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.