Watson Wire: Keep Turning the Corner

The Austin City Council and I have made significant positive strides to better address public safety in Austin. A few things include:

• Increasing staffing within the city’s 911 call center, which created significant improvements in our 911 answer rate. We’ve gone from less than 2/3 of calls being answered within the national standard when I took office to now consistently meeting the national standard of 90% of calls answered within the first 15 seconds.
• Passing and then renewing an ordinance that protects our police officers' salaries and benefits, even without a contract. That ordinance also created new incentives for recruitment and retention, among other positive aspects.
• Signing new contracts with our EMS personnel and with our Firefighters. In the budget we just passed, we took some additional explicit actions with both EMS and Fire to enhance public safety.
• Our relatively new City Manager recommending a new Chief of Police and the City Council unanimously endorsing the hiring of Chief Lisa Davis. I think it will be helpful to APD to have a new chief coming in from outside of the department.

Since coming into office, a top priority of mine has been and continues to be turning the corner on the difficult place the city has been in with policing. When I came into office, we had a badly understaffed police force, and the relationship between City Hall and the police, as represented by the Austin Police Association (APA), was just sorry.

Not everything that we tried has worked the way we wanted, and there’s more to be done. I hear our residents from all over our city who are worried about safety. People want to be safe and to feel safe. A police presence makes a difference.

A Long-term Contract

One important positive change has been communication with the APA. Officer Michael Bullock became APA President this past January. He and I started talking immediately after he was elected the prior November. We certainly don’t agree on everything, but President Bullock works to communicate, and he is a big reason that, for the first time in a long while, the City of Austin and the APA have been negotiating a long-term contract. We’re actually at the table talking. The city team has worked hard with Bullock and the APA team.

This potential contract will address the officers' salaries for the next five years. Austin is facing an affordability emergency. ?That applies to cops, too. They need to be able to afford to live here. And if we want to be a city that’s able to recruit and keep police officers, we need to be competitive with other cities and show we care about the importance of our officers being a part of the community.

Austin simply must pay salaries that are competitive with other cities.

The Austin Police Oversight Act

Independent of the monetary aspects, this contract must comply with the Austin Police Oversight Act (APOA), which the voters overwhelmingly approved in a citizen-initiated Austin election in May of 2023.

The City Council and I took deliberate actions to protect the rights of voters to let their voices be heard on Prop A in that election. Regardless of what the city did immediately after passage of the APOA, parts of it would have ended up in court. Last Friday, we got clarity on a key provision related to what’s known as the G-file.

Friday, a Travis County District Court assured an important part of Prop A was consistent with state law and not otherwise preempted. So, the provision can be enforced without it being an agreed part of a contract with the police union.

Even without the court order, my position has been that the voter approved Prop A, including this provision related to the G-file, must be part of a long-term police contract. That contract can both support APD officers and put police oversight at the forefront. As to the court order, I do not see reason to appeal. We have needed clarity, and we can take yet another step in turning the corner for a better, safer Austin.

Overall, I feel hopeful that ongoing, good-faith negotiations between the City of Austin and APA will allow us the opportunity to move forward by prioritizing accountability, oversight, and support for our officers needed to turn the corner on our relationship with the police and the community’s public safety.