AUSTIN (KXAN) — Travis County Judge Andy Brown joined KXAN Monday to talk about priorities for the year ahead of Travis County Commissioners Court on Tuesday.
The conversation was centered around working to bring passenger rail to Central Texas, a new Travis County mental health diversion program, artificial intelligence and strategies for tackling homelessness within the City of Austin and throughout Travis County.
Listen to the full interview with Brown in the video player at the top of this story.
Passenger rail expansion
Brown’s two top priorities for the year are passenger rail and the mental health diversion program.
As for expanding passenger rail in the region, Brown said there are three options:
- Expanding Texas Central Railway with a first-phase route that would go between Dallas, College Station and Houston and a second-phase route that would go between College Station, Austin and San Antonio.
- Expanding existing Amtrak service on the existing rails between Austin and San Antonio. Brown said the county is working with Amtrak on trying to figure out a way to do that, which would mean there needs to be negotiations with Union Pacific to figure out how to how to do that.
- Developing a new passenger rail line with Brightline, which is a private company that currently only operates in Florida but Brown said is interested in the Central Texas corridor.
Brown said there is a study group of people in Travis County that will meet and discuss those options.
Mental health diversion program
Travis County’s mental health diversion program is nearly one year in the works. Last week, county, city and local leaders shared updates on the crisis care program with county commissioners.
Commissioners approved the program in March 2023 and set $6 million aside for the program in April 2023. The goal is to address behavioral health conditions and reduce recidivism.
Brown hopes a pilot program at an Integral Care site on Airport Boulevard will be up and running in the next few months. It’d expand the site’s existing psychiatric emergency services to be 24/7 — which is not available now outside of emergency rooms.
The longer term goal would be building a robust mental health diversion center and crisis care facility, which would involve the City, Central Health, the county, the state and the federal government, Brown noted, “hopefully with some grants to build the most robust mental health diversion center that the state has seen.” Brown said the county hired a person to act as a project manager for this.
Artificial Intelligence
Brown has worked with the National Association of Counties to look at the challenges that local governments face relating to AI and some possible solutions to those. Brown said he and a commissioner from Florida are co-chairing the Artificial Intelligence Exploratory Committee and have met with people from software services like Google and Microsoft to try and figure out what, if anything, does it make sense for counties to use in terms of AI.
Brown said there are a lot of red flags but one thing there is potential for is summarizing and sorting data, though there are still logistical obstacles to overcome such as the quality of the data, and where the physical data centers needed for that would be placed.
Homelessness
There is a proposal from the city on the commissioner’s court docket for Tuesday addressing homelessness and potential funding to be allocated toward analyzing the homeless strategies within the city and county.
Brown said he believes the biggest need within the community to help address homelessness is mental health resources.
He said that’s where the mental health diversion center and the crisis care facility come in. Brown said there are limited places for someone to go if they’re having a mental health crisis, especially if they’re low income.
“The state hospital system, frankly, is supposed to do that, and it’s not, there’s a long waitlist there. So as a result, our jail is getting backed up and we’re having other problems in our community,” Brown said. “So I think if we can meet the community’s need on mental health, I think that’s where the county and Central Health in the city really can step in and change things, and that’s I hope what’s going to happen with this mental health diversion center, both with the pilot and the the permanent diversion center once that’s up and running.”