EverGreen Austin Hosted Green Space
& Climate Change Policy Forum
Monday, September 30, 2024 5 PM - 7 PM
Austin Mayoral Race
Candidate Introductions
The following transcripts were created from a recording provided to us
Jeffery Bowen
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the favorite place. I have in Austin, that's Lions, Municipal Golf Course. This is a gem for me in the 35 years that I've lived here. I love this golf course. It is so peaceful. It is just a great place to be. I’d hate to see us lose it, but I'm trying to move on. My name's Jeff Bowen. I’ve been here 35 years, I was stationed at Bertram I got transferred back to Texas where we were from. I'm an Air Force veteran and had my own small business doing small construction projects. I did work in the big building world for a while until I got fed up and just got out of it. I'm actively involved and Austin neighborhoods Council by Springs up. There has been involved with them for about 10 years and been dealing with numerous issues when it comes to city council and going and speaking for the neighborhoods. My wife is also here tonight. Both our children were raised here. But they can no longer live here because of the cost of Austin. So I have 10 seconds. Thank you very much. Glad to see you guys are here and we'll go play on the putting green after this is over.
Carmen Llamas Pulido
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Hello everyone. Thank you so much to the whole Evergreen committee. Everyone who organized this event and to all of you in the room. Because so many of you, I know, and have gotten to work with over the years to improve and steward the amazing quality of life in Austin, Texas. My name is Carmen Llanas Pulido and I was born and raised here in Austin Texas. I was born just east of West Lynn Clarksville, just west of downtown and I grew up on both sides of I-35. I've spent the past 20 years organizing with communities all over Austin, north south east and west Central and outer on all kinds of quality of life issues, including access to Green spaced physical activity opportunities, to a healthy built-in environment, and a healthy natural environment. Outdoor Learning for early childhood to aging in place and having access to walkable green spaces. I am the strongest candidate to bring new accountable community driven leadership to our city. For my track record, for leveraging, public, and private money for Green Space. My ability to bring diverse communities together, and my vision for leveraging money with an equity lens, so that we get the best benefit everywhere. Thank you!
Kathie Tovo
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Thanks so much for being here. Thank you Evergreens for hosting this. My name is Kathie Tovo, I'm running because I believe we need, for many reasons, but, one of them is, chief among them, that we need a mayor who's prepared to be a climate champion. And that's exactly what I was as your council member for three terms, I served three terms, four years as mayor pro tem as well. And in that time, I had the opportunity to initiate some of the things you talked about tonight, like water forward. That was an idea that came forward from the community. I set up the task force that actually wrote the plan and then did the resolution that passed it. And we need to implement that with urgency. Resilience hubs was one of my initiatives, the food plan that is being considered on 10/10. So I also supported all the great plans that came through in that time and I'm not, I'm not afraid of standing up when we need to against bad development and I only have 10 seconds. So, let me tell you, I did receive the endorsement from the Austin Sierra Club, only mayoral candidate to do. So, Received some other great endorsements too. I know we don't have a closing, so let me just say we're running an incredible campaign. I invite you to check me out or to have a conversation. And thank you so much for your time tonight.
Alexis Garcia (Kirk Watson's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Thank you so much. Hi everybody. My name is Alexis Garcia. I'm super excited to be here today. I wish I could say this ain’t my first rodeo, but this is actually the first forum, I've been put up to do this campaign season. So like I said, I'm Alexis Garcia, I'm a policy advisor for mayor Watson, um, and I oversee climate issues. I'm super excited to talk about the mayor today and the things he's been able to accomplish in 20 months of being in office. Um, the way that I love the mayor talks about climate is, it's a holistic approach right? Climate is not just about our green spaces and our trees, but it's about public transportation. It's about protecting our Parks, protecting our tree canopy and also one of the items that he was very passionate about was our awesome energy generation plan, he was leader in pumping the brakes on that and ensuring that we figure out a way to close Fayette. That's incredibly important as the city of Austin should not benefit from fossil fuels, like some other people have. Anyways I’m excited to be here. Excited to talk about climate and mayor Watson is incredibly excited to do this thing for the next four years.
Question 1
Do you support proposing a climate bond in 2025 or 2026?
​What provisions would you like to see in the bond package
and would this bond funding be used to execute the city's existing climate plan?
