City Council Special Called Meeting Transcript – 11/19/2024 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 11/19/2024 6:00:00AM Original Air Date: 11/19/2024 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [9:00:00 AM] You're watching a meeting of the Austin City Council Council members good morning everybody. It's 9:00 am on November 19th, 2024 [9:01:02 AM] and I will call to order the special called meeting of the Austin city council that was scheduled for this date. We are meeting in the city council chambers, which are located in Austin city hall at 301 west second street, and we have a quorum of the Austin city council present. What I'm going to do is actually use this as a moment to tell everybody what the day kind of looks like. And then because we have several things that the council is going to take up today, but I just want everybody to know all of that. The, the because we have a lot on tap. What we're going to do is we have two items on the agenda of the special called meeting and the first is to approve a resolution canvasing the results of the November 5th, 2024 elections. And the second is to approve an ordinance ordering a runoff election. We received official vote tallies from the counties that we contract with to run our elections, and we use those [9:02:04 AM] elections, and we use those official tallies in order to conduct the canvass. We're waiting on Williamson county to provide required information, and it's our understanding that they will come. That information will come at some point during their meeting that is scheduled to begin at 930 today. That being the case in just a few minutes, we're going to recess the special called meeting of the Austin city council. And we will reconvene it at a time that it will be appropriate when we have that additional information from Williamson county. If anybody looked at my message board post yesterday, it said we would reconvene at two. That was because we had information that led us to believe that they would take up this item at around 130 to 2 today, that information has changed. So I apologize that we're we're in a little bit of a flux on that, but we'll we'll do that in an appropriate time. And that will [9:03:04 AM] appropriate time. And that will be the time that we will take up speakers. With regard to the items on the agenda for the special called meeting, as soon as we recess, this special called meeting that we're in, the mayor pro tem, as chair of the Austin energy oversight committee, which is a committee of the whole council, she will call that meeting to order and conduct that meeting. We also will have a work session of the city council, and that will follow. And we have we are also scheduled for an executive session and a good or appropriate and appropriate time. We will also call that. We will call that executive session. So that's the order of the business for the day before I recess. I do want to say one other thing. Just because it's kind of neat, or at least I think it's neat. Today is November 19th and 20 years ago on November 19th, we opened this city hall, so it's hard to [9:04:04 AM] city hall, so it's hard to believe it's 20 years old now. But there's many people in this room and folks on the dais remember when we used to meet on this property? But it was in what we still called the temporary council chambers, even though they had the city had bought the land in the mid 70s, like 74. I think I'm right about that. In 1974, bought four and a half blocks. This block the two blocks were silicon labs are the block behind us. And then another half block and then proceeded to not do much with it for many years. And we met in those temporary council chambers. And it was during the 97, 98, 99 time period. We voted to build a new city hall. And on this space, which was what was always intended, intended. And we opened it November 19th, 20 years ago. So I just thought [9:05:06 AM] years ago. So I just thought it'd be nice to have that recognition because it's, it's a really a grand building and, and so it's neat that we have the opportunity to do that. So with that, and unless there's an objection I will we will recess the special called meeting of the Austin city council at 9:05 A.M, and I will call it back to order, probably probably at the conclusion of the Austin energy oversight committee. And we'll take it up at that point in time. So with that, we are in recess at 9:05 A.M, and I will now turn the gavel over to our mayor pro tem as chair of the Austin energy oversight committee. Thanks, mayor. [1:37:02 PM] >> Thank you, madam chair. Members that will take us what I would recommend for the rest of the day is we will go to the special called meeting. I indicated earlier in the day that we would wait until we had the results from the Williamson county commissioners court. We have those results. So we're able to go to the meeting and I'll call that meeting to order when we complete that meeting. Then we will go to the work session. The first item that we'll take up on the work session will be the cap and stitch program. Then we will take up the website and then we will go into executive session and I'll talk about that a little bit more. When we get to it. So with that I will call back to order the Austin city council meeting. It is 1:38 P.M. [1:38:04 PM] council meeting. It is 1:38 P.M. This is the special called meeting of the Austin city council. Before we proceed with the consideration of item one on the agenda, which is the item to canvas the election, I want to note two things. The first