Monday, June 1, 2026, 2 p.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Public Safety Committee
The Public Safety Committee, chaired by Council Member Laine with Council Members Siegel and Velásquez present, approved the minutes of its May 12, 2026 meeting. The committee received a briefing from Austin Municipal Court Clerk Mary Jane Grubb on Class C misdemeanor warrants (nearly 61,000 outstanding, 85% for failure to appear), followed by remarks from Lisa Foster of the Fines and Fees Justice Center recommending warrant-reduction strategies. The committee then heard staffing forecasts from Austin Police, Fire, and EMS, followed by a briefing from Austin Police Oversight on its 2024 annual report and a preliminary preview of its 2025 report. The briefing on the Union Pacific derailment emergency response was not given because the presenter had left, and the chair said it would return at a future meeting before adjourning.
0:02 Good afternoon. Um, so I am ready to call the public safety committee to order.
0:09 It is June 1st, 2026. This is a meeting of the public safety committee.
0:14 We are at Austin City Hall, located at 3 0 1 west second street in Austin, texas.
0:19 And we have a quorum present with myself.
0:22 Council Member lane sharing this meeting.
0:23 Council Member Mike segal, present in person and Council Member Velásquez present virtually.
0:29 Um, we'll begin with public communication.
0:31 I understand that we have no speakers.
0:34 That is correct, ma'am.
0:35 Thank you. Uh, then we'll move on to item one.
0:39 The first action item is approving the minutes of the public safety committee meeting from May 12th, 2026.
0:45 I'll accept a motion to approve the minutes made by Council Member Velásquez.
0:49 Second, seconded by Council Member Siegel.
0:52 Without objection, the minutes are approved and we'll move on to item number two, which is a briefing
0:57 on warrants issued for failure to appear on class c misdemeanor charges and failure to appear rates for
1:02 Austin municipal court and Austin community court.
1:06 I will look to mary jane grubb.
1:34 Good afternoon. I'm mary jane grubb.
1:37 I am the court clerk for Austin municipal court.
1:40 I'm here today to present information on class c.
1:43 Notices warrants, arrest, collections and community service.
1:54 So background class c misdemeanors are the lowest level criminal offense in texas, they're typically punishable by a
2:03 fine, um, up to $500, though some offenses May have different fine structures.
2:10 And when we say fine only, that's meaning no jail time at the time of conviction.
2:16 Common examples include traffic violations, public intoxication, disorderly conduct, assault by conduct and family violence, failure to maintain
2:26 property, high grass and weeds, illegal dumping zoning and building code violations.
2:33 Cases are either initiated by citation or probable cause affidavit and defendants are required to appear to answer
2:40 the charges that have been filed against them.
2:43 Failure to appear to answer charges or satisfy a judgment May result in additional charges filed, for example,
2:49 a failure to appear or the issuance of a warrant.
3:00 So citations serve as the primary legal notice and must include a written notice to appear the time
3:07 and place or instructions to contact the court.
3:11 Information on alternatives to full payment
3:19 cases that are filed by probable cause.
3:21 Affidavits are charged by complaint and then a notice to appear is mailed to the defendant.
3:28 Required notices also include, uh, pre-war notices, uh, for failure to appear.
3:33 And this doesn't necessarily mean the person's been charged with a violation of failure to appear.
3:38 It means they did not appear to answer the charges against them.
3:42 So we are required to send a notice prior to the issuance of a warrant.
3:46 That notice must include alternatives if unable to pay options and consequences of not complying post judgment, meaning
3:54 they've came in, they've entered a plea and there's a judgment on the case and they have failed
3:58 to comply with the terms of the court orders.
4:01 Notices are also required to be mailed, um, prior to the issuance of a warrant, and the defendant
4:06 has opportunity to be heard before enforcement actions take place.
4:19 So Austin municipal court, um, has a robust campaign of notices, phone calls and text.
4:26 So the top portion of this chart are un adjudicated cases.
4:29 Again, those are individuals who have failed to appear to answer the charges filed against them.
