City Council Work Session
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You're watching a meeting of the Austin City Council with Mayor Kirk Watson, Mayor Pro Tem Cheeto Vela, Council Members Natasha Harper-Madison, Vanessa Fuentes, Jose Velasquez, Ryan Alter, Krista Lane, Mike Siegel, Page Ellis. So country. City attorney Deborah Thomas city clerk Erica Brady and city manager TC brought next.
Good morning, everybody. It's 9 o'clock on May 26, 2026, and I will call to order this City Council work session. We have a quorum of the City Council present, and we are meeting in the City Council chambers located in City Hall at 301 West 2nd Street in Austin, Texas. This is a work session, and what I thought we would do is we will just go straight through the items in the order that they are on the agenda. So we will first take up the... Preselected items and talk about the I-35 cap and stitch program. Then we'll go to briefings. We have two briefings today. One is consideration and development of the 2027 state and federal legislative priorities. And the second one is looking at community engagement and cost assessment for renaming Cesar Chavez Street in Austin, Texas.
So unless there's questions or objections, we'll just go straight into the pre-selected agenda item. Members, I pulled this item because we have it on the agenda for Thursday, and it's an item that I brought forward Really because as we get right down to the lick log or whatever is the phrase somebody wants to use about having to start spending money, some additional money with regard to deadlines that we have on the cap and stitch program, there were really two goals. One is based upon what I'd been hearing from the community and frankly based upon how well this council works together and this item had quite a bit of division on it, I wanted to look to see if I could lay out something that would get us to a good result that might be different than what we originally had talked about and frankly part of the
impetus for that was that there's been some change since over a year ago when we made those decisions, including the TRE election and other things, and I thought we ought to take a moment to look at that. So what I would like to do is I've got a couple of questions. I want to tee this up and ask a couple of questions. I guess the Assistant City Manager Rogers and maybe TxDOT, and then we'll open it up for additional questions if people have other questions.
Thank you, sir. Would you remind us about the upcoming deadlines that we have in order to make decisions related to the Cap and Stitch program?
Thank you, Mayor. Right now, we're at a point where we need to sign an advance funding agreement with TxDOT, and June is the time frame in which we are looking to sign that advance funding agreement.
And tell me what the advance funding agreement does.
Advanced funding agreement is the agreement in which we will pay for the future proofing. So based on the resolution that took place, I believe in 2025, to future proof all the locations, we have to now basically sign the financing agreement that's associated with the future proofing.
Okay. You know, I screwed up, which, by the way, that's the only time you'll hear me say that today. I screwed up and should have had speakers. So if you don't mind, let's stand down and why don't you call the speakers. I apologize, counsel. I'm just moving forward. Yeah, yeah, very excited. Always in the work sessions.
Mayor, we have one remote speaker for item A60. Andrew Clements.
Hello, this is Andrew Clements. I thank you for the opportunity to come before you again today on this issue. It doesn't seem that long ago that the proponents of the caps were before you, and we hammered out that agreement in one day, which was heartening. And I want to come before you and say the same arguments told today. I hope you don't claw back. it's not a small amount of money, and I understand the budget pensions, but the amount that would be necessary to future-proof, so we ensured the ability to build a cap someday, is still worthwhile. And the strongest argument that can be made is that especially the northern cap, which is probably the one that seems to be on the chopping block, is
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Speakers
6 identified
Kirk Watson 17 min
José Vela 13 min
Natasha Harper-Madison 11 min
Marc Duchen 10 min
Paige Ellis 4 min
Mike Siegel 1 min
Officials recognised by voice; public commenters shown as “Speaker N” unless they state their name.