Council OKs limits on events at 3 Austin parks Move aims for balance between festivals, public access
The Austin City Council blessed a plan Thursday to limit the number of event days at three major parks, attempting to strike a balance between popular festivals and the public’s free enjoyment of these community spaces.
The move solidifies a recommendation from the Parkland Events Task Force to allow no new events at Zilker Park, Auditorium Shores and Fiesta Gardens and to have the number of event days at all three decrease slightly by attrition.
Only Council Member Jimmy Flannigan raised objections during the past two weeks that what constitutes an event day is drastically different depending on the event. The Austin City Limits Music Festival, for example, counts as six event days and the Trail of Lights counts as 14, even though public access to Zilker is substantially more limited during the ACL Fest.
The council’s move Thursday allows all current events to stay at the three parks, but if those events choose to leave, the city would reduce the event days at Zilker from the current 29 to 24, at Auditorium Shores from the current 20 to 17 and at Fiesta Gardens from the current 19 to 17.
“When we set a numberof days that is less than the current number of days, we lock in the events that are currently happening,” Flannigan said. “There would be no rational reason for an event to explore using a different venue ... because the value on that day is so high.”
Flannigan also questioned why the calculation of event days doesn’t include the number of days a park is closed for setup or take down. Staff members said they didn’t want to give events a reason to rush that process.
For years, neighborhood groups have aired concerns that the parks near and dear to them are being overrun with private events — includ
ing some of Austin’s marquee festivals. An off-road bicycling championship that tore up Zilker Park in 2015 renewed questions about whether the city was striking the right balance between parks as community spaces and event venues, prompting the creation of a task
force to examine park use. The task force issued the recommendations last fall. Some of them, including that the city consider a fee study to decide whether charges for park events adequately
cover their costs, haven’t yet resulted in policy changes.
Overall, the goal is to manage large events in a way that doesn’t prevent public enjoyment of the parks.
“We have more and more people moving into apartments, et cetera, homes without green spaces of their own, and they look to public parklands as a place to go,” said Ingrid Weigand,
who served on the task force. She used Auditorium Shores, near her own home,
as an example, saying that with 22 event days plus time
for setup and take down, the park is unavailable for use 51
days of the year. Those days, invariably, are during the most desirable times of the year, spring and fall, when the public would use parks the most, she said.
David King, a Zilker-area resident who frequently speaks at City Council meetings, pointed out city numbers indicating that, if you include smaller events and setup and take
down days, Zilker Park access is at least partially limited 167
days of the year. “It’s important to have rest days,” he
said. “The parks are being loved to death.” Council Member Ann Kitchen, whose district includes Zilker, supported setting the limits on days as the task force recommended. “I’m not interested in going down the road of reallocating at this point, of saying that these existing events have to move or may need to move,” she said. “I’m interested in setting a limit on the number of days, and I think that the task force did a good job. I don’t want to rehash what they did.”
In addition to limiting the number of days, the approved ordinance cracks down on illegal vendors, including those who offer unpermitted paid tours, set up stands selling goods outside of concert areas and install marketing tents. It requires people to have approval to conduct commercial business in a special event area, or else they can be fined up to $500.
The ordinance also allows for fines of up to $250 for people who park illegally in a special events area during an event time.
Staff members said the parks department needed increased enforcement
because, until now, a parking ticket has cost only $30 — barely more than what people pay to park legally far away from the events in question. Because of that, many peo
ple park on sidewalks near the parks, or on the grass of the parks during events. “We frown upon you park
ing on the great lawn, but now you can be ticketed rather substantially,” parks Assistant Director Kimberly McNeeley said.