Austin council set to OK budget, millions in police cuts
Austin City Council members will vote Thursday on a budget that is expected to greatly reduce the Austin Police Department’s funding, by perhaps as much as $150 million.
The council was close to voting late Wednesday before recessing after several council members said they were feeling fatigued or sick. Before breaking, the council passed two similar budget items to move the policedDepartment headquarters out of its aging downtown location and directed the city manager to find different city space for the department’s next home.
The day began with community members flooding the council meeting with final pleas for significant police cuts. Activists had circled the city’s budget adoption process for months, leveraging George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis and Michael Ramos’ death in Austin to reimagine policing by removing funding and authority from the police force.
Heading into Thursday, the council has proposed reductions of more than $150 million from police through three ways. Those are: direct spending cuts, including the elimination of three cadet classes; moving functions from the police department, including internal affairs and forensics, to other departments or community organizations; and diverting funds toward alternative forms of public safety, which would not happen immediately but would happen before the end of the fiscal year.
Those cuts were in addition to $11.3 million presented by the city’s budget office.
Many callers praised the council’s efforts, while others said the cuts did not go far enough, suggesting the $21.5 million that will be redistributed into the community from the police department’s budget is too little.
The City Council was scheduled to reconvene at 10 a.m. on Thursday.