Carmen Llamas Pulido
Austin Mayoral Candidate
I do support a bond package in 2026. I think that we should use 2025 to get really clear on a lot of things and a lot of areas where there's been a lack of transparency and a lot of division unfortunately. So between our environmental groups and Advocates quite frankly. And I think that there is a lot of tension about how we're investing both public and private dollars in our partnerships and also with the federal government can offer us through the inflation reduction act, and this incredible opportunity to leverage funds, especially with an equity lens through Justice 40. I have been working on that with a variety of Partners, dozens of Partners, including the city of Austin, including the non-profits that have been leveraging, public and private dollars to improve our green space. And I also think we need a lot of accountability associated with we have only issued about half of the debt that we've approved. So, I I think with an adequate task force with transparency and the diverse stakeholders at the table. I think that we can fashion a bond that does fulfill the objectives of our climate Equity plan, which was a really big milestone for the city in terms of planning. But the plan itself is useless if it sits on the shelf and it's really an approach to all of the spending that we're doing. And all of the conversations we have about our general budget, our capital Improvement budget the new community engagement that we're doing around capital Improvements and this huge influx of funding. We have to do it right we have to do it with community at the table. Thank you.
Alexis Garcia (Kirk Watson's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Kathie Tovo
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Um, thanks. So, the question is, whether we would support it in 2025 or 2026, I would support it in 2025, if we're ready. Frankly, I thought the council should have had a conversation about it this year. And, you know, the mayor pumped, the brakes on the generation plan. He also pumped the big brakes on the conversation, about the bond, and did so on the message board, which is a online platform over the 4th of July weekend. No conversation with colleagues, no conversation, with, with the public. That's not the kind of open and transparent government I want to see and that's not the kind of open and transparent government that I think you deserve. And so, you know, one of the many opportunities that we're going to miss out on, is the acquisition of land. So, now while the prices are a little lower, the city has no capacity by the end of the year, all of its available funds will have been spent and there was not even a conversation about whether or not to move forward this time. Not a full one anyway. So as, as your mayor, it would certainly be my commitment to make sure that these kinds of conversations, get a full conversation, get a full opportunity of dialogue that includes importantly, includes and centers the community.
Jeffery Clemmons (Doug Greco's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
All right, 25 or 26. That is the question. Uh, but I think the question really should be answered by our bond advisory at a task force, there was a reason why we have process for bonds. We are a city that values community engagement, that values having these conversations publicly and regularly. So having a bond advisory task force was incredibly important for this. The council has expressed the need for funding support our climate, so I would be shocked if we didn't have any funding, uh, for climate in the bond, uh, but doing something without Community engagement and doing something incredibly quickly is so unlike Austin and it's something that the mayor really had to stand up for and figure out how we can create a process that will ensure that we are addressing our climate issues, but as well as a lot of other issues we have as a city, we're a growing city and we need to address some of these items. Thanks.
All right, um hopefully you won't get confused. My name is Jeffrey Clemmons. Um, I'm our campaign coordinator. I'm obviously not Doug. So I'm going to be speaking, you know, on behalf of the candidate. But definitely check out our website if you want full details on any of these things. First and foremost also appreciate y'all bringing this together. I know that you're a new group. So excited to see you all working here in Austin. Um, Doug absolutely does support a climate Bond as soon as possible. The climate crisis is here. We're seeing what's happening in other states. We're seeing what's happening here in Texas, right? We've seen wildfires, we've seen floods in Houston, we're facing drought here in the city of Austin. And so we got to get money for these climate Investments now. Or else we're not going to be able to afford to be resilient in the future and so he wants to see that get done as soon as possible. So whether that's 25 or 26, As soon as we possibly can but more importantly is obviously to work with the council. So in the last couple panels, we heard a number of amazing ideas from so many different candidates. And so I think that Doug as mayor wants the opportunity to be able to work with those council members on what is going to be the most effective bond package that we can have. It possibly needs to include not only things for like land acquisition but also for dense housing. So our housing affordability crisis, is also a climate issue that we need to deal with.
