Austin — the money trail

The City of Austin — the state capital and Travis County’s seat — is a separate government from the county, run council-manager style: an elected Mayor (Kirk Watson) and 10 district council members set policy, and a City Manager (T.C. Broadnax) runs operations. The bars are the General Fund’s departmental operating budget ($1.49B); Police, Fire, and EMS together are more than 60% of it. Austin’s full budget across every fund is about $6.3 billion — most of the difference is self-supporting utilities like Austin Energy ($1.38B) and Austin Water ($864M). One note on arithmetic: the departments below foot to the $1.49B operating total; the ~$54M gap to the often-quoted $1.54B General Fund is transfers-out and reserves booked fund-wide. Every dollar traces to the city’s open-data budget portal. Click any number to open the source. The pieces add up to the General Fund (departmental operating) total exactly.