Closed Caption Log, Council Meeting, 03/03/11 Note: Since these log files are derived from the Closed Captions created during the Channel 6 live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. These Closed Caption logs are not official records of Council Meetings and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records, please contact the City Clerk at 974-2210. here we go, guys. Good morning, I am austin mayor, lee leffingwell. We will begin today of the invocation from minister sheryl westwick from red river church. Please rise. Let us pray. Our father, lord in heaven, your name is holy and you are the giver of all that is whole and strength of everything that is good and beautiful. Let your kingdom of justice peace and joy come from heaven and especially in austin. Give us the bread we need and in council and other city leaders, the daily bread of wisdom as they consider, understanding as they listen, and resolve if they decide. Forgive us when we err and guard us from malice, envy and strife and give us the grace to forgive like we have been for given. Keep us from temptation evil and make us fearless in the face of a foe that you have already defeated. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Aamerican. Amen. Thank you, minister. Please be seated. I will call this meeting of the austin city council to order, thursday march 3, 2011. Meeting in council chambers, austin city hall 301 west second street, willie nelson boulevard, austin, texas. Begin with changes and corrections to today's agenda. Item number 53, the zoning and planning commission recommendations should read as follows. Postpone to march 15th, 2011. Our time certain i 30 morning briefings, the briefing on urban parks stakeholders update has been withdrawn, and so we will have a briefing on the image austin comprehensive plan preferred growth scenario and plan framework. At twelve noon, we will take up the citizen's communication. , we will take up our zoning matters. At 3, we will convene a meeting -- I want to check that. I think it's 2:00. , we will take up -- we will recess the council meeting and call to order the meeting of the austin housing finance corporation board of directors. we have live music and proclamations. Musician for today is matt the electrician. Consent items for today's agenda are items 1-42, with several exceptions, which i will read in just a moment. First I want to read into the record item 28, which is our board and commission appointments and waivers, item 28 will remain on the consent agenda as of now. There are no nominations scheduled for today. I have a waiver solid waste advisory commission to approve a waiver of the attendance requirement in section 2-1-26 of the city code for paiaz casis kazes service, and the waiver includes through today'ses date. The following items have been pulled off agenda by council members, items 25 and 29 are pulled by council we have several more items that are pulled off of the content agenda because we have several speakers signed up and those are items 10, item 11, item 31, and item 32. Thirty-four, we are adding speakers as we speak, so i will go over that again, pulled off consent due to speakers, 10, 11, 31, 32, 34, and 40. Now add 36. Pulled off consent. So we are going to have a number of items to address. We have no items for single speakers except for item number 33, signed up to speak only if there are questions. So with that, if everyone understands what the consent agenda and there are no more items to be pulled, I will entertain a motion for approval. Council member spelman moves to approve the consent agenda. Second by council member cole. Any discussion? All those in favor, say " oppose say no. Passes on a vote of 7-0. So we will go right into our items pulled off, unless there is any preference from council members, I will just go in the order that we had these items in. If we could try to hold the noise down level -- hold the noise down as you exit so we can continue our meeting, i would very much appreciate it. First item pulled due to speakers is item number 10 with two speakers, the first is dr. dan west. Dr. dan west. So we will go to gus pena. Welcome, gus, you have three minutes. Thank you, mr. mayor. Council members. Assistant city manager, mike donald, I am gus pena, having to deal with meals for the different parks and recreation department. We are in favor of this and the doctor is running late but my comments will be this, in the downturn of the economy and poverty as it is, I would ask that the city austin and also parks and recreation department and meals on wheels have a psa or any other option to notify the seniors' requirements on where they can sign up because a lot of seniors are definitely paying more for their taxes and less for nutritious food and we wholeheartedly support this item and we thank the city and of course dan pruett from meals for wheels for providing food for seniors. It has been my contention way before graduate of high school, that our two most precious gifted segments of our community are the senior citizens and our youth and children. Thank you very much for that and I will be speaking on 25 when it comes up. Thank you very much. thank you. dan west, is he in the chamber? He is not in the chamber but he is signed up for. So mayor pro tem moves approval of item 10. Second by council member morrison. Any discussion? All those in favor, say " oppose say no. Passes on a vote of 7-0. Go to item number 11. Item number 11 also has dan west, who is not here and gus pena. Both signed up in favor. Gus, do you -- are you passing on this item? Okay. So entertain a motion on item 11. Council member spelman moves approval. Council member cole second. All those in favor, say " oppose say no. Passes on a vote of 7-0. Brings us to item number 25, pulled by council member morrison and we do have speakers, also. Morrison: Mayor, I would be happy to hear from the speakers first. first is jim ray signed up neutral. Jim ray. Not in the house. Gus pena. Gus pena signed up for. Welcome back. You have three minutes. Mayor -- mayor pro tem, gus again, I am a proud marine corps veteran. Item number 25, these are our concerns over here, number 1, will new employees be hired to take over the duties of the extended hours. Number 2, what is the physical impact on our budget; and number 3, it should have been first, is the safety of our employees. During the hours, I hate to say this, but when people are celebrating, people become inebriated so there is a safety factor in this time frame, so if we could get answers to those questions, that would be most appreciated by the people that asked me to speak on these -- on this item. I will leave it at that. Before I leave, because this is the last item I want to speak to, I want to say this for the record, I highly respect mark ott, our city manager and michael mcdonald, I do support them, very much, mike and mark, wherever he is, I always said that, I have high respect for you. You are highly competent, intelligent and continue the march, sir, and