Jeffery Bowen
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Okay, I'm the other Jeffrey. So today or actually, tomorrow. I I actually looked this up, because I needed to be, I had to refresh my memory, because of the resolution. This resolution that they put out was — this bond is supposed to cover: housing, transportation facilities for animal shelters, libraries, parks, land acquisition, drainage flood mitigation, and other public asset improvements. So I said, okay I can see where there's some environmental stuff in parks and land acquisition. One of the things that we haven't heard about is that the council members of the mayor get to pick two members to be part of this bond acquisition to put this all together. They are engineers, a finance person, and somebody that does Land Development, 22 people, there's nowhere in here that the public is going to have anybody. Being part of this whole process. We get four meetings, four minimal meetings for the public to speak on. And I've already seen what in the 35 years I've lived here, how bonds go in this town. I can't commit to a bond that I don't even know what's in it at this point in time. So I don't know how anybody else can.
Question 2
Many Austinites support addressing affordability with increased density,
but wonder if a denser city means a less green city?
How would you as an elected official advocate for and implement policy to prioritize green space planning to keep pace with development?
Kathie Tovo
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Yeah, thanks for the question. So I can tell you how I did it as council member and how I'll do it as a mayor, I would stop putting them in conflict for one thing. And as a council member, I've heard them always pitted against one another and that is a shift in how we talk about parkland and how we talk about environmental elements. If you look at the home conversation, you know, there was very little consideration for some of the environmental impacts and so this gets down to question four. So I'll address it later then, but we do need to bring back a real environmental conscience. Um, we also need to look really carefully at how we use our parkland. If you watch Council over the last year, one of the really egregious actions with regard to Parkland was the sale of the Oracle was the sale of Parkland. One of our most valuable tracks of land within the city's portfolio to Oracle, it was wildly undervalued. Thank you council member Alter for the questions that you asked that revealed that in the council meeting. We sold it and um wildly undervalued. What we got in return, wasn't what the voters had supported and we sold it rather than leased it. We should never be selling our really valuable tracks. We should be leasing them. So those are um just a couple things that you need to address.
Jeffery Clemmons (Doug Greco's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Also certainly agree density and our environment don't need to be in conflict with one another. When we are building denser, we're not taking up, you know, more space from our parklands, we're not taking it up from the green space that we do have. It enable us to continue to use that space for the things that we care about and that we value. And so we certainly want to see that um, to that end, the Land Development code can continue to be a tool that we can use by building these things into it. So you know, developers are frequently, paying fees and lose. They're doing things like dedicated park land, let's just go ahead and have them build it. I know that we lost some of those tools in the last legislative session, but we can still advocate for form-based development. That's going to compel them to build some of these features into the housing and make that a non-negotiable. And so it becomes a way of doing business at Austin as opposed to one of the things that we used to negotiate. And so there's going to be new housing in Austin. It needs to be up to environmental standards. It needs to include these green areas, not just the open spaces, but if we're going to do things like, you know, shrink the sidewalk. How where else, can we have green space within the building or on the building? Even I'm again to make sure that we're preserving our current spacing on the parts of Austin. Thank you.
Alexis Garcia (Kirk Watson's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Um, all right. I agree with council member. We should not be pitting density against an environmentally friendly, or climate initiatives, right? Density, I think is not our enemy or it is not something bad. It is an incredibly useful tool when addressing climate. Specifically, when we promote density we prevent urban sprawl which prevents building on some of our really sensitive areas. But again, Kathy, you are absolutely correct. Density needs to be managed. Right? And it's not something that we can just let happen. So the council, so mayor Watson did a lot of surveys and work on our home and our other land use initiatives to ensure that we are getting updates. We are figuring out how much impervious cover we are putting on the ground. Uh, we're figuring how many units are coming. What is the value and the benefit of this? And we are going to be expecting some additional data on that. So, anyways, I, we should be promoting density as a way to, address climate and to use it as a tool, not the end-all.
Jeffery Bowen
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Well, I'd like to say thank you Allison halter for voting against home. In regard to that, I spoke against home because we talk about denser. If we go denser we're going to be less green. Let's be real about this. The mayor actually voted for home. So how can we be in the situation that says, we are going to be able to save our green spaces? I was at the legislature when they talked when the developers came in and lobbied the same developers that are building here in Austin and lobbying for more and more to build to get out of paying for the park, if we lose those issues. So we need to be able to come up with a plan to where we can save some of our green space. How we do it, we just need a collaborated effort. Because it's not working because they're not listening to us. Bottom line, we got home one, we got home two, we're going to be losing precious land with those massive redevelopments. Thank You.
