Council Creates New Emergency Communications Office as Part of $6.6 Billion Budget

Budget season is officially done. Austin’s City Council finalized the FY 2026-27 budget Wednesday, Aug. 12, rescuing funding for social services, continuing the investments addressing homelessness, providing overtime money for firefighters and EMS technicians, and including a historic win for social justice advocates – funding to create an Office of Joint Emergency Communications that will work to centralize the city’s 911 call-taking service, with the goal of eventually making it independent from the police department.  

According to city estimates, the new $6.6 billion budget will raise property taxes on the owners of median-value homes by a little less than $10 a month. It will also increase the amount that the average ratepayer spends on electricity, water, trash, and related services by about $14 a month. 

The budget avoids major cuts to social services by using $4.7 million of property tax revenue that city staff unexpectedly discovered last month. It provides $13.8 million for housing vouchers and wrap-around services for people at risk of homelessness. It provides $32 million so the city can continue building sidewalks, bike lanes, and trails. And it includes $1.4 million to create the Office of Joint Emergency Communications, which is envisioned as the first step in a process to create a new city department in charge of 911 calls that will be independent of APD. 

Longtime activist Kathy Mitchell told us that she and her colleagues first began talking about decoupling the 911 response system from APD in 2015. Those discussions intensified in the summer of 2020, weeks after the police killings of George Floyd and Mike Ramos, when the Austin Justice Coalition released a study showing that only about one-fifth of calls to 911 over the previous 18 months had been related to a crime. In 2021, the city’s Reimagining Public Safety Task Force recommended decoupling the city’s Emergency Communications Department from APD. Five years later, Council has begun that process.  

“Having an independent, overarching communication system, I think will allow staff to work towards the goal of matching the responder in an emergency situation to the need, and prioritizing that,” Mitchell said. “There’s a long way to go to get there. We still know there’s a hiring process and people need to come into it with a vision. But I would expect that we will find good people with broad experience.”

The budget was approved on a 9-2 vote shortly after 7pm on Wednesday evening. Mayor Kirk Watson and Council Member Marc Duchen voted no, emphasizing that the budget will worsen the city’s affordability crisis. “It just strikes me as business as usual,” Duchen said of this year’s budget process. “It feels very surreal.” Watson singled out the approval of the Office of Joint Emergency Communications as a major reason for his vote. “I don’t want it to be part of the budget,” he flatly stated. 

Both city leaders had opposed the creation of the new office in a debate earlier in the day. That debate began with CM Mike Siegel, joined by co-sponsors Krista Laine, Ryan Alter, and José Velásquez, proposing an amendment to the budget to create the office, saying it was needed to improve response times by first responders in a city that spans multiple counties and criminal jurisdictions. Duchen immediately challenged the idea, asking representatives of the city’s police, fire, and EMS departments to offer their opinions on the necessity of revamping the city’s 911 call system. A strong pushback on the proposal began. 

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis told Council that she had recently learned from a consultant company called Mission Critical Partners, which the city hired to evaluate its existing communications system, that the current 911 center is in the top 0.5% of call centers in the country in terms of response times. She said response times are continuing to improve and asked, “What problems are we trying to fix?” Representatives from EMS and Fire expressed concern about making changes to the 911 system, stating that the proposal under discussion had “unknowns.” 

Assistant City Manager Ramón Batista also spoke, saying he believed the Council’s proposal would not create a “real” joint emergency communications center because its director would not oversee the EMS and Fire departments. He added that he was worried the new center could decrease efficiency. “Adding another bureaucracy into the system will add another layer of complexity in the process,” he said. 

Duchen next turned to City Manager T.C. Broadnax, asking him to elaborate on a memo the manager had released that morning in which he recommended against creating an independent emergency communications center. The memo referred to a preliminary assessment of the city’s current call center by Mission Critical Partners and the company’s evaluation of three proposals – maintaining the current system with “enhancements”; maintaining it with no enhancements; and creating an independent emergency communications center. In his memo, Broadnax said the recommendation from the consultants, from city staff, and from himself was to go with the first proposal – to keep the current system but enhance it. Duchen said he agreed. 

