Wednesday, April 15, 2026, 9:30 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall, 301 W 2nd St, Austin, TX 78701
Committee: Audit and Finance Committee
The Audit and Finance Committee heard five public speakers, mostly AFSCME members opposing the consolidation of IT workers into Austin Technology Services (ATS), plus a speaker supporting Communities In Schools. After an executive session on Municipal Civil Service Commission appointments, the committee approved minutes, discussed (but could not validly act on) Kevin Mullen's reappointment to the commission due to a posting issue, and discussed the budget forecast process including transparency around the no-new-revenue rate. The CFO presented the city's 119 financial policies with proposed changes to general obligation debt policies tied to the council's decision-tree framework; members generally preferred the 'part four alternate' allowing proposition-specific bond elections, to be revisited May 20. Deloitte presented the FY2025 annual audit with a clean opinion and one significant deficiency on firefighter pension accounting. Staff briefed the preliminary 2026 property tax roll showing a projected 3.1% decline in taxable values, and ATS presented an application rationalization assessment projecting $49–142 million in potential annual savings.
0:03 It's nine 30 on April 15th, 2026, and I'm gonna call to order, uh, the meeting of the audit and
0:09 finance committee of the Austin City Council.
0:11 Uh, we have a quorum present and, uh, we are meeting in the City Council chambers, which is
0:17 located in City Hall at 3 0 1 west second street in Austin, texas.
0:22 So I've called, I'm calling the meeting to order.
0:24 The order that we're gonna go in today, members is we have some speakers that have signed up
0:29 to speak. We'll hear from the speakers, and then what we will do is we will go into
0:33 an executive session. I'll bring that up at the time.
0:36 Uh, we'll go into the executive session and then we will come back out and we will just
0:40 start, uh, going through the agenda by the numbers.
0:44 With that being said, let me, uh, have you call out the names of the speakers.
0:48 It's my understanding we have people, five people that have signed up to speak.
0:52 I'd ask that you call the order of all five of them.
0:55 And then, um, y'all make your way up and, and you, you know the drill.
1:02 We have maria campos, david cruz, hereford, frank, frank hereford, ramsey biss, christina tremmel,
1:21 and I assume you'll just go in the order that your names were called.
1:24 So, good morning Mayor and members of the committee.
1:29 Uh, my name is maria s and I'm here representing communities and schools of central texas in support
1:34 of our continued partnership with the city of Austin.
1:37 Uh, cis is a direct response to two urgent challenges.
1:41 The city has prioritized student attendance, crisis and youth mental health.
1:46 We provide relationship-based trauma-informed supports on campus if students get help early before challenges escalate into crisis care,
1:55 emergency response, or more costly public systems.
1:59 We now have rigorous texas-based evidence showing this approach works and pays off a new harvard cornell study
2:06 with opportunity insights using education records, census data, federal tax data, analyzed outcomes for more than 16 million tax
2:15 students, and found that sustained access to cis in middle school increases high school graduation and strengthens long-term
2:23 economic mobility. Here is why it matters to the city of Austin in terms of return on investment.
2:29 The study finds that cis changes audit adult outcomes by reducing the likelihood a student ends up in
2:36 the bottom income quartile, which is defined as under about 15,000 a year or 80% are not working.
2:43 Instead, cis increases the likelihood students move into the next quartile, meaning more young adults attached to employment
2:50 and stable earnings, and the fiscal impact is real.
2:54 Three years of cis at an estimated cost of about $3,000 per student is projected to generate approximately
3:02 $7,100 in additional lifetime federal tax revenue per student in present value.
3:08 In other words, cis more than pays for itself through increased earnings and tax contributions.
3:15 This is why cis is not only a student support strategy, it is smart and good fiscal public
3:21 policy. Investing in cis helps prevent long-term costs tied to non-employment and economic instability, and it strengthens Austin
3:30 workforce and future tax base.
3:32 And just to provide a little bit of data from this past year, 99.9% student stayed in school,
3:38 99% graduated, or were promoted to the next grade level, and 90% improved in one or more of
3:44 their individual academic attendance and behavior need areas.