is that under state law, only two council members are necessary for a quorum in order to canvas an election. The second is that because I'm a candidate for office in the election, I'm going to abstain and avoid voting on item number one, although I will preside, I just want to, for the record, indicate that I'm abstaining and avoiding voting on item number one. As I mentioned, state law provides that only two members of the governing body are required for purposes of canvasing the election. As we have a quorum necessary, we will now take up item number one to approve a resolution canvasing the results of the November five, 2024 general and special [1:39:06 PM] five, 2024 general and special elections. I will now read into the record the results of the elections in the general election, the returns of the election show in the mayoral race, there were 70,540 votes for Carmen de Lianes. Pullido, 29,383 votes for Jeffrey L Bowen, 16,865 votes for Doug Greco, 175,096 votes for Kirk Watson and 58,280 votes for Kathie tovo, with Kirk Watson receiving a majority of all votes cast for city of Austin mayor. In the district two race, there were 22,591 votes for Vanessa Fuentes and 3780 votes for Robert Reynolds, with [1:40:10 PM] for Robert Reynolds, with Vanessa Fuentes receiving a majority of all votes cast for city council member. District two. In the district four race, there were 1149 votes for Louis heron, 5223 votes for Monica Guzman, 630 votes for Eduardo lolito Romero, 11,034 votes for Jose chito vela and 819 votes for Jim Raybuck. With Jose chito vela receiving a majority of all votes for city council member district four. In the district six race, there were 14,008 votes for Christa lane and 13,283 votes for Mackenzie Kelly, with Christa lane receiving a majority of all votes cast for city council [1:41:11 PM] votes cast for city council member district six. In the district seven race, there were 6625 votes for Gary L Bledsoe, 5110 votes for Pierre way. Nguyen, 2973 votes for Todd Shaw, 2135 votes for Edwin batiste, 13,682 votes for Mike Sigel and 303 I'm sorry, and 3828 votes for Adam Powell with Gary L Bledsoe and Mike Sigel receiving the highest number of votes, but neither receiving a majority of all votes cast for city council member. District seven. In the district ten race, there were 20,811 votes for Marc duchen and 20,321 votes for [1:42:17 PM] duchen and 20,321 votes for ashika ganguly, with Marc duchen receiving a majority of all votes cast for city council member district ten. In the special election, the returns of the election show that there were seven votes for and three votes against proposition P. Before we take a motion, I will ask the clerk to let us know if there is anyone who has signed up to speak on this item, and then at the conclusion of any speakers, I will call for a motion. >> Yes, mayor, we do have some speakers. Chris Paige and Chris Paige has time donated by Betsy Greenberg and Jenny Grayson is not here. Then that'll be six minutes. >> I'm just going to have a [1:43:33 PM] >> I'm just going to have a timer so I'll make sure I get it all. >> Okay. >> So I'm here to talk about 13 votes, which is what is the as far as I last knew, the difference between a runoff or no runoff. So I was a poll watcher for two days at Travis county speaking entirely in my own capacity. This is not in conjunction with any campaign, although I was asked to be a poll watcher on behalf of Carmen Lianes campaign. So this testimony is based on my observation and subsequent fact finding. I think mayor Watson, you've misled the public with premature victory speeches, social media posts that were later circulated by our actual local news. This is what occurred. [1:44:35 PM] occurred. >> There are. Over 4000 rejected provisional ballots. >> There are also 282 more voter check ins than there were ballots collected. That's a margin of error that could change a runoff. There's also a statistical drop off in the acceptance rate of provisional ballots, and your last three elections. Mayor Watson, if this one is your third. So when you first ran, it was 43% accepted. When you went into a runoff last time, it was 87% accepted. In this election, it was 19% accepted as of the 13th. When I was first poll watching, there was a batch of provisional ballots that were missing 75. That was unaccounted for. It was [1:45:37 PM] That was unaccounted for. It was asked for voter registrar or voter registration staffer to seek them. He suggested there may have been a printer that ran out of paper, but that would make no sense. We had unadjudicated ballots emerge yesterday, and they were counting them as late as 9 P.M. Last night, 12 hours before the special meeting convened, and the unadjudicated ballots, 13 voted for mayor and mayor Watson, you had sub 50% out of those that were adjudicated as approved, 55 of those recently located ballots were rejected for reasons unknown to me, because poll watchers didn't have the opportunity to observe whether exactly how vr was assessing whether or not to accept or reject ballots. There may have been late provisional ballot curing. There's six calendar's calendar days prescribed by the secretary of state. It was told to me that there were curing them as late as seven days later. There's [1:46:38 PM] as seven days later. There's limited observability, which I've already discussed. We were prohibited to have movement to the vr space where things were being assessed for acceptance or rejection. This also conflicts with the secretary of state's rules. We don't know if there