Council approves new 5-year deal with Austin Police Association

“Downtown Austin is experiencing an unprecedented level of negative and criminal behavior... The perception among those who live and work downtown is that the police are just not here, and they’re not coming," Amanda Mullen, a downtown retail property manager, said. "Well, that’s because we don’t have enough. We don’t have a contract to keep officers from retiring or leaving.”

The new five-year labor deal and its $217.8 million price tag also drew strong opposition for its handling of voter-approved police oversight policies and its significant budget impact, which appears likely to affect other departments and potentially city taxpayers. Residents asked council to reject the plan, or to return to the negotiating table to work out a different deal.

“If this contract passes, we will see our social safety net erode, city services diminish and utility bills rise," said Trish Niswander, a city communications employee and vice president of AFSCME Local 1624, which represents civilian city staff. "The working class will bear the brunt of these costs. The contract pushes us towards austerity and privatization, threatening essential city services."

Equity Action, a local criminal justice reform group that backed a ballot measure last year to expand Austin's police oversight framework, had filed in court this week to stop council from voting on the deal. A judge rejected that request Oct. 23, although the group said it would take further legal action after the agreement's approval.

The cost

City and police leaders have said the contract, with its added benefits and incentives for officers, will help retain current APD officers and make the department a more attractive destination for new recruits.

Police Chief Lisa Davis also said it could help keep more experienced officers on patrol and help reduce growing police response times. Reggie Diggins, an ambassador on the Downtown Alliance's safety team, said he and other downtown workers wanted to see a new contract given their daily experiences lacking safety responses.

“We do need more police out here, because I’ve been assaulted, chased with pepper spray, chased with knives and spat on," he told council. "When we do call the police, it takes them a while to come out here, which is a big issue, because we deal with this every single day and every single morning."

Much of the $218 million agreement will cover police pay raises of nearly 30% over five years plus other stipends and payments to officers.

The city's current two-year deal with the Austin Firefighters Association costs about $35.5 million, while its four-year deal with the Austin Emergency Medical Services Association is about $33.67 million, according to the city. Meanwhile, interim police pay and benefits packages approved by council in early 2023, when the last APA contract expired, totaled about $18.6 million over two years.

Diving in deeper

Alongside the contract vote, council moved $16.58 million in the city's fiscal year 2024-25 budget to cover the deal's first year. By FY 2028-29, the final year, it'll run over $66 million. Despite the record contract amount, city budgeting staff report it'll have a "marginal" impact on Austin's finances.

That analysis has been scrutinized in the past few weeks over its differences from previous forecasts of future budget deficits. Council members and residents have also noted the growing likelihood that Austin will need to raise taxes or shift budgeting practices to fully fund city operations alongside the police agreement.

Accounting for the contract, budget staff now say Austin could face a $6 million deficit by the end of the decade—assuming other city departments don't see their funding grow at the same rate as APD. If services like public safety, the parks system, libraries and public health were to match that growth, the projected FY 2028-29 deficit would hit at least $33 million.

City staff said that total doesn't account for millions in one-time funding for homelessness and other city programs approved this year, or millions of federal relief dollars that will soon be used up.

To continue city services while addressing the forecasted budget gaps, the city could move to increase its revenue from taxes—which may require voter approval. Fuentes said the possibility of more taxing to support city services is likely on the horizon.

"I do want to surface that that is the reality that we're heading into," she said Oct. 22.

Mayor Kirk Watson said dwindling federal aid and a state-imposed cap on cities' tax revenue gains created a situation now impacting budget and taxing considerations. Alter, who leaves office in January, said future councils will have to contend with those issues and weigh cuts.

"I don’t know about you, but I am really hearing from folks that they can’t handle too many more taxes," Alter said. "We also have propositions—which I hope will pass—right now that are going to add taxes to folks for worthy things in our community. ... We have tools, but it’s not just going and taxing people that’s going to fix it, because they have budgets, too."

Also of note

A resolution from council member Ryan Alter also approved Oct. 24 directs new quarterly reporting on police budgeting. He said additional care is needed as APD remains the biggest piece of Austin's general fund, given the state's effective ban on lowering police funding.

"We’re making decisions right now that are going to affect other departments, whether that’s fire, EMS, parks or libraries," he said Oct. 18. "We need to have good information about potential trade-offs within our budget decisions."

The city's police oversight system was a central reason for the extended time without a contract, and due to some opposition to the new agreement.

Early last year, council declined to vote on a tentative four-year deal with the APA to let voters weigh in on an Equity Action-backed oversight proposition. The Austin Police Oversight Act was approved by an almost four-to-one margin in the May 2023 election, but wasn't fully implemented from the start.

This fall, some have questioned the effects of the new contract language on its policies. One concern raised by Equity Action representatives and other Austinites is the deal's handling of APD "g-files," or previously confidential personnel records that have long been blocked from public release. The oversight act was meant to end the g-file practice in Austin, although it took over a year and a separate lawsuit from Equity Action to make that change.

This fall, the city released its first g-file materials and is also now processing public information requests for those records. On Oct. 22, Council member Chito Vela spoke to the city and APA's agreement on the new approach, which he called a "major, major win."

"I know it’s very troubling when we hear those descriptions of police abuse, misconduct, those kinds of things like that, but I am so glad that that documentation is out in public now because if we don’t have that level of transparency, we’re not going to be ultimately able to hold our police officers and our police department accountable," he said.

Interim City Attorney Deborah Thomas has formally certified that the new contract complies with all oversight measures, a step required by the Oversight Act. Still, some worries remain. Many Austinites shared their experiences with police misconduct and concerns that records of such incidents could still be buried over the next five years. Others stated skepticism with the treatment of new oversight provisions overall.

"I have no confidence in this police department to actually be transparent without having that be written into the contract explicitly," resident Ishrat Kundawala told council. "I think this contract really does us, as voters, a disservice by going against the Austin Police Oversight Act and also does the citizens of this community a disservice by placing funding in places that do not really make our community safer.”

Before the vote, Equity Action's Chris Harris asked the city to return to the negotiating table to remove what he called oversight "poison pills" from the contract. He said language on g-files, officer investigations and discipline, and potential challenges to the Office of Police Oversight's work, could be affected.

“The changes we have requested are simple and would make the words on the page of the agreement match the words in the mouths of the city staff, and, more recently, APA leadership,” he said in a statement.