Tuesday, November 18, 2025, 9 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
0:08 You are watching a meeting of the Austin City Council with Mayor Kirk Watson, Mayor pro, tim Vanessa
0:17 Fuentes, council members Natasha Harper Madison, José velazquez, cheeto Vela, Ryan Alter, crystal lane, Mike Siegel, Paige Ellis, zoe
0:40 cadre, mark uchin, city attorney, deborah thomas, city clerk erica brady, and city manager tc broadnax.
0:59 Good morning, everybody. It's nine o'clock in the morning on November 18th, 2025, and I will call to order the
1:06 Austin City Council work session.
1:09 Uh, we have, well, I can't really call us to order.
1:16 There are two coming up right now.
1:17 Okay. Hang on one second.
1:19 Council Member Siegel was, oh, he's here.
1:22 He's here. Oh, there he is.
1:24 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6. We got, we have a quorum present, so I will, uh, go ahead and call us to
1:29 order. What I'm gonna do is, uh, I'll walk through what the, uh, the plan for the day
1:36 is. Uh, we also have an Austin energy oversight committee meeting, and we're gonna take it up before
1:43 we actually take up the substance of the work session.
1:46 But I wanna walk through what the day will look like so that everybody will know.
1:51 Um, as soon as we get through this little informational part, I will turn it over to chair
1:58 Vela, who is chair of the Austin energy oversight committee.
2:01 We will take up that item.
2:03 Once that is complete, then we will come back and I'll, we will reconvene the Austin City Council.
2:10 And, and that is when we will, uh, hear, we will hear the issues for briefing and we
2:17 will hear from speakers.
2:18 Uh, what we will do is we will call the speakers up on the item.
2:24 So, uh, we, I know we have somebody signed up, for example, on, uh, item forty eight forty eight.
2:29 We will call somebody, call that person up at that point in time.
2:33 I also wanna say for the record that item b one, which is a briefing regarding the development
2:38 assessment for a proposed plan unit development, or pud, located in 1100 west ces chavez street, um, and
2:47 north lamar boulevard within the lady bird lake watershed urban watershed.
2:51 That item is postponed.
2:56 So if you're paying attention, because that's the briefing you wanted to hear about, that item will not
3:00 be taken up today.
3:03 Um, once we are finished with the budget discussion, we'll go to the budget discussion after, uh, after
3:09 we hear, uh, and the way we're gonna do the budget discussion is I will have, uh, our
3:16 professional staff come up.
3:18 Uh, I will have a couple of questions just to set things up, at which point we will
3:23 have a presentation from them, and that's when we will go to the speakers because we thought it
3:29 was in the best interest of everyone to hear what the presentation is before the speakers, because it
3:33 May change what you think or what you say.
3:38 I also wanna say for the record, and I will say this over and over again, many of
3:42 you that follow stuff like this, uh, religiously will get tired of hearing me say this, but I'm
3:48 going to say it over and over again because I'm trying to get notice out to everybody, is
3:52 that in addition to the meeting that we're having today, we're going to have additional opportunities for the
3:58 public to speak on the proposed budget amendments tomorrow, starting at 10 o'clock in the morning, we have
4:05 a council meeting, which will begin with a presentation on the proposed amended budget, and it will continue
4:12 at 3:00 pm with a public hearing on the proposed amended budget.
4:17 So on Wednesday, we will have another presentation on the budget, and at three o'clock we will have
4:24 a public hearing on the proposed amended budget.
4:27 If you're interested in speaking on the proposed amendment budget, amended budget, I highly encourage you to do
4:33 so at the 3:00 pm public hearing tomorrow on Wednesday online, online registration for that meeting closes at noon
4:43 today with in-person registration closing tomorrow at 9:15 am lemme say that again.
4:51 Tomorrow, Wednesday, we will have a public hearing on the proposed budget amendments at three o'clock online registration,
5:03 online registration for that meeting, uh, closes at noon today with in-person registration closing tomorrow at nine 15
5:14 on Thursday the 20th.
5:16 So the day after tomorrow, starting at 10:00 am we will have a council meeting at which council will
5:22 be taking up the items to vote on amending the budget and adopting the updated tax rate ordinance
5:29 in res in response to prop q not being approved, we will be taking speakers on the 20th
5:36 as well. That's looking like it's going to be a long council meeting.
5:40 I just want to let everybody know that's why I'm highlighting, and I wanna continue to highlight the
5:46 opportunity for people interested in speaking on the budget amendments to do so at the public hearing tomorrow,
5:53 the 19th, if you can.
5:56 We also have posted council meetings for Friday, the 21st, this coming Friday, Monday the 24th, and Tuesday
6:05 the 25th. However, for members of the public, I want to emphasize that those meetings will only be
6:12 held if the council does not get to the needed number of votes in favor of the proposed
6:18 budget amendments beforehand. In other words, on Thursday.
6:23 And, and as a result of not having the needed number of votes, we will have to have
6:28 additional meetings. So we, we have posted those meetings for the budget ordinance to pass by the required
6:34 votes. If council gets the needed votes before any of those meetings, we will be canceling those remaining
6:43 meetings. So, in other words, if the council has all of the votes to pass on all three
6:48 readings, the budget on Thursday, then we will not have the, the meetings that are, that we're posting
6:55 for Friday, Monday, and Tuesday that is being done to make sure we're properly posted and make sure
7:02 we're in a position to vote on the budget amendments.
7:06 Also, on the 20th, if the count, which, which is Thursday at the regular meeting, if the council
7:14 can't get to a vote on the amend amended budget before the end of the day, which is,
7:19 uh, 10 30, if the council can't get to the amended budget, uh, vote on the amended budget
7:28 before the end of the day, we would recess that meeting to the next day, which is Friday,
7:34 which we have done before.
