The City of Austin Mayor Watson Wire: 2026 City Budget Insights & Reasoning.

 

Thanks for all of you who took time to complete my survey last week. There were lots of good responses, and they’re helpful to me. One reply especially struck me.  A 36-year-old, lifelong Austin resident said: “If you can do the basics really well, then the voters will support and trust that you can do the extras as well.” Something else that struck me was how much folks want to engage and to learn about what’s in the budget and how it works. That’s why I recently sat down with Kerri Lang, the Director of Austin’s Budget & Organizational Excellence Department, to talk more in-depth on the ins-and-outs of budgeting. I call this going behind the Wire. Behind the Wire: Austin’s Budget Essentially Austin Austinites want their local government to deliver quality essential city services. They want to know that the city is focused on maintaining our roads, improving drainage, supplying residents with clean water, keeping the lights on, providing effective and responsive public safety, managing our parks and pools, making progress on reducing homelessness, and other important basics. There’s an inherent tension between delivering quality city services— through the rates, fees, and taxes we ask people to pay— and the issue of affordability. The tension grows even more when we consider the economic uncertainty many of our residents are facing in their lives. Growing costs, rising inflation, and slowing household incomes are making it harder and harder for people. I’ve said it before—local government is where policy meets the pavement. It’s where our choices make a real impact on the day-to-day lives of others. As we move through this budget process, I’ve worked to make sure we have thoughtful, disciplined, and transparent conversations about Austin’s finances and the difficult realities of our economic environment. It’s important to me that people understand how we’re using our existing resources, how we’re meeting the community’s needs, and how we’re stewarding the money taxpayers and ratepayers give us. That’s why I’ve pushed for us to manage this tough financial environment by embracing transparency in our decision making— especially if we’re going to ask people to increase their taxes. Compassion Isn’t Just What We Spend Tomorrow, we will hold a work session regarding social service contracts. The meeting begins at 10:00 am, and you can watch it here. Yesterday, at a special meeting of the Audit & Finance Committee, which I chair, we heard from the City Auditor regarding a Nonprofit Performance Management Audit. This is the second phase of a special request I made in the spring of last year to make sure we understand our investment to serve vulnerable residents, and whether the public dollars we’re spending is having the positive impact we intend and want. This evaluation isn’t an attack on nonprofit organizations, or any specific nonprofit. Austin relies on many dedicated nonprofits and their dedicated employees who do difficult, compassionate work for people facing some of the hardest moments of their lives. This is an audit of the city’s system for purchasing, monitoring, and assuring the delivery of essential services. And the findings are troubling.  It appears we’re not effectively meeting the goals that we set. We’re told that 19 of the 25 sampled contracts missed at least one performance expectation. Almost half of the performance expectations reviewed weren’t met. In many instances, performance was substantially below what the contracts required. Those numbers don’t just represent boxes left unchecked on a report. They may represent—likely represent—vulnerable Austinites who didn’t receive services the city agreed to purchase for them. We need to understand why. There may be some good explanations of why performance failed. But we can’t support a system in which expectations can be missed repeatedly without consistent review, corrective action, or consequences. Good fiscal stewardship and strong social services are not competing goals. Financial accountability isn’t in conflict with personal compassion. In fact, caring for our most vulnerable requires us to care about these services and to care about whether they’re delivered. The focus shouldn’t be on protecting City Hall or protecting any particular organization. It should be on protecting the people these dollars were meant to serve. We should have clear and realistic performance expectations. We should have transparent and equitable selection processes. We should give providers a fair opportunity to explain problems and correct them. And when performance doesn’t improve, we should be willing to redirect public money so that the promised services are actually provided. We can’t and shouldn’t measure compassion by how much money we appropriate and spend. We should measure it by whether we’re doing what’s necessary to assure people receive the help that the money was intended to provide. Progressive government should be accountable government. View email in browser Mayor of Austin · 301 W 2nd St · Austin, TX 78701-4652 · USA update your preferences or unsubscribe