20+ hours of public comment possible on police contract

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- As of Thursday morning, roughly 300 people had signed up online to speak in person about the police contract ahead of City Council's vote on the measure. Additionally, about 100 have signed up online to speak remotely.

Each speaker gets three minutes, running the in-person total, in theory, north of 13 hours, and an additional 5 hours for remote speakers. These are rough estimates as there are occasions where both in-person and remote speakers either wind up not speaking or don't speak for their full 3 minutes.

This does not include people who signed up in-person at City Hall, and city staff said, as of Wednesday evening, those figures bring the potential public comment time up to about 26 hours.

KXAN will be monitoring public comment and the vote. Check back for updates.

The contract

The City's negotiations team and the Austin Police Association (APA) reached a tentative agreement on the police contract last month. City Council has to vote it through before it can be ratified, as is the case with all sworn labor contracts in Austin.

In February 2023, the city and Austin Police Association (APA) reached a tentative agreement, but city council voted it down to wait for the results of a May 2023 vote on a police oversight measure.

That measure, the Austin Police Oversight Act, which included the call for the release of once-sealed primarily unsubstantiated misconduct claims against officers, passed. It spent the following months making its way through the court system before a judge made a ruling that prompted the city to begin releasing those files via official public information requests from members of the public.

The current tentative agreement further details the terms of the release of those documents.

This week, Equity Action, the group that wrote the Austin Police Oversight Act, amended its lawsuit to push for a temporary restraining order that would block Thursday's vote. A judge denied those efforts Wednesday evening. Equity Action said it would re-up the order if council votes the contract through.

Many who support the contract say it provides necessary stability for officers and is necessary to retain current sworn staff as the department faces what leaders have called a staffing "crisis."