Austin City Council members are proposing cuts to the Austin Police Department budget totaling roughly $149 million, or 34% of the department’s current budget.
Council members are scheduled to vote on the city's budget for the upcoming fiscal year as early as Wednesday and no later than Friday.
The proposal, posted to the City Council message board Friday afternoon by Council Member Greg Casar, attempts to incorporate ideas council members have discussed over the past few weeks during hours-long budget meetings. Nearly three-fourths of the council members say they support it.
About a fifth of the money – just over $22 million – would be immediately transferred to other city departments, including Austin Public Health and Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services.
Council members have also recommended that nine divisions of the police department, including 911 operations and victim services, be moved to other city departments or be made into their own offices. Doing that would amount to a $79.5 million reduction in police funding.
Another $47 million would go into a holdover pot of money, which council members would decide over the next year how to spend. This chunk of funding covers several other divisions currently under police, such as the traffic enforcement and mounted patrol, that the council could decide to reduce funding for and/or make into standalone departments.
“The goal of the proposal is to immediately reinvest dollars into the safety and well being of Austin, while also committing ourselves to long-term change,” Casar wrote on Friday.
The $149 million in suggested cuts diverges greatly from the budget City Manager Spencer Cronk proposed to council members last month, which included a roughly $150,000 reduction in funding for police.
Hundreds of Austinites told council members they were insulted by this initial proposal, particularly after police seriously injured demonstrators protesting against systemic racism at the end of May. APD’s budget makes up roughly 40% of the general fund, which is the portion of the budget dedicated to core operations, such as libraries and parks.
“If a budget is a moral document, [City Manager] Spencer Cronk’s current proposal is immoral,” said David Peterson, one of hundreds of people who spoke during a nearly 10-hour public comment period during the hearing on the city’s budget in July.
Council members’ latest proposal gets them closer to what Peterson and many local racial justice organizations have been asking for. The Austin Justice Coalition has demanded the council cut at least $100 million from APD, while other groups like Communities of Color United are advocating for the budget to be cut in half and for the department to be fully dissolved over the next several years.
The aspect of the propo... (Read more)
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