City Council

Thursday, May 21, 2026, 10 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall

Video of the meeting

On the agenda

Roll-call votes

Documents

Summary

The Austin City Council met on May 21, 2026, beginning at 10:00 AM and adjourning at 7:52 PM. Council Members Harper-Madison (D1) and Fuentes (D2) were absent. The Council approved Item 12, a time-sensitive item required for notice on third reading May 28. It held a public hearing and approved Item 16, authorizing $1.35 billion in bonds for the Austin Convention Center redevelopment project. Staff withdrew Item 7 (Austin Energy gas peaker plants) after extensive public comment, and Item 23 was withdrawn to return next week. The Council approved Items 38, 39, and 60 authorizing the Dog's Head development agreement with Endeavor Real Estate Group, an interlocal agreement with Travis County, and annexation of approximately 2,614 acres, after adopting an amendment striking military installations as a permitted use. The Council adopted Item 56, a citywide density bonus program, with amendments from Mayor Watson (compatibility standards), Council Member Alter (fee in lieu options), Council Member Qadri (fee in lieu study), and Mayor Pro Tem Vela (compatibility waiver), while rejecting Vela's amendment to allow 250-foot buildings in commercial zoning districts. The Council established a Native American and Indigenous Quality of Life Commission (Item 50), approved a procurement oversight resolution (Item 52), and approved the Rain to River strategic plan (Item 45). Zoning items 61-64, 70, 73, and 74 were postponed to May 28; Item 76 (Rosedale AISD property) was postponed to September 10 at Council Member Siegel's request.

Transcript

0:08 You are watching a meeting of the Austin City Council with Mayor Kirk Watson, Mayor pro, tim cheeto,

0:17 Vela council members Natasha Harper Madison, Vanessa Fuentes, José velazquez, Ryan Alter, crystal lane, Mike Siegel, Paige Ellis, zoe

0:41 cadre, mark uchin, city attorney deborah thomas, city clerk erica brady, and city manager tc broad.

1:01 Good morning everybody. It's 10 o'clock in the morning on May 21st, 2026, and I will call to order this

1:06 regular meeting of the Austin City Council.

1:09 We are meeting in the City Council chambers located in City Hall at 3 0 1 west second street in

1:15 Austin, texas. Uh, we have a quorum of the City Council present.

1:20 Let me say for the record that two council members, uh, will not be present.

1:25 Uh, Council Member, uh, Harper Madison will not be present.

1:29 And Council Member, uh, Fuentes will not be present.

1:32 So I will not, each time I call out a vote, call out that fact.

1:36 I just wanna make it, uh, clear for the record that, uh, both of them, uh, have a

1:41 good reason to be out today.

1:43 Um, with that being said, let me walk you everybody through the order of business for the day,

1:49 and then I'll read changes of corrections in the record.

1:52 Uh, the order of the day is we're gonna do things just a slightly differently than what we

1:56 have grown accustomed to because of timing issues.

1:59 And I'll, I'll make note of that here in just a second.

2:02 The first item we're gonna take up today will be item number 12.

2:05 We're taking that up because we need to have that approved by a certain time today if we're

2:10 going to approve it, so that we can provide notice, uh, correctly for third reading on May 28th, 2026.

2:18 We will then go to our consent agenda.

2:20 Members. The items that have been pulled from the consent agenda are obviously item number 12, item seven,

2:27 item 16, and item 23.

2:31 We will hear speakers on the consent agenda, and then we will go as soon as we can

2:37 to those other items.

2:39 Um, we of course will at noon, we will have our 12 o'clock time certain, which is public

2:45 general, public communication. At 1230, we will have an executive session.

2:51 The executive session will be on item number 16, item number 16, and we're doing that, uh, to

2:57 accommodate, uh, a schedule with outside counsel on that matter.

3:01 So we will have that at 1230.

3:03 And, um, what normally that we would have, uh, music, but we're not gonna have music.

3:09 So we will, we will go into executive session at 1230.

3:11 We will come out of executive session and take up item 16.

3:17 We will then go to the other items.

3:19 As I've indicated, we also have a number of non-consent items, and they are public hearings.

3:24 Items 54, uh, 55, 56.

3:28 Item 57 has been postponed until May 28th, 2026, and item 58, 59 and 60.

3:36 Um, members, we will have a, our two o'clock zoning matters.

3:44 Uh, typically that gets put off a little bit, depending upon what's going on during the day, but

3:48 whatever we're doing, whatever we're doing at two o'clock, we're gonna pause whatever we're doing, and we're going

3:55 to take up some zoning matters.

