Austin, TX

A look inside Austin City Council’s climate investment plan, city manager search & more

Published

2 years ago

February 15, 2024

A look inside Austin City Council’s climate investment plan, city manager search & more

Editor’s note: City Hall Insider is a roundup of items the Austin City Council is set to vote on, other local government news and an inside look at my reporting process. This story will be updated following action from the Austin City Council.

Shortly after I moved to Texas, I heard several horror stories about the fallout from the two severe winter storms that battered the Austin area in 2021 and 2023.

I received several tips from friends and family members: make sure you have extra bottled-water on hand, buy an extra charger for your car and, most of all, make sure you have everything you need before February, because February is the month when things gets bad and you might just lose power and/or water.

But, so far, it would seem, mother nature has blessed Central Texas will a rather mild, and often pleasant, February and 2024 winter season. I’m no meteorologist, but I certainly breathed a sigh of relief after January’s winter weather event left me with only a few frozen pipes — power and water services full intact, as it seemed to be for most of the city.

But the cautionary climate tales I heard weren’t just restricted to winter weather.

I experienced in my first summer here the extreme heat (the one that broke records here last summer with several consecutive days above 105 degrees), saw the wildfires sweeping through the city and county, and droughts across the region.

These severe climate related events aren’t news to the city and council members. In 2019, the Austin City Council declared a climate emergency and an accelerated timeline to meet the city’s climate goals. Long-term plans to meet these goals were approved both before and after this declaration.

But some City Council members feel the implementation of these goals are not coming fast enough, and are seeking to create an investment plan to help the city meet these goals and identify how much it will cost to do so.

The first step of that will be up for vote at today’s City Council meeting, along with more than 40 other agenda items, including the approval of the city’s $2 million contribution to a mental health diversion center pilot program.

Another bit of Austin City Hall news these past two weeks came from an unlikely source: Bozeman, Montana. (If you know, you know. We’ll get into that more later).

A roadmap to implement climate goals

The City Council has in the past approved several detailed plans to address climate issues. Maybe you remember hearing about Water Forward, the city’s century long water resiliency plan, or the Austin Climate Equity Plan, the city’s goal to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

“We have done a lot as a city in terms of making plans and setting goals, but we have found that we are falling short of too many of those goals,” Council Member Ryan Alter told me.

Alter and other council members have co-sponsored a resolution up for vote today that, among other things, would direct city staff to determine the investments needed to fulfill goals outlined in several city-approved plans like Water Forward and the Austin Climate Equity Plan.

It also requests the city and Joint Sustainability Committee take public feedback on potential climate related investments.

“I think of it as building a menu,” Alter said. “Here are the types of investments you need to make to reach our goals, here are the various ways you pay for it.”

The resolution would not approve the allocation of any funding, but would serve as a roadmap for future investments that could come before the City Council and, potentially, Austin voters. The resolution draft cites the possibility of a 2024 bond election as one of the ways to secure funding. (Bond referendums allow voters to approve or reject financing for capital improvement projects.)

There are several other funding mechanisms that will be evaluated as potential sources to complete these goals, like utility rates and fees, general fund expenditures and grants. There is also an emphasis in the draft resolution on maximizing potential tax credits available through the Inflation Reduction Act.

“We have to start taking bold action right now to meet our climate goals, because climate change is here and it’s only going to get worse,” Alter said.

Mental Health Diversion Center

In January, my colleague Skye Seipp reported on Travis County’s pilot program for a Mental Health Diversion Center that would give low-level criminal offenders with unmet mental health needs the option of receiving treatment instead of jail.

More: Travis County set to begin pilot program of mental health diversion center in coming weeks

The Travis County Commissioners Court approved the creation of the mental health diversion center last March. The pilot will serve as a trial run for the types of programs the county could offer when it opens up an actual facility, which could be another 5½ years away, Seipp reported.

Part of the pilot program includes a $2 million contribution from the city of Austin, which will be on the City Council agenda for a vote today. The County is paying $8 million, with another $2 million coming from Central Health.

The pilot program will use Integral Care’s Psychiatric Emergency Services program on Airport Boulevard, according to the recommendation attached to the item, and repurpose Integral Care’s 15th Street crisis residential program, located in a city-owned facility.

There is set to be a total of 25 bed spaces, Robert Kingham, the Downtown Austin Community Court administrator, told the City Council on Tuesday.

During a Tuesday work session, there was a rather robust Q & A session with Kingham and the City Council. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson had several technical questions for Kingham about the pilot program, some of which Kingham did not have answers for on the spot.