Siegel spoke next, defending the proposal and emphasizing that it had been changed over the preceding day to address some of Broadnax’s concerns. He said there would be room to make additional accommodations if Council passed it. Laine took up the defense, acknowledging that data seems to show that call response is improving but that a new Office of Joint Emergency Communications would “refocus us on improving where our people in this city have been left behind, where families have been traumatized, where response time has cost lives.” 

Laine said the need for some of the changes recommended in the Mission Critical Partners preliminary assessment has been understood for years. She asked the chiefs why those changes have never been implemented. Chief Davis replied that the consultant’s preliminary assessment had only been reviewed by APD within the last week, but agreed that everything at the department should be about continuous improvement. 

Laine next stated that she had no faith that the response times cited in the Mission Critical Partners assessment and touted by Davis were accurate. She said that in her district, some calls to 911 must first be routed to APD, causing a delay in response that isn’t reflected in the data. She said she had heard of multiple examples of long response times for people in her Northwest Austin district who called 911 asking for help and that she has repeatedly brought these stories to her Council colleagues in private meetings. 

“I am concerned because these private meetings haven’t moved us towards change, which is why I brought it into the public,” Laine said, her voice tightening. “We need change. We need to make a commitment as a Council to continue on the path to excellence in emergency communications. Have we started? Yes. Is it good enough? No, it is not.” 

She then made an unusual comment: “But I will tell you something: It does not help me stay calm and focused and project what I think people would like me to project, nor does it help me to have trust in the path that we’re walking down, when there is resistance to making it possible to move forward. And that is how I perceive this.”

Laine did not specify where the perceived resistance was coming from, but Broadnax responded. He stared directly across the dais at Laine and enunciated his words sharply and distinctly, arguing that the chiefs of APD, Fire, and EMS were against the creation of the new emergency communications office and that he shared their concerns. “I have to stand with my three chiefs,” he said. 

Mayor Pro Tem Chito Vela spoke next, expressing a different unease. Vela said that there had been a lot of changes to the joint emergency communications proposal over the last several days and that he would like to spend more time examining and debating the issue before approving the budget. He moved to table the discussion on the proposal until later in the meeting. 

Siegel spoke against the motion to table. Like Laine, he addressed the resistance to a joint emergency communications center, but he made it plain where he believed the opposition was coming from. 

“My team met with the chief financial officer of the city, the assistant city manager for public safety, and I met with the manager directly,” Siegel said. “And I was told pretty clearly that the option that’s now on the table was much more acceptable. So I feel like I’m being told one thing in private and a different thing in public. I’m very disappointed that there’s this effort to portray this very reasonable step forward as something that’s irresponsible or dangerous. … I’m just disappointed about the way staff is kind of advocating – it’s like there’s a 12th Council member advocating against this item.”

The motion to table the discussion was defeated. CMs Vanessa Fuentes, Natasha Harper-Madison, Zo Qadri, Alter, Ellis, and Velásquez commented on the proposal, one after another. Siegel stared down as they spoke, his eyes focused on the desk in front of him, his lips set. Vela spoke again, clarifying his position on the issue. 

“This is a very delicate area,” the mayor pro tem said. “This is the hub of everything that we’re talking about in our 24/7, 365-day operations. I am extremely hesitant to fiddle with anything relating to the joint version of that, particularly when, currently, we’re operating well. I support the goal, but I’m not seeing a real coherent plan or a process. So I’m going to be abstaining on the budget amendment.”

Watson also presented some final thoughts. He said he couldn’t imagine creating the joint emergency call center office without first having reviewed the larger, comprehensive version of Mission Critical Partners’ report on the city’s 911 service, which is expected to be made public in September. He also reiterated that the city manager and chiefs are against the proposal. 

Siegel responded, stating that if Council approved the creation of the Office of Joint Emergency Communications, there would still be time to review the full report from Mission Critical Partners and make modifications before initiating hiring for the new office. Minutes later, Watson called the vote. It passed with six in favor – Alter, Fuentes, Laine, Qadri, Siegel, and Velásquez; two against – Duchen and Watson; and three abstaining – Ellis, Harper-Madison, and Vela.

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