The big picture
While voters backed hundreds of millions of dollars for mobility and affordable housing initiatives in the 2020s, it's been years since the approval of a more comprehensive bond program covering transportation, cultural facilities, parks, housing and more.
The city has traditionally operated on six-year intervals for those larger propositions. However, the current timeframe would leave an eight-year gap between comprehensive bond votes due partly to the significant amount of unspent funds still remaining from past packages.
City Council created a resident task force to help facilitate community engagement around a potential 2026 bond to deliberate over projects, including some from a list of environmental and climate-related investments proposed last spring. After initial planning meetings, that board and the city's communications team are now looking ahead to the first round of public input to inform the new bond's creation.
The details
The city's public engagement plan for bond development is still in the works and will likely wrap up in February or March, Chief Communications Director Jessica King told the bond task force. Once underway, months of outreach could include community meetings and presentations, tabling at city events, public surveys, social media and e-newsletter posts to collect local input.
With the communication and engagement plan still coming together, King said a full list of possible projects to be funded could be released for initial public review around April.
Keep in mind
Although there'd been some stated interest by council members and advocates in fast-tracking a potentially climate-centered bond for a vote this fall, city staff and task force members have steered away from that concept in favor of a broader funding package for 2026.
In a recent memo, Assistant City Manager Robert Goode said an accelerated 2025 bond would end up cutting available funding in 2026. King also noted that Austinites wouldn't have as much of a chance to contribute to the program's development in less than a year.
“As you can tell, this is a lengthy timeline for a 2026 bond. To do a compressed 2025 bond, it would honestly feel more like a ‘check the box,'" she told the task force Jan. 27. "We’d have to put a lot of work into doing that, and in all honesty I don’t know that we have the ability to do that given how much we’ve got to do to work on the 2026 bond.”
What's next
Residents can follow the bond's development during meetings of the 2026 Bond Election Advisory Task Force, made up of two appointees from each council member. The board convenes monthly and its next meeting will be Feb. 24.
