Broadnax sees police oversight as a “natural” part of the next contract

The Austin Monitor recently met with Austin’s new City Manager, TC Broadnax, to discuss some of the more pressing issues facing the city’s staff and city administration as he settles into his new job.

As for the police contract, the draft contract was already in circulation before your predecessor left. Did you have any concrete ideas about what it would contain?

I’m not entirely sure what has changed specifically. The feedback I’ve received has been that it’s a work in progress. They’re still working through issues specifically related to some of the things that delayed the previous contract. I’m not going to go into too much detail because, to be honest, I wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve tried to be at a very high level with the negotiating team and let them do what they do. That’s hard work in these talks.

The ultimate goal is to find a way to overcome the difficult periods of issues and challenges that the community and the council and their concerns have had and to achieve a fair contract that will help our people improve their recruitment and help them understand what their future will look like when it comes to whether they want to join the police force or stay in it. I have full confidence that our team is working in the spirit of what we believe will be successfully adopted not only by the men and women of the police force but also by the council when we finally put it forward.

To what extent are you involved? Do you plan to take part in the daily negotiations?

Absolutely not. That’s my assistant city manager, Bruce Mills, and our negotiating team. I’ve learned to review the situation when they get to a point with big issues and challenges. They might come over and tell me are they going in the right direction? Is it something I can support? But for the most part, I try to give them all the freedom when they sit at the negotiating table every day. It’s hard work and it’s challenging. I give them all the flexibility they need to bring the contract home or to council that we can all support.

There are many, many nuances and subtleties to such a contract, but the issue that has come into the public eye is the aspect of oversight, which the mayor has of course said in a very loud and clear voice that it absolutely has to be part of the contract. What is your view on the issue of oversight? What is your position on this, given that it is a public matter?

It’s important. I think it should be something natural and expected. I have no problems or challenges with where the council and/or mayor want to go. I’m right where they are. It should be an acceptable progression in any capacity, whether it’s police, public works or any other department. We have a job, but that job is created based on a balance between the expectations and desires of our community. Like anyone who does a job, you have to be held accountable.

It’s even more important for policing that there be some accountability and oversight. I think that’s what we’re having conversations about, what that looks like and what their respective roles and responsibilities are. I come from the oversight board in Dallas. We had an Office of Community Police Oversight that went from being just a review board to an office. I think the relationship between that office and the police department is important just for transparency and accountability reasons. I think the community would expect us to take care of that.

Has there ever been a conflict between these two offices or sides, or how has this been going since its introduction? What have you learned from it?

I think there’s always a built-in perception and tension. But as an administrator, whether it’s the boss or the director of that particular office, their relationship and how they call balls and strikes, I think it’s important. Of course, it’s important to listen and understand the community you serve. There’s always going to be some level of attention. But I think it gets overdone in some cases because if you’re doing the right things, honestly, oversight shouldn’t be a problem. You don’t have to have a built-in distrust or dislike.

For us in Dallas, it’s been a transition, but I think we’ve found a good balance there. I’m confident that when we finally get to where we need to be in this organization and this community, people will realize that this is a very natural progression. People just want to have the opportunity to feel, in cases where they feel like things haven’t gone right, that they have a voice that they can go to that is open and honest and takes their concerns and complaints and then works them through a system that they can trust. Again, there are stories that you might read from other communities and many communities that would make you think that there should always be conflict, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

How difficult is it to prepare a budget from a budgetary perspective when you have a police contract that is secured for three to five years? How difficult is it to prepare a budget when you depend on a police contract from year to year while you have that security for three to five years? Could you talk about the security that can be created by doing that?

I think there is some certainty depending on how the contract is worded in terms of wages. There are some contracts, depending on how they are worded, that are market-based. So there’s always going to be an unknown at some point when you actually test the market and see where your competitors are at a given point in time. So it’s never consistent, and there’s always a guess. But then there are others that are similarly based on average salaries of comparable cities. Then that’s a little bit different, but similar to the market.

Because they were off contract here (and I can’t speak too specifically to that because I wasn’t here), the council defined and determined how much of a pay increase they couldn’t afford outside of the contract. There’s no evergreen clause to that. That didn’t make it difficult. What made it more difficult was the lack of a contract and the impact that had on the other things that make them feel better about recruiting and people wanting to join knowing what their future looks like and/or advancement opportunities and things of that nature. So that didn’t add any additional complications. It’s dollars and cents, and whether you’re on contract or not, there are still some parameters that you have to agree to.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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