was consistency in the state and county registration list, and Harris county and an audit had inconsistencies that we should probably consider here, since we only have a difference of 13. Now, this is another interesting thing. Mayor Watson. You had a poll watcher that is alleged to have a history of voting fraud. This is available and confirmed in three different sources. This also contradicts what's allowed by the secretary of state. Now here's the heritage foundation's indication of it. This is the KXAN report. I wasn't going to name the person, but he actually came up and tried to intimidate [1:47:40 PM] came up and tried to intimidate me in the lobby of city hall by saying, do we have a problem raising his voice? And suggesting that I should not testify on this? I gave him the opportunity to clarify anything that I might be wrong about. He gave no clarifications and left. We also don't know in Williamson county what happened there because we had no access for poll watchers. We were told that it was going to be on Friday morning. It didn't occur on Friday morning. It occurred on Thursday night. After potential poll watchers were told that they were not allowed to be on site. It was after 5 P.M. So why does this matter? To my knowledge, the determination of our city's mayoral runoff hinges on a very limited number of votes. Insanely close. It's a narrow margin that was estimated at 5 P.M. Yesterday. Despite the lopsided resources, approximately half of Austin's [1:48:41 PM] approximately half of Austin's residents confirmed their desire through ballots for new leadership and our mayor's office votes are sacred in our democracy. We should not discount the possibility that the unobservable vr review of provisional ballots over 4900 that were submitted in the general election could have a differential of 12 to 13 votes. And based on what I saw last night, after we got confirmation from Travis county that they had already finished their estimation based on what I saw last night, there are not only errors that exist, but errors that are large enough that they could change whether or not we have a runoff in the city and they could change who leads our city for four years now, I'm not here to politicize, and I'm not officially affiliated with with the campaign that potentially could run off against you. But I think we need to follow our rules. We need to have transparency. We didn't have [1:49:41 PM] transparency. We didn't have that. We didn't have the capacity to see all these errors that are now inexplicably emerging. Thank you. And so please don't finish this until we have that confirmation. It's sacred for our democracy. Thank you. >> Your time has expired, mayor. >> Those are the speakers for item one. >> Thank you. Council members. The motion that the chair will accept is the following motion that the city council approve the resolution. Canvasing and accepting the returns for the November 5th, 2024. General and special election declaring Kirk Watson is elected to the office of mayor, declaring Vanessa Fuentes is elected to district two, declaring Jose chito vela is elected to district four, declaring Christa lane is elected to district six, declaring Marc. Duchen is elected to district ten, declaring that a runoff election between Gary L Bledsoe and Mike Siegel is necessary for district [1:50:43 PM] Siegel is necessary for district seven, and declaring that proposition P passes. Is there a motion? Council member Ellis moves approval. It is seconded by council member Velazquez. Discussion on the item. Hearing none without objection, item number one is adopted, with the mayor abstaining from the vote. I'm sorry. With council member Alison alter off the dais. Thank you for noticing that. Thank you. Members that will now take us to item number two. As I mentioned before, we only need two members of the council to be present to conduct the canvass of the election. But we have another item on the agenda, obviously, and that's item number two. And that requires a regular quorum. And all the members necessary for that are present. This item is to approve an ordinance ordering a runoff [1:51:46 PM] an ordinance ordering a runoff election to be held in the city of Austin on December 14th, 2024, for the purpose of electing a city council member for district seven, providing for the conduct of the election, and declaring an emergency. Before we take a motion, I'll ask the clerk, do we have anyone who has signed up to speak on this item? >> Yes, mayor, we have one speaker, Betsy Greenberg. >> Miss Greenberg, do you wish to speak? She's waving her right to speak on item number two. Is there anyone else signed up to speak? >> That's all. Mayor. All right. >> Thank you very much. That being the case, I will now entertain a motion. And the motion will be approval of an ordinance ordering a runoff election to be held in the city of Austin on December 14th, 2024, for the purpose of electing a city council member for district seven, providing for the conduct of the election and declaring an emergency. Do we have a motion? Motion made by the mayor pro tem, seconded by council member qadri. Is there any discussion on the item? [1:52:47 PM] any discussion on the item? Hearing none. Without objection. Item number two is adopted with councilmember Allison alter being off the dais. Members. That completes all of the items for the special called meeting of the Austin city council for Thi date without objection, we will adjourn the special called meeting of the Austin city council at 1:53 P.M. We are adjourned.