Wednesday, October 21, 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 met on October 21, 2026, chaired by Mayor Watson. The committee approved minutes from July 16, 2025 and August 19, 2026, adopted corrected minutes for several past meetings, approved two bylaw amendments (adding public safety to the Hispanic Latino Quality of Life Resource Advisory Commission's mission and aligning Austin Travis County Food Policy Board membership terms with city terms), and adopted its calendar year 2027 meeting dates. It approved forwarding the City Auditor's calendar year 2027 audit plan (10 new audits plus alternates and carryover projects) to full Council. The committee received briefings on the city's redevelopment and public facilities portfolio, the social services strategic reset and compliance framework, and an audit finding inconsistent monitoring of living wage requirements in city contracts. One member of the public, Scott Cobb, spoke remotely, questioning why the city's living wage increase has not kept pace with Texas inflation.
0:04 Good morning everybody. It's nine 30.
0:05 Wow, that is loud, but I like the sound of my voice.
0:09 So let's continue forward.
0:11 Uh, it's October 21st, 2026, and, uh, I will call to order the audit and finance committee meeting of the
0:17 Austin City Council. We have a quorum of the audit and finance committee present, and we are meeting
0:23 in the City Council chambers located in Austin City Hall at 3 0 1 west second street.
0:29 So, um, we welcome everybody.
0:31 We will start with citizen communication and uh, it's my understanding we have two people signed up, so
0:36 I'll ask that you, uh, call out their names.
0:38 Yes, sir. The first speaker is scott cobb speaking remotely.
0:43 And then the second speaker is kamal hagood.
0:47 Alright, remotely or here in person.
0:50 Alright. Did you hear your name called?
0:53 Did he mispronounce your name?
0:55 Kmel hagood. Alright, well we'll go ahead with scott cobb and then we'll see what comes after that.
1:06 Can we hook him up?
1:08 Hello? Can you hear me?
1:09 Yeah, we can now.
1:09 Thank you. Hi, thank you very much.
1:13 So my name is scott co.
1:14 And I used to work for the city of Austin, and I'm calling in today to question why
1:19 the city's living wage is failing to keep pace with inflation despite the recommendations of its own living
1:26 wage work group in 2022.
1:29 The living wage work group specifically recommended that once the city has reached a living wage, use the
1:34 average of the annual increases in the c-p-u-c-p-i-u in texas to increase the rate each year.
1:41 Um, it has to increase with inflation or we lose purchasing power.
1:47 Yet this past year we living wage only increased by 10 cents, which was a 0.45% raise, where the
1:58 current rate of inflation is over 3.5%.
2:03 Uh, even this month it reached 3.7%.
2:09 Uh, so when the council adopted the budget in August, the latest available dallas and houston, cpiu readings
2:15 showed an annual inflation rates of 2.9 in 0.8.
2:19 So if you average those, it would've been 1.85%.
2:23 That would've been meant that the living wage should have increased from 2205 to 2246 rather than 2215.
2:34 Uh, so I had three questions.
2:37 Uh, what is the cpiu data measurement period and calculation used to determine the 2020 6 27 living wage
2:46 increase? Why has the city not implemented the living wage work group's recommendation to adjust wages annually to
2:53 reflect texas inflation and why?
2:56 And will the city auditor examine whether the city's living wage adjustments have kept pace with inflation and
3:03 whether workers have lost purchasing power as a result?
3:08 Today's agenda includes an audit examining whether city contractors comply with living wage requirements, but who is examining
3:15 the city's own living wage policies.
3:18 A living wage that fails to keep pace with inflation becomes less of a living wage every year.
3:23 So I ask this committee and the city auditor to ensure that the city public, that the city
3:29 publicly accounts for its living wage calculations and takes meaningful steps to protect the purchasing power of its
3:35 wage workers. Thank you very much.
3:40 Thank you, sir. Let's call that name again.
3:45 Camo ood. Okay, why don't you spell it?
3:50 C-o-m-e-l-l. C-o-m-e-l-l. Okay. I don't see anybody coming forward, so thank you for that.
3:58 Um, members that would conclude all the people that have signed up to speak on general public communication.
4:03 So now we have, uh, we'll go to the agenda.
