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Austin City Council members are working to finalize a city budget – and they’ll have to find ways to trim after voters resoundingly rejected a proposed tax rate increase that would’ve generated more than $100 million.
The Austin Independent School District will vote this week on shuttering campuses and reassigning some students to different schools after releasing its final version of the plan last week. We have more about what’s changed and what’s the same.
The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:11] Austin City Council members are meeting today as they work to finalize a budget for the city. They’ll have ways, they’ll have to find ways to trim the budget after voters resoundingly rejected a proposed tax rate increase that would have generated more than $100 million. We’re gonna have an update from City Hall. Plus, the Austin Independent School District will vote this week on their plan to shutter campuses across the city and reassign some students to different schools. AISD released their final version of the plan last week, ahead of Thursday’s vote. We’ll have more about what’s changed and what’s the same.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:44] The Austin Signal is a production of K UT News, hosted by Jerry Kihano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:49] And bats eat tons and tons of pests each night. Farmers are hoping they can play a bigger role on their properties. That is coming up next on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, you are listening to Austin Signal. This is listener-powered public radio, K U T News 90.5 on the KUT app and online at KUT.org. It’s Tuesday, November 18th. Thank you for making Austin Signal part of your day. Breaking news into the KUT newsroom in the last hour. A federal court has blocked Texas from using the new congressional map passed by the legislature at President Trump’s urging this summer. U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling, quote, the public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map, but it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map. End quote. You can read more about the ruling from the Texas Newsroom’s Capitol reporter, Blaise Gainey. That is over at KUT.org. Let’s get into the show. Austin City Council members are holding a work session today to finalize a budget for the city by the end of this week. Voters rejected earlier this month the proposed tax rate increase, proposition Q, and now City Council is deciding on which parts of the budget must be trimmed. KUT City Hall reporter Luz Moreno Lozano is downtown at the work session, and she is joining us now here on Austin Signal. Howdy Luz.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:02:29] Hi Jerry. Thanks for having me.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:31] I’m glad you are here with us. Can you get us up to speed? Austin City Council tried to get this process started last week, but they hit a bit of a speed bump. What happened there?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:02:40] Yeah, so you know, the the city council had posted its agenda for I think last Thursday and it included, you know, a date, time, location, the agenda item. But as part of a new state law, that new that agenda item should have included backups to like the proposed amendment budget, what the annual tax rate would be for the average homeowner. And because those documents were not part of the agenda that was posted, it was technically a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act. And so two attorneys, Bill Alshire and Rick Fi and his colleague Rick, filed a complaint against the city. The city did say that they believed that they followed and complied with what was supposed to be posted, but they ended up canceling the meeting anyway out of transparency. And the city manager had talked about wanting to like address and make sure that the community is aware of what’s happening with this budget.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:35] Okay, and so that meeting got pushed back to today. You’ve been out there since this morning. What’s been going on so far?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:03:41] Yeah. So we you know, we heard the city council get kind of their first overlook at what this budget would include. You know, they are having to find or reduce their budget by the hundred and ten million dollars that was supposed to be added through the tax rate election. We’ve seen kind of cuts or suggestions for cuts across the board. You know, they wanted to make cuts to homelessness. And so they’ve reduced that particular area. Same thing with park, same thing with the library. And so we’ve seen just how they can do that. I think, you know, there’s still a lot of moving parts of this. So I hate to say, you know, we might see four million dollars here and six million dollars there without the city council first you know, deciding what that looks like. But yeah, it looks like they’re gonna have to really make some tough decisions about what they wanna see funded and what they’re gonna prioritize.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:30] And you’ve been doing some reporting on this, a lot of reporting actually, but your most recent story over at KUT dot org, mentioned a lot of those services that had come up in the proposed cuts to the city budget. One of those was first responders EMS. You spoke with the president of the Austin EMS Association. What did he have to say?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:04:49] Yeah. You know, EMS has been struggling with staffing shortages. And, you know, the city is just getting bigger and so it’s making it harder to respond in an an effective manner. And so one of the things that this budget was supposed to do was kind of help hire more people and help kind of fill those gaps that they were filling. You know, we have seen the city council kind of throw their support behind potentially supporting some of those asks that they were that they were hoping to get as part of the tax rate election increase. But yeah, we’ll kind of see what happens. I I think people are we we’ve heard a lot today from the community and from city council members about wanting to make sure that people have access to Emergency medical services, you know, when you call nine one one, you want someone to respond as soon as possible. And I think that’s gonna be a top priority for the city council. And J James Monks, who’s the president of the union, told me that that was something he heard and he was hoping to to kind of hope to play out this week. But yeah, we’ll see how that plays out for sure.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:48] Well like you said, in your article at K U T dot org, Austin City Council still plans to adopt a revised budget by the end of this week. So they’re having the work session meeting today. What is the rest of the week expected to play out like?
