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Austin Mayor Steve Adler was feeling hot about the city’s homelessness problems and seemed to shift the blame onto city manager Spencer Cronk in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan.
During the nearly hour-long chat from Rogan’s Austin studio, Adler addressed a number of challenges the city has faced since becoming mayor in 2015 – most of the time devoted to combating resident policy setbacks the city of camping in public.
As Adler recapitulated Austin City Council’s decision to lift a public camping ban in 2019, Adler said that in his role as the city’s top executive, Adler had not clearly defined where homeless people could stay and where not in effect under the new rules .
The mayor did not elaborate on it. After the interview was released this week, its spokesman said Adler was referring to a letter sent to Cronk two years ago calling for clearer rules for camping.
“We asked the city manager to come back with a set of rules about where people can and cannot go,” Adler told Rogan. “That never happened for many reasons. We made our mistake there.”
More:When Austin’s camping ban returns, the homeless face an uncertain future
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A city spokesman backed Adler’s comments, telling the American statesman that the mayor and city council hadn’t given Cronk clear instructions to implement the changes Adler now says he wanted to do at the time.
The letter was not a binding document directing Cronk to take action, said spokesman Andy Tate.
“At the direction of the city council, city officials made recommendations to limit camping in August 2019,” Tate said in a written statement. “After the council had initially postponed the measures on proposals in September 2019, the city council reinstated limited bans on camping and rest in public in October 2019 Employees do not receive additional political instructions to take further action to change the city’s camping rules. “
Adler’s comments, released Tuesday when the podcast became available, came after Austin voters turned down his public petitions and voted to reinstate the citywide camping ban on May 1.
As the city’s best elected official, Adler has received more criticism than Cronk for the increased visibility of people affected by homelessness – and his comments to Rogan continued a pattern in which Adler interviewed the city administrator’s office.
On May 5, after the election, Adler told the statesman it was a mistake to allow people to camp in parks and downtown on the Ann and Roy Butler Walking and Biking Trail.
Even under the revised 2019 camping rules, it was illegal to camp on parklands and trails. However, following recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, city officials under Cronk failed to enforce this ban to slow the spread of COVID-19 by not disrupting camps.
“I think it was a mistake to let camps open in parks and along the running track. That was a mistake,” Adler said on May 5th.
The comments to Rogan come from the letter Adler wrote to Cronk in October 2019, according to Mayor’s spokesman Ryan Poppe.
Attached to the letter was a resolution from Adler that would have instructed the manager to take a number of steps to define areas where people were allowed to camp. This included identifying criteria to quantify areas with high levels of pedestrian and vehicular traffic that could identify risks to public safety, as well as areas prone to flooding and forest fires.
Adler’s proposal, which had four co-sponsors, was postponed, among other things, at a meeting of the council a few days earlier and not put to the vote. It was never brought back to the test.
In the letter, Adler said that even without action by the city council, he hoped that city officials, led by Cronk, could implement some of the ideas in the proposal.
The letter reads: “We believe that today you have the authority to respond to these proposals, monitor progress and address the city’s main problem without additional approval from the city council.”
This is not the first time Cronk has come under fire from the Council for concerns about its response to key community issues. Earlier this year, four council members wrote a letter asking Cronk to share a food plan with people who had lost power during the winter storms and expressing disappointment that he was not returning calls they made to it Had addressed the subject to him.
In response, Cronk wrote a letter saying the city was working internally and with community partners to bring water and food to community members.
Last year, Cronk was also criticized by some council members for failing to replace then Police Chief Brian Manley after protesters suffered serious injuries from beanbag bullets fired by Manley officials during social justice demonstrations.
Manley stayed on the job 10 months before stepping down in April.
Adler appeared on episode # 1,657 of Rogan’s popular podcast. Rogan, a longtime host and comedian on a television show, recently moved to Austin from California and bought a lake house near the Cuernavaca neighborhood.
Poppe, Adler’s spokesman, said Rogan invited Adler to his podcast when the two met while they were dining separately at a local restaurant.
During the interview, Adler went through the challenges he faced during his tenure. The list included an increase in traffic, a decrease in the availability of housing, and two cases of the city issuing notices of boiling water. He jokingly paid tribute to the heavy rains in 2015 that raised water levels in Lake Travis after a prolonged drought. He described his decision to vacation in Cabo last year during the pandemic as a “sore spot” and apologized for filming a video while he was there, encouraging Austin residents to stay home and not to travel.
The interview ended with another discussion about homelessness.
At a recent homeless summit, Adler was involved in adding 3,000 new units over the next year. The estimated cost of this is $ 250 million and is expected to be covered by a combination of public and private US dollars.
Rogan, who has a net worth of about $ 100 million per various reports, appeared to offer help.
“If you need anything, I’ll be here,” he said to Adler.
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