Who is Sara Hensley? Here's why Denton's city manager is a finalist for the role in Austin

Denton City Manager Sara Hensley says the prospect of returning to Austin as the city's chief executive would be a "calling."

Having worked for the city of Austin for more than 10 years before leaving in 2019 for Denton, a Dallas-area suburb of about 148,000, the municipal executive says she is uniquely positioned to guide Austin's local government as its next city manager.

"My family was a part of the community," Hensley said in an interview, explaining how her twin sons enjoyed Austin's renowned parks and libraries. "Having that opportunity and then seeing Austin now and wanting to be a part of the next phase and the next chapter of Austin is what is drawing me there."

Austin's city manager runs the day-to-day operations of the 10th-largest city in the country. Hensley, 67, is one of two remaining finalists under consideration for the position hired by the Austin City Council. The other finalist is the departing Dallas city manager, T.C. Broadnax.

More: Who is T.C. Broadnax? Here's what we know about the Austin city manager finalist.

According to her résumé, which the American-Statesman obtained through a public records request, Hensley's career in municipal government spans much of the country and 26 years, a period including stints working at cities on the East and West Coasts, Phoenix and Austin before landing her current role in Denton.

Since March 2022, Hensley has served as Denton's city manager, overseeing a $1.95 billion budget, 25 departments and nearly 2,000 employees. Her base annual salary is $305,000, said Dustin Sternbeck, a city of Denton spokesperson.

For comparison, Austin has a budget of $5.5 billion and more than 16,000 employees, according to the city's website. The city of Dallas, where Broadnax has worked as a city manager for seven years, has a budget of more than $4 billion and about 15,300 employees.

Though Denton is considerably smaller than Austin or Dallas, Hensley said it should not be counted out.

"It's not how big the dog is in the fight; it's how much the fight is in the dog," she said. "There's a great story to tell from Denton, Texas, that I think I can bring to Austin, Texas, and the fact that I've lived in Austin and worked in Austin and understand those things, I think makes me a viable candidate."

Between May 2019 and March 2022, she rose through the ranks, working as the city's interim city manager, deputy city manager, and assistant city manager, according to her résumé. When she was an interim city manager in Denton, the city of Chandler, a Phoenix-area suburb of about 279,500, named Hensley as one of four finalists for its open city manager position, according to reporting by the Arizona Republic. She was not selected.

More: Austin is getting close to hiring a new city manager. Here's everything you need to know.

Prior to Denton, Hensley worked for more than a decade at the city of Austin, overseeing the Parks and Recreation Department from 2008 to 2017. In an interview with the Austin Chronicle during her first year on the job, Hensley said she had been surprised with how "far behind we are as a city."

Colin Wallis, who has served as CEO of the Austin Parks Foundation since 2012, said Hensley had an outsized impact on the Parks and Recreation Department, which saw increases in staff and its operational budget during her tenure.

"To me, that's a huge win from her perspective," Wallis said in an interview. "I think Sara really understood the value of partnerships for the city and the parks department and did everything she could to help foster those relationships. And that's rare. Not everybody in the city thinks that way."

Hensley transitioned to Austin interim assistant city manager from 2017 to 2019, during which time she oversaw five city departments: public health, public library, parks and recreation, animal services, and real estate.

Approach on homelessness

Austin's next city manager will enter the role at a time when the homeless population is on the rise. The number of unsheltered people who are homeless has more than doubled from April 2022 to October 2023, the latest figures available, according to estimates by the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition.

This rise likely informed survey responses from Austin residents asked to rank city priorities for the next city manager earlier this year. Homelessness ranked second only to housing affordability, according to a presentation to the City Council.

As assistant city manager in Austin, Hensley oversaw some of the city's response to homelessness. One of her "biggest successes," she said, was incorporating multiple departments into the effort.

"Every one of the departments in the city are impacted by people experiencing homelessness. So in a way it takes a village to solve this issue," she said of the practice.

This city's posture has changed on this front since Hensley left for Denton. Last fall, in a memo to council members, interim City Manager Jesús Garza said a monthslong reevaluation of the city's approach found the current organizational structure “does not effectively respond” to the issue. The evaluation informed the creation of a stand-alone department tasked with addressing homelessness.

As in Austin, the homeless population in Denton County, where the city of Denton is the county seat, has grown in recent years. According to estimates published by United Way Denton County last year, the number of homeless people more than doubled from 2021 to 2022 — or 176 to 448. The estimate fell to 431 as of Jan. 2023, according to the latest figures available.

Hensley said she was instrumental in opening a 34,000-square-foot facility for homeless services, the only such facility operating in Denton County at present. The facility, a project of both the city and county, is run by a nonprofit, a similar arrangement to most of Austin's shelters.

But one "tiny home" proposal meant to provide shelter to unhoused people in Denton failed to gain steam, despite the city seeking bids from nonprofits to run such an operation, according to reporting from the Denton Record-Chronicle. The prolonged efforts have given rise to scrutiny of city leaders from some local advocates for homeless people.

Among them is Jane Piper-Lunt, a chair of Denton Basic Services Center, a nonprofit established with the aim of realizing the project. Piper-Lunt declined an interview with the Statesman, but she issued a statement saying she hoped Hensley, if selected as Austin's next city manager, would work to further the efforts of homeless advocates in Austin, including Mobile Loaves & Fishes CEO and founder Alan Graham and Other Ones Foundation Executive Director Chris Baker.

Lawsuit by attorney general against Austin, Denton

In January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against five Texas cities, including Austin and Denton, to halt their ordinances decriminalizing low-level marijuana possession — local laws that garnered broad support from voters in their respective counties.

While Austin greenlit the effort about four years ago, Denton County voters took up the initiative in the fall of 2022, passing it with about 71% of the ballots. After the vote, Hensley opposed implementing the practice, saying it would violate state law.

"I’ve said it a thousand times and I’ll say it again, I do not direct the police chief. He gets his oath from the state of Texas,” Hensley told Denton City Council members, according to reporting in the Denton Record-Chronicle. “I could tell him to break the law, but that is not what I will do as a professional."

In an interview Tuesday, Hensley said she was "threading a needle very thin" as the debate over the issue pressed on. According to reporting in the Denton Record-Chronicle, critics cast Hensley as usurping the voters' will.

Ultimately, the following summer, in 2023, the Denton City Council voted 4-3 not to proceed with a council-approved marijuana ordinance. Still, Hensley said, the city took other steps in the spirit of the vote without implementing what she and key staff members understood would subject Denton to legal action.

"We did everything we could to do everything up to saying we're breaking the law," Hensley said, citing Denton's efforts to lower the offense level of low-level marijuana possession in 2019 from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Denton was sued by the attorney general's office despite not fully implementing the voter-approved initiative, called Proposition B.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Sara Hensley is one of two finalists for Austin city manager position