About the Austin Metric

The Austin Metric covers Austin public policy and policymakers.

Its mission is to help Austinites rigorously evaluate their local government's performance.

The Metric's blog and newsletter are written by Julio Gonzalez Altamirano.

About Julio

Julio began writing about Austin civic affairs in 2008 at his first personal blog: Keep Austin Wonky. He later helped lead OpenAustin and served on the City of Austin’s Open Government Working Group, advocating for open data and stronger civic technology. In 2012, he was a leader in Austin Community for Change’s advocacy to replace Austin’s exclusively all-at-large council system with a hybrid geographic representation system.

Julio was a founding board member of the Capital of Texas Media Foundation, the nonprofit parent created to sustain what became the Austin Monitor. He also co-founded AURA, which grew from a transit advocacy organization into a major voice on Austin housing, land use, and transportation policy.

His transportation work includes co-developing the “Wheel Deal,” an integrated rail, bus, bicycle, sidewalk, and safety investment proposal that helped shape the civic debate preceding Austin’s 2020 Proposition A and Proposition B mobility measures.

Julio served on Austin’s City Manager Search Advisory Task Force. And its Charter Review Commission. From 2022 to 2026, he served as a Board director of the Strategic Housing Finance Corporation of Travis County, including service as board president.

In 2023, the Austin Chronicle recognized Julio with a "Best of Austin" Critics Choice award as a special recognition for his civic data analysis work.

Julio is a native Texan that has lived in Austin for over two decades. He is a graduate of Yale and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Follow Julio on X at @juliogatx, or see all of his Austin Metric posts.

The views and opinions expressed at the Austin Metric are solely Julio's and do not reflect those of the institutions and enterprises he is affliated with.