AUSTIN, Texas — Austin City Council has tapped a well-known former city manager to serve as the city’s interim leader. The search is on to replace Spencer Cronk, who has been officially relieved of his position following outrage over the city's response to the power outages after February's ice storm. 

Jesus Garza was city manager when Kirk Watson began his first term as mayor in 1997. At the time, the city budget was $1.3 billion. Austin’s population was 550,000, just about half the size of San Antonio or Dallas. And the city’s biggest social event was not SXSW or ACL Fest; it was Aqua Fest.

Garza was one of the last homegrown city managers in Austin. Both Garza and his successor, Toby Futrell, spent most of their early careers in the Austin city government. Garza joined the city in 1978. Stymied in efforts to advance in the Austin city government, Garza left for a stint as an assistant city manager in Corpus Christi before returning to Austin to lead the Texas Water Commission. He returned to the Austin city government in 1993 because “there are less politics,” he told the Austin Chronicle in a 1997 feature. 

Garza would be elevated to city manager within months of rejoining the Austin city government in 1993. He served as city manager from 1994 to 2002, covering Watson’s entire four-year term as mayor. He oversaw some of the city’s early significant growth and expansion, as well as the relocation and opening of Austin Bergstrom International Airport in 1999.

Garza left the city not long after Watson finished his term as mayor, moving on to take a role at the Lower Colorado River Authority and then, less than a year later, moving on to head up the Seton Health care Network. He retired from the network, now known as Ascension Texas, in 2017. In 2019, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce honored Garza as the Austinite of the Year. 

The choice to name an interim city manager in the same vote as the removal of Cronk is likely one indicator that the search for the city’s next leader is expected to go faster than the one to choose Cronk. Austin was without a city manager for 14 months between Marc Ott and Cronk. Cronk joined Austin, from Minneapolis, in 2018.