3:57 We're gonna take up items 61, 62, 63, 64, 6, 76, 73,

4:04 and seven. Maybe it's 70, 73 and 74.

4:07 Um, we're gonna take those up because they are being postponed, and we need to take them up

4:13 as close to two o'clock as we can so that we have them done.

4:17 So, again, notice can be properly provided.

4:20 I'll pay attention to that, but I just don't want anybody to be surprised about what we're doing

4:24 when we do things.

4:25 Maybe a little bit out of order on those.

4:27 With that, unless there's questions, let me read the changes and corrections into the record.

4:33 Items nine and 10 have been withdrawn.

4:37 Item 54, when public hearings are taken up, this item will be postponed indefinitely.

4:42 That's what I just read, uh, into the rec, no, actually I read 57.

4:47 Uh, item 54 will be postponed indefinitely.

4:52 Item 57 will be postponed to May 28th, 2026.

4:58 So for the record, when public hearings are taken up, this item we postponed to May 28th, 2026.

5:04 Again, let me reiterate, we are pulling off the consent agenda.

5:09 Item number seven, item 12, item 16, and item 23.

5:18 Again, unless there are questions, um, what I will do now is we will go to item number

5:23 12, and I'll turn to the city clerk for, uh, to call.

5:29 If there are any speakers, there are no speakers on item 12 members.

5:33 There are no speakers on item number 12, so the chair will entertain a motion with regard to

5:37 item number 12, Mayor pro, tim moves approval.

5:40 It is seconded by Council Member uchin.

5:42 Is there discussion on the item?

5:45 Hearing none without objection.

5:47 Item number 12 is approved.

5:50 And, and I'll say it this one last time, with, um, Council Member Fuentes and Council Member, uh,

5:57 Harper Madison, absent, uh, and, and, and that's probably the last time I say that.

6:03 I do not have any information.

6:04 If, if somebody on, uh, Council Member lane's staff will let me know whether she is, well, there

6:10 she is. Sorry. Council Member lane, do you want to vote on item number 12?

6:19 All right, with Council Member elaine, temporarily off the diocese, item number 12 is adopted.

6:23 That will now take us to the consent agenda, and I will turn to the city clerk to

6:27 call for speakers on the consent agenda.

6:29 First speaker on item two is an obia joseph.

6:35 After ms. Joseph, we have bill bunch on item three.

6:46 Next, mr. Bunch is heading on in.

6:50 Well go ahead and call on four so people can make their way down.

6:54 Mr. Bunch, your name's been called.

6:55 If you wanna talk additionally, on item number four, we have paul robbins, craig naser, nancy cowher, please make

7:08 your way down. And if your name's been called, please come forward my time to call.

7:14 Have you already donated?

7:15 According to our rules, no.

7:19 No, we don't have any time donations.

7:21 We have no time, time donations.

7:22 So mr. Robbins will have two minutes.

7:25 Go ahead, mr. Bunch.

7:27 You were called on a previous item, so, uh, if you want to talk on number three, you're

7:31 welcome to, uh, I, I, I think I'll pass on three.

7:36 Sorry, I missed number two.

7:38 Uh, well, you weren't signed up for number two.

7:40 You were signed up for number three.

7:41 And if you're passing on number three, then we'll go to number four.

7:57 Mayor, this was prearranged two days ago and do not, well, when you prearrange it with each other,

8:03 it doesn't really work.

8:04 You have to prearrange it with the city clerk's office.

8:07 Uh, mr. Nasser's trying to reconcile this right now.

8:13 Well, we're in a council meeting right now.

8:15 That's why we have the rules to allow for you to do this beforehand.

8:19 And if, and I've, so you have two minutes, which is not really enough time to do this.

8:27 Well, that's why we provide for people to donate time following the rules, which I've tried.

8:34 Counsel, uh, I questioned the last battery contract vote on May 7th, and maybe some council members were confused

8:45 as to my reasoning.

8:47 The common assumption is that if Austin wants to support renewable energy storage is essential.

8:54 So why would we question it?

8:56 And let me show you why, given the time.

8:59 I'm gonna ask, uh, move to the next slide.

9:02 Next slide, next slide, next slide, next slide.

9:07 Okay. This is a chart that basically shows that, uh, Austin energy's three battery contracts are estimated cost

9:18 between 10 and 19 cents per kilowatt hour.

9:23 But batteries will only say seven, 7 cents per kilowatt hour, uh, with arbitrage.

