Austin voters to decide on raising police staffing levels in election
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Pro-Cop Group Submits Signatures for High-Priced Staffing Plan
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Former congressional candidate Julie Oliver canvasses on behalf of Homes Not Handcuffs No on Prop B campaign in March (Photo by David Brendan Hall)
In June 2019, after many years of pressure from justice advocates, Austin s increasingly left-leaning City Council voted to roll back the city s 20-year-old ordinances that banned camping, sitting or lying down, and panhandling in many public spaces. These moves to decriminalize the experience of homelessness, and to acknowledge that the growing presence and needs of Austin s unsheltered poor could not solely be handled by law enforcement, set City Hall on a new strategy, but drew swift pushback from Downtown stakeholders, Austin conservatives, and high-profile Texas Republicans, including Downtown Austin resident Gov. Greg Abbott.
After failing last year to reinstate the city s homeless camping ban, an Austin group says it has collected the required number of petition signatures to bring the issue before voters in May.
Save Austin Now says it turned in more than 27,000 signatures to the city clerk Tuesday, continuing its push to overturn a 2019 Austin City Council vote that repealed the city s public camping ordinance.
The signatures still must be validated by the clerk s office to verify that at least 20,000 of them came from registered voters living in the city. Save Austin Now says it validated 24,000 signatures that it turned in and did not attempt to validate another 3,000. It discarded 3,000 others it could not validate.