Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 9 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
This work session featured two briefings and no formal votes. First, staff from Austin Emergency Management and the Austin Fire Department presented the completed 2026 Austin-Travis County Community Wildfire Protection Plan, a non-regulatory framework with 71 recommendations, updated risk assessments, and new public tools; they asked Council to adopt the plan, noting an implementation kickoff on November 6. Council Members asked about the annual review process, home-builder concerns about separation-distance recommendations, affordability impacts of mitigation standards, shaded fuel break criteria, engagement with Williamson County and large private landowners, and wildfire mitigation work on Austin Water wildlands along Bull Creek. Second, Capital Delivery Services gave an overview of its portfolio (467 projects, $10 billion combined budget), recent completed and in-construction projects, the new bond dashboard and quarterly reports, and plans for an Austin capital dashboard and a 2028 bond program. The Council also discussed utility coordination with Austin Energy and the trajectory toward spending 90% of prior bond dollars in 2027. One member of the public signed up to speak but was not present.
0:03 You are watching a meeting of the Austin City Council with Mayor Kirk Watson, Mayor pro, tim cheeto,
0:12 Vela council members Natasha Harper Madison, Vanessa Fuentes, José velazquez, Ryan Alter, crystal lane, Mike Siegel, Paige Ellis, zoe
0:35 cadre, mark uchin, city attorney, deborah thomas, city clerk erica brady, and city manager tc broad.
0:55 Good morning, everybody. It's nine o'clock in the morning.
0:57 It's, um, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It's a good morning.
1:05 Let's just call it a good morning.
1:07 We'll wait for just a second.
1:14 I'd like to, yeah, <laugh>.
1:18 I don't think that's lost on anybody.
1:20 Council Member <laugh>. That's great.
1:40 Hey, man, that's from ja.
1:44 All good. Oh, good work, man.
1:48 <Laugh>. Guess I've turn.
2:19 All right, now I will call the order of the Austin City Council for this work.
2:22 Session is 9:01 am on October 20th, 2026.
2:26 We have a quorum of the City Council present.
2:28 We're meeting at the City Council chambers located at City Hall at 3 0 1 west second street in Austin,
2:33 texas. Uh, members, we have two items on the agenda.
2:36 Both are briefings, and we will take 'em up in the order that they appear on the agenda.
2:40 But before we begin, we have one person that has signed up to speak, and I'll turn to
2:43 the city clerk's office and ask that they call the name of this person.
2:47 Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.
2:48 We have one speaker on item b, one komel, haygood.
2:53 Are you here
2:58 com kamel haygood. Kamel haygood.
3:04 All right. Doesn't look like, um, uh, they're here today.
3:07 So what we will do is we will go to our first item, which is a briefing on
3:10 the community wildfire protection plan.
3:11 And I'll recognize the city manager.
3:13 Thank you, Mayor. And good morning Mayor and council members.
3:16 Today we are presenting the updated 2026 Austin travis county community wildfire protection plan developed through the collaboration among
3:26 the city of Austin, travis county, the wildfire coalition and regional partners.
3:32 The plan provides updated wildfire risk assessments and 71 recommendations to strengthen wildfire preparedness, mitigation response, and community
3:42 resilience. It serves as a non-regulatory framework to guide future coordination, prior prioritize, risk reduction, and support implementation
3:51 across our region. Thank you for the opportunity, uh, for staff to present this important work.
3:57 This morning. I'll turn it over to jim reddick, uh, director of emergency management, and chris graves, wildfire
4:03 mitigation manager and chief ey, uh, as necessary, jim.
4:08 Thank you, mr. Manager.
4:10 Mr. Mayor, Mayor, pro tem, members of council, uh, it's my honor to serve as the director of
4:15 Austin emergency management. And, uh, it's an honor to be here, uh, before you today to talk about
4:21 the community wildfire protection plan.
4:24 As you'll recall, last month, I believe it was the ninth, um, y'all had, um, adopted the revision
4:30 to our all hazards mitigation plan.
4:34 The plan is intended to identify the threats and the hazards which face our community, um, and, and
4:40 doing so with community input to develop recommendations to minimize or eliminate the threats as best we can.