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:06:02] Yeah, this is a fast track kind of budget, especially since next week is Thanksgiving and so there are gonna be a lot of people out of town. So yeah, so today they got their first look at it. They’re going back and forth and discussing as we speak. They will discuss more tomorrow, and that’s where I think we’ll see some of the city council kind of lay out some of their budget amendments and priorities, things like EMS funding, homelessness. I saw something about wanting to fund food pantries at Title I schools and meal delivery programs for senior citizens. So we’ll see more of that tomorrow and fig and see how city staff can move money around to support some of those initiatives. They’re hoping that they are going to adopt a budget by Thursday. It could be Friday, as we saw in the original round of budget discussions. They did take the full two days to adopt the budget. So that could absolutely play out that way this week as well. They also have an extra meeting scheduled for Monday, just in case they don’t actually get something this week. But I foresee at least something by Friday.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:05] Okay, well she will definitely keep us updated. That is K U T City Hall reporter Luz Moreno Lozano. Luz, thank you for your time. We are thankful for you.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:07:14] Thanks, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:20] Alright, another deadline this week in the city, the Austin Independent School District is gonna vote on a school condu consolidation plan that will close schools and reassign students. Now Austin ISD released their final version of the plan late last Friday, and here to tell us more about that plan and the vote is KUT’s Katy McAfee. Howdy, Katy.
Katy McAfee [00:07:39] Hey Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:40] So you know, there’s been a lot of changes to this plan. How does this latest final plan differ from the initial announcement?
Katy McAfee [00:07:47] Yeah, so the plan is mostly the same, at least from the last time I was here talking with you at the Austin Signal. From the last update, three schools were taken off the list. That’s Maplewood, Breaker Woods, and Palm Elementary. The district is still deciding to wait to redraw attendance boundaries for most schools. But there were a few refinements that the district made in response to community feedback and some concerns from board trusted members, some small-ish things. One thing they changed is AISD is planning on moving its dual language programs to Sanchez, Pickle, Wooten, and Odom. Originally that meant that those schools were all going to turn into non-zoned schools. But after hearing some community feedback, they decided to make Pickle Woo-Ton and Sanchez neighborhood schools that kids who are already going to those schools can still be enrolled there and make Odom the only non-zoned wall-to-wall dual language campus. And then another sort of refinement that they made was one campus was going to be relocated to a school that had a failing accountability rating, and they wanted to change that in response to some board feedback. So mostly the same from last week, but just a few refinements.
Jerry Quijano [00:09:00] Okay, that the one big change was that number going from thirteen to ten on the school closures list. With the vote expected to happen this Thursday. Is that gonna be it for the campuses on that closure list?
Katy McAfee [00:09:13] As far as we know, yes. The district was pretty firm that the plan released Friday is the final version to give board members time to think about how they’re gonna vote on Thursday night. But there that doesn’t mean that changes could happen in the coming years. Those three schools, Maplewood, Breaker Woods, and Palm, the board could still vote on closing those schools maybe next year or vote next year to close in the coming years. Another change that they were sort of floating around but didn’t actually decide on was what to do with Oak Springs and Blackshear. So right now, students at Oak Springs, which is on the closing list on the closure list, are moving to Blackshear. But Oak Springs was due for a big multi-million dollar renovation from the 22 bond the 2022 bond. So the district is considering continuing construction on that campus and then eventually relocating students at Blackshear to Oak Springs.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:07] Okay, so a lot a little, you know, it’s in the fine details now as they get to this final version of their plan. Again you can read more from Katy at K U T dot org. Obviously the the big item on Thursday is going to be the vote on this school consolidation plan, but is there anything el else that we should be paying attention attention to at the school board meeting?
Katy McAfee [00:10:26] Yeah, Jerry, there is another big vote happening on Thursday. The board is also voting on turnaround plans for two dozen schools. Turnaround plans are mandated by the state after schools receive consecutive failing grades. The what the district is voting on is plans that would mean more funding for these schools, maybe new requirements for teachers at these schools. Those plans are available at AISD’s website and the board will take an official vote on Thursday.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:53] Okay, and we had s me even more breaking news happen this morning. That was the news was that Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against the Leander and Round Rock independent school districts. Why was that the case, Katy? Why did he do so?
Katy McAfee [00:11:06] Yeah, so this is a very fluid situation. I just jumped on this story this afternoon. The attorney general is filing a lawsuit against those two school districts for not displaying donated copies of the Ten Commandments in all classrooms. That is a law that went into effect on September first.
Jerry Quijano [00:11:23] And I was wondering why these two is Austin ISD are is are they already involved in litigation with this Ten Commandments law?
