, loans for ADUs, and we need to fight the 40% of homes in Austin are bought by institutional investors, 37% in Williamson County.

Private equity, investment firms.

There are things we can do locally and work with our legislators to fight that, but that has been driving up costs for the last 30 years and beyond.

Families can't compete with that.

We need a mayor that is gonna fight for the working class.

- Thank you, Doug, so for this next round of questions, we are going to be asking individual questions to a candidate.

My question is gonna go to Mayor Kirk Watson.

This past spring construction began as part of the Austin-Bergstrom Airport expansion and Development program in 2023.

Our airport saw over 22 million passengers.

This project is set to complete in spring of 2026.

How will you ensure that this project is completed in a timely manner and in a way that minimizes any negative impacts it could have on travelers?

- Great question and one that keeps me awake at night.

'cause I want it to come in on time and on budget.

When I became mayor, I was saying at the time that we were about six years behind on that airport.

That the things that needed to be, that we're doing now needed to be done about six years ago.

But for some reason there wasn't a focus.

Early on in my tenure after we replaced the city manager, we also were able to replace the director of the airport, brought in an interim for a period of time and now have a new director at that airport, a relatively new director at that airport.

And so a whole lot is being done by the council right now to get things moving.

In fact, I think it's Friday that we're gonna break ground on the mid airfield taxiway, which will be where the second concourse is going to go.

It's a simple question of management and making sure we're staying on top of it.

I was mayor when we opened Austin-Bergstrom Airport.

And we had a specific program and procedure that we followed at that point in time so that we were able to open it on budget, and we were able to open it on time.

That's what we have to do.

We just have to make it a a focus.

It apparently had not been a focus prior to my coming into office, but it is now a focus because we cannot afford as a growing city to have that airport lag behind.

- Thank you, Mayor Watson.

I'll now hand it over to Luz for the next question.

- My question is for Doug Greco.

You've said that one of your reasons to run for mayor is because you wanna fight for working families and build a strong working class.

Can you give me a couple of specific examples that you would use to achieve that goal?

- Absolutely, and we need to look at affordability.

We just, we never get asked in these forums about education workforce, living wages, okay?

Rightly we get asked about housing.

Biggest cost driver, but we need to look at this from both sides.

What families earn and where they spend their money.

Like I said before, we need to connect kids who grow up here and adults who are underemployed to the good jobs that we already have.

And we have good jobs in Austin.

We need local folks to be prepared, invest in education and workforce.

Number two, we need robust living wage policies as lead organizers, we were involved in getting it to 15 and now over 20 an hour working with unions to make sure that all city contracts and all public projects have living wage requirements and incentives.

Even though I don't like incentives to big corporations.

When they're part of the game of the day, they better pay living wages and lead to local hires, okay?

So that's on the investment side.

And I have had a hand in shaping policy at the local level and the state level on jobs.

And then again on housing, okay?

The best way to get folks who are working folks and folks who have come from lower income backgrounds is to pay for invest in affordable housing that goes directly to them, number one.

And we need to invest in childcare, and we need to invest in healthcare, and we need to support Prop A for schools in Austin.

And I challenge everybody here to support Prop A and support the Travis County - Doug, that is our 90 second mark, thank you.

- For education.

Those are just some of the few ideas I have.

- [Francheska] Thank you, Doug.

- Great, my question is for Carmen.

One of the main issues that you have based your campaign on is addressing Austin's climate related issues.

And you said that the city will most likely face more natural disasters or climate stressors in the next 10 years.

What specific policies would you change and address to create a city better equipped to address climate change?

- Thank you so much for the question.

I am proud to have led an organization that has served as a key community partner to the city of Austin in all of our climate resilience efforts thus far.

And part of it is defining that.

The reality is that climate change is no longer something we talk about in the future.

We are experiencing now every single year, multiple shocks and stressors from extreme weather, whether that's fire, flood, heat, and our air quality also facing issues.

So by learning from frontline communities like those who survived the Halloween floods on Lower Onion Creek in 2013 and 2015, we have developed, I've seen community develop disaster preparedness guides that the city has now integrated across the board.

But it goes far beyond that.

The city is really responsible for critical infrastructure.

Know that in these recent deregulations, which allow market investors to develop whatever they want but don't support community developers to build actual affordable housing, that we are not consulting Austin Energy and Austin Water, our critical infrastructure and the load that this is putting on our grid and our water reuse.