tell mark if he is not listening, but anyway, we have confidence in y'all. Keep up the good work. Thank you very much. we will ask those questions of staff when we get into discussion. Travis snavely signed up against. You have three minutes. Thank you. My name is travis snavely, an austin resident and I saw next week's agenda the council is discussing how they to intend to use the revenue extended from parking hours, so it looks like you made your decision and gone against the people's wishes, the city gave a survey and it showed that austinites were against extended meter hours, 76% said they received free on street parking to pay lots. Of those 76%, 81% of them said they would be less likely to visit downtown if the parking meters were extended. At the february 8, 2011 urban transportation commission meeting, commission member, which i attended, commission member richard mckenna nsaid almost all of the email responses and feedbacks were against extended meters and he followed that by saying he wants everything to be free but it can't be that way. After hearing this, I had to ask why did the city have people fill out survey since the decision seems to have been a foregone conclusion anyway, was it to make people believe falsely that they have an effect on city matters that affect them and I went back to a study done by an agency called parking planners, on the first page, the goals of the study spelled out. Three of the four goals were all about revenue generation. One of them was evaluating revenue potential of the various technologies on a 7-year time line e another of those four were studying potential revenue game by extending hours of enforcement from 8:30 a.m. and the other was potential revenue game from hours of enforcement from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. To midnight and now we are in 2011 and it is about helping businesses so let's go to the survey results that were given to the 600 downtown stakeholders. At the downtown commission meeting, I asked which of the downtown stakeholders were for the parking meters and the commission members said the downtown commission was and I didn't know who the downtown commission was so I looked it up and it is actually a group of council appointed members who represent downtown interest and the council appointed members it is like one section government asking another section of government, should we tax these people? Yes, I think we should. I don't think that is valid. The parking garages, for profit garages were for extended parking meters and even in the memorandum by the urban transportation commission said this would help the parking garages. They are for profit business and the city should not be using its power to direct people to for profit businesses. That is immoral. Also the texas bar and nightclub alliance is one of the downtown stakeholders and they were absolutely against this. In fact, the director actually said they were invited to give their input after the decision already had been made. [Buzzer alarming] I am very butch against this and vote against it. I notice on the agenda next week but please think about it. Thank you. Thank you. jim ray. Is jim ray in the building? All right. Kim johnson has signed up against and does not wish to speak. Those are all of the speakers we have signed up on item number 25. So council member morrison. Morrison: Thank you, mayor, we had a good discussion about this item in the work session yesterday and I appreciate the conversation that we had and provided some few thoughts of looking at things, I think. I do want to give a tip of the hat to council member riley who remind and me there is no such thing as free parking, ever. I understand that because you have to look at the big picture, but I do believe there is a way we can reach a balance there. I also have been thinking about -- we had a great civics summit that the mayor sponsored on monday and one of the panellests was secretary cisneros and his summing up when asked to give final words was, get over it, austin, you are a big city. And I agree with that. I understand that. But the bottom line is we need to choose what kind of big city we are and who we really are and who we are here to serve. As mentioned yesterday, in my comments with what is proposed, we may well not see fewer people coming downtown, but I believe we will see different people coming downtown and will be changing the ecosystem of our vibrant downtown and who downtown serves because we are basically talking about moving money from the pockets of our citizens and residents to the city copper, as I mentioned 2 million is expected to be generated in revenue from fines of people who will be breaking the new -- who we will be expecting to break the new laws. I am very uncomfortable with that. So if we go back to what brought us to even have uses look at this in this case it was the perceived lack of parking and lack of turnover and availability for some downtown businesses and i believe the staff recommendation that we have in front of us today goes well beyond addressing that problem that was set out. Because the staff recommendation says let's put in paid parking everywhere and I believe -- I am not sure if it includes rainy or not yet, but there was discussion about including it. I believe that the staff recommendation goes way beyond what the joint subcommittee recommended. That is the joint subcommittee between the downtown commission and the urban transportation commission. One of their recommendations was to maintain the boundary at seventh street where paid parking starts so everything north of seventh street would remain free and they mentioned that it would be an easy demarcation for the they said as part of their rationale that lack of adequate off street parking in that area, that this is a lack of adequate off street parking in that area, so it could be a challenge for employees at bars and restaurants, and also that there is not a strong need for turnover there. So I do believe that adopting the joint subcommittee's recommendation is a wise wave into the future because, in addition to addressing the issues that the joint subcommittee mentioned, it will also maintain options for free parking, for people that are willing to and really need to seek it out if their finances are limited for their evening out downtown, for musicians, for volunteers and as i mentioned, it is easy to understand. So I -- I sort of have a sense of reality of this passing in large part, so what I would like to make do is make a motion that we pass the staff recommendation but with the adjustment that the -- that seventh street is the line of demarcation and anything north of seventh street remains free. Mayor leffingwell: Motion by council member morrison. Second. Spelman: I will second it for purposes of discussion. Mayor leffingwell: Council member spelman seconds for purposes of discussion. Do you want to discuss first? Spelman: What is the difference between seventh street and 6 et street in this respect? Why could it off there