4:05 Item number one is approval of the minutes for the July 16th and the August 19th, 2026 meetings.
4:11 The audit finance committee, you've had those and, uh, the Council Member uchin lose approval of the minutes.
4:17 It's seconded by the Mayor pro tim.
4:18 Any discussion, sir? It's, uh, 2025 July 16th, 2025.
4:25 Well, you're right. Good catch.
4:28 Does that change your motion?
4:29 Council Member uchin? Okay, well, well, uh, Council Member uchin knew that he was moving to approve July 16th, 2025.
4:39 It was only the chair's error.
4:41 Uh, not Council Member uchin or the Mayor Pro Tem.
4:43 Second. Uh, so the motion is to approve the minutes for July 16th, 2025 and August 19th, 2026 of the audit finance
4:50 committee. Is there discussion, hearing none without objection.
4:54 Uh, those minutes are approved.
4:56 Now, item number two deals again with minutes, but members, as you've seen in other committees and other
5:03 work that's been going on, uh, staff has gone back and looked at the, at a number of
5:07 the minutes of different meetings and found places where we needed to make corrections, uh, and correct those
5:13 minutes that has been done.
5:16 Uh, and this is what is before us in item number two.
5:19 Are there any questions with regard to those minutes?
5:22 With that being said, uh, the Mayor pro tim moves and, and Council Member Alter seconds, a motion
5:27 to approve item number two, which relates to the corrected minutes for a number of, uh, audit and
5:33 finance committee meetings. Is there any discussion?
5:35 Hearing none without objection.
5:37 Item number two is adopted.
5:39 That will take us to item number three and we will recognize our clerk staff.
5:46 Good morning, stephanie hall, deputy city clerk, and I'm here to present to you two proposed bylaw amendments.
5:52 The first is from the hispanic latino quality of life resource advisory commission.
5:57 They are proposing to add public safety into their mission and as part of their bylaws, article two,
6:03 their justification for this is that adding public safety to the commission's purpose would formally recognize equitable access
6:09 to public safety resources as essential to the quality of life.
6:11 For austin's hispanic latino community codify the commission's ex existing oversight of interactions with law enforcement and closing
6:18 a gap in its current duties.
6:20 Staff has no concerns with this proposed edit.
6:23 However, if this, if this is approved, it will require an ordinance to cha amend a piece of
6:29 code section 2 1 4 1 46. The second is for the Austin travis county food policy board.
6:35 This is to edit their membership requirements for the county to terms to align with our city terms
6:41 of four years and starting on March 1st of the appointment.
6:44 This actually came from the county.
6:45 They wanted to, to correlate with that.
6:47 They've made a recommendation and then has the board.
6:49 So we certainly support moving forward with this.
6:51 That's all I have.
6:52 Thank you. Um, members, you have any questions?
6:57 If that's the case, then, um, I'm gonna take these up separately just so that we have clarity.
7:03 Um, and, and we will, I'll seek a, a motion to approve the bylaw amendments to the hispanic
7:08 latino quality of life resource advisory commission.
7:12 It's made by the Mayor Pro Tem.
7:13 It is seconded by Council Member.
7:16 Um, lane, is there any discussion without objection?
7:20 Uh, the motion to amend the bylaw bylaws of the hispanic latino quality of life resource advisory commission,
7:27 uh, are adopted and we will now move that forward in the process that has, has been outlined
7:32 by our professional staff.
7:34 The second motion that I'll entertain is a motion to amend the bylaws related to the Austin travis county
7:41 food policy board. That motion is made by, uh, Council Member uchin, seconded by Council Member Alter.
7:47 Is there any discussion?
7:49 Hearing none without objection.
7:51 That motion is also adopted.
7:53 Thank you very, very much.
7:55 Members, uh, we have supplied to you, uh, in consultation with, uh, professional staff and in working to
8:03 make it kind of correspond, not kind of hope, is it fully corresponds with what we're doing with,
8:08 uh, council meetings in the year 2027.
8:11 I got that right, right.
8:12 Yeah, 2027. Okay. Um, in 2027, um, with we, so we have a list of the committee meeting
8:19 dates for calendar year 2027 for the audit and finance committee meeting meetings.