Katy McAfee [00:11:31] Yeah, so there are eleven school districts in the state that actually cannot display these Ten Commandments. That’s after a federal judge ruled after sixteen families filed a lawsuit against those districts and a federal judge ruled in the favor of those sixteen families. So here in central Texas that includes Austin, Dripping Springs, and Lake Travis, but Leander and Round Rock ISDs were not part of that ruling.
Jerry Quijano [00:11:55] Okay, well like Katy says, a very fluid situation. Just a story that you worked on just about an hour ago before coming on to talk AISD with us here on Austin Signal. So we appreciate your flexibility and we appreciate your reporting. That’s K U T’s Travis County reporter Katy McAfee. Katy, thank you.
Katy McAfee [00:12:12] Thanks so much, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:13] And thank you out there for tuning in to Austin Signal on this Tuesday coming up. We’re gonna talk bats and we’re gonna talk Austin FC soccer schedule. Lots more coming up after the break. This is listener-powered public radio. And we appreciate you tuning in. This is Austin Signal on KUT News ninety point five on the KUT app and online at KUT.org. This is Austin Signal. Thank you for being with us today. Bats, sometimes they get a bad rap. Luckily, Austinites have a lot of love for the only mammal capable of sustained flight. Not to mention the fact that they eat untold tons of pests every single night, which helps keep crops healthy and saves farmers some money. And on some farms, bats might be able to play an even bigger role. For Harvest Public Media, Texas Standards Michael Marks has this story.
Michael Marks [00:13:31] It’s a clear September night on a bank above the San Marcos River in central Texas, and a group of folks in headlamps are inspecting a small noisy creature.
Melissa Donnelly [00:13:40] And this is very, very typical of this species. They got a lot to say all the time.
Michael Marks [00:13:44] Researcher Melissa Donnelly is holding an evening bat in a cloth bag. It’s tiny, no bigger than a Clementine. She just caught it over the river in a supersized tennis net and now she’s measuring it.
Melissa Donnelly [00:13:56] Yeah, and so I’m just holding on to the humerus so that I can get to the form and
Michael Marks [00:14:03] Donnelly is a science specialist with the nonprofit Merlin Tuttles Bat Conservation. One of the reasons she’s collecting data on this bat is actually to help farmers grow better pecans, farmers like Troy Swift.
Troy Swift [00:14:16] So our job is to work with Mother Nature instead of against her to grow the best pecans money can buy. That’s what that’s the way we say it.
Michael Marks [00:14:23] Swift’s pecan orchard covers more than 250 acres. Lots of insects affect pecans like moths and stink bugs, which bats love to munch. But when Swift first bought his orchard in 1998, he protected his trees the way everyone did, with plenty of chemicals.
Troy Swift [00:14:41] Spungicide, insecticide, herbicide.
Michael Marks [00:14:43] That started to change, though, after Swift met Merlin Tuttle in the mid-2000s. Swift first knew Tuttle as the guy he let fish on his property. But then I found out he was a famous bat scientist. Tuttle spent sixty-five years studying bats around the globe, including at Swift’s Orchard. Tuttle says you’d be hard pressed to find better bat habitat.
Merlin Tuttle [00:15:04] If your orchard is near a river, you have a very good opportunity for attracting bats to bat houses.
Michael Marks [00:15:13] Tuttle’s been using the orchard to experiment with bat boxes, tweaking the color and position, even the kind of wood they’re made with. Swift also runs a sawmill at his orchard where he makes lumber out of cypress trees. Turns out it’s perfect for bat houses.
Merlin Tuttle [00:15:30] It’s extra lightweight, extra insulative, and yet it’s one of the longest lasting woods in America.
Michael Marks [00:15:37] This punky cypress, as it’s called, is porous on the inside, which gives the bats something to hold on to in the house. It also regulates temperature well, which is crucial for bats in hot places.
Merlin Tuttle [00:15:48] What we’re doing is actually helping. We’re not just giving the bats are already there a place to live. We’re building populations with more bats
Michael Marks [00:16:01] There are dozens of bat boxes now on Swift’s property housing hundreds of bats. So many, in fact, Swift decided to just let them handle the bugs on part of his property this year.
Troy Swift [00:16:13] This year is the first year I did not spray any insecticide at all. And guess what? We got a really good crop over there.
Michael Marks [00:16:22] Reducing reliance on insecticides is one of Swift’s big goals because of how they can harm ecosystems, human health, and a farmer’s bottom line. Not every farm can do this though. Russ Benedict is a biology professor at Central College in Iowa who studies bats and agriculture.
Russ Benedict [00:16:39] Primarily I hear those in, you know, smaller operations folks who are doing organic farming, that kind of stuff. The among the the corn and soybean folks I I haven’t really heard that much.
