SAVE AUSTIN NOW: City Council Meets Tomorrow to Consider Putting 13 Charter Amendments on Nov. Ballot // Take Our Poll on the Amendments // Call for $ Support to Pass Our Audit Charter Amendment

Good Monday afternoon --

The Austin City Council will meet tomorrow at 10am to consider 13 (!!!) charter amendments for the November ballot.

Only one charter amendment — OURS — is GUARANTEED to be on the ballot, as it is the only one that was certified to have enough signatures.

The rest come from the Charter Review Commission, which conceived of the additional 12 charter amendments and TRIED to put them on the Nov. 2025 ballot, but was unable to do so due to a violation of the Open Meetings Act committed by the City Council.

Here is the complete list of Charter Amendments they will consider:

A) clarifying that the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is independent of Council control, allowing the ICRC to review City districts after changes to the City’s boundary lines, providing an effective date for the redistricting plan adopted by the ICRC, increasing the number of individuals in the pool of potential appointees to the ICRC, clarifying the method and timing of filling vacancies on the ICRC, and allowing City staff to communicate with the ICRC outside of a meeting;

B) deleting language providing that the Council shall meet at least once each week;

C) deleting language requiring the Council to determine its rules and order of business by ordinance;

D) clarifying the meaning of the term “election” and to provide that the campaign contribution and expenditure limits shall be modified each year by January 1st instead of with the adoption of the budget;

E) providing that initiative elections and petitioned charter amendment elections must be held on the next available November election date that occurs in an even-numbered year and that allows sufficient time to comply with other requirements of law;

F) providing that a petition for an election to recall a Council Member other than the Mayor must contain valid signatures of at least 15% of the qualified voters of the respective Council district, instead of the current 10%, and clarifying that the affidavit on the recall petition must be signed by a petition circulator;

G) providing that the Council appoints and removes the City Attorney;

H) making the time frame for the automatic resignation provision for municipal court judges the same as that provided in the Texas Constitution for other officials;

I) ensure that City financial practices are consistent with generally accepted accounting principles, reflect current practices for appropriations for department-level work programs;

J) removing appointees and employees of the office of the City Auditor from the classified civil service;

K) making non-substantive corrections of typographical errors, punctuation, and sentence structure, and to change or remove language that is moot or unenforceable because it has been superseded by state law or by a final court order;

L) removing the restriction that officeholders must wait until after leaving office to solicit and accept political contributions to pay unpaid campaign expenses or to reimburse campaign expenditures made from personal funds and to impose contribution limits on such officeholders; and

M) requiring an independent affordability and efficiency initiative before any tax rate increase and requiring the independent contractor to identify annual and multi-year savings;

We are truly curious about your views about these proposed Charter Amendments.

Please do respond to each polling question above.

SAN VIEW: Some of these are minor or technical. But a couple of them are very bad and reduce transparency and accountability while protecting the status quo.

A few quick thoughts:

PROPOSED CHARTER AMENDMENT E: This is THE WORST proposed charter amendment. Without this charter amendment, elections for ordinances and charter amendments can occur in May or November of any year, depending on when they are certified for the ballot. This charter amendment seeks to only allow ordinances and charter amendments ONLY in November of EVEN NUMBERED YEARS. The Mayor and Council believe this will reduce both the volume of ordinances and charter amendments, and also give the city’s current power structure an ability to stop ordinances and charter amendments it doesn’t like. Recall we PASSED Prop B (homeless camping ban) in May 2021 and defeated Prop Q (20% city property tax increase) in Nov. 2025). Both of those elections went against City Hall wishes and WERE NOT held in November of even numbered years.

PROPOSED CHARTER AMENDMENT F: This Charter Amendment seeks to make it HARDER to recall a sitting Council Member by increasing the threshold and putting additional requirements on canvassers. It is a solution in search or a problem. No Austin City Council Member HAS EVER BEEN RECALLED. Never in city history.

From Gemini:

There have been a few high-profile, organized efforts in recent years that ultimately failed:

• Ann Kitchen (2016): A group called Austin4All launched a recall effort against District 5 Councilmember Ann Kitchen. The primary grievance was her push for stricter regulations on rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft, specifically her advocacy for mandatory fingerprint-based background checks for drivers. While organizers submitted over 5,000 signatures, the city clerk rejected the petition because the pages lacked the required notary stamps.

• Mayor Steve Adler and Multiple Councilmembers (2019–2021): Following the city council’s controversial 2019 decision to alter public camping ordinances, efforts were launched to recall Mayor Steve Adler and several council members, including Sabino “Pio” Renteria, Ann Kitchen, Paige Ellis, Natasha Harper-Madison, and Kathie Tovo. The organizers ultimately suspended the campaign in early 2021, citing a lack of funding, staffing, and an inability to collect the necessary number of valid signatures.

ACTION ALERT: You can email the Mayor and Council about these Charter Amendments here — http://tinyurl.com/emailaustincitycouncil.

OUR REQUEST FOR YOU: Email the City Council (via link directly above) and ask them NOT TO ORDER Prop. E or F for the ballot and explain why. Also, say you support them adopting Charter Amendment M (they can simply adopt it, not requiring an election at all).

You can check out at the backup documents on the agenda

A special thanks to Jen Robicheaux for putting much of this together (on her X feed) and staying on top of it — as she always does.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT NEEDED: PLEASE DONATE TO OUR EFFORTS

We absolutely need your financial support.

We have to be ready to:

1. Legally challenge any biased ballot language immediately in court

2. Run the campaign to pass the Audit charter amendment!

Ways to Give:

• ONLINE: You can securely contribute online here.

• BY CHECK: You can make a check to “Save Austin Now PAC” and mail it to:

  • 807 Brazos Street

    Suite 306

    Austin, TX 78701

• VENMO: @saveaustinnow

• WIRE: If you wish to send a wire, please email Matt.

As we have said before, WE HAVE ONLY BEGUN TO FIGHT!

THANK YOU.

-Save Austin Now PAC

Pol. ad. paid for by Save Austin Now PAC. Leland Bickers, Treasurer. SaveAustinNowPAC.com

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