Austin City Council to look at other options for 24-hour trails

Riley also wanted to direct the city manager to work with APD and the Neighborhood Connectivity Division of the city of Austin's Public Works Department to identify potential areas of the trails that could be opened. Mayor Lee Leffingwell made a friendly amendment for a broader directive to the city manager asking him to just look into the issue.

Riley accepted the friendly amendment but was disappointed to not have the added detail in the direction.

"I realize the city manager is reluctant to consider our trails as transportation opportunities and hesitant to engage our staffers specifically dedicated to that, but I think it would be very helpful to engage the help of our neighborhood connectivity staff to seek and identify neighborhood connections," Riley said.

Acevedo recommended at the work session to reinstitute the curfew on the trails that were part of the pilot program, allow a few segments of the trail to be open to get cyclists past dangerous areas on the road, wait for additional officers approved in APD's budget to join the police force and put together stakeholder meetings to come up with a comprehensive plan to police the trails in Austin.

Through this discussion, one point of contention was the proposal that APD was going to move some of its district representatives to help cover the open trails. Riley made it clear the police department is planning to reallocate some district representatives regardless of the trail decision.

"The last I heard from APD was that [the department] felt like APD does need to do some reassignment and in fact will need to be doing some reassignment regardless of our decision at this particular time," Riley said.

APD officials agreed with the statement but said the process was sped up because of the need to police the trails that could be open 24 hours. A district representative is a police officer that serves as a liaison between the community and APD.

"If we don't keep [the trails] open, we won't move [the officers] at this time," Acevedo said.

During the discussion, concern over the use of the district representatives was raised from the council. Councilwoman Kathie Tovo said it is the police department's discretion as to how it uses its staff.

"It is [APD's] role to allocate staff as the need demands," Tovo said.

Councilwoman Laura Morrison urged APD staff to have a "broad dialogue" about shifting its district representatives because of the feedback City Council has received from the community.