and not someplace else? Morrison: As opposed to sixth street. Spelman: Sixth or eighth street or tenth or anywhere else. Morrison: According to a joint subcommittee, that there ises -- there is not a lot of activity in terms of business and retail -- retail restaurants and, in fact, as many bars north of seventh street. There is still some between sixth and seventh, so the idea is to target the areas where there is a lot of business activity right there, and that way, it will encourage turnover -- the parking the meters would encourage turnover in then front of businesses. Spelman: And your indication in your mind is turnover needs to be in front of the businesseses themselves. We don't have the turnover businesses on eighth street. Morrison: Exactly. Spelman: But we have businesses on red river and other streets like congress avenue, which is another good example. There are a lot of businesses right -- facing north-south street which are north of seventh street and it concerns me if we will put an arbitrary cut-off point of seventh street, we are going to have a lot of -- we are going to be reducing turnover on north south arterials rather than east west. Yes, on a couple of them and I think one of the ideas was, first, I was looking at and talking with folks about was trying to be more targeted and sed out quadrants like the north-west quadrant. But the trade- off there is an easy understanding to make it an easy line. are you done -- I have a couple of comments. I am not going to support the motion as stated with a modification for several reasons. And I know there are -- this has changed and change is going to be difficult -- this is change and change is going to be difficult for a lot of people and what we also realize is there is going to be changes to the change. And these are, I think, for the most or nearly all part, parking kiosk areas. There may be a few meters in there somewhere, but it is mainly kiosk controlled areas. These kiosks have the ability -- they have software in them where you can program them to accommodate different scenarios in different places. For example, if you identified an area, just hypothetically, northwest where, for some reason or another, we wanted to extend parking hours and/or reduce rates or change rates, you can always do that when these problems come along. As they are identified, you can address them with this software capability in the kiosk, and we know there are probably a lot of problems that are going to come up. We are hearing them even as we -- even this morning, we are hearing about people have additional concerns about it. The city staff, I know has made a lot of efforts to reach out and address a lot of these problems that have been brought up and there will be more to come, so i would suggest that instead of changing the line of demarcation -- and by the way, the reason for tenth street is because that's where the -- as was pointed out yesterday, that's where the city's jurisdiction ends and the state takes over so we couldn't go past tenth if we wanted to. So I really think the best thing to do is go ahead and over the next 6 months, as council member spelman pointed out yesterday, we are going to continue to receive input. We are going to continue to re-evaluate, identify problems, formulate solutions to problems, as is also pointed out in that monday meeting, and -- but for now, I would like to maintain the full flexibility. That is my preference, so i won't support the motion as stated but I would support the staff recommendation. Council member shade. Shade: Can I ask staff a question? Is there -- you mentioned yesterday the ability with the technology that we have -- and it is not addressed in the ordinance, but the ability to have, rather than three hours, five hours, in some places, is that something we can do to address the concerns that I think council member morrison might be thinking about in terms of volunteers working at the paramount or something like that, and the areas she is talking about that is north. Council member, robert phillips from the transportation department, yes and that is one thing we found on the kiosks out, that we found on red river near brackenridge during the daytime that we don't need the level of turnover that the rest of the city was programmed for. So what we did, in fact, was change the three hours to five hours, so, yes, it's possible. That is not an elements that reflected in the ordinance because it is typically left up to the operations so that we can move more quickly to make those changes to reflect the business needs surrounding the meters. Thank you. And because it's pertinent to I think the topic we are talking about here and because I am -- I think i noticed cameron came in after we already called on the speakers, I would like to ask if he would like to come forward because he is the person that has been circulating widely these emails related to the paramount in particular, and if you would like to come forward. I did have a chance since our last work session discussion to also get some insights from the head of the paramount as well. Council members, thank you for allowing me to come down this morning. This was something that came on to my radar about 48 hours ago. And so I thought, you know, when I came down here, i always bring you facts, logic, and arguments that make sense. I thought, well, I should probably do a poll. So I took my email list, which is a random selection of the entire diversity of austin, and I sent out an email and asked people if they would sign a petition opposing this extension of parking hours. There is 284 signatures on that response that's come back to me in the last 48 hours. I have had three people say that think didn't agrees are. 9% of a very diverse group of austin citizens and taxpayers who say this is the wrong thing to do. So I urge you, in the name of the hundreds of volunteers who come to downtown austin in the evening, on the weekends, to spend their time helping struggling nonprofits stay alive -- and there are a bunch of them -- not just the paramount, which I am a volunteer with -- and it is also something which the feedback came in that this also impacts people who work downtown part-time jobs probably, nights and weekends, they are working at minimum wage, probably less, plus tips. Those people are impacted, too, and so that's an economic hit to people who have decided to work downtown. So if you are going to pass this ordinance, you are going to impact the struggling volunteer nonprofit organizations that we have downtown. You are going to impact the employees who work downtown nights and weekends. This is the wrong thing to do. 9% Of my simple broad spectrum sample of austin says, don't do this. So I would urge you to back up. Don't pass this today. Start rethinking how to cope with revitalizing downtown austin without driving people to the suburbs. Thank you. Mayor leffingwell: Council member, you still have the floor. I would like to ask a couple of follow-up questions. Council member shade I will give you the