Mayor Steve Adler – State of the City of Austin Address

About our speaker: 

Mayor Steve Adler was sworn into office in January 2015 and has focused primarily on Austin’s growing affordability crisis and worsening traffic.

On affordability, Mayor Adler and the Council created a new property tax break for homeowners, increased the senior and disabled property tax exemption, and lowered electric rates for everyone in town. Mayor Adler has also completed the Mayors’ Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness, sponsored the Strategic Housing Blueprint to increase the housing supply for the working poor, and, together with County Judge Sarah Eckhardt, spearheaded the Austin Metro Area Master Community Workforce Plan to lift 10,000 local residents out of poverty and into middle-income jobs over the next five years. And on mobility, Mayor Adler led passage of the $720-million Smart Corridor mobility bond which was more than four times larger than any transportation bond previously approved in Austin and bigger than all the transportation bonds cumulatively passed in the previous 20 years.

Mayor Adler has received recognition for his innovative ideas and leadership. In Jun. 2017, his fellow mayors elected Mayor Adler a Trustee of the United States Conference of Mayors after putting him on the Advisory Board the previous year. In August 2016, Mayor Adler was voted by mayors surveyed by POLITICO Magazine as the co-winner of the Rookie of the Year award. In September 2016, Living Cities included Mayor Adler on the list of 25 Disruptive Leaders. Also that month, his office's application for a crowdsourced minibond campaign to save Austin's iconic music venues was picked as one of five winners of the Neighborly Bonds Challenge. In September 2016, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx named Austin one of the winners of the Mayors’ Challenge for Safer People, Safer Streets. Austin, which won for its Smart Trips Austin program in the Rundberg neighborhood, is the Mayors’ Challenge Ladders of Opportunity (Large City) Award Winner. In Nov. 2016, the readers of the Austin Chronicle named Mayor Adler the Best City Official and critics named him Best Drag Mother for his turn as Mother Ginger in Ballet Austin's The Nutcracker. The readers of the Chronicle named him Best City Official again in 2017, and the Chronicle critics named him Most Devoted Pen Pal for his Wonder Woman letter. And in August 2017, Austin Monthly named Mayor Adler "Best Politician" for "fearlessly speaking up for Austinites [and] proving that a little snark goes a long way to support the morale of a community." In May 2017, the U.S. Conference of Mayors presented Mayor Adler with the Small Business Advocate Award for his dedication to the small business community. In Dec. 2017, Foreign Policy named Mayor Adler to its 2017 list of Global Thinkers "for standing up for immigrants in the heart of ... Texas." That same month, the Anti-Defamation League of Austin gave Mayor Adler and First Lady Diane Land the Ray and Audrey Maislin Humanitarian Award.

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