We have to prioritize those things.

So securing our critical infrastructure, and leveraging the massive amount of federal funding coming in to climate proof our infrastructure.

Yes, we have a mayor who can get deals done, but will they actually serve the public interests?

That's gonna depend on how much we work directly with our impacted organizations, communities, and frontline staff who have been making recommendations for years about our critical infrastructure, so we can be climate ready for the future.

- [Kylee] Thank you.

- All right, it's your turn, Kathie.

I have a question about a policy priority that I've noticed in reading about you and your background.

And that has to do with family support, especially childcare and that's important since the labor department reports that Travis County is the most expensive county in Texas to raise a child.

Travis County commissioners recently proposed a property tax increase to fund childcare for low income families, after school care, and some other related assistance.

Talk about what additional steps the City of Austin should be taking regarding childcare.

- Yeah, thank you for that question.

Years ago I served on something called the Families and Children Task Force, and we divided into two sections.

And one of the sections focused on childcare and said, you know, this city needs to regard childcare as an economic development issue because it is.

And it wasn't really, though some of us kind of made that call over and over again.

It really wasn't until the pandemic that that started to get the attention of a broader range of the community.

So absolutely we need to invest in affordable, accessible, high quality childcare.

I'm a big supporter of that.

The city of Austin has been a partner with, specifically with Austin Independent School District because they're facing such dire financial circumstances.

But one of the things that I help lead, and we need to do more of, and I will be a champion of this if I'm elected mayor, we support AISD's after school programs.

We support family resource centers, we support parent teacher support specialists at those title one campuses where working families really and those students really need those supports.

And so, you know, we need to work with some of our other public partners, including Travis County and the private sector to really expand those resources for families throughout.

While housing is the highest cost for most folks, childcare for families with children is number two.

And so continuing to expand that network of accessible childcare is important.

Before I left, I passed a policy to create childcare, or at least have a discussion about it in any public building that the city brings forward.

That can be part of an equation that can really help support those childcare facilities because rent is, excuse me, such a big portion of their costs.

- Thank you, Kathie, and for our final individual question, Jeffery, it is known that you have an extensive background in handling large budgets.

In August, the City of Austin adopted a budget of nearly $6 billion for the 2024 and 2025 fiscal year.

This is the largest budget in city history.

With your experience and knowing the needs of Austin, how do you best see fit to allocate and restructure the distribution of these funds?

- Well, let's be real clear.

I've made no bones about the fact that I think the city needs to be audited.

That's from top down, the whole thing.

Now I have gone back and kind of said, "Okay, what's gonna be the best way instead of trying to do this all at one time?"

I just look at it from let's budget over five years, and say we're going to do a major department, say it's Austin Energy or Austin Water, and then several smaller ones.

And this would be an external audit, not our own internal auditors.

We do have those already on staff, but they've been looking at other issues such as manpower, those type of things.

But the City of Austin is no different than any large company.

Yes, it's a non-profit organization in the big scheme of life The issues are how do we find what's actually being done, and what can be done better?

Any major corporation, they have audits all the time, why should we be any different?

We are all asked to live within our means, and I think the city should have to live within its means also because we're the ones, that are actually the shareholders when you look at it and we're asking them to do certain things, but we're being burdened with the taxes to have to run that.

Where are the issues that we could fix, make them better?

And as we do that, say the first year, then maybe there's some of those programs that come and could be utilized in some of the other departments.

That's why I wanna spread it out like over five year period.

- Thank you so much, Jeffery.

And thank you to all of our candidates for responding our questions.

We are just about at the end of our planned time.

As we conclude, I wanted to share a few key dates regarding the election.

Last day to apply for a ballot by mail is October 25th.

Note that mailed ballots must be postmarked no later than November 5th.

Early voting begins on October 21st, and goes on until November 1st.

And you may vote in person on election day, Tuesday, November fifth.

We'd like to thank our candidates for participating in this important and engaging conversation about city government policy and the future of Austin.

We'd also like to thank our hosts here at Austin PBS for their studio and production support for the forum, as well as our collaborators, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, whose leadership guided coordination for this event.

And our media partners, KUT Radio, The Daily Texan, again, Austin PBS, and of course my colleagues at Univision.

And lastly, we'd like to thank our studio audience for taking time to be with us in person.

And as we conclude, please give yourselves and our candidates a warm round of applause.

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