Council candidates are starting to ramp up and announce their campaigns, and the reason for the season is civic engagement.
FAN will eventually hold a vote of the membership on 2018 candidate preferences and positions on possible bonds, or other issues before the City Council.
But a large part of our goals before that step would be educating the public and our members by asking each candidate some questions about their platforms and topics slated for Austin’s future.
In 2016 our questionnaire included these queries:
What policies will you advocate to accommodate and welcome the full abundance and diversity of people who aspire to live in Austin’s high-demand neighborhoods?
How will you resolve policy issues and cases that come before you when the wishes of some incumbent residents in a neighborhood conflict with the interests of other residents and the larger, city-wide community?
What policies and approaches will you advocate to promote neighborhood improvement, and avoid neighborhood protectionism, as Austin changes and grows
What policies will you advocate to address the increasingly unaffordable housing, transportation, and utility costs that are economically segregating our neighborhoods
This is the post where we discussed the content of those questions. But the highlighted points we settled on were: