City Manager T.C. Broadnax proposed a historic budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, with notable increases for the Austin Police Department, but emergency medical service officials are left wanting more funding to promote public safety.
The proposed budget amounts to $5.9 billion, a 7% increase from the $5.5 billion budget from the previous fiscal year. Austin homeowners may see a rise in property taxes, rates and fees, potentially paying an additional $22 per month.
Specifically, the proposed police budget includes a 4% wage increase for civilian employees, $2.6 million for opening the Canyon Creek joint fire and EMS station and an additional $18.2 million for the Austin Police Department compared to the previous fiscal year.
The city said the increase for the police department is aimed at covering costs related to internal services, legacy liabilities for police retirement systems, employee insurance fees and a 4% wage increase for the department’s 600 civilian staff. The funding is allocated to address existing needs and will not be used for expanding staffing levels or new negotiations on a city contract, according to a city of Austin spokesperson.
Selena Xie, Austin EMS Association president, said funds for public safety could be improved based on the increasing number of calls paramedics are responding to.
“Our paramedics and medics in the call center are taking more calls than ever, and they’re not able to appropriately triage all the calls,” Xie said. “They say, ‘What’s your address?’ (or) ‘What’s the nature of your emergency?’ and they don’t ask any of their questions, and they hang up the phone because they have so many calls coming in. But then that’s not really safe for our paramedics, because we don’t really know what kind of emergency (was) going on.”
Xie said emergency response times around downtown and Lady Bird Lake can take up to 40 minutes due to the distance from available resources. Given the high number of UT students who frequent downtown and participate in activities such as water sports and boating, Xie said funding specialized emergency services is important so paramedics can improve response times and provide quicker emergency assistance.
“In the long term, we need to be better stewards of all of our resources, and so we’ve been advocating for really targeted investments,” Xie said. “We just need people at the scene. We don’t necessarily need a multi-million dollar apparatus.”
Austin City Council is expected to vote and finalize the budget on Aug. 14-16. The next fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.