podium back. Skip, you volunteer at the pair point, how long have you been there. Nine years. Spelman: Any evening you are there and ushering and doing things you do, how much time do you spend at the theater? We come to the theater, 30 or 6:30 in the evening. The show will start an hour and a half after that, 7 or eighth lasts an hour to hour and a half so we will be in the downtown area from 5 to 30 or 10:00 o'clock. We are gone before the sixth street crowd comes in to enjoy reveling on the sixth street because when we come down here, there are always parking spaces within a few blocks of the paramount. We always park on the street as other volunteers do, and then when we leave, there are parking spaces available when we leave, 9, 00 o'clock, but we notice people coming in as we go out, because this is the evening crowd. Spelman: Right now, what you have to do is find a 30, put money on the meter to get you to 6. Yes, pay 50-cents or dollar to park until the meter goes off. And then the meter goes off and you have two or three hours you are in the theater, so the affect of this ordinance on your life would require you to spend whatever it costs to get another 3 hours on the meter? Yes and for me and my wife, in particular, we don't mind feeding the meter for a good cause, but it's going to inhibit us and we will probably volunteer less at the paramount because of this. Many of our paramount volunteers have said, I am on fixed income. I have been hurt because of cd rates at 2% or savings account at .5%. I don't even have the money to pay a parking meter now. I cannot volunteer any more at the paramount if I have to come down here. So it will definitely be an impact on the nonprofits in downtown austin. Spelman: And for you and the friends and the rest of people on email list it will probably be 3 hours on the meter in the evening. Yes, sir. Spelman: Thank you. Cole: I have a question. cameron, you talked about other nonprofits besides the paramount, can you give us a cursory list of that? Amoa, next door, the zack scott theater. There is an art house right across the street from the paramount on seventh and congress. All you have to do is look up and down the street and there are lots of places where people volunteer. I really was not cognizant of all of that until this issue came up and I started hearing from people to say, hey, this is really going to be a big impact to people who come downtown to volunteer their time. Cole: And I think just cold council member spelman, how much do you estimate 30 on a paid meter? If the rate still stay at a dollar an hour, which i don't know if the ordinance is, maybe it will, it's going to cost 3 or $4 to park for the time that you are downtown volunteering. Cole: And do you have any sense of how many volunteers there are for the paramount? We have ever 400 volunteers. Zack scott has over 500 volunteers. And growing. Cole: Okay. I guess I will give the floor back over to council member shade. Mayor leffingwell: Council member. Shade: Just to confirm, the rate is not changing, the ordinance does not have this going into effect until several months from now. I think that zack scott would not be impacted because it is not in this area we are talking about, and I think that in talking to the folks at the paramount, the biggest challenge is having to feed the meters, isn't so much the extra dollar for the -- or the $4 that you needed, the $4, I think it is something that we really ought to look seriously about, in terms of adding -- especially the area that council member morrison is talking about, looking at five hour time frame so that would easily cover someone. You know, I think if I did a survey and asked 300 diverse people something you have been getting for free, I am now going to charge you $4 for it, they would say no, i don't want to do that. But I do think that the businesses that are impacted by not having turnover, by not having money to spend to do waive finder and some of the things we were talking about to do, I think there are opportunities to improve the downtown business situation, especially for the very organizations you are talking about, where there is a perception, i can't go to the paramount because I can't deal with the parking downtown. I think now there might be more opportunities for people to find -- we actually have capacity in garages that people are unaware of. So I am going to end up supporting the ordinance, but with the understanding that we do need to be looking specifically at the areas north and, again, director speller said he would be doing that and that has been effective as we rolled out things. Again, we will have several months so it won't be a sudden jolt to the volunteer community out there and it will be closely monitoring it, but I think that -- I -- I have weighed a lot of the facts and looked at what other cities are doing, and cities that are comparable, there isn't -- they are going -- going until midnight is a little different but going until 10:00 certainly is not. That is the norm, for vibrant, active downtown cities, and again, I don't like adding a new cost to my day, either, but I do like the idea that if there is more turn, then more people will be possibly going downtown, because there is more turnover of the spaces. Again, I am really excited about the opportunity to help those businesses that have garages that are undercapacity. I thinks that a really good part of this. Again the motion on the table is not the ordinance but the ordinance as modified with the seventh street restriction. Shade: Am going to plan to vote for the ordinance. mayor pro tem. Martinez: spiller, i warranted to ask, where we lose our jurisdiction at tenth street and where the state takes over, what are their parking hours? Their parking hours go to 00 o'clock, I believe, concurrent with ours. Yes, that's correct. Martinez: So anywhere around the capitol complex, conceivably if there is available space, some of these volunteers could park on 11th street on colorado street, and walk four blocks, if they don't want to park any -- if they want to park in a closer spot, pay $4? Yes, sir. Martinez: The other point I wanted to make which is what I brought up yesterday, and you answered it clearly yesterday but I want folks to hear it today for the record. I asked why rainy street wasn't included when council has directed you to consider a parking improvement district for the rainy street area for infrastructure improvements, lighting, security, other things, and you just said it was a timing issue. This was coming forward and we popped the rainy item on you all of a sudden, so they didn't mesh together. And I asked you, would it -- would it be unusual or out of norm or would it be something you wouldn't support if we were to go ahead and include the rainy area in proposal today since we've already directed you to consider such moving forward? -- How I answered this -- yes, it's fine to go to the river. We probably have 2 dosimeters south of cesar chavez, between cesar chavez and the river, where the two