And right now we are joined
by Austin Mayor Steve Adler.
Mayor, thank you very much for joining
us as always and just came back from
a busy trip to DC let's talk about
this past weekend in Austin though.
Biggest crowd in the history
to watch UT Alabama.
What goes in as far as the city
goes to planning for 100 + 1000
people and how do you think the
city did on that national stage?
Well, you know, planning for big
events is a is something that we do
here pretty regularly in the city and
the city staff and the community.
UT Well trained for that.
Big events like this and ACL live,
they drill for it.
I think we looked good.
Boy, they tell you the game was close.
It was a heartbreaker.
A couple calls go the other way.
They would result would have been different,
but it was a real close game
and I was real proud of the
the students in the school.
So you look good.
I think they're the power outage.
Just talk about that.
At the airport last week that
police were shutting down the
Rose nearby we saw video of
people literally walking to
the airport with their luggage.
Do we have any idea yet really what
happened and what's being done to
prevent it from happening again?
Well, we've asked for that.
We've gotten a preliminary report back.
Apparently some of the underground
generators and equipment at the
airport went out in the kind of
the wee hours of the morning.
By about 4:15, a little after 7,
about 85% of the power had been restored.
By eight, it was all back on.
But it's underground.
So apparently it was harder for
them to to isolate or identify
where the challenge was.
We've asked.
The question you just asked what
do we have to do to make sure that
kind of thing doesn't happen again?
We haven't heard back yet,
but we expect too momentarily.
I
will of course let the people
know when we do get that answer.
We talked this morning earlier about
how documents were filed in court this
week about a transgender middle schooler
in Texas being pulled from class and
questioned by DFPS without the family.
There is this something that's
happening in Austin public schools
and what is your reaction to this?
You know, it's the first
I've heard about that,
and I think that's real unfortunate.
I think that the that what I believe to
be almost an attack on transgender kids
and their families just seems wrong to me.
And, and I don't know the details
of the event that you reported on,
but what you reported is real disturbing.
We're trying really hard to be as safe a
community as we can in this city in Austin.
And we appreciate the fact that our
District Attorney and our County Attorney
have said they're not going to prosecute
crimes or alleged crimes in this area.
It's a very disturbing report.
In four months from now you had your
final state of the city address a
few weeks ago and you said that the
quote was the city that we live,
leave to our children and grandchildren is
one that they will be proud to call home.
Now we talked a few weeks ago about
what you are most proud of in office,
but what does the next mayor have to
work on that has not been done yet?
What would you like to see have done?
Well, I think, you know,
we've made great strides on lots of things,
including mobility and investments
in capital infrastructure.
But affordability and and housing
supply have got to be the two
existential challenges as the city goes
forward so that we don't lose people,
so we can preserve the the artists
and the diversity in our community.
And I think that's really where
the focus needs to be in November.
There's going to be a housing bond.
I think it begins with voters approving that.
But beyond that,
even though we build more housing than
any city in the country last year,
both in absolute terms and
on a per capita basis,
it still wasn't enough.
And that's what the city needs to focus on,
bringing down the price of housing
by increasing housing supply
where people want to live and
everybody does want to live here.
I may rather appreciate your time,
as always. Thank you very much.