Mayor Steve Adler said the UT student body can swing the vote in favor of the Smart Corridor Plan while speaking at the Student Government general assembly meeting Tuesday.

The plan, a $720 million bond to improve mobility in Austin, will be voted on in November. Adler attended the SG assembly hoping to gather student support for the plan. 

“I remember really well the stories, just before I came to Austin, the students at the University of Texas decided the city elections,” Adler said. “It was this huge moment where the student body voted in huge numbers and decided the council members and the mayor for the City of Austin. I romanticize that time.”

Adler told the assembly that traffic is an issue Austin has chosen not to fix as a city and criticized the “do nothing” voices in Austin preventing progress from being made.

“The thing that’s going to hold Austin back is mobility,” Adler said. “If people can’t get around the city, then the city will die as we know it. We will lose the spirit and soul of this city, and we will lose the diversity of this city.”

After Adler spoke, a resolution in support of the bond was introduced to the assembly for its first reading. 

Davey Bemporad, the co-director for SG City Relations, said the bond must be supported by SG because it is the best thing for students.

“Students need to have safe roads around campus,” Bemporad said. “So many students ride bikes, ride the bus and walk around campus and without newer, safer systems, we will have an unsafe campus. We are doing what is by far the best thing for students. It’s very cost effective for what it’s trying to do for students and without a doubt Student Government should come out and support it.”

SG Assembly Speaker Santiago Rosales said Adler attending meetings allows for students to have a greater understanding of what the city is doing for them.

“For the last three years, the mayor has come to the student government meetings to talk to students about issues that matter to them, and to shed some light onto what the city is doing in general, and what they’re doing for students specifically,” Rosales said. “It’s a conversation about what can be done to make students’ experience in Austin better.”

Assembly members will vote on whether to support the November mobility bond at their meeting next Tuesday.