are close together right now. We left those out, I think yesterday because we forgot about them and it did not make good business sense to add the little sliver of a couple of dosimeters out there. Considering we are thinking about rainy street in your direction it would not be bad to extend this from the river, i-35 and lamar. And just for the record, we talked about -- this went on very long yesterday as well. We talked about working with musicians, workers for the venues downtown, creating some -- the least possible impact on their bottom dollar, potentially creating parking passes that could be as inexpensive as $15 a month so they could park in a nearby garage and still work and earn a profit and not be severely negatively impacted by this, and I want to make sure we state that for the record and that, also, that we don't anticipate any of the changes taking place until august, after we've created the wave finding system and after we have figured out exactly where we are going to rely on like how many hours we can buy on time and what we are going to do about the workforce and the musicians that come to downtown. And so, with that, I will support the staff recommendation today if that motion is made. Obviously with the caveat that between now and august, we are going to be watching this very closely and we can certainly bring it back to council if necessary, if we need to take other action. Yes, sir. it would have to be a substitute motion at this point. Martinez: Right. I am not making that motion yet. I think there is still some discussion. Cole: Yes. Mayor leffingwell: Council member cole. Cole: I would like to ask spiller a couple of more questions. Yes, ma'am. Cole: The karen house a the arch are actually on seventh street and I believe there are volunteers at those facilities, would this impact those volunteers? I believe, yes, that area does fall within the management zone that we've discussed, as council member martez h indicated, though, that we are more than willing to work with these special sites, volunteer sites, to help them figure out a different way to handle their parking needs for their volunteers. We are more than happy to be flexible. The technology that we have now is really opening our eyes in terms of parking management, with regards to the variety of approaches we can take. Cole: Thank you. Mayor, let me say that i think that we have to be very sensitive to the nonprofits that are downtown and their volunteers, and karetots and arch serves the homeless population and arch is managed through a major contract with the city and we won't want to get into the business of the city wanting to treat one nonprofit one way and the others another way, so whatever policy we may propose, I think it definitely has to be consist consistent with that but that the community needs to recognize that we are trying to set a longer term vision with technology that will make downtown more accessible for everybody, throughout the city and a major hurdle with that is the parking and that we simply have to address that. And I think that as we begin those discussions with the nonprofits, from everybody who does theater and entertainment and those who serve the homeless, it also needs to be in consideration of collaboration, and the question of what those nonprofits can or cannot do to assist us with parking for their volunteers. Thank you. Cole: And also consistent with our long-range vision that, we want people to be coming into downtown through mass transit because we want to alleviate the congestion on our arterial roads and on our freeways through potentially variable messaging centers and that we have a comprehensive vision in mind and this is just one piece of that. So I will not be supporting the motion, but I will make a substitute motion, to approve the staff recommendation. that substitute motion by council member cole to approve the staff recommendation, seconded by council member shade and I wonder if i could add a friendly amendment, just being in the form of staff direction to do outreach with volunteer groups and that would include the performance venues and art venues and would include the arch and other -- other venues like that, and it would also include -- recently I got input from downtown churches who have nights when they have volunteer activities, to reach out to all of those groups between now and implementation time to see if we can find some solutions that is work for everybody. Is that acceptable to you? Cole: That is acceptable but let me also ask a question to legal that your friendly amendment brought to mind, and that is, throughout the city, I am sure that there are nonprofits that have volunteers that are paying for parking, and is it even legal for us to contemplate making a particular exception for the nonprofits downtown? let me say before you answer that question. I didn't say make an exception. I said work with them to find solutions. Cole: But I just kind of want to know before we put that out there. Council member, I just think that any regulation that the city adopts needs to be reasonable. It isn't be arbitrary and a caprisious, so you can arctic late objectives why an exemption for a particular group can be made. There is a reason why we could do that but we want to see what the specifics of are of why the groups will be exempted, that is the definitive answer to that. for example we already have one exemption in the ordinance, it's for people who feel like they are downtown, having a good time, maybe too good a time and don't want to drive home, so they take alternative transportation, public transportation, taxicab or whatever, and they are given the option to submit proof to the city that this was the case, along with the actual expense, and be relieved of the burden of parking ticket until later on in the morning. That's already in there, so those -- there are possibilities, and I am just saying we ought do that outreach between now -- Cole: I definitely agree with you, mayor, and of course I accept your amendment. I just wanted to make sure that staff understood that we want to give the direction that we are making a comprehensive look to what extent that can be done and we don't have to do that now and I understand it needs to be loaded through legal, but I think we need to hear that in committee and definitely in our work session before we make a definitive decision on anything other than direction. Yes, ma'am, we will look at as many options as possible. as long as they are legal, right. [Laughter] only legal options. Council member shade. Shade: I just want to make a comment for all of us talking about nonprofits. Vast majority of the nonprofits, especially those you mentioned, for example, carry-tots, the vast majority of the organizations are during daytime and they have been paying parking, volunteers that go there years and years and years. The museum is the same. It's hours -- hours are not often at night. They do have some special events from time to time. So, I mean, there are volunteers that work at these