Austin City Council Member Ryan Alter is running for his second term to represent District 5. He faces challengers David Weinberg, Liz Brink and Farrah Abraham.
District 5, which includes areas of South and Southwest Austin, is home to more than 95,000 people, and the median home sale price is around $475,000, according to city data.
Alter ran four years ago vowing to put a focus on affordability.
“Four years later, we’ve achieved some amazing results,” Alter said. “Housing costs are lower than any other major city in the country. We’ve nearly doubled the senior homestead exemption. We’ve made it so landlords can’t surprise renters with hidden fees.”
But Alter’s three opponents are pushing back on his narrative that things in Austin have gotten more affordable.
Property taxes have increased. Fees are up for utilities like water, electricity and trash. Inflation has hit everyday goods like groceries, and gas prices have skyrocketed.
Weinberg, who led the Texas League of Conservation Voters for six years, said tackling affordability will be a balancing act of listening to what people can actually afford and providing essential city services.
“We need to have folks at City Hall who are doing a much better job of engaging with their communities and really meeting people in the middle,” Weinberg said. “I feel like we have a council that is pretty distant from the rank and file in terms of their priorities.”
Abraham, a former reality TV star, said South Austin families are feeling squeezed by rising costs while watching basic city infrastructure get neglected, like local parks, major roadways like Menchaca Road and South Lamar Boulevard and water pressure in the Matthews Lane neighborhood.
“We need to focus on economic revitalization through B2B growth, filling empty commercial storefronts, and updating local land-use rules to protect our green spaces and watersheds without driving up property taxes,” she said.
Austin has been facing budgetary constraints that have forced the City Council to lessen investments in social services such as rental assistance and parks and recreation programs. While Proposition Q failed last year, the city is hoping to pay for some of its needs through two separate bonds that will go before voters in November. The $295 million bond package would mean that homeowners pay more in property taxes. The city estimated a $40 annual increase on an average-valued house of $495,000.
Alter and Weinberg both said they supported the bond package, which would put $260 million toward park upgrades and $35 million toward library improvements. Abraham said she supports strategic investments in parks and libraries, “but taxpayers deserve complete transparency before approving new debt.”
Affordability is just one of the many issues the candidates have brought forward. Alter and Weinberg joined KUT for a panel in September. Abraham was unable to make it due to a medical constraint but submitted answers over email. Brink did not respond to a request for an interview.
This November, Austin voters will decide on Proposition I, a charter amendment to require the city to do independent external audits. Do you support or oppose Prop I and why?
Alter: Opposes Prop I. “I believe in the need for an audit, which is why back in the spring we passed an audit as a council that is going to have a real impact on saving money for the taxpayers. This is going to be a program that will look really deeply into our departments to figure out where we are working well and where we are not. … I don’t support proposition I because it doesn’t do that.”
Weinberg: Supports Prop I. “What I have been hearing from a lot of people in the district is that people are upset. People are frustrated. People do not trust how the city is spending its money, and people want this audit. I won’t be telling anyone to vote against it.…”
Abraham: Supports Prop I. “Independent external oversight is a necessary baseline for holding City Hall accountable. However, traditional periodic audits alone are not enough if they don’t lead to real-time enforcement. We have seen time and again that standard delayed reports simply confirm past spending breaches without preventing them. True change requires modernizing City Hall’s accounting infrastructure directly.”
Austin has invested significant resources into addressing homelessness. Yet there is still much to be done to prevent eviction and to keep people from falling through the cracks. How do you think the city is doing on its homelessness response? What might you change?
Weinberg: “There have been some troubling numbers on rising evictions, I think, in Austin over the last year that sort of clashes with the narrative that everything is going in the right direction on affordability. … Homelessness is one of the most complex problems facing the city of Austin. And there are no magic bullets or overnight solutions.…”
Alter: “Thanks to investments in prevention, something I have championed and truly believe we have to do to cut off inflows to homelessness, two years in a row now, we have fewer people entering homelessness than the year before. … We have also in the past four years nearly doubled our shelter and housing capacity. And we need to keep doing more of that.”
