AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 With the Austin City Council expected to begin adopting the city\u2019s proposed $6.6 billion budget Wednesday, residents in East Austin are raising concerns about how much money is slated for police compared with other needs, including housing and social services.<\/p>\n
A neighborhood budget town hall meeting was held in District 3, represented by Council Member Jose Velasquez, at Govalle Elementary School. Some attendees criticized the proposed increase for the Austin Police Department.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe APD budget increase, it’s unconscionable to me, especially given just a few weeks ago, we had a 17-year-old child murdered by police,\u201d said Neha Shah, an Austinite. \u201cTo hear that this APD budget is not going to be flat. That realistically, we cannot expect that, that is gut-wrenching.\u201d<\/p>\n
ALSO| <\/p>\n
KEYE DVR_WINDOW<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Under the proposal, Austin police would receive nearly $550 million, making up more than 36% of the city\u2019s general fund. That is nearly $25 million more than this year.<\/p>\n
Some residents said the city should direct more funding toward housing. \u201cDefinitely housing for one…housing for those making 0 to 30% of Austin’s MFI–the supply is quite low,\u201d said Uszee McKoy, an Austinite. <\/p>\n
Ed Miller, another Austinite, said, \u201cThere’s too many common people losing their houses and their apartments because they don’t have the rent, and so they end up homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n
City officials have said state law restricts Austin from reducing police funding and that the police budget will not remain flat because of rising costs.<\/p>\n
The proposal also includes more than $5 million in cuts to some social service contracts. Asked about those concerns, Velasquez said the city is working to address the shortfall, including using last year\u2019s sales tax revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, so I understand those concerns. I mean to me also, the budget is too high over there, but we have been working, as I said, we are restoring 4.7 million. In fact, I think we are covering any chasm that we had before,\u201d Velasquez said.<\/p>\n
City officials said Austinites can still weigh in on the budget when council meets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 With the Austin City Council expected to begin adopting the city\u2019s proposed $6.6 billion budget…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-403256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}