Spencer Cronk's future as Austin's city manager is once again up for debate, amid outrage after stumbles in the city's response to Winter Storm Mara.
Spencer Cronk's future as Austin's city manager is once again up for debate, amid widespread outrage after stumbles in the city's response to what has now been named Winter Storm Mara – what the chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas called"an ice hurricane" that made a direct hit on Austin last week.
It will take weeks or months to clean up the wreckage of Winter Storm Mara, Council learned at its Feb. 7 work session. It may take just as long to really figure out if and what Austin Energy could have done to better prepare for yet another extreme weather event. But it's clear that the utility and the city's communications team dropped the ball on two key principles of crisis management: Respond to what your customers are telling you, and don't make promises you can't keep.
That evening, at 7:35pm, AE sent an email to Council – not to the public – that revised the timeline, saying most customers would have power restored within 48 hours, by 6pm on Feb. 3. When that time rolled around, more than 100,000 customers remained without power.
For Alison Alter, Watson, and others on Council, frustrations with Cronk extend beyond decisions made – or not made – over the past week. Frustrations over how the city activates extreme weather shelters have boiled over in recent months. Last year, former Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros resigned after the utility issued its third boil water notice since 2018 – all three of which occurred under Cronk's leadership.
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