Carmen Llamas Pulido
Austin Mayoral Candidate
The solution is that we do actual planning, with community at the table, we do real modeling of what these code changes might be, real planning, and then you actually write a code to support that. You don't dump code on communities and change names constantly and have a very, very disingenuous conversation about environmental protection and affordability. Because we know we, you know, we can say we shouldn't pit density versus environmental protections but that's exactly what the home initiative did. If you supported it, you supported three additional driveways, not counted toward impervious cover and just allowing people to flood each other and figure it out. If you voted for home, as is, you incentivized the chopping down of trees. You've paid two thousand dollars in a fine to cut down a heritage tree. When you're talking about 250 to 750,000 dollars of additional development potential, it's just a business cost at that point. But there is a way to actually have a cost benefit analysis with honesty at the table and we can find much better planning solutions for density. Thank you.
Question 3
The city of Austin set a goal to provide park space within a quarter of a mile walk for the urban core and a half a mile walk for those outside of the urban core.
In 2023, the city of Austin lost an important tool to acquire parkland with the elimination of parkland dedication fees, estimated at 20 million dollars, annually.
Do you support finding a permanent source of funding for parkland acquisition?
If so, how would you approach finding a permanent source of funding for our parks?
Jeffery Bowen
Austin Mayoral Candidate
I do. I do support trying to find us a permanent source, whether it be through, some type of endowments, whether it be through, some other type of… Well let's even look at this right now. Parks has got 62 million dollars still sitting under a bond. Why? Do we even know? We can't even get the land to pay for the pocket parks. So we need to be really evaluating how that money is actually going and find pieces of land that we can do. We may even be able to take and do some type of a swap for impervious cover for small piece that you can't build on, to make a pocket park in a neighborhood. How do we fund it? That's going to be the 64,000 dollar question, because are we all tapped out? I know. I am. I know some of the people that I, that I deal with all the time, they're leaving because they can't afford to stay here anymore. But we've got to be creative. Grants. Finding other part of park funds somewhere through the feds, whatever the case is that public, private partnership. May also be another benefit of this, but we need to find something. And everybody needs to be part of that action.
Kathie Tovo
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Coming up with a permanent funding source, um, and I think that's important too because, you know, the council passed an item to consider a bond in 2026. But if you know much about city council, you can't tie the hands of future councils. So that is a wish. It's a hope, it's not really a plan. And I think it'd be great if we could find a funding source that's not bonds for the reasons that that some others up here have suggested. Some ideas that I have. Number one, we should be making sure the council I served on looked at user fees for camps and parkland and other kinds of things and increased it for out-of-state users who don't pay those taxes. And I think it's probably time to recalibrate that. I also think that we should look at leveraging partnerships, that was something I served on the, on the community task force that actually produced this recommendation of the families and children task force. And one of the ideas we had was to leverage partnerships including with schools. And so that is something that I followed up with the urban parts task force. As a way to get parkland in areas of town where we don't currently own land. And then a couple funding sources that I would look to, the parking management benefits district, which has some flexibility, it would take a mayor with a persistent kind of voice, which I have had in other funding decisions to really make a case for it, but I think it's eligible. The other funding source I would look at is the hotel occupancy tax marketing, and promotions budget, because many of our parks do serve visitors, and so that makes them a eligible expense as well.
Carmen Llamas Pulido
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Okay, so uh, I, I also agree with acquiring a permanent identifying or permanent funding source and being very creative about how we do it. One thing that I think we need to look at is the action. Not abdicating the power we do have over land use, to require open space and park space where we can get it, and to really look at the levels of impervious covered and just how we actually assess, requiring land, both on-site and in general. And I would say an example of this is when we look at a planned unit developments and large tracts of development. There has been a move recently to move toward planned development, areas, or PDA and often they're called PUD light which is sort of the charming thing that gets people's attention when they've completely zoned out altogether. But the long and short of it is that we can't guarantee the same kinds of public of community benefits. When we use PDA versus a PUD and it's changes like that. It's a lens like that as we negotiate, the increased density we need to be looking at all the funding sources available to us.
