Watson Wire: Making It Look Easy

For most of us, the eclipse on Monday was a short but amazing moment of cosmic wonder and awe. But for a lot of City of Austin employees, it was the culmination of a year-long effort to be ready for whatever the universe had in store for us.

The regional coordination for the eclipse involved multiple strategic planning meetings and calls with 250 participants representing more than 40 agencies. On Sunday and Monday, the Emergency Operations Center was activated with over 20 agencies representing state, county, and local partners across the region. These agencies had resources in place to coordinate responses to any kind of incident.

And, of course, it's not just emergency preparedness that has folks working hard. Big gatherings and events are part of the regular order of business for Austin. In fact, as the city prepared for the once-in-a-lifetime eclipse, we also hosted over the weekend a soccer game at Q2, the Rosedale Ride, the Capitol 10K and the CMT Country Music awards. And just a month ago, we hosted a little international deal we call South by Southwest. Gotta love it…never a dull day here in Austin, Texas.

So, we have pros doing work in departments like libraries, parks, transportation, resource recovery, the airport and more, always making Austin a special place for everyone.

We often don’t see the extraordinary work of our city employees before, during and after these big events, particularly when all goes smoothly. But their experience and professionalism is always on display whenever the world stops by for a visit.??

To our great public servants, thank you for everything you did so we all could enjoy something truly special.?