Mayor warns of 1 million people “coming to town”

In an opinion article, Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell, joined by City Council Member Bill Spelman, suggested Austin Energy should have a change in oversight because the City Council stands to confront multiple other challenges.

“We’ve got 20-odd departments to watch over and — with nearly a million people coming to town in the next 20 years — incredible housing, land use, and transportation problems,” the pair said in the piece placed online by the Austin American-Statesman on May 5, 2013.

A million people on the way?

That figure holds up only if one considers projected population changes from San Marcos to Georgetown to Bastrop, in other words the five counties encircling the capital city, which is otherwise expected to have more than 330,000 additional residents by 2035.

See our take on Leffingwell’s claim, including a hyperlinked analysis by Spelman, to the right.