places during the day and they have been paying for parking and I think that yesterday during the work session, council member riley made a great suggestion as well, to think about these organizations that are nearby a private parking garage, might be able to speak sponsorship dollars. There are all kinds of ways. Nonprofits are very resourceful and I think, again, it is great to think about outreach but all of the businesseses are also constrained as they have their staff -- and I think i heard director spiller say was - - that this is what they are spending the next several months looking at. So I think it's really important that whatever your business tax status is, if you are operating downtown, you are going to be impacted by this change in the ecosystem as council member morrison said and we need to do it carefully. With that said, I think the intent behind it, much like when we made the change to the parking meters is to actually improve the way things are operating downtown, because the area is vibrant, active, and so i am going to -- that's why i am supporting the ordinance. Mayor. Mayor leffingwell: Council member spelman and then mayor pro tem. Spelman: Just a couple of questions, mr. spiller. We tacked about this a lot yesterday and I want to make sure I understand the deal we made yesterday. This becomes implemented in august. Six months after august, it's going to be february and in march, we can expect to have a six-month report from you guys, which will talk about how much money we actually received through this, how that money has been spent, and what effect this has had, if any, on the number of people who go downtown and how much money they spend when they go go downtown. Yes, sir, and we will expect because the way we suggested that we will bring new projects forward that would be funded through these resources, we expect to also do that annually at budget time. Time, as part of the normal presentation to council. Spelman: Let me ask you a little bit about that. First of all I appreciate your promise to bring us a report in march because i want to watch this carefully to make sure our assumptions are correct and this won't have a initiative effect on people's willingness to come downtown. It seems to me we have two issues here going on which are going in opposite directions with respect to that. One of them is the cost of coming downtown to some extent, at least going up. You won't have free parking during the evening. You will have to pay for it and even if 78% of people are already parking in lots and garages, 22% of the people are parking for free on the streets. So if you think you might get a free space -- that's what is drawing you downtown, that's going to end, so that's all else equal, going to argue in favor of fewer or people coming downtown or spending less time and less money when they do get here. On the other hand, the benefit of this, from the public it seems to me, is we are able to spend more money on things like way finding, like signal improvements, transportation management and so on, we have benefits we are getting out of this and it is the biggest reason for doing it, is to spin out cash which makes it more convenient to come downtown and in fact makes it easier to find a parking space because of the way finding systems and so on. A lot of that depends on how quickly we can roll out an effective way finding system and spin out these benefits you are talking about. I wonder can you describe to us how long it will take before we can expect do see to see the investments you are talking about, especially on the street? Well, the investment force way finding -- for those in the audience, it is directional signage to public parking. So we are working right now on trying to get static signs up. Calling that a temporary way finding system, using the international parking symbol and simply to identify -- help drivers identify better where public parking is available. And when I say public parking, that is parking available to the public, not necessarily owned by the public, and so those signs, hopefully, will be going up over the next 6 months. Also understand that through a contract or funding that council has previously approved through our pdr department, we will be -- our planning department, we will be going out and seeking a way finding consultant. Here is the deal about way finding, as a I havetor comes in town, right message and location of messages from outside of the town once you are in the freeway, down to the arterial, down to parking facility and from the parking facility to the destination, and so that effort will start within the next quarter. The other element is we are already talking to privately owned garages about bringing the technology in that will allow them to broadcast in a sense, or create a data stream as to how many vacant spots are available within their parking facility available for the public to use, because it is a private partnership discussion, it may take longer, but that's really we are headed. Once we create a data stream as council member riley said yesterday in work session, we know that the private sector will pick up that data stream and figure out lots of ways to broadcast that information. So I would say within 12-18 months, a lot of these structures will be up and running and we've tried to approach it, let's get what we can up right away. There is also a discussion of branding of all of the public parking, so that as facilities come in to that sort of information stream, they also get the benefit of a common branding so that we can drive parkers to those facilities. So when this ordinance would be implemented in august, we could expect to have better amic signs on the street already? Absolutely, yes. Spelman: We will have a consultant who is starting to work through us what the content of additional signs ought to be and where they ought to be located. We will have -- be far along in our discussion with the private garages, because i think there is a -- do you think there is a chance we will have data from the garages, the data stream coming online for august? Yes, in fact we have created a map of all of the available parking facilities downtown that offer public parking in the evening. That is the first step. We have already started a discussion with a number of the parking garages. The technology literally because they have a gate in and out, they can tell how many spaces are available at any given time. In this facility we talked to building management last night and they are going to work to change the policy of waiting until we have 50 empty spaces to notify available parking. Again, that would be our goal, is to accelerate that effort, which is really facilitated by the revenue that's made possible through this ordinance. We are just about at full capacity, the system after updates, we are now profitable again. The parking enterprise in terms of generating excess revenue that allows us to start contemplating improvements through the transportation department. Congratulations for