Ward 3 race sees change ahead of primary

Editor’s note: Brian Prentis, one of the candidates for Ward 3, has chosen not to participate in this story.

There’s been something of a change of scenery in the primary race for the Austin City Council’s Ward 3 seat, currently held by incumbent Paul Fischer.

Initially, three people filed to run in Ward 3, including Fischer. The other two include Brian Prentis and Alexander T. Marshall, however, Marshall confirmed Thursday morning that he has suspended his campaign for personal reasons.

Paul Fischer

Fischer will be running for a third term in Ward 3 and said he was doing so in part because he feels he has the experience now to continue pushing for things he and the council have been working on through his past two terms.

“I think it takes you at least a couple of terms to fully understand how city government works,” Fischer said. “You just can’t get on the council and know where the budget should be at. It takes a lot of experience to figure that out.”

Fischer added that he’s also enjoyed the work of his previous two terms.

“If I didn’t enjoy serving the folks of Austin and being a part of the city council, I wouldn’t be running,” he said. “It is rewarding, but it’s also non rewarding as well. Just to be a part of it is fascinating.”

One of the areas Fischer wants to continue focusing on is the employee engagement project the city is in the midst of in order to improve morale within the city government.

He said that continuing to see that through has taken a lot of work, but at the same time he argued that it’s a worthy and important process.

“Obviously, our employees are our biggest asset,” he said. “The people are who we need to take care of. I want to continue this process and see it through.”

Fischer also wants to work more on the challenge of recruiting first responders to Austin. This includes both the Austin Police Department and the Austin Fire Department, who have experienced shortages.

With retirements on the horizon in the police department, Fischer said it’s as important as ever to ensure officer hires are available.

“We’re not getting those applications,” Fischer said, referring to those positions vacated in the wake of possible future advancements to fill the retirements. “How do we bring new officers in? We need to do some kind of recruitment and be better about bringing police officers to Austin. How do we fix this? It’s something we as a council need to look at now.”

He said the same is true regarding the fire department, which is seeing a need for more volunteer firefighters.

“How do we get folks to become volunteer firefighters?” Fischer said. “These are things that I think as an experienced council member, are important. Having the experience in dealing with police and fire in where they’ve been and where they are going.”

Fischer said he is ultimately falling back on that experience as a reason for being worthy of support for a third term.

“I think the decisions I’ve made for the city have all been to help the citizens of Austin,” he said. “Helping employees of Austin, helping better the community. Every decision I make on the budget, ordinances, whatever they may be … that’s for the citizens of Austin. I’m here because they elected me. Overall I feel the decisions I’ve made, I feel, have been for the best of Austin.”

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