Alexis Garcia (Kirk Watson's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Absolutely, so we did lose a tool that was necessary in our parkland system, right? Um, and it's important that we can all recognize that the state is not always our friend. I think I can say that comfortably in this room. And it's important to have someone like Kirk Watson who has experience at the state and working with state legislators on these kinds of issues that we're facing. But more importantly we do need to figure out a reliable and sustainable source of funding for our parks. We are growing as a city, which means that our needs are growing as a city. Um, and it's important that we're able to provide parks, but I also want to mention, it's not just about providing parks, it's about providing good parks. We're not going to be a city that unfortunately puts out a park and then all of a sudden your kids and dogs can't walk on it because there's stickers everywhere that's not the kind of city we want to be. So I want to say that it's important that we find a reliable source of funding for not only providing parks, but also maintaining ours.
Jeffery Clemmons (Doug Greco's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
So Doug Certainly supports. Permanent park funding, trying to find sustainable sources of funding different, things are going to require different solutions. There may be some things that need to be in a bond election. There may be some things that have to go through a tax election, that we look at how we can have sustainable sources of funding to make sure, but he also certainly agrees with what some of the candidates have said, we have a lot of instant bond money right now. Uh that we need to go ahead and disperse, that 64 million dollars that’s sitting in bond that Jeff brought up needs to get spent right now so that way we can spend it on things like benches, trash cans and public restrooms. So that people can actually enjoy our public spaces and also turn the entirety of our community into a home space that everyone can really feel comfortable in. It is accessible too. And also something that was proposed in um on Council was also for grants office that could help manage those public-private partnerships and bring in some more of those Federal dollars and bring in and locate additional kinds of funding for us to maintain our parklands. And so um, Doug will certainly be in support of that, but the main thing will be to have a community oriented approach that's going to bring many different stakeholders to the table, and look at how we can best support all of our lands.
Question 4
The city of Austin established a well respected environmental department, leading our green vision of the 70s and 80s. This department has been dismantled leaving a significant void in responsibility, accountability and leadership internally at the city.
How do we bring Green Vision and environmental culture
back to the city of Austin?
Jeffery Clemmons (Doug Greco's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Well I think that we obviously first and foremost have to elect a mayor who shares the values at all. As I'm sure we all love our green spaces. We all love our native plants. We want to make sure that we support these things through Council. And so Doug has been a supporter in another area of potentially setting up an Office of Education in City Hall. To get city council and City Hall, involved in some of our education discussions. And so if it means bringing back that environmental office from the 1970s and 80s, and maybe that's what we need to look at. But a mayor who shares our values and shares our vision is going to be able to steal and shape that conversation in a positive direction and provides provide, some of that cohesive leadership that we need, uh, to be able to get back to some of those values that we all share. And again, uh, that can also come back to supporting land development code changes that are environmentally forward.
Carmen Llamas Pulido
Austin Mayoral Candidate
I do think that there are a number of resources and efforts, and champions across our city, who are carrying a lot of this good information. Once upon a time, there was a wildlife Austin City staffer. And as a young organizer, I was trained on wildlife habitats by the National Wildlife Federation program, right? Um, it was great. Uh, but in, but having these really critical departments that look more, broadly beyond individual participation and really community-wide and citywide in our regulations. It's really important to do our work across the city's infrastructure and basic services well. I think the way that we address this is we stop the assault on regulation and community engagement in our city right now. We stop the assault on cross-departmental and equity centered governance. It's not just environmental department. It's not just sustainability. Our resilience office is gone. The equity office has been tucked into small minority business, in two years in the stroke of a pen 5, 10, 40 years of work undone. But it doesn't have to be that way. We could bring staff and community back in and address these issues with a much more holistic lens.