4:47 Um, there are no requirements, only recommendations, and the cwpp is very much, very much the same, of
4:55 course, rather than being all hazard, it focuses on the high probability, high impact threat of wildfire and
5:00 is laser focused on that.
5:02 So again, with community input, uh, in partnership with a fd and the Austin travis county, uh, wildfire coalition,
5:10 um, these recommendations were also developed to help us get to where we need to be again, without
5:16 recommendations, but just like the mitigation plan, this allows us to be eligible for grant funding.
5:22 So with that, um, I'm happy to say that we were able to, to host chris graves and
5:27 our in our shop to work through this process.
5:29 He did a fantastic job, and I'll turn it over to him for his presentation.
5:33 Thank you. Great. Thank you.
5:35 Thank you, mr. Ram.
5:36 Mayor, uh, council members and, uh, mr.
5:39 Manager for the 2026 Austin travis county community wildfire protection plan.
5:47 We have, I'm proud to say that it is complete, but looking forward, what is a community wildfire
5:55 protection plan? It comes from the healthy forest restoration act of 2003, where it's a collaborative non-regulatory bot,
6:04 uh, plan developed with residents, land managers, uh, property owners, and set forward priorities and recommendations to groups
6:14 wildfire risk within the community.
6:16 Key things, though, is that it's not a regulation or a mandate.
6:20 It's not a single department work plan, parcel level, risk rating or insurance tool, or a commitment of
6:25 funding by any staff or any one agency.
6:29 As part of the hfra, it has to be agreed to by three parties, and that's the local
6:35 fire authority, which for the city of Austin would be Austin fire.
6:38 We also have travis county fire marshal that is involved since this is a regional plan.
6:43 It's for the county of travis county and city of Austin.
6:48 Uh, also has to be agreed to by the state forestry agency, which is texas a and m
6:53 forest service, and then also the local governing bodies, which is why we are bringing this forward to
6:58 you as director. Reddick stated that a cw a current cwpp also allows us to apply for grant
7:06 funding and, uh, is necessary for, uh, many numerous grants.
7:16 Again, cwpp is complete, and our next steps are towards implementation.
7:21 But prior to that, we need a local level adoption.
7:25 On November 6th, uh, we have our implementation kickoff, and this is where we actually put, uh, people to
7:33 work, align our priorities, and start moving forward.
7:37 We have a number of tools that we'll be engaging with the public and in between departments, and
7:44 the big ask is to help sustain this movement forward.
7:48 One thing that we're looking forward to is assigning, uh, and recognition event on the seventh.
7:53 Seventh.
8:00 Why does the c-w-p-p-r community wildfire protection plan matter now?
8:05 Well, it's a regional problem, and we recognize this in that within travis county, uh, we have 8,000
8:13 wildfire incidents recorded since 1998.
8:16 This shows the growing problem within travis county.
8:19 In 2011, we had some significant events.
8:21 The steiner ranch fires and spicewood fires within travis county alone, uh, destroyed numerous homes, but we also
8:29 had a regional impact in which we had seven other fires occurring during that time, which strapped resources.
8:36 Our population is growing.
8:39 We've gone from 1.3 million and 2020 to 1.4 million people, and, uh, nine in 10, uh, fires within texas
8:48 are caused by, uh, humans, which means outreach and public education are primarily important.
8:56 With that growth in population, our exposure is growing.
8:59 We're having to build more homes into those places where wildland fuels occur.
9:04 Our conditions are intensifying with climate change, uh, and longer periods of drought and low fuel moisture.
9:12 When then we've also recognized through fires around the nation and also locally, is that they have cascading
9:19 impacts. When we have a wildland fire, it affects numerous other community resources, such as communications, infrastructure, power,
9:27 water, uh, quality and watershed, uh, stabilization, and they, they necessitate recovery resources.
9:43 Since the 2011 fires, the joint wildfire task force was created after that event.
9:49 This, uh, joint wildfire task force then evolved into the Austin travis county wildfire coalition, and, uh, the joint
9:58 wildfire task force initiated the initial cwpp in 2014.
10:02 This was the foundation plan.
10:04 Our current update builds upon that plan.
10:06 It doesn't make any changes.
10:08 It just augments, uh, what the findings of that initial plan.
