Story by Paul Best
Former Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk warned the mayor and city council days before his termination earlier this month that trying to negotiate a one-year contract with police instead of a longer four-year contract would damage “recruiting and retention efforts” at the department, which is already stretched thin.
Cronk had been negotiating the longer contract with the Austin Police Association for the past year before he was fired last week due to his lackluster response to winter storm power outages.
The Austin City Council then voted 9-2 to ditch the long term contract, aiming instead for a new one-year deal. That decision elicited criticism from the police union, which said it would not negotiate a short term contract.
Another wrench was thrown in negotiations over the weekend when car clubs took over intersections throughout downtown Austin, drifting in the middle of the street and setting off fireworks as crowds looked on at the chaos.
One officer was injured in the mayhem and several police cars were damaged, with the police union blaming it on Austin policymakers who have “failed to make the right decisions & continue to defund, destroy, & demoralize public safety.” Several onlookers were reportedly set on fire during the mayhem.
Mayor Kirk Watson accused the police union of making “false comments” that “wrongly conflate this illegal incident with important community conversations about safety and oversight.”
He also said the city council will vote this week on an ordinance to ensure that officers’ wages and benefits are paid once the current contract expires on March 31.
“This ordinance will also establish the authority of the Office of the Police Oversight as an investigator as permitted by state law,” Watson said Monday. “This option will allow for investigations of anonymous complaints by citizens and police officers.”
The contracts that the city negotiates with the union allow for police oversight, but Cronk warned in the memo on Feb. 6 that the city council cannot simply pass an ordinance on this issue.
“The City and our community stakeholders have worked to create a strong civilian oversight program by negotiating with the Austin Police Association for significant changes to state laws that impede effective civilian oversight while still protecting the fundamental rights of our police officers,” Cronk wrote. “Council cannot simply pass an ordinance that contradicts state law, and we do not believe we can get Association agreement absent the stability of a long term contract.”
Austin City Council Member Ryan Alter (District 5), who is a co-sponsor of the ordinance, said that some oversight policies negotiated under the four-year contract cannot be enacted, but city officials still “retain certain powers under state and local law to implement oversight.”
“I believe it is important to create as much stability as possible for police officers,” Alter told Fox News Digital on Tuesday. “They are an important part of our community and it is my goal with this ordinance to demonstrate that we value their service and ease any concerns they might have as it relates to future pay and benefits as we potentially fall out of contract.”
Mayor Watson’s office did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
The stated goals of the four-year contract were to strengthen the civilian oversight program and “address APD’s very significant staffing needs for retaining current officers and recruiting high quality new officers.”
Austin Police Chief Joe Chacon “expressed deep concern” to Cronk about a one-year contract’s impact on staffing, telling the former city manager that the “stability of a long-term contract is very important to achieving his recruitment and retention goals,” according to the memo.
The four-year contract that city council turned down called for hiring 400 additional officers by the end of 2025 and giving police a 14% raise over the course of the deal.
APD has been understaffed for years, with the department taking a hit in 2020 when the city council voted to cut their budget by about a third. Funding was restored the next year to comply with state law, but by then the damages was done. Multiple cadet classes had already been canceled and officers left the force in droves, leading to disbanding or reducing specialized units and forcing some officers to return to street patrol to make up for shift gaps.
A co-host of the street takeovers on Saturday night appeared to mock the police department on Tuesday, telling Fox 7 Austin that they would be back because “the cops can’t catch us.”
“You have all these resources and you’re telling me you only caught two people. Now that’s what the community should be upset about,” the co-host told the local news outlet. “They should be upset that they’re wasting time, wasting valuable money and resources that could be allocated elsewhere.”