9:35 And the utility could probably build it for 8 cents.

9:39 The actual cost of power in ercot was 4 cents.

9:43 And I've asked publicly what is going on.

9:46 Slide, uh, Austin energy refuses to describe the business model that makes these storage contracts.

9:55 Economic assets. Austin energy lacks transparency.

10:01 Two days ago, I showed how the utility was hiding the effects of residential rate increases.

10:07 Now they are hiding this, uh, battery contract justification.

10:13 The public deserves better counsel.

10:17 The staff at Austin energy does not own the utility the people in this room do.

10:24 Thank you, mr. Robbins. Continue on item four, we have nick wang, jen robo, kaba white, elisa hammond.

10:34 If your name's been called, please come forward.

10:45 Good morning, counsel. I'm speaking right now about the 20 year contract for battery storage agreement.

10:51 And, uh, from what I've seen the theme of today, ma'am, we, we know who you are, but

10:54 you need to state your name for the record.

10:55 Oh, thank you. I'm jen robo, uh, Austin resident.

10:59 And, uh, you know, I think we see a theme here on the Austin energy agenda that we're

11:03 really looking at diversifying our generation portfolio.

11:06 And I think that's important for reliable and resilient grid.

11:09 And I know you've seen a lot of pushback on these issues, so I'm not challenging the actual

11:13 battery storage concept. Uh, I think more so what I'm looking at is why are we looking at

11:18 such a long, long term contract on the battery storage?

11:23 20 Years is a lifetime in the realm of battery technology.

11:28 We've seen huge strides just in the last decade, and I expect that we'll see a lot more

11:33 in the next decade to come, even in our own city.

11:36 We have innovators in this field and a lot of people in the community are surprised that not

11:41 only are we not, um, turning to those providers for this, but that we are contracting ourselves for

11:48 so long. And so I think when we look at this, we really wanna balance between, you know,

11:54 getting a better term for a longer time period of commitment versus having the flexibility to adapt to

12:02 changing technology that we might come across in the next five to 10 years.

12:06 Uh, so I encourage you to just look at this a little more closely.

12:10 Not question that this is the right contract right now, but question whether it'll be the right contract

12:14 in five to 10 years and see if we can reduce the length of this contract just to

12:18 give us more options in the future.

12:19 Thanks. Thank you. Good morning.

12:23 My name is elisa hammond.

12:24 I'm in district nine, and I'm, um, appear to share more information about the potential of batteries because

12:31 we have such a revolution going on at this time.

12:34 Last year in minnesota, the power utility, xcel energy proposed a new program called capacity connect that would

12:43 have it deploy 200 megawatts of battery storage, not in the form of large utility scale installations, but

12:50 smaller chunks distributed through the grid, like lego blocks of different sizes, some place to top commercial and

12:57 industrial buildings, like big box stores.

13:00 Others can be in the backyard of a faith community, the size of a shipping container, each generating

13:06 that kind of income for those locations while we continue to grow our infrastructure and promote resilience and

13:14 reliability. This introduces a new chapter in the history of the us electricity grid and for our economy

13:22 more broadly. And I hope you will, uh, explore this cutting edge cost saving program.

13:28 I emailed you, Mayor and all the City Council person about the article today.

13:33 I'm with third act, and our energy expert, who's outta the country, emailed me this information just this

13:39 morning. This is also taking place by, uh, the southern company utility in georgia.

13:47 And I think that we will begin to see this because the price of batteries has dropped so

13:52 significantly so, and as we see fossil fuels increasing.

13:59 So I think it's just so important before we make a billion dollar investment that locks us into

14:04 fossil fuels. We look at this opportunity, can we create a battery standard offer like we have solar

14:12 standard offer so that the money stays in our communities and supports all levels of businesses.

14:18 Thank you very much.

14:20 Thank you, ms. White. Good morning, Mayor and council members.

14:24 My name is kiba white, speaking on behalf of public citizens texas office.

14:28 We do support passage of this item, and I wanna point out that there is some good basic

14:33 information included in this rca, including the company and the amount of the investment, as well as the

14:41 time duration, and a few other details.

14:44 We do think that this will be in the benefit of Austin energy customers and move towards meeting

14:49 the established goals in the the Austin energy resource plan.

14:52 However, I do see in the additional backup information that it states that this will, uh, allow the

14:58 utility to exceed its goals.

14:59 But I would just call to attention that the delivery date is for 2030, not for 2027.

15:05 So I don't think that the, uh, goal is actually going to be impacted.