I wonder if any of these questions will resurface at today’s meeting or if any amendments will be proposed. Some of the questions very well could have been addressed off the dais before today’s meeting as well.

City manager search

Now folks, I’m not going to sit hear and say no one has ever had a bad day at work and had choice things to say all meant to remain in the veil of confidence. It happens, we’re human. Sometimes you just need to vent, or complain, or scream or whatever.

But, as the leader of any city, getting caught on a hot mic/camera moment not only slamming your colleagues, but also boasting about the possibility of a potential new job while simultaneously calling it “a (expletive) show,” is quite possibly a career-ending storm.

And that might just be the case for the City Manager of Bozeman, Montana.

This past week, I reported on a nearly 20-minute leaked video where the city manager of Bozeman touts that he was contacted by the head-hunting firm, Mosaic Public Partners, leading Austin’s City Manager search about potentially applying for the position.

More: Bozeman city manager slams Austin job, calls city ‘a (expletive) show’ in leaked video

In that video, while also criticizing about his colleagues in Montana, Jeff Mihelich revealed that he was a potential candidate for the city manager position in Austin, and then proceeded slam the city and it’s operations.

He also talked about a potential $475,000 salary for the top-job in Austin, which is much higher than the current interim city manager and past city manager were paid. Whether or not that will be the base salary for the next top-dog in Austin remains to be seen.

City Commissioners in Bozeman requested Mihelich resign in a unanimous vote on Monday, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported. I doubt he is still in the running as a potential candidate for Austin, but, that is well beyond my current purview of knowledge, and Mosaic Public Partners never responded to my request for comment for last week’s story.

All that to be said, the city manager search process is still well underway. Applications for the position just closed this week and the search firm will continue to winnow down candidates.

The city is also requesting public input on what Austinites would like to see in a new city manager, who, if you may have forgotten, is responsible for overseeing the city’s implementation of City Council-approved policy, the hiring of nearly all executive level leaders in the 10th largest city in the country and drafting the annual budget, which clocked in at $5.5 billion last summer.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for following along! I hope you’ll continue reading “City Hall Insider,” published the day of every Austin City Council meeting, which is usually bi-weekly. In the meantime, I will continue my coverage of local government and politics. To share additional tips or insight, email me at emccarthy@statesman.com. You can also find me on X, formerly Twitter, @byEllaMcCarthy.

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Austin, TX

Texas softball handles Wagner; set for matchup with Wisconsin

Published

11 hours ago

May 15, 2026

Press Room

Texas softball handles Wagner; set for matchup with Wisconsin

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Texas softball entered the NCAA Tournament ranked fourth in RPI. Their first opponent in the Austin regional was Wagner, sitting a bit lower at 274th in RPI.

The Longhorns handled business Friday afternoon, taking down the Seahawks 9-1 by run rule in five innings.

Wagner actually got on the board first and was extremely energized in their NCAA Tournament debut. The Longhorns settled down to the tie game in the bottom half of the first before taking the lead in the third and never looked back.

The first game of the day in Austin went to extra innings and pushed back the start time between the Longhorns and Seahawks. Wisconsin made it past Baylor in extra innings with a 2-1 walk-off victory.

Now, the Badgers earn a date with the Longhorns on the winner’s side of the bracket. The two will duel Saturday at noon with the winner advancing to the regional final.

Wagner and Baylor will play an elimination game Saturday after Texas and Wisconsin. The winner of the Seahawks and Bears game will face the loser of the Longhorns and Badgers battle.

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Austin, TX

Texas Metro Areas Are Coming for Chicago

Published

23 hours ago

May 15, 2026

Press Room

Texas Metro Areas Are Coming for Chicago

The nickname “Second City” wasn’t bestowed upon Chicago as a title of distinction. When author A. J. Liebling bestowed that sobriquet in writings that were later published in his 1952 book, Chicago: The Second City, he didn’t mean “second only to New York.” He meant “secondary,” or maybe “second-class.” He lived in Chicago, and he hated it. Chicagoans eventually embraced being the Second City, especially after they fell to third, when Los Angeles surpassed the metro in the early eighties.

Chicago is still the nation’s third-largest metropolitan area, according to U.S. census data released this week that estimate population totals for the year 2025—but, looking at the trends since 2020, it’s likely that Dallas–Fort Worth will supplant Chicagoland before too long. Let’s explore the takeaways from the newly released data.