4:34 And of all of these notices, um, the ones with asterisk next to them are additional notices that
4:42 we send. So there is the required delinquent append appearance notice, but we also send an initial appearance,
4:49 phone call and text if they have scheduled court dates.
4:52 We send reminder phone calls and text.
4:55 Uh, we send them another notice after a warrant's been issued.
5:00 We also place a phone call and text and then we send another notice before the case is
5:06 referred to a collection agency for the adjudicated cases.
5:10 Again, these are the ones who failed to comply with the terms of their court order.
5:15 We send docket reminders and phone calls and texts three days before the scheduled court appearance.
5:21 We send a past due phone call and text for anyone who has financial obligations due.
5:26 Maybe they were on a payment plan or community service.
5:30 We send a past due warning.
5:32 Notice that one is required.
5:36 We also do a pass due phone call and text.
5:39 We do a second pass due phone call and text.
5:43 We send a notice after the warrant's been issued and we also do another phone call and text
5:49 after warrant.
5:59 All right, outstanding warrants.
6:00 As of April 23rd of 26, there are almost 61,000 outstanding warrants.
6:09 52,000 Of those are in cap pia status.
6:12 What that means is that they're un adjudicated.
6:14 There's no judgment, meaning they failed to appear to answer the charges.
6:18 So that's 85% of our warrant caseload is for individuals who have failed to appear 15% or for
6:26 individuals who have appeared, but they failed to comply with court orders.
6:31 So let's see, almost 61,000, 60,934 warrants.
6:38 That's 36,050 people. So people May have multiple warrants.
6:50 And the table to the left, I'm sorry, to the right, that's a breakdown of the demographics and
6:56 you can see that there are some disparities there.
6:59 I think it's important to point out, I think the natural tendency is to look at the, these
7:03 demographics and compare 'em to the city of Austin.
7:07 It's important to note that 40% of people in warrant status live outside of the city of Austin.
7:16 These numbers reflect both, both Austin municipal court and community court, that 89% of these cases are Austin
7:23 municipal court cases.
7:36 So there's multiple things that we do to try to, to clear the warrant caseload, not just the
7:42 warrant caseload, but move cases, uh, for the closure un adjudicated cases, again, those are those who fell
7:48 to appear. We administratively closed those after eight years.
7:52 There are some exclusions to that if they've had activity in the last year or certain violations involving
7:58 serious bodily injury or fatalities are excluded from the closure process.
8:05 We closed those cases in September of each year.
8:08 So the last closure was through 2017 adjudicated cases, which are those who fail to comply.
8:17 We have less discretion on those and state statute prohibits us to close those cases for 15 years.
8:24 And again, there are some exclusions in those closures.
8:29 So looking at all of her warrants, our outstanding warrants stating back to 2005, which are very few,
8:36 but those are those ones that have been adjudicated represent 1% of all the cases filed during that
8:43 time. If you look at the outstanding warrants stating back to 2017, uh, that represents 16% of all
8:53 cases filed during that time.
9:13 I'm gonna go back to this for a minute.
9:14 If you look at the chart you can see in 2019, that's when we have a spike.
9:20 Some important things that happened during that time is that we stopped sending cases to the scoff law
9:26 program in in 2018.
9:28 The scoff law program was a program where the, uh, the dmv would place a denial of renewal
9:37 for vehicle registration. So that contract expired in 2019.
9:45 We also used to have a contract with omni base, which denied the renewal of a driver's license.
9:50 So you have a warrant.
9:52 That contract expired and was ended in 2020.
9:57 Uh, also in 20 right at the beginning of 2018.
10:02 We suspended warrant confirmations and the issuance of warrants for about 18 months.
10:06 During the pandemic 2022, I believe our collection agency, our third party collection agency went out of business.
10:15 So we were without a contract for about a year and a half.
10:18 And that contract was just re-implemented last year.
10:22 So there are multiple factors that lead to a heavy caseload of 20 19, 20 and 21.
10:33 The actions I just described were the result of council direction and not renewing the collection contracts
10:50 top 10 offenses are listed here.
10:52 These are those in warrant status.
10:54 Our number one is failure to maintain financial responsibility, which represents about 23% of the warrant caseload
11:17 arrest on class cs.