7:37 But it is not the custom and practice of this council to vote on big items like this
7:43 late at night. Uh, we are, we will come back the next day if that happens.
7:50 If we recess the Thursday meeting in order to come back on Friday.
7:55 If that happens, we will cancel the separate meeting posted for Friday so that we don't have two
8:01 overlapping meetings. And if we recess, there will not be speaking again on Friday.
8:10 The speaking for the Thursday meeting will occur on Thursday.
8:15 Uh, to sum up, if you want to be guaranteed an opportunity to speak on the proposed budget
8:19 amendments, and you're not signed up to speak today, um, you can speak at the council meeting on
8:26 the 19th or the 20th, but I highly encourage that you sign up and speak, uh, Wednesday, which
8:35 is tomorrow, and again, o online registration for that meeting closes at noon today with in-person registration closing
8:44 tomorrow at nine 15.
8:46 Council members, any questions before we recess and yes, member, tim?
8:51 Yes. The fire contract, when will that briefing take place?
8:54 It will, will take place after, um, we do the Austin energy oversight committee meeting.
9:00 Okay, very good. Thank you.
9:01 Alright, and, and I wanna make sure, uh, apparently I didn't say what I was in my head,
9:07 which probably is a good thing most of the time.
9:10 Uh, but in this case it's not.
9:12 And that is the item that I indicated was being postponed.
9:17 And for the record, that is item b one, which is the pud briefing.
9:22 The development assessment assessment item b one will be postponed to December 9th.
9:29 It will be postponed to December 9th.
9:32 With that, unless there's objection, we will recess at 9:09 am the Austin City Council work session.
9:39 So that, uh, the Mayor, uh, the chair, chair Vela will be in a position to call to
9:45 order the Austin energy oversight committee meeting, uh, without objection, we are recessed at nine oh nine, call back to
9:53 order at 10 o'clock.
9:54 The 10:00 am the work session of the Austin City Council members, as I've indicated, uh, what we'll do
10:01 now is we will have a briefing with regard to the budget, uh, proposed budget amendments.
10:08 So I'm looking for any movement.
10:15 Well, that's right. We're gonna have, you're right.
10:16 Um, the fire contract.
10:18 Well, I hope they're that close.
10:20 Okay. Yeah. Um, uh, what we're going to do is, is we're gonna hear from the speaker on
10:25 the fire contract and, and that and that, because we don't have the need to take up the
10:31 briefing on that. Is that correct?
10:35 That, that that's the recommendation.
10:39 Why don't you come up and give us a brief status of where we are and, and that
10:43 that'll work. Please come forward.
10:56 Thank you, Mayor roxanne is stevens deputy labor relations officer.
11:01 Um, we have on the agenda today, uh, an item that was pulled from the regular agenda on
11:08 the, uh, fire tentative agreement between the city of Austin and the a fa.
11:14 Um, I do, it, it, I do have a presentation.
11:17 I'm not gonna go through it right now.
11:19 Um, what I'm gonna do is give an update, but the presentation that outlines all of the elements
11:24 of the tentative agreement that had been agreed to and were negotiated, are uploaded in the backup documents.
11:30 And I'll make sure that they're available to the public.
11:32 And the powerpoint that outlines all the summary of the tentative agreement is available to everybody.
11:37 And if you, you can look through that, and I will go through that at a later time.
11:41 Um, if there's any other questions, what I would like to do is give a brief update on
11:46 where we are with the tentative agreement.
11:48 Uh, we did negotiate that for a course of, um, 60 days that began on July 30th, and we
11:56 reached a septe, um, an tentative agreement on September 25th.
12:00 Uh, after we reached a tentative agreement, we agreed to mediation on a few details that we needed
12:05 to work out with regard to the major issues that we had agreed to.
12:09 The tentative agreement was published on October 24th, uh, 2025.
12:14 But upon the announcement of the, uh, tentative agreement agreement, uh, that we made on September 25th, 2025, uh, the
12:23 a fa had announced that they had launched a petition for a charter amendment regarding the foreperson staffing,
12:29 uh, that goes beyond what the current four person staffing ordinance is by including a significant budget limitation
12:37 that does not currently exist.
12:39 When we negotiated the tentative agreement, the city was under the understanding that we were addressing all outstanding
12:44 issues, uh, and moving forward into a new era of working together and cohesively with the a fa,
12:51 obviously, um, with the charter, proposed charter amendment, there are outstanding issues and the city would like the
12:57 opportunity to explore solutions to get us all on the same page and achieve labor peace with the
13:02 a fa and between the city.
13:05 Before the council considers the tentative agreement, we would like to seek direction, uh, from the Mayor and
13:11 the City Council to request that the a fa meet us back at the table at the bargaining
13:15 table to address the issues that are brought forth by the afas proposed charter amendment.
13:20 In an effort to resolve those issues through the collective bargaining process and the collective bargaining agreement, if
13:27 the a fa had an issue with the staffing, which is a mandatory subject of bargaining, we believe
13:32 as a city, that they should have brought it to the bargaining table as an outstanding issue, but
13:37 they didn't, and instead bypass a collective bargaining process without giving the city an opportunity to be able
13:42 to discuss and bargain the issue.
13:45 Um, although the tentative agreement was negotiated with the assumption that a four-person, uh, staffing ordinance would be
13:51 in place, the additional significant budget limitations sought by the proposed charter amendment was not considered in the
13:58 negotiations. The a fa only brought that proposed charter amendment after we had already, um, completed our negotiations
14:04 and announced a tentative agreement.
14:06 Uh, so what we're looking for today is that our recommendation, um, is number one, we did negotiate
14:13 a great contract, but there are still outstanding issues, and we would like the opportunity to be able
14:18 to try to resolve those, uh, within the collective bargaining process.