Austin Mayor Steve Adler outlined a number of community goals and priorities Wednesday night during the annual State of the City address. Adler focused on racial issues, the coronavirus, policing and transportation, and about how each should be leveraged to create a more equitable Austin as things get back to normal from the pandemic.

Here are five takeaways from the speech that signal where city leaders could be heading:

POLICE BUDGET

The Austin Police Departments budget has been top of mind for many at City Hall and throughout the community since protests against police brutality erupted in June. Since then, calls from the community to defund the Police Department have been met with support from Austin City Council members.

Adler said he supports such measures, but he said major systemic changes will take longer than many had hoped.

"I do not see how we actually make any of these things happen right away. If we want real, transformative change, we have to be prepared to do the work necessary," Adler said. "This will take all of us working together, digging deep, resolving conflicts, removing barriers, being our most creative, innovative and adaptive. ... Ultimately, there will be no lasting re-imagination realized and sustained without putting in the time, resources and deliberation required. These are important decisions."

Adler said some issues have a clearer path forward and need to be changed as quickly as possible, including moving the forensics lab from the Police Departments control and making changes to training at the police academy.

But for the larger issues which involve millions of dollars, large numbers of staff members and significant infrastructure Adler said he supports removing elements from the police budget and putting them into a transition budget category, which likely will contain well over $100 million in elements currently in the police budget. The council would have to readdress that funding within six months.

RESTITUTION

Adler added his voice to those of mayors in cities throughout the country calling on federal leaders to build a national program of restitution for descendants of slaves that would help address the wealth gap between Black Americans that has widened across generations.

"We must also do the work here. We would not be alone in this work. Cities around the country (Asheville, Providence, Durham, Tulsa and others) are owning up to the physical, emotional and economic violence visited upon people of color by the communities they call home," Adler said.

Adler asked City Council members to begin planning a path toward restitution, saying there has already been movement in that direction and city leaders should support those trying to push the initiative forward.

"It will require us to be intentional about addressing our history and righting the wrongs. It is the work of saying Black lives matter," he said.

Adler said history will remember 2020 as the moment that pointed Austin in the direction of justice, because it was a year in which injustice was seen on a scale like never before.

While calling 2020 "a troubled year," Adler said he thinks "it will turn out to have been the kind of necessary trouble that Congressman John Lewis exhorted us to make in the name of progress."

COVID-19 RECOVERY AND RISK

Adler said his State of the City speech could have been solely about the COVID-19 outbreak.

"In every discussion of things that matter our families, our health, our jobs, businesses and our schools, our best laid plans the virus is the elephant in the room. In the dark film this year has been, the coronavirus was the supporting actor that stole every scene," he said.

Austin is still dealing with the uncertainty created by the outbreak. Adler said hard choices came early in the pandemic, like canceling the South by Southwest festival, shutting down businesses and telling residents to stay in their homes to protect themselves and others. Adler said Gov. Greg Abbotts decision to reopen some businesses compounded the challenge to contain the virus in Austin.

Adler said the fight is by no means over, and if we want to reopen schools and businesses and keep them open, the community needs to drop the infection rate from its current level of 10% to 15% to under 5%.

He addressed the University of Texas plans to let 25,000 people attend football games, saying such a move will not help get the community down to that infection rate.

"I hope they dont really try to do this," Adler said. "Our choices have consequences. People die from this virus. Many people who live through it are carrying injuries that may be with them the rest of their lives. Risks we take with masks, distancing, or large groups puts at risk sustaining the opening of schools and businesses."

HOMELESSNESS

About an hour before Adlers speech, news broke that a petition filed to try to put Austins homeless camping ban to the November ballot had failed. Of the more than 24,000 signatures collected, the city clerk verified 18,000 to 19,000. To earn a place on the ballot, the petition needed 20,000 signatures.

To those who signed the petition, Adler said he shares their impatience with the citys efforts to address homelessness, but he said the city is on the right path.

"For all of the discussion around this topic, no one wants this for our neighbors absolutely no one. For too long, though, we were content to not think too hard about it because we didnt see it," Adler said. "We didnt see the suffering; we didnt see the injustice. We didnt see it, because we didnt want to. It made us uncomfortable. We adopted policies that were intended to move it along and hide it."

Throughout the pandemic, Adler said, the city has acquired hotel beds for people who are homeless, and brought the city together with nonprofits to focus on how Austins crisis response system functions. He said the city needs to be able to show the community that progress is being made, and must invest in diversion and rapid rehousing programs and permanent supportive housing that makes homelessness brief and empowers those experiencing it to climb out.

"Now is the time our moment of opportunity to build on that work and to act boldly to make our city more just. We know that 38% of our homeless population is Black over four times greater than the demographics of the county as a whole. When we work to end homelessness, we are also doing the important work of addressing the symptoms of racial injustice," he said.

TRANSPORTATION

Adler said the coronavirus outbreak gave Austin a brief respite from the usual gridlock on MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1), Interstate 35 and downtown, but it also exposed another gap that prevents people without access to transportation from fully participating in Austins economy.

"In our community, far too many of the people most in need of affordable, reliable, rapid transportation to meet their daily needs and improve their lives dont have it. As a result, many are forced to spend a disproportionate part of their income on dangerous ways to get around, or they are losing time and in too many cases risking their lives to make use of inadequate transportation options," he said.

Adler said Project Connect, the citys multibillion-dollar transit plan, could correct transportation investments in the past that have deepened inequality, segregated the city and displaced many.

"We must learn from that painful past and ensure we do not repeat those injustices. We must ensure that the very communities we intend to serve with improved transit are actually able to keep living in those areas once the improvements are in place," Adler said.

The measure will likely be put to voters in November in a tax rate election.

Adler said taking the actions and focusing on the priorities he outlined will require major disruption to the status quo, and require a reckoning with a past of racial disparities that exist in every part of Austin.

"We have to recover, but shame on us if we rebuild systems as inequitable as before. Let us embrace the remarkable gift it is to have so much undecided and up in the air. Lets celebrate the opportunity born of the necessity to rebuild. Lets commit to be guided by a search to deliver justice. Lets join in a disruptive recovery, seizing the moment rebuild in a just and equitable way," he said.

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Adlers Austin: 5 takeaways from State of the City address - Austin American-Statesman