2026 Election: Meet the candidates for Austin City Council District 5
Meet candidates for Austin City Council District 5
Four candidates are running for Austin City Council District 5: Ryan Alter, David Weinberg, Liz Brink, and Farrah Abraham.
AUSTIN, Texas - Four candidates are running for Austin City Council District 5: Ryan Alter, David Weinberg, Liz Brink, and Farrah Abraham.
Meet the candidates
What they're saying:
Ryan Alter was first elected four years ago.
"I'm running for this office because I want to make Austin a place that's affordable for people. That was the reason I ran four years ago, and in that time we have achieved really amazing results. Housing costs are down, rents are down. We've been able to almost double the senior homestead exemption, so seniors are able to stay in their home, keep electricity bills as low as possible," Alter said. "I have shown myself to be someone who's a problem solver, who shows up prepared and ready to deliver results that make a real difference for people, and I'm ready to do that for four more years."
"You need to have people who are actually representing the district well. We do not have that today in District 5. I'm really trying to improve on that in two big ways. Number one, actually listening to people in the district and taking their voices to City Hall on all sorts of issues," Weinberg said. "Another thing I want to do is just really plain and simple, excellent constituent service for people helping them out of City Hall."
"It seems like the City Council really isn't listening to what the residents are saying. I just got tired of wondering what they are thinking down there? I just decided to be the change that I want to see," Brink said. "I'm just a lifelong resident of South Austin that just truly wants the best for the city. I'm not bound to any developer or activist group or anything like that. I am a 25-year union electrician."
Farrah Abraham was unable to do an interview due to recovering from surgery. She sent FOX 7 written responses. She describes herself as a self-funded, debt-free candidate who is a single mother, advocate for crime survivors, national TV talent. She was on "16 and Pregnant" and "Teen Mom."
"Critics try to use my public history to diminish my qualifications, but my background as an 18-year small-business owner and national figure is proof of my transparency, adaptability, and unwavering resilience under pressure. I will audit, save money, and make you money—and I hold myself and others strictly accountable," she said.
Ryan Alter, David Weinberg, Liz Brink, and Farrah Abraham.
Big picture view:
Prop I
Prop I on the ballot would require external audits of city spending.
Alter says he doesn't support it.
"We are doing our own audit that's going to be much more thorough and comprehensive, and this one that's on the ballot would end up being very surface level. We'd pay a lot of money to get very little value out of it," he said.
"I certainly am in favor of more auditing. I think I would prefer the proposal that the mayor put forward in terms of his audit program, but I'm not going to be telling anyone in District 5 to vote against Prop I in November," Weinberg said.
"I absolutely support the external audit and getting it on the charter because we could do an internal audit, but we would know that as city councils change, they may do away with that," Brink said.
"Internal city audits leave too much room for political interference and self-policing. We have seen incumbent leaders slide through internal reviews after misusing public resources. Independent, mandatory, voter-protected charter audits hold politicians accountable. Proposition I enforces true fiscal transparency, identifies wasteful spending before asking residents for more money, and protects taxpayers," Abraham said.
Tax dollars spending
"We should always be the best stewards of taxpayer dollars as possible. My office is one of the leanest, most efficient offices. We spend very near the bottom of every office every year, and so we have been able to take some of that money and invest it into District 5 parks, and I'm really proud of that," Alter said. "One of the things where we have lacked over the past, and what I want to see do better in the next four years, is really show people what they're getting for their dollars."
"I think a lot of people in my district are upset with how City Hall is spending money. They're not really in a particularly good place of trust with City Hall. There's certainly a lot of clamoring for folks who want to see more auditing done at the city level so that they are in a place where they feel more comfortable about how the city is spending their money," Weinberg said.
"We need to make raising property taxes the absolute last thing that's done and, right now, it just seems like that's the first go to, that the city council and other taxing entities want to go to, instead of looking at themselves and seeing how we can budget things," Brink said.
"Voters made it clear when they rejected tax rate increases that City Hall has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. We balance social service funding and neighborhood affordability by eliminating government waste and developer giveaways, not by cutting essential frontline services," Abraham said.
Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center
Another concern in District 5 is safety around the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center.
"Sunrise is providing a critical service in the community. The problem is, it's the only one in the city. That's problem number one. Problem number two is that it is not big enough. When they started, they were serving maybe 20, 30 people a day. Now it's over 300. Because of that, and because it's not big enough, you have this spillover into the neighborhood where there's a school, a park," Alter said.
"You cannot concentrate a single homeless service center in one council district. It's not going to work. I don't care which council district it's in. I don't care who's running it. That is too much of a burden on one particular area," Weinberg said.
"I think we need to work with the director there to see maybe if we can work with putting up maybe some sort of fencing to kind of help keep people on the property. I know it would be great if we could just relocate the Sunrise Navigation Center so not right across the street from the school," Brink said.
Abraham says safety standards around facilities should be enforced, there should be root cause wraparound care, plus protection for crime victims and survivors.
"We must ensure strict buffer zones, zero-tolerance policies for public open-air drug sales or violence, and active coordination with local police around service hubs like the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center to protect neighboring families, schools, and local businesses," she said.
Transportation
On transportation, Alter says it's a priority to give options for getting around and delivering on bond dollars.
"We have to balance that with what we can afford. I think really what is most important is the public has asked for a number of years, through a number of bonds, for us to improve our sidewalks, our roads, all of our transportation infrastructure," Alter said.
Other candidates have concerns about the cost of Project Connect but want to see other transportation improvements.
"In District 5 I would like in particular to see some improvements made in terms of north-south bus service. I would like to see improvements made in terms of how people are getting around by car, particularly in the southern part of the district, Slaughter Lane, I-35," Weinberg said. He also suggested exploring curb-to-curb microtransit options.
"Can we maybe shore up Cap Metro in some way, maybe get it to where they have more routes that are through all hours of the night consistently. Can we make the busses safer, have better bus stops? I think that there are other things we can look at besides just throwing our money away," Brink said.
"While I support expanding modern public transit and connectivity across Austin, I do not support blank-check spending or unchecked cost overruns that burden taxpayers. Transit projects like Austin Light Rail must be tied to independent performance audits to ensure tax dollars are strictly accounted for before major capital expansion," Abraham said.
The Source: Information from Ryan Alter, David Weinberg, Liz Brink, Farrah Abraham and reporting by FOX 7 Austin's Angela Shen