Dallas–Fort Worth Is Poised To Surpass Chicago

According to the census data, as of 2025, 9,434,123 residents are spread across the Chicago region. The Metroplex, meanwhile, is home to 8,477,157.

While that million-person difference is a lot, Chicago’s population has been stagnant for years; the area has actually lost a couple thousand residents since 2020, with fluctuations year over year. DFW, meanwhile, has a rocket strapped to its proverbial back; in 2020, only 7,667,416 folks lived in the region, which means the Metroplex has added an average of just over 160,000 people each year. If Chicago remains anemic and DFW continues to boom at the same rate, that means Dallas–Fort Worth would be the nation’s third-largest metro area around 2031 (at which point, presumably, Chicagoans will cling even tighter to the “Second City” moniker).

And DFW isn’t the only metro on Chicago’s heels. The Houston–Pasadena–The Woodlands metropolitan area added nearly as many residents as DFW over that same five-year period. There are half a million fewer Houston-area residents than DFW ones, but if current trends hold, by around 2036, Houston should slide into fourth place. (As some consolation to depressed Chicagoans, they should hold on to fifth place for a while after that, as the metro areas currently behind Houston are quite a bit further back, and they aren’t growing at nearly the same rate as the Texas cities.)

We Hit Peak Austin a Few Years Back

Austin has been heralded as a tech-utopian dream city by some folks in the capital, and while it remains a growing area, it’s not the juggernaut it once was. For years, Austin and San Jose, California, ran neck and neck for the spot of the nation’s tenth-largest city, but they’re now at numbers twelve and thirteen, respectively—and it’s Fort Worth that rounds out the top ten, with Jacksonville, Florida, behind it.

That’s because Fort Worth, which grew by nearly 2 percent between 2024 and 2025, is the fastest-growing of Texas’s big cities, and by a considerable margin. Austin, meanwhile, grew by just 0.4 percent—which isn’t nothing, but the era of constant, accelerating growth in the state’s capital appears to have ended, perhaps putting slightly less strain on the city’s infrastructure.

The rapid rise of Fort Worth isn’t a new story—the trend got noticed back in 2022—but the fact that Austin is growing more slowly than Houston and San Antonio might change the narrative of the city as an ever-growing hub of creative- and tech-minded talent that emerged over the past decade.

What the Heck Is Going On in New Braunfels?

In addition to being outgrown by the other big cities in Texas, Austin is also being outpaced by a much smaller city nearby, and not just statistically. New Braunfels has a gaudy year-over-year growth rate of 5.1 percent, but it also added more total residents between 2024 and 2025 than Austin did—and by a lot. The year saw 4,025 newly minted Austinites, while New Braunfels exceeded that number by nearly 50 percent, adding 5,969 newcomers. There are now 122,492 New Braunfellas. That is more than six times what the city’s population was back in 1970.

It makes sense: New Braunfels is between San Antonio and Austin, relatively affordable, and charming as heck.

The Boom Among New Suburbs Is Bonkers

The fastest-growing city in the United States? That’s Celina, Texas, a spot on the map north of U.S. 380 at the tip-top of the Metroplex. (To get to a Cowboys game from Celina, you’re facing a hundred-mile round trip.) Celina grew by 24.6 percent between 2024 and 2025, which means that statistically, one out of every four people you see shopping for groceries at the Brookshire’s moved there last year.

What accounts for Celina’s boom? Mostly, it’s that the city basically didn’t exist fifteen years ago; Celina, currently home to 64,427 Texans, was a town of just 6,028 in 2010. According to The Texas Tribune, the city’s 36-year-old mayor moved there with his wife from Allen in 2017, “seeking a quieter, family-oriented neighborhood with good schools and a slower pace.” Celina: For when a bedroom community like Allen is too much of a bustling metropolis!

Celina’s neighboring towns aren’t far behind it. There are five other DFW suburbs—Princeton, Melissa, Anna, Forney, and Greenville—among the ten fastest-growing cities in the country. (All but Forney are similarly situated on or above U.S. 380.) The Houston suburb of Fulshear (which grew by a similarly enormous 21 percent) and the Austin suburb of Hutto (a more modest 7.9 percent) are among the top ten too.

Texas remains booming, in other words, even if the distribution of that boom has shifted somewhat—that looks like a slower Austin, steady growth in San Antonio and Houston, an even more massive Metroplex, and suburbs that envelop small towns.