8:26 Uh, I'll ask if anybody has any questions or any things that they would like to suggest changes
8:31 on what we have submitted.
8:33 That being the case.
8:34 The ameripro tim moves approval of the audit finance committee meeting dates for calendar year 2027.
8:40 It is seconded by Council Member Alter.
8:42 Is there any discussion?
8:44 Hearing none without objection.
8:46 Uh, item number four is adopted.
8:48 That will now take us to item number five, which is a discussion and possible action on the
8:53 city auditor's calendar year 2027 audit plan.
8:57 And I see our city auditor, morning Mayor committee members, jason avi, city auditor.
9:03 I'm here to present the draft, uh, 2027 calendar year audit plan.
9:08 We'll be looking for, um, any feedback that you May have and recommendation for, uh, forwarding this plan
9:16 to the full council for approval.
9:19 So if the, the plan's broken into four sections.
9:22 The first section is the, the new audits.
9:24 There's 10 new projects for account year 2027.
9:27 That's the first section with the green header bar.
9:30 Below that, you will see the alternate audits that, uh, we've included there in case we move through
9:35 some of the plan quicker than, than anticipated or if any of those projects need to drop off
9:41 for any reason. The last couple of alternate projects are flex projects.
9:45 They're just placeholders for anything that May come out of the citywide efficiency assessment that's ongoing right now.
9:50 We're anticipating they May identify some risks that don't fall within their scope on the efficiency assessment, but
9:57 warrant our attention on the back.
9:59 You can see the carryover audits.
10:01 Those are projects that we're actively working on.
10:03 We've kicked them off in 2026.
10:05 We anticipate completing them in the first half of 2027.
10:09 And then lastly, we've, uh, included a section that briefly discusses our oversight for the efficiency assessment and
10:16 the plan for the, for the three years of the citywide efficiency assessment, which departments and areas of
10:22 the city will be covering in each of those years.
10:24 So with that, I can take any questions that you May have on any of these projects.
10:29 Members you have questions of, of mr.
10:32 Avi? Yes. Council Member ucci.
10:35 I just have one question and that's in relation to the memo that we got yesterday about item
10:40 52 on the agenda for Thursday, which is about the gallup contract, which also deals with retention issues.
10:47 And so my question really just is, can anybody help me understand the relationship between what that contract
10:54 is exploring regarding employee retention and what the audit that you would be doing next year on compensation,
11:02 which would be focused on retention also?
11:04 Sure. So I think those, those two items would be connected, but not, uh, not completely overlapping.
11:10 So I, as I read it, the, the gallup contract is intended to replace the former listening to
11:16 the workforce survey that we conducted annually.
11:19 That survey con, um, obtained a lot of data and feedback from, from the workforce on a number
11:25 of factors including compensation, but it really measured employee engagement, job satisfaction, their perspective on health and safety
11:34 in the workplace, benefits, uh, ethics throughout, uh, the city, their department, and number of other factors.
11:40 So I think that the gallup survey May address employee satisfaction with compensation practices, but wouldn't fully address
11:49 everything that we, we want to achieve by looking at our compensation philosophy, looking at our historical practices
11:57 and how those compare to, to the market and making us a, an attractive employer.
12:04 So they're complimentary. And what would your expectation be for next year then, for once?
12:09 I suppose we've got the results of the gallup work as well as your audit.
12:14 The, the gallup work I would look at as an ongoing, so when we had the listening to
12:19 the workforce survey, that was a, a major source of data that we used as part of our
12:23 development of the annual audit plan.
12:25 So we would be looking at that as consistently as possible.
12:29 I don't know how frequently they'll, they'll be pushing out results, but that's something that we would be
12:33 monitoring citywide and a department by department basis to determine where we might need to initiate audits going
12:40 forward. Okay. Thank you.
12:42 Good. Thank you. Alright, further questions or thoughts?
12:47 Yeah, member tim. Just, uh, the facilities management, uh, audit just really, uh, jumps out on that list
12:54 as a, as a very timely, uh, and important one.
12:58 Uh, so just look forward to, I think this is a great list.
13:00 And, uh, just look forward to seeing the results of this, uh, down the road.
13:03 Thank you. Thank you.
13:05 All right. Um, there being no further discussion on the item related to the city auditor's calendar year