Overview
City of Austin staff in the labor negotiations department have tentatively agreed to a new police contract with the Austin Police Association. This deal:
- Undermines the voter-approved Austin Police Oversight Act and upends the will of 80% of voters, and
- Costs so much it threatens huge cuts to essential city services, tax increases (requiring an election), utility rate increases or all of these.
Get Involved
The Austin City Council will discuss this proposed police contract on Tuesday, October 22 during a public work session, and is set to vote (yes or no) on the deal on Thursday, October 24. They need to hear from everyone that opposes this deal! You can have your voice heard by:
- Sign-up to testify! When you register on 2 items, you can sign-up to speak and will receive 6 minutes address the City Council either in-person or over-the-phone. This is the best way to amplify your voice. Below you can find talking points to use if you’d like. Come in-person if you can!
- This link lets you register: deadline NOON Wednesday 10/23
- Calling your council member and the mayor BEFORE THURSDAY, and preferably on Monday, October 21.
- Signing this petition TODAY!!
- Share this document with your friends, family and neighbors!
Talking Points
This deal costs too much
- The $218M price tag for this deal will require cuts to essential city services, major tax increases (requiring an election), utility rate increases or all of these.
- City investments in parks, libraries, arts, the social safety net and all of the non-police infrastructure and services that improve public safety will face cuts.
- Parks is the largest department after public safety, and is the first department likely to face cuts. We are about to open five more parks but no additional park maintenance is projected in this spending plan, meaning these new parks will fall into disrepair.
- Before this deal was considered, city budget staff claimed the City would face huge deficits in the coming years.
- The financial projections assume NO NEW STAFF for any department in the next five years.
- The most recent police contract before this proposal provided a $44M increase over 4 years. This deal is a $218M increase over 5 years – a drastic and unwarranted giveaway.
- If this deal is approved, the City will be on track to spend over $3 Billion on police alone over the next five years — over 40% of our general fund expenditures
- Austin police are already the highest-paid big-city police department in Texas and among the highest paid big-city police departments in the nation.
- Other city workers, which receive much less pay, will struggle to achieve cost-of-living adjustments moving forward.
This deal undermines voter-approved police oversight and transparency
- This deal would make most records about conduct that occurred BEFORE this deal totally secret forever in violation of the Austin Police Oversight Act – and the Austin Police Association admitted this.
- This deal would allow the police association to weaken the police oversight system with petty grievances AGAIN, which is how they wrecked the system before the ballot measure passed.
- This deal would keep police oversight from being involved in interviews of officers, limiting their ability to make disciplinary recommendations
This deal won’t improve public safety
- Every community group that’s taken a position opposes this deal because they know it will harm their members and neighbors.
- Crime rates don’t align with police staffing.
- Even with Austin police staff falling, crime in Austin is down dramatically.
- Even those that clamor for more police provide no evidence this deal will lead to more police staffing.
- This contract does not address the police department’s slow response rates or its declining rates of solving crimes.
- Public safety requires many of the other essential services and infrastructure that will face cuts if this deal passes – housing, healthcare, transit, youth, alleviating poverty, increasing community resilience, substance use and violence prevention, combating climate change, etc..
We don’t believe the City staff’s claims about this deal
- The City’s negotiation team has repeated failed to secure quality police oversight
- They missed a poison pill in the 2018 contract that allowed the police association to weaken the police oversight system
- They conspired with disgraced former City Manager Cronk to rush an awful police contract thru in 2023 to try and prevent people from voting on the Austin Police Oversight Act
- They lied about the Austin Police Oversight Act and claimed it would prevent any future contracts – which obviously isn’t true because here we are debating a new deal
- The City’s budget staff said the City was going broke a few months ago when City Council was deciding on what to fund in the next budget
- They claimed the City couldn’t afford a few million dollars here and there for many important initiatives
- Now those same staff claim the City finances are fine and the City can afford a $218M increase over 5 years for this police contract
- If the City budget staff was so wrong about the budget just a few months ago, why should we believe them now?
- The City’s legal department has been wrong about police transparency for decades
- They claimed the Austin Police Oversight Act was illegal for making more police conduct records public – and a judge just ruled they were totally wrong.
- The City Council recently tried to put a measure on the November ballot that would allow them to hire their own legal staff because they rightfully don’t trust City Legal.
- City Legal’s analysis about whether this police contract conforms to the Austin Police Oversight Act cannot be trusted.