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Austin, TX

No. 3 Softball preview: NCAA Austin Regional – University of Texas Athletics

Published

1 day ago

May 14, 2026

Press Room

No. 3 Softball preview: NCAA Austin Regional – University of Texas Athletics

AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Softball, the nation’s No. 2 seed at the 2026 NCAA Tournament, opens the Austin Regional vs. NEC Tournament Champion Wagner at 3 p.m. CT Friday, May 15, at McCombs Field. The game will stream on ESPN+ with Cat Osterman (analyst) and Alex Loeb (play-by-play) on the call. Fans can also tune into Andrew Haynes on Texas’ radio broadcast on https://texas.leanplayer.com/ or the iHeart Radio app.

Notes

Wagner, Baylor and Wisconsin are joining Texas at the Austin Regional. Prior to Texas’ game vs. Wagner on Friday, Baylor (28-26) and Wisconsin (32-19) will clash at 12:30 p.m. on ESPN+. The winner of the Austin Regional will advance to play the winner of the College Station Regional.

Texas is making its 26th NCAA Tournament appearance, including its 21st-consecutive tournament. The Longhorns are 57-30 all-time during NCAA regionals.

Texas has made the NCAA Tournament in every year under head coach Mike White. Under White, Texas has clinched six top-13 national seeds at the tournament.

It marks the fourth-straight year in which Texas has earned a national seed (1 through 16). Texas’ four-consecutive national seeds ties for the longest streak in program history. It last happened from 2010 to 2013. Additionally, Texas has collected three-consecutive top-six national seeds.

Texas’ No. 2 national seed is the second-highest national seed in program history, behind the 2024 team’s No. 1 overall seed. Last season, Texas was selected as the No. 6 overall seed and went on to win the program’s first Women’s College World Series with a 10-2 postseason run.

Texas won the program’s first SEC Tournament title and fifth overall conference tournament crown on May 9.

Junior first baseman Katie Stewart became the program’s first SEC Player of the Year after earning the award on May 8. Stewart is the fourth Longhorn to garner conference player of the year, joining Reese Atwood (2024), Taylor Thom (2014) and Amy Hooks (2011).

Freshman RHP/DP Hannah Wells tied the program’s freshman home run record of 13, which was set by Katie Stewart in 2024.

Against Oklahoma on April 10, junior RHP Teagan Kavan became the sixth player in program history to eclipse 500 career strikeouts. Kavan, who currently has 572 career strikeouts, joins Cat Osterman (2,265), Blaire Luna (1,428), Meagan Denny (988), Christa Williams (678) and Tiarra Davis (508) as the only players in program history to reach 500 career Ks. Kavan’s 572 career strikeouts rank fifth in program history.

All Eyes on the Longhorns

Texas’ SEC Tournament Championship game vs. Alabama on May 9 was the most-watched college softball game this season, bringing in 847,000 viewers.

Texas also had the top two most-watched regular season game this season vs. Georgia on April 19 with 725,000 viewers watching. The second-most watched college softball game this year was between the Longhorns and Oklahoma on April 11 when 700,000 tuned in.

Three of Texas’ games were in the top 5 of college softball’s most viewed games during the regular season.

Texas vs. Oklahoma on April 12 brought in 581,000 viewers, making it the third-most watched college softball game of the regular season.

Series History

Texas and Wagner will be playing each other for the first time in history on Friday.

Both Texas and Wagner received automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament after winning their conference tournament titles.

Former Big 12 conference foes, Texas and Baylor have played 70 times with Texas leading the all-time series, 44-26.

The Longhorns have won seven-straight games vs. the Bears.

Texas and Wisconsin have played each other 11 times with Texas leading the all-time series, 8-3. The Horns and Badgers last played each other in 2023 with Texas winning two games, 7-4 and 5-1, in Austin.

SEC Tournament Champs!

Texas won the program’s first SEC Tournament Championship on May 9 with a 7-1 victory over second-seed Alabama.

Teagan Kavan was named the tournament’s MVP. Kavan, Viviana Martinez, Leighann Goode and Jaycie Nichols were selected to the All-Tournament Team.

It was Texas’ fifth overall conference tournament title and the first conference tournament crown since 2005.

The Longhorns have won five conference tournament championships (1999, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2026) in seven of their championship game appearances (1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2023, 2024 and 2026). Texas earns its first conference tournament title under head coach Mike White. Under White, Texas has played in a conference tournament championship in three of the last four seasons. The Big 12 Conference did not host a conference tournament from 2011-2016.