AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- The Austin City Clerk's office on Tuesday announced that it has certified a petition from Save Austin Now aimed at putting a police staffing issue before voters in November.
The clerk's office, based on a statistical analysis, found that 25,786 of 27,778 signatures were valid, based on a 93% validity rate.
With the certification, the next step is for City Council to officially order the item to be placed on the November 2 ballot. Council is set to discuss the November 2 election in a specially called meeting on Thursday.
“We are pleased that the city certified our signed petitions and that we will now be placed directly on the November 2nd ballot," said Save Austin Now co-founders Matt Mackowiak and Cleo Petricek in a statement. "We will educate citizens about how our police budget was defunded, how police staffing has become a crisis, and about how a violent crime wave has resulted. We can fix this mess created by a unanimous vote of the City Council in August 2020."
The ordinance, as proposed, would call on the city to staff a minimum of 2.0 police officers per 1,000 population, combined with a minimum of 35% community response time. It would also require an additional 40 hours of post-cadet class training hours per year, and enact provisions aimed at boosting minority hiring, racially diverse community policing, and retention bonuses for officers without complaints.
The petition and ballot initiative come as the Austin Police Department is continuing to suffer under staff shortages, with more than 160 vacancies in the department. Interim police chief Joseph Chacon has called the department's staffing issues "a crisis." Just this month, more specialized units in the department have been downsized or suspended entirely in order to fill out the department's patrol ranks.
Under the proposed budget released by City Manager Spencer Cronk, two cadet classes are included in fiscal year 2022. That's in addition to a cadet class currently underway right now - but those cadets won't hit the streets until 2022.