your fast work on response to council member riley's suggestion on the 50 spaces. Overnight is as fast as anybody could reasonably expect. I appreciate that. And it bodes well for the promises you have made with respect to the other stuff. If we actually have better way finding systems available starting in -- between now and august, there is at least a chance that the convenience improvement outweigh the cost reduction, the reduction in users due to cost so that on balance, we might be even steven with respect to people's willingness to come data and spend money and time when they get here and there is a possibility that relatively soon afterwards, it would prove the convenience enough that people are better off and it can happen soon, it is not going to wait for implementation and when is that right? Yes, sir, as I said we can start with the static signs now, the static says process now and we are working on that way now, and a project to find a better way finding system, yes. Spelman: I am not completely sold this is a net public benefit but I am certainly sold on the idea it is worth a trial and i will vote in favor of the motion before us and look forward to seeing the results of that trial twelve months from now, 6 months after implementation so we can take a check in to see whether we should make adjustments or whether the policy is a good idea in the first place. Mayor leffingwell: Council member riley. Riley: Thanks, mayor, a few comments, I will be supporting this motion on -- the substitute motions that on the table but I recognize that the action we are talking about is jarring to many, that we are -- that it seems like we are suddenly imposing fees for things that have been free in the past. I do take issue with any suggestion that parking is no problem today and suddenly it will be difficult. In fact, parking is a problem today. Parking has been a problem in downtown austin for decades, in fact. You can look a planning documents for downtown austin date back to '60s and '70s and the main issue that people are complaining about is people finding parking downtown. Much of the congestion you see at night is not people going just to their destination, it is people wandering around, searching for a parking space. Often we are over 98% capacity in on street parking spaces. So it means people wind up searching and searching for a parking space. Often when you find one you are in a remote area that is not safe. A lot of crime that happens late at night occur when people are trying to get to their cars in remote areas that are not well patrolled. So we don't have a good parking issue in place now. The irony is we have abundance of parking downtown, it is not easy to find and much times is not available. Most of the parking we have available is not the on street spaces people are searching for. There is tons of parking that is sitting there unutilized every night, even saturday night, there is tons of parking that is sitting there in garages, or off street parking -- surface parking lots, totally underutilized, nobody is parking there, so the real challenge that we face is how to manage our parking resources better, how to get smarter in managing our parking. As we think about those solutions, for the long-term, I don't think that that the solution to our parking issues lies in expecting to accommodate everybody on on street parking spaces. We know everybody, about 78% of the people coming downtown at night are using off street parking spaces, and if we were able to manage our off street parking better, make it easier to find, more convenient, then we know that that utilization rate would likely increase. People would have an easier time using that off street parking. And that really needs to be the goal. We want downtown to be an attractive destination. We want it to be convenient for people to find a parking space and we can do that. We can make great progress and I am very encouraged that the work staff has done so far and the steps we are planning to take in the coming months as we prepare for increased parking -- extended parking hours, we will have significantly improved way finding. We will have -- we will aim to get to a point where someone can just use -- they have a portable device, they can check their phone and they can easily find a convenient parking spaces that affordable. They will know the hours, and it will be easier are to park downtown as a result of the changes we are considering today. In the process, we will actually also improve safety, because now we will actually have many more officers patrolling streets, especially in those remote parking areas because people will -- now we are charging, we will have enforcement, there will be officers out there and it will be safer for those who do choose to continue to parking on street, it will actually be safe to do so, so there are meaningful benefits associated with this and it is consistent with what i consider the only reasonable long-term vision for managing our parking and that is to get smarter in the way that we manage our parking, and particular, making off street parking easier to find, more convenient for the cruisers and more portable than it is today. So with those comments, i thank staff for the work they have done. I thank the joint subcommittee for their work on this issue and all of the citizens who have participated in this process and I look forward to continuing all of those comforts to make sure this work -- those efforts to make sure it works in the best way possible as we get ready for august. mayor pro tem. Martinez: Sorry, mayor, i do have one more question that I forgot to ask. Currently under our ordinance, folks that have a handicap, mirror hanger or license plate, are they required to pay for parking meters? No, they will not, state law allows them to park on the street. It won't affect that. Martinez: That's all i have. Thank you. I would like to make friendly amendment to council cole -- who seconded it. Mayor leffingwell: Council member shade. Crime that happens late at night occur when people are trying to get to their cars in remote areas that are not well patrolled. So we don't have a good parking issue in place now. The irony is we have abundance of parking downtown, it is not easy to find and much times is not available. Most of the parking we have available is not the on street spaces people are searching for. There is tons of parking that is sitting there unutilized every night, even saturday night, there is tons of parking that is sitting there in garages, or off street parking -- surface parking lots, totally underutilized, nobody is parking there, so the real challenge that we face is how to manage our parking resources better, how to get smarter in managing our parking. As we think about those solutions, for the long-term, I don't think that that the solution to our parking issues lies in expecting to accommodate everybody on on street parking spaces. We know everybody, about 78% of the people coming downtown at night are using off street parking spaces, and