City of Austin Council Message Board

Dear Colleagues, I would like to offer the below direction to any South Central Waterfront TIRZ we might adopt tomorrow. Regards, Alison Alter Alter Direction - Dec. 20, 2021 related to SCW TIRZ items 1-4 The City Manager is directed to provide Council with clearly defined roles and responsibilities...

Dear Colleagues, To save us time tomorrow, I would like to ask the sponsors of item 62 (the cost study) for clarification on a few things and raise some questions in the hopes of reaching consensus faster. I also want to offer some draft amendments. 1. Lines 93-94 of version two refers to “costs rel...

Dear Colleagues, At tomorrow morning’s Audit and Finance Committee meeting, we will be hearing two audits of interest for the full council, as well as an update on how staff is addressing the EMS billing backlog and making improvements for the future. The two audits of interest are: Disaster Prepare...

Dear Colleagues, I am supportive of advancing actions to reduce barriers to ADUs as well as options to increase our ability to create additional income-restricted affordable housing units as part of our strategy to increase density on our corridors. I look forward to working with Council Members Kit...

Dear Colleagues, AFD is investigating an intentionally set fire that occurred last night at Congregation Beth Israel (CBI) in District 10. I have spoken with temple and city leadership, the ADL, AFD Chief Baker, and the Fire Marshal and understand that the AFD arson unit is working with the FBI, APD...

Dear Colleagues, Thank you to Mayor Adler and CM Tovo for your resolutions related to the South Central Waterfront Plan and Colony Park. I would like to offer a few amendments to Item 44 and clarify the timing for 45. For 44, I would like to make the below amendments. A redline version can be found ...

Colleagues, Item 81 has been a contentious zoning case which narrowly passed 6-5 on first reading. I was among those opposed to the case due to certain choices made by the applicant. Since that time, the applicant has taken steps to remedy those issues. I am prepared to support this case on the cond...

Dear Colleagues, Thank you to CM's Kitchen and Ellis, MPT Harper-Madison, and Mayor Adler for adding their names as additional co-sponsors of our Austin Climate Equity Plan Implementation Resolution, along with CMs Tovo, Pool, Casar, and Fuentes who joined me on the original version. Please see the ...

Thank you CM Ellis for bringing forward this resolution that reaffirms the need for and our commitment to abortion access. I would like to be included as a co-sponsor as well.

Regards,
Alison Alter

Mayor Adler and colleagues, thank you for drafting this letter which I believe captures many of my concerns well. I would like to be added as a signatory.

Regards,
Alison Alter

Dear Colleagues, With item 99 on the September 30th agenda, city staff is bringing forward the updated Austin Climate Equity Plan. The Climate Equity Plan is the document guiding the city’s path to net-zero community-wide greenhouse gas emissions. Over the past months, I have been working on methods...

Dear Colleagues, At the September Audit and Finance Committee meeting on Wednesday the 22nd, EDD will provide a briefing to the committee on the Cultural Arts Fund and the Historic Presentation Fund. As this is a subject of interest for the whole Council, I want to call attention to the item and inv...

Note this and my last message are the same. I was worried my original version had not posted given we moved to a second page of the thread.

Colleagues, Below please find an additional amendment and a budget rider. ALTER 5: Adding $1 million to the Austin Arts and Culture Nonprofit Relief Grant fund. Link: http://assets.austintexas.gov/austincouncilforum/28-20210811170010.pdf ALTER Rider 3: Direction to the City Manager to highlight inve...

Colleagues, Below please find an additional amendment and a budget rider that I would like to offer as part of our budget deliberations. ALTER 5: Adding $1 million to the Austin Arts and Culture Nonprofit Relief Grant fund. Link: http://assets.austintexas.gov/austincouncilforum/28-20210811170010.pdf...

Colleagues, Below please find an updated ALTER 2 amendment, incorporating finalized numbers from the budget office, as well as my two budget riders: ALTER Amendment 2 - UPDATED: EMS/OCMO http://assets.austintexas.gov/austincouncilforum/F0-20210810150022.pdf ALTER Rider 1: Addressing EMS staffing, bi...

Dear Colleagues, I am looking forward to continuing our budget discussion next week. Below please find four amendments that I would like to offer. Note that I am preparing three budget riders that I will post early next week related to EMS staffing, the Victim Services and 911 Call Center Compensati...

Colleagues, As we will discuss in this afternoon's work session, our Victim Services Division has just secured unexpected Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) funding from the state, freeing up additional funding for Victim Services. As we’ve discussed many times, our Victim Services Division has been histor...

Dear Colleagues, I am looking forward to this afternoon’s briefings and discussion regarding the FY22 budget. Today we will be receiving a briefing regarding the Fire/EMS optimization study, which was released on Friday and includes a lot of information which will require deeper discussion between u...

Dear Colleagues, In my discussions with city staff, I have learned that the construction of the Loop 360/Davenport Fire and EMS Station will extend past Fiscal Year 2022, leading to some measure of cost savings for the City in the proposed budget. The savings from reduced staffing needs realized fro...

Colleagues, I intend to bring forward the following direction regarding Item 82: The City Manager is directed to explore opportunities to leverage the Austin Civilian Conservation Corps in the implementation of these education, clean-up, and beautification projects, and create space via the contract...

Dear Colleagues, I intend to bring forward the below direction for Item 4, which is the negotiation and execution of amended service schedules, including revised pricing and revenue to the City, to the single-stream recycling contracts with Texas Disposal Systems and Balcones Resources. Item 4 Direc...

CM Tovo, I would be happy to contribute $500 towards the waiver for the Austin Sunshine Run.

Regards,
Alison Alter

Colleagues, I would like to invite you to join tomorrow’s AFC meeting for an important discussion about the audit on APD’s early intervention system for at-risk officers. This topic ties in to our work on Reimagining Public Safety and is a critical piece in our conversations about use of force, acco...

A follow up to my original post… Together with the direction shared by CM Tovo, I would like to offer the following direction in support of the framework. I anticipate this would sit alongside direction offered by colleagues that the Council adopts. We may need to do some formatting to pull all the ...