3:48 Thank you so much for your time and your commun continued commitment to Austin students and families.
3:53 Thank you. Good morning, Mayor.
3:58 Good morning council members.
4:00 My name is david cruz.
4:01 I'm a resident of district seven and a city employee.
4:04 I'm here on my own time as part of afscme 1620 fours stop one a ts campaign in
4:10 the name of efficiency city manager, tc broad says he must move 650 it workers into a ts
4:18 starting in May, just a few weeks.
4:21 A ts director, ika lakey, and cfo ed van nu have bragged about interviewing 630 of those workers.
4:29 I wanna let you know we've spoken with those workers too.
4:32 As of today, over 700 city of Austin workers have signed our petition in support of our campaign
4:38 demands to stop one a ts.
4:40 The vast majority of them it workers, the workforce has spoken loud and clear.
4:47 They are on our side.
4:49 They are raising red flags in opposition to this dangerous reorganization, and they're joining our call to manager
4:55 broad next to stop all transfers the e atfs effective immediately.
5:02 Each one of those 700 signatures represents a conversation with a worker.
5:07 Our campaign has been outside of work sites across the city.
5:11 We've been to health fairs and conferences, and the workers we've spoken to have signed on in support
5:17 of efficiency by ending a costly high risk consolidation of it staff today's tax day.
5:27 So I wanna make a simple point.
5:30 If the city manager wants to sell one a ts as a savings measure, he should be able
5:36 to show us the money.
5:38 But what do we see instead?
5:40 Management is doling out millions on unsupervised non-competitive contracts to consultants while asking the members of this dais
5:49 to make hard choices about public infrastructure and social services.
5:54 The people get austerity while executives get extravagance.
5:58 And whether we've asked in private or in public, they don't even have a plan to back it
6:03 up. What are they even getting for this money?
6:07 You're about to see a presentation from director lakey that has numbers of applications savings and a timeline.
6:14 That is what's showing your work looks like it's proof that they can do this critical work, but
6:20 again, if they haven't done it yet for consolidating ist staff, why not?
6:28 Why haven't they done this?
6:29 In spite of the hundreds of it workers who signed a petition calling on the city manager to
6:34 stop this dangerous reorganization, why don't they have a business case or a meaningful path to savings with
6:41 this consolidation? That is why afscme is calling on council to intervene on this issue.
6:47 Our union cannot stand by while management gambles away public dollars while threatening our public services.
6:53 Thank you. Thank you.
6:57 Whoever's next. Good morning.
7:01 My name is frank hereford.
7:02 I'm speaking as a citizen of Austin and a member of afscme 1624.
7:07 I've worked in it for 30 years, including 15 as the it director of a financial services firm.
7:14 I know what a good plan looks like, and I know what a financial sinkhole looks like.
7:18 And we're looking at a sinkhole, the one a ts consolidation of technology workers needs and immediate halt
7:25 it workers are not widgets.
7:27 They're specialists whose expertise takes a career to build.
7:31 You wouldn't hire a trial lawyer to do your estate planning and you wouldn't hire a web developer
7:36 to run your hardware infrastructure.
7:39 Jumbling these assignments wastes your most refined talent and throws away the stakeholder relationships that keep city projects
7:47 running. No 30 minute consultant interview can produce anything but a fragmented picture of how these teams actually
7:54 work. And if the answer is, don't worry.
7:58 One a ts will put the teams right back in place, then what exactly are we paying consultants
8:02 millions of dollars to do?
8:04 If the end state looks like the beginning state, then you've spent a fortune to stand still.
8:10 Here's what I want you to hear most clearly.
8:13 I agree. The city needs to curb spending.
8:16 There are parts of one a ts, which makes sense and actually pursue that goal.
8:21 People are not the problem.
8:22 It's the software in particular.
8:25 The city is bleeding money on overlapping software subscriptions and licenses.
8:30 That is a real recoverable cost and a ts is uniquely built to fix it.
8:35 Centralized purchasing brings bargaining power director leahy's updates on this work are rational and she and her team
8:41 are on the right path in terms of application rationalization.