10:14 In, uh, 2023, the coalition recognized that there was the 10 year window for or grant eligibility was
10:22 waning. So, uh, they saw through Austin fire department a grant through texas a and m forest service,
10:28 and the usda to update the cwpp with that in July, and we started in 2025, and again,
10:36 looking towards implementation in 2026, the progress that we've documented since 2014 was that we've had 26,000 acres
10:45 of fuel management reported with 6,000 plus acres treated with prescribed fire, 80,000 plus linear fe of shaded
10:53 fuel breaks, and adoption of the wildland urban interface code by the city of Austin.
10:58 So one of the things that we're adding within the 2025 update is that we've updated countywide risk
11:04 assessments and field assessments.
11:06 These tools help us to be able to prioritize projects.
11:10 We've also added a watershed risk analysis, looked at utility public health and post fire, uh, intersects within,
11:17 uh, the wildfire risk arena and also, uh, adopted some public tools and shared project tracking, uh, dashboards
11:27 that can actually show our, our efforts forward that there's still some gaps moving forward is that, you
11:35 know, homeowner participation, uh, in mitigation projects remains low.
11:40 And we didn't have centralized project tracking or, uh, publicly viewable, uh, project tracking, which could be utilized
11:50 to inform the public.
11:55 So we launched in 2025, and throughout the summer and fall, we built a foundation in the risk,
12:03 and that meant reviewing our updates, our data based maps, and our risk assessments.
12:08 During this time, we also saw that there was, uh, there was a community motivation towards wildland fire,
12:17 and we captured on that in which we did our first, uh, public meeting, which was a virtual
12:22 event, which we brought in, uh, local fire managers and experts, excuse me, into engaging with the public
12:33 to help also communicate that the plan was in development, that we were working forward and wanted their
12:40 involvement. We turned that also into a, uh, a set of strategies and recommendations, and also, uh, engaged
12:49 through a public survey, uh, two public meetings, one on the west side of travis county, one on
12:54 the east side, and then, uh, a a month long public comment period on the plan.
13:00 We finalized that plan with the approval of texas forest service, and again, we're here in front of
13:05 you for, uh, adoption and implementation phase.
13:11 So what did we find?
13:15 We had 377 survey participants, which 77% of them are concerned, very concerned about wild land fire and,
13:23 and nine in 10 say they share responsibility, but also the local government and local fire departments share
13:29 that responsibility as well.
13:31 45% Are unsure of how to evacuate safely.
13:35 28% Are not sure what their insurance would cover after a wildfire.
13:40 And 32% named cost is their largest obstacle to home hardening and defensible space practices.
13:48 88% Would consider, uh, participating in a cost share program or tool share program as well.
14:00 The other things that we find is that no single wildfire exists.
14:04 A wildfire problem exists within travis county.
14:06 We have three distinct eco regions.
14:09 We also have three different places where, uh, wildfire has different effects.
14:15 On the west side of Austin and the hill country and travis county, we have the woodlands and
14:21 canyon fuels steep slopes and limited access and egress problems.
14:25 Within central Austin. We have the green belts and parks and preserves, which are part of our cultural
14:31 ethos here, but they present complex problems and they take a, uh, have specific site planning needs that
14:38 need to be thought of, especially during drought in the east and southeast.
14:43 We have other, uh, highest concentration of modeled risk.
14:49 Part of the problem there is that we have continuous grass fuels and, and shrub fuels that support
14:55 rapid fire growth, but we also have some social vulnerability issues there in which, uh, we need to
15:03 overcome through outreach, education, and also projects.
15:09 One of the things I want to emphasize with this map is please don't take the red as,
15:15 um, an absolute risk rating.
15:18 Only way to calculate risk is to have an onsite assessment at a local property.
15:23 The, that's a key tool.
15:25 This is a planning level model in which our efforts in those areas that are distinctly dark red,
15:33 our efforts there would probably have the most benefit, the most impact towards the community.
15:38 And I wanted to emphasize that so it it doesn't get framed in the wrong way.
15:48 So we came out with, through the work, through the wildfire coalition, 71 recommendations built around the national
15:56 cohesive strategies, three goals of resilient landscapes, outreach and structural ignitability and fire response capability.