Michael Marks [00:16:49] Bats need diversity in their diet and they can’t get it from a landscape that’s just acres and acres of the same crop, according to Benedict. They don’t thrive in wide open areas either, but for those farms where bats could make a difference, Troy Swift is ready to share what he’s learned on his pecan farm.
Troy Swift [00:17:07] I really want to have an impact on agriculture. This is not just pecans. Bats eat stink bugs and corn earworms. So that’s good for all agriculture. And when you talk about mosquitoes and flies, it’s also good for people. Have you been bit by a mosquito since you’ve been here?
Michael Marks [00:17:24] I had not, neither had he. And for that, we could thank the bats. I’m Michael Marks, Harvest Public Media.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:38] All right, the Austin FC season is over, but Major League Soccer made some news this month announcing that it’s changing its calendar to align with more international leagues. This change is gonna mean the season will shift from the current February to November model to the more common August to May schedule, more common for soccer leagues. This though is not gonna change until twenty twenty-seven. Here to talk more about those changes and how this might affect Austin FC fans is Juan Diego Garcia. He is one of the hosts of our Austin FC podcast, Vamos Verde. Juan, how’s it going, buddy? It’s going all right. How about yourself, Jerry? I’m doing great. I am a little confused and I was just asking you questions before we came on the air. So can you just clarify why the league is making this schedule change and you know, w what benefit does it provide?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:18:26] Yeah, so for a long time a lot of soccer fans have been asking or wondering why Major League Soccer plays its games from February to November, when if we look at the current Premier League season, it kind of just started back in August. So Major League Soccer is trying to line itself line itself up with some of the biggest leagues in the world, those usually being the European leagues. And there’s lots of little moving parts, lots of little areas within the sport that get impacted with a change like this.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:53] And I would guess like you’re saying, you’re mentioning the Premier League, it probably also stands to benefit when some of these players play for their club for their international teams, right? For their countries as well.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:19:03] Yes, that’s actually one of the biggest changes that’s happening with this new schedule. This is going to allow Major League Soccer to observe the FIFA international break schedule. So traditionally in Major League Soccer, you had just to take as n as an example, Austin FC playing some pretty significant games late in the year without their sort of most expensive and and high name, high billing players because they were away representing their nationalities in World Cup qualifiers, that kind of thing. Now Major League Soccer is going to be taking breaks when everyone else takes a break, allowing those players to freely represent their international teams without putting their clubs in an awkward spot.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:44] Okay, sounds like lots of good things are gonna come from this change. That made me wonder why are they waiting until twenty twenty seven to implement it?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:19:52] It takes a while to adjust these things. For example, just taking twenty twenty seven as an example, Major League Soccer plans to play what they call a full season from about January until May with a complete playoffs format, as well as crowning an MLS Cup champion and a supporter shield champion, before the official change happens later in twenty twenty seven, into the twenty seven twenty eight season where they play the first full year or first full season under the new format.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:22] Okay, so as I gather, Austin F C is gonna start two seasons in the year twenty twenty seven because of this change with a break during the summer months. What that what might that mean for Austin F C fans? It sounds like a literally a cooler experience.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:20:38] In a way, yes. It’s you know, you’re still gonna get the same number of home games, for example, within one calendar year between January and December for that twenty twenty-seven year. But there are a lot of interesting balancing questions around what constitutes a year when it comes to like commercial rights holders, when it comes to player contracts, as well as season ticket holders. There’s a lot of details that maybe haven’t quite been fully hammered out yet. That being said, you’re not gonna get as many hundred degree at kickoff games in the middle of the summer, which could be a bit of a home field advantage for Austin, but can also make it very uncomfortable for folks to go to actually see the games. To balance that out, there might be times when it’s frozen in Minnesota, so the loons have to come to Austin first before Austin makes a trip up north.
Jerry Quijano [00:21:29] Okay, well that does make sense. Okay, so that change gonna happen. It’s gonna happen in twenty twenty seven. But it did get Austin FC fans excited and enough to spark a little bit of a bonus episode of Vamos Verde.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:21:42] What’s happening there? We’re gonna be breaking down what this means for a lot of different things, roster construction, you know, transfer windows, how this could shape playoff formats going forward, little things like that, all of those little details that, you know, some folks might not be thinking about or, you know, trying to answer all of the questions that come up when a big change like this happens, all of that will be in the bonus episode that Jimmy and I plan on making soon.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:08] That’s Jimmy Maas, and we’ve been speaking with Juan Diego Garcia. They are the host of the Austin FC podcast, Vamos Verde, from the K U T and K U T X Studios. Juan, thank you for your time. Always a pleasure, Jerry. And thank you to you out there for tuning in to Austin Signal. We are here every weekday afternoon from 1 until 1 30. And you can find more from our show over at KUT.org. Kristen Cabrera is our managing producer, and Rayna Sevilla is our technical director. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. We will be with you tomorrow. We will talk to you then. Be well.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