8:48 Make a ts the one stop shop for every software license and subscription in the city.
8:52 That's the win. That's where the savings are.
8:56 Consolidating software is smart.
8:58 Consolidating people is a costly mistake, and it's one voters will remember.
9:03 Each department has invested years developing staff to meet its own specific needs.
9:08 Those budgets are already tight.
9:10 There are no idle hands to centralize.
9:14 I'm asking you to pause the personnel consolidation, direct a ts to lead an in-house audit of the
9:21 city's software spend and use the strengths of the teams that you already have.
9:27 And before any irreversible decisions get made, come visit us in the field.
9:32 I promise you'll learn more about what we do in an afternoon than any consultant ever will in
9:37 a 30 minute phone call from dallas.
9:39 Thank you. Thank you.
9:45 Good morning, Mayor and council.
9:47 My name is ramsey bisex.
9:48 I'm a senior software engineer in Austin fire.
9:52 I'm speaking today in my personal capacity as a member of afscme and the chair of ion team.
9:57 Austin is not Austin anywhere.
9:59 Usa, we run our own electric utility company, water utility company, international airport and transportation systems.
10:06 We also run our own watershed department, flood operations, public health functions, and many other complex public services
10:13 that the pit people of Austin rely upon.
10:16 Our technology has to fit our actual operations.
10:20 It workers don't just manage software.
10:22 There aren't multiple people doing the same exact tasks across the city.
10:26 Each it worker supports real world operations.
10:31 The strongest path forward right now is a hybrid federated model.
10:34 One where a centralized it department like a ts, can support the work of decentralized it staff across
10:42 the city who remain embedded in departments and serve mission critical functions that our communities rely upon.
10:49 The petition team has had over 700 signatures and conversations across, uh, our city, across our city departments.
10:57 Folks who rely upon it have expressed concerns over an increase in response times for their it needs.
11:03 For example, my role specifically was created because our it needs were not being met, uh, by our
11:08 centralized model. Uh, there are also concerns over it workers, um, losing domain specific mo uh, domain specific
11:16 knowledge. If we remove, uh, our embedded teams and centralize them.
11:22 There are also concerns over weaker personal relationships with it workers right now.
11:27 Uh, there there are customers across the city who can work directly with their it, uh, support staff
11:33 and, and have a, a conversation with their coworkers.
11:37 Uh, that's much more difficult if it's a image on the screen and a ticket fellow.
11:44 It workers have also expressed concerns over layoffs, concerns over loss of years of experience in it job
11:51 functions. If people, uh, feel like they're being pushed outta the city.
11:54 Centralization is not the only path to efficiency, even if it is one.
11:58 In this case, if the city wants efficiency, it should rationalize applications and improve upon a federated model.
12:05 That's why asks me in the stop boats campaign is calling on council to intervene on this issue.
12:10 City workers are worried that the consolidation will have major negative impacts in their jobs and on the
12:15 services that we provide to the people of boston.
12:18 The consolidation is not, has not been shown that it will do anything to save the city money
12:22 or improve any aspect of the city.
12:24 Today, we are asking your council to listen to the workers and establish a federated it department guided
12:30 by the people who make our city run.
12:32 Thank you. Good morning everyone.
12:37 My name is christina tremmel, and I'm speaking as a resident of Austin and a member of afscme
12:41 1624. A memo from city manager broad acts sent on April 1st, drastically changed to the one a ts
12:48 rollout plan by removing operational technology or ot positions from the consolidation.
12:54 The example that has been provided in this and other communications is that ot staff are only those
12:59 working at a plant or operating systems at a plant.
13:02 Well, I don't work at a plant, but my, in my role, when there are service disruptions due
13:06 to a ts system upgrades a winter storm or daily roadblocks, I'm the one that works directly with
13:12 technicians to ensure they get what they need.
13:14 For the past 10 years, I've worked in the transportation and public works department.
13:18 My role equips our field operations teams with the necessary technology to get work done safely and efficiently,
13:24 while also tracking it for accountability and transparency.