Jeffery Bowen
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Well, if somebody in two thousand one, I decided to quit working for the big guys, big developers and go out on my own. So in that, in that time, I started having to pull my own permits and do a lot of that whole thing. One of the things that I did come across was that. Yes they have the environmental section. Got split up. But it actually from from my perspective I'd actually think it came out to the good side because now we have a separate tree department that deals with nothing but trees. And how many of you know that they teach a lunchtime course on trees and how to protect them? and do that they do that once a month. There's also another division that does nothing but the environmental inspections, there's one for residential, there's one for commercial, they also once a month, will do free classes for all of us taxpayers to understand what they do and how to report those things. So, those are issues that are very important that we need to be understanding. That those resources are out there for us and they give you the, they give you the resource of saying. If you see this, you can call us and we'll get on that. So I think the fact that when it was all together they were really kind of convoluted now they're split and they've got their own functions that they do not have to deal with one big department. So that's been my that's been my story with them and I've been very pleased with all the interaction I've had with them, you know, my permits and taking their classes.
Kathie Tovo
Austin Mayoral Candidate
So there used to be a parks and open space council committee and I think it's probably time to bring something like that back. I've been off Council for about a year and I've watched from the sidelines as several of the environmental initiatives I started, did not move forward or at least are not moving forward, in any kind of quick way, and that ranges from a resolution to reduce the use of single-use plastics among the restaurant industry, which the restaurant industry professionals, I was talking to were pretty enthused about. It includes some ordinance changes that haven’t come forward yet to increase our protections on bodies of water, in East Austin and it includes a meaningful education around resilience hub toolkits, which have now been created. But again there's no education to encourage communities and neighborhoods to actually use them. So I think a council committee that is really monitoring our work on environmental issues. Monitoring our work on climate change is necessary. Or could be necessary. And I also think we need a mayor who wants to engage in these conversations and, you know, as I look around some of you may have been expecting the incumbent to be here, and I want to say, you know, this isn’t the First Community Forum, he's not come to, he's actually not been to 14 of the 18 Community forums that we've had on this campaign. Sent proxies to be fair, send proxies to, I think four of them. But community forums, from Zilker to Brentwood, and Crestview, and lots of neighborhoods in between and some Community organizations. He hasn't come to have those conversations. If I'm elected, you're mayor, you can bet. I'm going to be engaged in those conversations with community because that’s what I did as a council member.
Alexis Garcia (Kirk Watson's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Well, I'd like to think I'm enough for y'all but I totally understand. So I get it, I get it, I get it. Um, well I I want to make sure that when I'm bringing back a green vision, I want to push back against that, we have a green vision. In Austin, people move here for the green vision, right? People go on the trails. Uh, we have such a good sustainability culture, but what is most important is how um, how this green Vision has been in all of our departments and you're right. It may not be something you see outwardly. But as my day-to-day work, I can tell you every single department thinks about our climate, you have watershed, you have DSD who has our tree ordinances and the wonderful things that Jeffrey has highlighted. You have Austin energy really reconsidering our generation plan to make sure that we're talking about climate the right way. And in addition, I know that the city can create these big fluffy plans and not always focus on implementation. Well I can tell you mayor Watson has implemented one of the of biggest things in water, for it, which is purple pipe. So climate, and the thoughts on our environment is pervasive and it goes in all of our departments. I also want to highlight the good work of the office sustainability. They have done some amazing things. So I want to make sure that there are people who are working on this in all departments.
Question 5
Most Austinites would be shocked to learn that the Trust for Public Land's Park score ranks Austin's Park system, 44th out of the top 100 most populous cities.
Thought leaders attribute this embarrassing ranking to a departure from Austin's green cultural roots. What policies will you champion and what actions will you take to put Austin on a pathway of ranking in the top five cities?
Alexis Garcia (Kirk Watson's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
So I thought this was a really interesting question, because when you hear that number, it's incredibly shocking, right? You're like, oh man, we're not going where we're supposed to be well. So I went and looked up at the um, at the score and how they score and guess why we have such a low number. It is equity the way that we talk about parks and our equity. That's where we're lacking. We really need to be working on it as a council. And something that mayor Watson has truly committed to is talking about how we look at our West versus East, how we look at historically disadvantaged communities, if they have parks that are accessible and walkable, if they have parks, they don't have stickers in it where they can walk and play and use. And so that's one of the most important parts of that score. And also guess what our investment, we have the highest ranking part on investment. We spend about 200 dollars per person per year on investment. So our issue is not necessarily investment but it's about equity and we need to focus on that and a variety of other things when we talk about parks.
