{"id":75057,"date":"2025-12-03T23:42:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/75057\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T23:42:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:42:11","slug":"austin-city-council-trying-to-reform-spending-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/75057\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin City Council trying to reform spending policies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"City City of Austin spending review<\/a> <\/p>\n

Austin City Council is trying to reform its own spending after passing a resolution in November. This comes after a failed tax rate election and criticism of how the city is spending money.<\/p>\n

AUSTIN, Texas – Austin City Council is trying to reform its own spending after passing a resolution in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This comes after a failed tax rate election and criticism of how the city is spending money.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Criticism of city spending <\/p>\n

What they’re saying:<\/p>\n

One example of criticism is Council Member Vanessa Fuentes leading a delegation of 27 Austinites on a cultural exchange trip to Japan through the organization Austin Sister Cities<\/a>. That happened when Austinites were asked to vote on a property tax increase, or Prop Q, last month.<\/p>\n

That drew comments like “I do question the wisdom of posting this while voters are considering Prop Q.”<\/p>\n

Another instance is Council Member Ryan Alter donating $100,000 from his office budget for parks. That drew comments like, “I will feel even better now when I vote no on Prop Q.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dig deeper:<\/p>\n

At an Audit and Finance Committee meeting<\/a> Wednesday, council members looked at how other Texas cities do their expensing and found other places have more uniform policies, while Austin’s is a bit more scattered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There’s not really a single policy that applies to us, but that’s part of what we’re attempting to do is to compile that to create greater clarity,” Mayor Kirk Watson said in the meeting.<\/p>\n

One of the areas they want to work on is travel and reimbursements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The reason we made that part of the [presentation] slide is because it has received some attention,” Watson said.<\/p>\n

Right now, travel has to have a clear public purpose and fall within a per diem limit. There has to be documentation.<\/p>\n

“Some of the things we’re looking at are how we can provide clarity to what is a ‘public purpose,'” Watson said.<\/p>\n

\"PREVIOUS <\/p>\n

Council Member Krista Laine suggested looking at inventory management and having more specifics on using funds for food and refreshments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Travel has come up a lot, and it is important to give more clarity to public purpose,” Laine said.<\/p>\n

Council Member Chito Vela suggested having a council liaison to look at reimbursements.<\/p>\n

“I think that would be helpful, because right now it’s really our office and essentially finance staff,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"PREVIOUS <\/p>\n

He doesn’t want to eliminate expenses like town hall food or translation services because it helps with community outreach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I just want to make sure we don’t sacrifice the quality of events, because that makes a difference and definitely brings people out,” Vela said.<\/p>\n

Council Member Vanessa Fuentes proposed making monthly expense reports more accessible to the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Council Member Marc Duchen flagged looking at how council office budgets roll over at the end of the year, especially if a council seat is empty for a while or if a council member was recently elected.<\/p>\n

“How do we appropriately motivate this and make sure someone doesn’t get penalized for saving money or someone doesn’t get penalized for being new,” Watson said.<\/p>\n

What’s next:<\/p>\n

After Council gives their feedback, they\u00a0hope to have a proposal by mid-January and put the policy into effect at the end of January.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city has hired a consulting firm to look at where they could save money on things like shared technology services across departments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There’s also a petition from the group Save Austin Now that calls for an independent audit and routine budget reviews.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin’s Angela Shen<\/p>\n

Austin City Council<\/a>Politics<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City of Austin spending review Austin City Council is trying to reform its own spending after passing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,1501,134,133,223,1827,287],"class_list":{"0":"post-75057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-city-council","10":"tag-austin-headlines","11":"tag-austin-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-organization","14":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75057","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=75057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}