City Council gets a summer break too. After sprinting through a 100-plus-item agenda, Austin’s council members are now off until mid-July, when they’ll turn to next year’s budget. A handful of the items they passed on the way out are worth flagging.
A possible November bond election
The most contentious question was whether to ask Austinites to approve a new bond program this November. Mayor Kirk Watson has discouraged the idea since voters rejected the tax increase known as Proposition Q last fall, noting that the city has scheduled bond elections every two years over the last decade — far more often than the roughly six-year spacing it historically used. City staff recommended in May that Council wait until 2028, pointing out that Austin still has more than $1 billion in previously approved bonds left to spend.
Council went the other way. It voted to loosen the city’s own rules to make a 2026 bond election possible and directed staff to assemble a roughly $390 million package for transportation, parks, and community facilities. A final decision to actually hold the election has not been made. Watson and Council Member Marc Duchen voted against the measures.
“If we only support financial guardrails until they become inconvenient, then we shouldn’t be surprised when the public questions whether we really mean them.”Mayor Kirk Watson, on the bond vote
New limits on the “peaker” plants
Council returned to more familiar unanimity on three measures tied to the small, gas-fired plants — known as peakers — it had approved the week before over environmentalists’ objections. The plants are meant to add power on high-demand days, but they sit awkwardly against the city’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2035.
- CM Mike Siegel sponsored a measure to limit the plants’ negative impacts on nearby neighborhoods.
- CM Ryan Alter sponsored a resolution capping emissions so they don’t rise above current levels.
- CM José Velásquez led a proposal encouraging the city to site new peakers outside East Austin, where most of the city’s power is already produced.
Velásquez framed the siting question in terms of long-running inequity, noting that all ten existing peakers are located in East Austin and arguing for “a balanced range of sites across our city.”
Affordable housing: a new “fee in lieu”
CM Chito Vela sponsored a resolution to develop a “fee in lieu” option, letting developers who use the city’s density-bonus programs pay into a city fund instead of setting aside a share of below-market units on site. Vela noted the city has produced significant housing for households at 60–80% of median family income, but has struggled to reach the 30–50% MFI range — even though, per Housing Works Austin, close to 200,000 households fall at 30–60% MFI or lower. The fund, he argued, could deepen affordability in existing units and build new ones.
Vela also celebrated a trio of items finalizing a multiyear effort — begun under former CM Greg Casar — to build a mixed-use development on city-owned land on St. Johns Avenue, at a former Home Depot site. He said the deal will expand St. John Park from 1 to 4 acres and create about 500 housing units, roughly 70% of them set aside for households at 50–80% MFI, alongside amenities and commercial space.
A sanctuary renamed for Daniel Llanes
Council also renamed the Colorado River Park Wildlife Sanctuary as the Daniel Llanes Wildlife Sanctuary, honoring the musician, curandero, and community organizer who died last December after shaping Austin’s civic life for more than half a century. Velásquez noted that from the 1980s until his death, Llanes fought “relentlessly” against development he believed threatened wildlife and the natural areas near the river — a fitting through-line to the Dog’s Head debate playing out just downstream.