11:19 This is from April 20th, 24th through April 20th of 26th.
11:26 There was, let's see, 3,182 people arrested with 5,343 charges.
11:37 The breakdown of this is on view, that means the person has no warrant, they're arrested on site
11:42 that makes up 52% of all arrests on class cs.
11:48 Their 45% is for individuals who had cap s warrants.
11:54 Again, cap ps or un adjudicated and failure to appear.
11:58 And then, let's see, 3% are for individuals who had cap ps pro profile warrants.
12:03 And again, those warrants are individuals who failed to comply with court orders
12:15 collection rate on class cs.
12:17 Again, this is for the last two years.
12:19 So there is no money due on a case until that case has a plea entered and a
12:27 has been sentenced. So there's a judgment amount on it.
12:30 The vast majority of individuals pay within the first 30 days of being sentenced in the next, uh,
12:36 within, well you can see the breakout there.
12:40 We've got a 30 days, 180 days, and 365 days.
12:44 So 98% of all people pay within within the first year of being sentenced with only 2% paying
12:51 after a year
13:06 community service in lieu of financial penalties.
13:09 So in the last two years, there were 31,000 cases adjudicated of those 2,192 requested community service.
13:21 So that's a very small percentage, 7%.
13:25 It's important to note the defendants must appear to request or they don't actually have to appear in
13:29 person. They can do it by mail or email, but the defendant does have to request community service.
13:37 The median days the individual is sentenced to complete their community service is 90 days and many complete
13:46 it within the first 75.
13:49 So in the last two years, there's been 21,637 hours assessed for community service.
13:57 It's about half and half.
13:58 About half have been completed, the other half did not complete it.
14:02 And then it's about 3,400 hours remaining still owed.
14:14 So in conclusion, we do have a high volume of outstanding warrants, although it's low compared to total
14:20 class cs filed. And it's driven mainly by the failure to appear cases.
14:25 There are demographic disparities present in both outstanding warrants and arrest.
14:30 We do have strong payment compliance with most fines, cost and fees paid quickly and community service is
14:37 available and used efficiently, but used in a relatively small share of the cases.
14:43 The court does rely heavily on automated notices to encourage compliance prior to enforcement actions.
14:54 Any questions? Do we have questions?
14:59 Yep, go ahead. You go ahead chair.
15:03 You want me to go?
15:03 Alright. Alright, well thanks so much, uh, appreciate it ms.
15:06 Grubb for your presentation.
15:07 Um, it's clear the court is doing a lot of good work and that we have an excellent
15:11 data collection system and there's a lot of really good information packed into these slides, so thank you
15:16 very much. Um, a lot of people don't realize the class c tickets.
15:19 Things like traffic tickets or ordinance violations such as sitting or lying down on the sidewalk are criminal
15:24 offenses in texas. They carry fines, not jail sentences, but a lot of the debt people accumulate is
15:31 paid off with jail credit and they drive a lot of arrests.
15:34 Most arrest warrants in texas are for class c tickets.
15:38 And I think it's clear these are wealth based arrests.
15:40 People with money can pay off the ticket with no extra court costs that only apply to people
15:45 who can't pay right away.
15:47 And it's just plain more expensive to be poor.
15:50 And because these are criminal cases, it means you could go to jail.
15:54 And I think, um, I speak for multiple people on the council that we're interested in reducing these
15:58 numbers and I'm grateful to the fines and fees justice center for being here and offering to help
16:01 us with that goal.
16:03 Um, a few questions.
16:05 Um, it's my understanding that a waiver is appropriate for fines when somebody is unable to pay or
16:12 perform community service without undue hardship.
16:15 And waiver is appropriate for costs when they're unable to pay regardless of ability to complete community service.
16:22 Is that your understanding?
16:30 Yes, that is correct.
16:31 My understanding is a judge can waive fines, fees, or costs.
16:37 I didn't realize that only fines could be, uh, waived for an undue hardship, but judge coffey confirmed
16:44 that is correct. Do you know if this waiver as an option is mentioned on the tickets that