Abraham: “Continual $700,000/month encampment sweeps without structured follow-up care fail to address the root crisis. Having personally completed a 12-step recovery program, I know that lasting recovery requires personal accountability paired with structured support. I will redirect city homelessness funds away from administrative bloat and into structured 12-step recovery programs and trauma-informed mental health care modeled after proven models like Iowa’s ‘Open Door Mission’ while enforcing clean, safe public spaces for all.”
There has been a lot of recent public scrutiny of automated license plate reader cameras. Some have serious privacy concerns about them while police say they are an essential tool. What do you think?
Alter: “Flock cameras should not be used here in Austin. We have seen what this company has done. … When the renewal of those cameras came before council, we told the manager ‘no,’ and that is why it was removed from the [City Council] agenda before we even got there [to vote]. But there is a place for ‘dumb cameras.’…”
Weinberg: “If we lived in a perfect world where it could be constrained to just the police using it for A, B, and C and not D through Z, we might have something to work with. But unfortunately, that is not the world we currently live in. These tools of mass surveillance do not have a place in Austin. I do not support them. Dummy cameras, sure, that sounds like a much better way to go.”
Abraham: “Technology can be a helpful tool for law enforcement in recovering stolen vehicles or tracking missing persons, but civilian privacy rights must come first. We need strict constitutional guardrails: clear data-deletion timelines, prohibitions against warrantless tracking, and mandatory public audit reports so ALPR cameras assist active criminal investigations without turning into unmonitored mass surveillance.”
As part of its budget process this year, the City Council approved a plan to create a standalone 911 call center in the hopes of improving response time over the objections of the city’s fire, police and emergency services chiefs. Do you support the change?
Weinberg: “I do. … I think a lot of good work has been done on this measure. And I think we can have a better system of how we are dispatching both APD and also sending folks in terms of a mental health crisis there and moving folks out of APD will help with that.”
Alter: “When we look at 911 almost four years ago, we had almost 50% vacancies. People would call 911, and they’d be put on hold for 10 minutes. Wholly unacceptable. So we made sure we got resources necessary to hire up, and now have [an] almost fully staffed 911 call center, and response times are dramatically down. … I supported the move because I think we need to have that kind of mindset of continuous improvement moving forward.”
Abraham: “I stand with our first responders and emergency service chiefs. Administrative restructuring should never override the operational expertise of our police, fire, and EMS leadership. Our primary focus must be on lowering emergency 911 response times, addressing officer and dispatch staffing shortages, and ensuring our first responders have the direct tools and competitive support they need to keep South Austin safe.”
We’ve heard the City Council say a lot over the last year that it is working to restore trust with the community. How would you restore that trust? Give some examples.
Weinberg: “[Alter] was spending his office budget on personal lunches. He was spending his office budget on partisan political clubs. He was spending his office budget on sending his chief of staff on an overseas trip to Thailand. We are in a city where affordability is a top issue where public trust is a top issue. And the council member betrayed that trust.”
Alter: “Everything that our office has spent on was within city policy, but in order to maintain that trust, I voluntarily paid that money back. … We are an office that has spent near the bottom, or at the bottom, of city funds. We are a very lean and efficient staff, and because of that, I was able to roll over and invest $100,000 in District 5 parks because that is what people wanted to see.”
Abraham: “Trust is built through transparency and direct results, not political speeches. Examples of how I will restore trust include: Leading by Example: Taking zero candidate loans and zero corporate PAC money so constituents know I work strictly for them. Automated Constituent Dashboards: Implementing an automated request intake form and public board so residents can submit issues and track City Hall response times in real time. Zero Campaign Waste: Eliminating single-use non-biodegradable plastic campaign signs to respect local green standards.”