Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax, left, and Mayor Kirk Watson discuss a new city budget at City Hall on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. The Austin City Council is set to vote on a budget that includes millions of dollars in spending cuts after voters rejected Proposition Q in November, a ballot measure that would have raised property taxes and generated $110 million in new revenue.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
When the Austin City Council passed a new budget late Thursday, the American-Statesman and other publications emphasized the spending plan included $95 million in cuts – an eye-popping sum that would suggest a major reduction in city services even with a 3.5% tax increase.
But did the city actually cut that much? The short answer: Not really. And will services be stripped to the bone? Also not really.
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Workers install a large banner advertising a $15,000 signing bonus for Austin Police Department recruits at the downtown APD headquarters on Wednesday June 21, 2023. The police department is offering a $15,000 signing bonus to all new recruits in an effort to fill officer vacancies.
Jay Janner / American-Statesman
Why did the Austin City Council need to make “cuts” in the first place?
Because Austin voters on Nov. 4 resoundingly rejected Proposition Q, a measure that would’ve generated nearly $110 million in new revenue by hiking the city property tax rate more than 20%.
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Back in August the City Council adopted a $6.3 billion budget for 2025-26 assuming Prop Q would pass. So when voters rejected it on Nov. 4 by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, city officials had to go back to the drawing board. That meant reversing many of the expenses built into the earlier plan.
Campaign signs for and against Prop Q are posted on Waller Street on Monday, Nov. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
What happened next in the Prop Q budget saga?
Three days after Prop Q failed, City Manager T.C. Broadnax recommended a variety of amendments to the Prop Q budget so that it would be balanced, as required by state law. Those recommended changes included a 3.5% property tax hike, a $14.1 million withdrawal from the city’s rainy day fund and a menagerie of cuts across departments.
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But at that point what would actually end up on the chopping block – and the grand total of the budget cut –still remained to be seen. That’s because when the City Council approved the Prop Q budget over the summer, it also agreed to use a scalpel to make cuts in the event the measure failed.
That scalpel was wielded over a series of meetings last week, which resulted in the approval of a $6 billion-plus spending plan that we’ll call the “final budget.” The exact price tag remains unclear; A city news release said $6.3 billion while Mayor Kirk Watson said $6.2 billion in his latest Watson Wire newsletter.
The general fund portion of the final budget, which is the only portion that really matters from a property taxation perspective, totaled nearly $1.56 billion.
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(If you want to understand where the many other billions come from, click here.)
The Austin City Council meets at City Hall on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
How much did the budget end up cutting?
If you ask the city, $95 million. But that’s when you compare it to the obsolete Prop Q budget, which was never really enacted.
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Most of the time when government entities say they’re making budget cuts, the totals they give are compared to the last budget implemented.
The Prop Q budget may have been adopted by council but it will never be implemented.
OK so how big are the cuts compared to the last actual real budget?
Last year’s general fund budget was about $1.43 billion. The Prop Q-backed plan would have pushed that to about $1.56 billion. The final budget adopted last week comes in at about $1.48 billion. So while there are cuts relative to the Prop Q plan, the city’s core spending will still increase this fiscal year compared to the last.
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Police, fire and emergency services will all see budget increases under the final spending plan. The Police Department, for example, will receive $526 million, up from $497 million last year.
Austin-Travis County EMS medic Jodeci Romo works an emergency call at the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
If you had asked EMS and the Fire Department about their budgets before the final one passed, they would’ve told you they were slated for cuts of $6.3 million and $8.3 million, respectively. But those sums were what the agencies would’ve received if Prop Q had passed.
Even before the City Council agreed to “restore” $3 million of the EMS funding, the agency’s budget was slated to grow from last year. City Council cut $8.3 million from the Fire Department’s overtime budget, but the department’s overall budget still slightly increased from last year.
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Where were the cuts made?
Many of the reductions hit social service contracts, homeless-intervention programs, and parks and grounds maintenance – areas that had been slated for expansion under the Prop Q budget.
At the same time, the council restored some priority items from earlier staff proposals, including EMS overtime, expanded mobile mental-health outreach, and support for seniors and food-insecurity programs.
How are city leaders framing it?
Mayor Kirk Watson said the new plan reflects voter direction: “basic services through basic budgeting.”
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But Council member Ryan Alter, a Prop Q supporter, said the cuts to the Prop Q budget would harm Austinites who depend on government services.
“People will fall behind,” Alter said. “People will potentially even fall into homelessness and that’s not because they have failed; It’s because their community just didn’t have the resources to catch them and that is really concerning.”
On the other hand, Kerri Lang previously described Prop Q spending as largely for “enhanced services” rather than core or basic services. So while the cuts won’t dismantle the city’s functions like police, fire and EMS essential functions, some expansions and enhancements will be deferred or scaled back while the city stays focused on maintaining vital services.
Austin City Council Member Ryan Alter listens during discussion of a new city budget at City Hall on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. The Austin City Council is set to vote on a budget that includes millions of dollars in spending cuts after voters rejected Proposition Q in November, a ballot measure that would have raised property taxes and generated $110 million in new revenue.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
How much will this cost me?
It depends on the value of your property, of course.
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The tax rate in the final budget was set at 52.4017 cents per $100 of taxable value. That means that if your home – like many others – is worth about a half a million dollars, you’ll be paying roughly $100 more to the city next year.
If you want to get specific about it, the city budget office projects that a typical homeowner with a property valued at $494,803 would see their city tax bill increase by $104.76.
That’s on top of property tax increases enacted by other local agencies, namely Travis County which hiked its rate by 9%.
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According to the Travis County Appraisal District, the 2025 median market value for a residential homestead property was $519,677 and the median taxable value was $401,879.