Jesús Garza is leaving City Hall soon. Here's what he said about his time as Austin's interim manager

After 14 months as interim city manager, Jesús Garza will soon hand over leadership of the city of Austin to T.C. Broadnax.

Garza, who was Austin's city manager from 1994 to 2002, was brought out of retirement in February 2023 to serve as the city's interim city manager after the City Council fired Spencer Cronk in the wake of widespread weather-related outages.

In April, the City Council voted to appoint Broadnax, Dallas' exiting city manager, to the chief administrative role overseeing daily operations for the country's 10th largest city. His first day on the job is May 6.

In Austin's "council-manager" form of government, the city manager has the top authority to implement policies approved by the City Council and oversees dozens of departments that run everything from the city's electric utility to the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

In a 2023 interview with the American-Statesman, Garza said he hoped to bring stability to the city and to better position it for the future by the end of his time as interim city manager.

"I think we've achieved stability," Garza, who is going back into retirement after his last day May 3, told the Statesman in an interview Tuesday.

When he began in his temporary role in 2023, Garza was coming in on the heels of the fallout of the 2023 winter storm that left tens of thousands of Austin residents without power, which contributed to the City Council's decision to fire Cronk.

The power outages were largely caused by ice accumulation damaging infrastructure such as power lines. A city report found there were also internal issues in the city's response to the event, like communication failures between government entities and between the city and the public.

The city has since made "a lot of changes within the emergency operations center, HSEM (Homeland Security and Emergency Management)," like centralizing communications for severe weather events, Garza said.

"Those changes had a payoff during this last winter storm that we had (in the) earlier part of this year," Garza said, referring to the arctic blast that hit the Austin area in January.

Garza has made several permanent appointments to director-level city positions during his tenure, such as naming Austin Energy's general manager, the Homeland Security and Emergency Management director and the director of Austin's Homeless Strategy Office.

Austin identified homelessness as a priority issue in its 2023 strategic direction plan, and Garza in November announced the Homeless Strategy Office was moving from the auspices of the Austin Public Health Department to a stand-alone department. At the time, Garza said the office's organizational structure “does not effectively respond” to the issue of homelessness.

While there is more work to be done to combat homelessness in Austin, Garza said Tuesday that the city has set up a structure and positioned itself to best address the issue.

The city has "tried to work on the concept that it isn't just permanent supportive housing, you can't treat it that way," Garza said. "You've got to work on each of the elements of what's necessary to make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring."

Garza's recent tenure was marked by controversial decisions surrounding policing, such as appointing Art Acevedo, Austin's former police chief, to a newly created interim assistant city manager position to oversee policing. Acevedo reversed his job acceptance days after the news was made public and saw strong pushback by the City Council and community members.

On the Acevedo appointment, Garza said, "Any decision that one makes at this level, if you had the benefit of hindsight, you might do something very differently."

"Of why we did it — the focused attention on the Police Department by the city manager's office, because of the focus and the scrutiny that's provided by the community, may at some point require somebody dedicated to just that department until we're (at) a point of stability," Garza said.

The City Council was also displeased with Garza reneging on his promise to conduct a national search for the director of the city's Office of Police Oversight. Garza in September appointed Gail McCant, who had served as interim director, to the role, later telling the City Council in a memo that it was not his intention "to catch you off guard" but reasoned that a nationwide search would have delayed filling the important position.

As Broadnax comes into office, his work will include tackling many of the same issues Garza faced: the city's response to addressing homelessness, working to solidify a permanent contract with the Austin Police Association, overseeing the implementation of land development code changes the City Council has approved, appointing a permanent police chief, addressing traffic woes and mass transit, and much more.

Garza said Broadnax has been spending a couple of days a week in Austin and will get a detailed transition book and briefing sheets as part of the transition.

His parting wisdom to Broadnax is to make decisions in a thoughtful way, understand the politics of the city and have fun.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Here's what Jesús Garza said about his time as interim city manager