Zohaib Qadri, the District 9 council member representing most of UT and West Campus, held a town hall on Jan. 28 to discuss issues including 6th Street’s reopening, housing and city mobility.
Over 80 Austin community members and students attended the town hall at the Austin Energy headquarters. Qadri’s staff pre-picked questions to be asked during the town hall, with his chief of staff, Sara Barge, asking Qadri the questions.
Qadri and Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis briefly discussed the reopening of 6th Street to vehicular traffic earlier this month. Davis said when she entered her role as police chief, she saw a high concentration in the 6th Street area of violent incidents, use of police force and police officers’ injuries.
Davis said the 6th Street pilot program may or may not be the final solution to the issue. The city and her are looking for more ways to maintain safety for pedestrians and police officers.
“We were acting, to me, as bouncers for these bars instead of them having the responsibility to control their crowds and to control the people that go in,” Davis said at the town hall.
When answering questions about housing costs, Qadri spoke about the Department of Justice lawsuit against Austin property management companies that claims the companies actively colluded to fix rent prices. Qadri said with the changes in the Department of Justice following the inauguration of President Donald Trump, the city is waiting to see whether the case continues.
“We’ve been in touch with other cities, and we have been working with this national group on bringing forward an item on price fixing,” Qadri said. “(This is a) challenge of a rogue administration in a state that unfortunately at times beats up on Austin, but we’re going to continue to see what creative things we can do as a city on that issue.”
Qadri also discussed climate change, addressing the lack of electronic car charging stations around the city. He said he is working on providing more charging stations and repairing the nonfunctioning ones.
Most of the crowd’s questions had to do with the mobility around the city, with one resident asking about the lack of available CapMetro bikes. Qadri said CapMetro plans on putting out two rounds of new bikes in the spring and summer of this year.
Qadri said the city and state often clash with each other over mobility. He said the city tries to provide services like Project Connect and diverse forms of transportation while the state advocates for more highway expansion.
“Highway expansion is a bad policy,” Qadri said. “I’m not a fan of it. It causes displacement (and) more traffic, and it’s not good for the environment.”
Qadri said he will try to hold more town halls, with the next one likely being hosted at UT. The date for the next one is not known at this time.
“We’re going to try to do a town hall every other month or so,” Qadri said. “We’re going to try to have more topic-specific town halls going forward.”