The City of Austin finished collecting community feedback for its 2026 bond issue on Feb. 28.
Austin Capital Delivery Services, which coordinates Austin’s public projects, hosted a series of meetings from Feb. 17 to 28 where community members could offer feedback on the proposed list of projects in the bond issue. The city issues bonds to raise money from the public to fund large-scale infrastructure projects.
“We ultimately want the city to work for everyone,” said Zohaib “Zo” Qadri, the council member who represents UT and West Campus. “The only way that’s going to happen is if we do our due diligence and are effective leaders and communicators and are doing that outreach and hearing from the people that we serve.”
The bond issue draft list includes proposed projects involving community spaces, public safety, homelessness strategy, transportation, public works and watershed protection.
Qadri said safer streets, transportation improvements, flood protection and public spaces are his main priorities for his district.
“District 9 specifically has some of the oldest neighborhoods and some of the oldest infrastructure anywhere else in the city,” Qadri said. “There needs to be significant investment in that aging infrastructure as growth continues.”
Eric Bailey, deputy director of Capital Delivery Services, said the city is prioritizing “traditional infrastructure projects,” including public safety, parks, watershed protection and flooding.
Carly Egyed and Adrian Santoyo, who moved to Austin in December, said they were drawn to the city because of its parks and trails. While walking home from a park, they passed a community center where an engagement meeting was held on Feb. 28, and decided to join in.
Egyed and Santoyo hope to see parks, trails, greenspaces, homelessness and infrastructure prioritized in the bond issue.
“In order for a city to have a better quality of life for its citizens, it needs to have green spaces, it needs to have the walkability,” Santoyo said.
For Egyed and Santoyo, green spaces have provided an opportunity to integrate into life in Austin.
“We’ve really loved being able to go play pickleball and just meet other people,” Egyed said. “Without parks and green spaces and community spaces, we wouldn’t have had that.”
The process of developing the 2026 bond issue began in July 2024 when the City Council passed a resolution directing the City Manager T.C. Broadnax to create a bond package. The city then created the Bond Election Advisory Task Force to develop a recommendation for bond projects, with the bond set to be up for vote in November 2026.
The city has to be strategic in how it funds bond projects, as repeated bond issuances in 2016, 2018 and 2022 have limited Austin’s capacity for a bond issue, Bailey said. He said the initial draft list for bonds included over $4 billion worth of projects, but had to be cut down to about $700 million.
The City Council is slated to finalize the list of projects of the bond issue in August for an election in November.
“I would encourage community members to stay informed and to learn with us as we go through a process,” said Lucero Arechiga, an acting community engagement manager for the city of Austin. “Engagement starts at any time and all the time.”