Jeffery Clemmons (Doug Greco's Proxy)
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Well, as a city, we should certainly be a little embarrassed that we're 44 instead of number one, because, so I’m from Dallas. And so, our biggest park is the one that's over the freeway. So we'll have one of those soon. But I love Zilker, love, uh, Walnut Creek Park up north. Um and I also personally used to work for Congressman Dogget to know that he was doing important work to connect all of our parks. And I think that gets to a very important issue that Doug really cares about, which is that equity piece, but it means accessibility, right? So, those trails that are getting built all around Austin. Or the one that just got built from Austin All the way to Manor. It's about connecting people to the places that we're building these Park lands that we have. Um, and so we absolutely need to do that and work with um, work to make our Parks, cool, right? Um, so we all love Zilker Park. Outsiders love Zilker Park because they come here for ACL. And so we need to find ways that we can connect our Parks to different opportunities, different uses. So whether it's the entertainment, or whether it is parks, dedicated again for, for these specific purposes and really put money into doing that. Um, but the main thing there is going to be accessibility and making sure that we're putting money into making sure it's easy for people to get these parks. The last thing I'll mention, um, if I have the time is that, you know, Rory Guerrero Park is right next to an apartment complex and you can go right from that apartment complex into the park. We need to be seeing that all across the city of Austin on the east side, the West Side, North Side and South Austin. So so Put money into that.
Jeffery Bowen
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Well I actually have the report, I printed it out today, but uh if we spend 198 dollars, for the parks per then, why are we in such bad shape with our parks? How come we can't maintain our parks? That's one of the questions because even as Kathie talked about, looking for anybody that even remembers the Oracle deal, where's it at? We traded a piece of property that was our maintenance yard to Oracle for a piece of property that's got a racetrack on it that we don't even know how much it's going to cost us to clean it up because of all of the debris, all of the roofing shingles, all of the other environmental hazards out there, not only that how much is going to cost us to build a new maintenance yard? What is the devil is in the details that we as their taxpayers, the owners of those parks, don't know. And I want to see and I want to bring transparency to this entire proposition. This is ridiculous, the way this happens to go. Our park right now is going to be taken up for almost three months. And we're not gonna be able to use it unless you go to the concert.
Carmen Llamas Pulido
Austin Mayoral Candidate
I think we need to learn from our history so that we don't take it for granted. And so that we can adapt much better for our future. We have to reinvent Austin for the future that we're in now. The existing climate shocks and stressors, a huge population, worse income inequality, more extreme severe weather, all of those things are impacting us. There's going to be massive migration from the coastal areas inland, we have to think about all these things in the future forward way. But our past actually has a lot of keys for history. Our track records of improving sites of maintaining them of partnering. And I agree that Equity is key but I would urge you to look at who have been the equity champions in our city, who got us to look at park funding more equitably and getting more who are looking at, after our Parks and green spaces? Who are they supporting in this race for mayor? They may have reusable water bottles on the table. I'm just saying, but really, we need to really listen to our community and our, our experts so that we can solve these issues because we have a lot to learn from in our history.
Kathie Tovo
Austin Mayoral Candidate
Yeah, I think we need to use, you know, all the tools we have in our toolbox. We do still have Parkland dedication which has been decimated, but we still have it. Need to protect what is what is remaining of it. We absolutely need to use our Partnerships and really lean on those. And we need to be careful about how we handle our own real estate. I mentioned Oracle. Um, you mentioned Jeffrey, um transparency. There was a fair amount of transparency about the deal and we did really poorly as I mentioned earlier and we know how much that facility that new unit is going to cost and it's going to cost a lot more than the developer paid for it. So we had transparency but they had a really high powered lobbyist and that's how that deal went through. Um, we need to make sure that, you know, that we're really using our real estate well. We do have these tracks of land throughout the city of Austin, but we need a real estate process that is always evaluating them to get benefit for the community. One of the, one of the things that was on our consent agenda one day was the sale of attractive land that I was able to pull from pull from the agenda and it is now instead of being sold to a developer, it is now home to Urban Roots. So, you know, if we had a real estate process and we passed some resolutions before I left about handling, our real estate more carefully, really leveraging it for value, leveraging it for benefits for affordable housing for parkland, but we need to follow through on it. We need the political will to follow through on this.