if we were able to manage our off street parking better, make it easier to find, more convenient, then we know that that utilization rate would likely increase. People would have an easier time using that off street parking. And that really needs to be the goal. We want downtown to be an attractive destination. We want it to be convenient for people to find a parking space and we can do that. We can make great progress and I am very encouraged that the work staff has done so far and the steps we are planning to take in the coming months as we prepare for increased parking -- extended parking hours, we will have significantly improved way finding. We will have -- we will aim to get to a point where someone can just use -- they have a portable device, they can check their phone and they can easily find a convenient parking spaces that affordable. They will know the hours, and it will be easier are to park downtown as a result of the changes we are considering today. In the process, we will actually also improve safety, because now we will actually have many more officers patrolling streets, especially in those remote parking areas because people will -- now we are charging, we will have enforcement, there will be officers out there and it will be safer for those who do choose to continue to parking on street, it will actually be safe to do so, so there are meaningful benefits associated with this and it is consistent with what i consider the only reasonable long-term vision for managing our parking and that is to get smarter in the way that we manage our parking, and particular, making off street parking easier to find, more convenient for the cruisers and more portable than it is today. So with those comments, i thank staff for the work they have done. I thank the joint subcommittee for their work on this issue and all of the citizens who have participated in this process and I look forward to continuing all of those comforts to make sure this work -- those efforts to make sure it works in the best way possible as we get ready for august. mayor pro tem. Martinez: Sorry, mayor, i do have one more question that I forgot to ask. Currently under our ordinance, folks that have a handicap, mirror hanger or license plate, are they required to pay for parking meters? No, they will not, state law allows them to park on the street. It won't affect that. Martinez: That's all i have. Thank you. I would like to make friendly amendment to council cole -- who seconded it. Mayor leffingwell: Council member shade. Martinez: If they will include friendly amendment to include rainy district as well. We have on street parking on the rainy area that was not contemplated. I would like to put that on with the caveat we will watch this closely. Cole: Absolutely, mayor pro tem. Mayor leffingwell: Council member shade. I can ask mayor pro tem to clarify that, did you mean to include it to the river? Because there are some meters that are south of cesar chavez but not on rainy street. Spelman: Yes. Shade: And residential parking permits and I think you suggested there might be some other tools that are going coming also for us to look at when now and when this new ordinance goes into effect, is that correct? Yes, ma'am, we are looking on revised rpp program to currently reflect our system. In our downtown area we have not traditionally allowed rpp, especially with the major developments that have gone in, residential developments. The reason for that being is that those developments are required to have off street parking. But what we have found when we were transitioning out the meters, that there are a handful of older facilities, pre1950s type multi-family that were built with insufficient parking at the time, before there was the requirement for sufficient off street parking, and so those we have handled on a one by one basis, and so we have a few more tools and are thinking more creatively on how we use the rpp, especially with that. Shade: I want to make sure we had that in discussion as well. Thank you. rob, before you leave, I have a couple of questions. I believe you have covered them in the discourse, but specifically, answering pena's question about who will be doing this work and where the revenue goes. We anticipate, should you choose to pass this ordinance, we will be coming back on our next council member meeting, I believe march 10th, in discussing a budget amendment to the parking enterprise to hire 11 new people, ten officers and one financial administrative support person to support the new efforts, and that process will begin -- it will take about a 6-month process to move through. I think the other question was with regards to security and without getting specifics into the others, yes, security has been an issue as we start to do this planning and after hours, in the dark hours of the day, after sundown. We will be putting these enforcement teams out in pairs, just so there is two sets of eyes at the same time on the same blocks. We will be coordinating with austin police department so that the various block captains know where our staff are, and this is very similar to what our downtown rangers do in the evening hours, to make sure that they have a partner in the area for backup. I believe the other question that was raised is in terms of revenue. We believe in the first twelve months and you remember yesterday I said that our projecttions are for the first twelve months because there is some specific expenses in the first twelve months that is we have to accommodate. The revenue increases is about a little over 3 million, we estimate, for just due to the increased hours. Now, in terms of anticipated expenditures in that first twelve months, we have committed through this ordinance to. Place 40% of revenues to be used in downtown reinvestment. So the suggestion we have is the priority for the first twelve months would be the way-finding system, capital projects such as sidewalk construction, streetscape, et cetera, I said yesterday that increased downtown maintenance, for instance one of the questions we always get is can't we plant more flowers, we are the state capitol of texas, can't we do something more in color, landscaping color during the spring and summer months so that is certainly possible within that, the tma, transportation management association that is just formed that the city is a partner to as well as transit and transit operations support. That still leaves about $400,000 for transportation initiatives that can be invested city wide through the transportation department and then the parking enterprise operations, the start up costs for hiring the additional crew, changing out the signs and so forth is a little more than a million and a half the first year and obviously that piece of exes pendture would expect to go down in the second twelve months and transfer more into the transportation improvements. thank you. Without objection, council will vote on the substitute motion first. All in favor of the substitute motion say aye. Opposed say no. Six-1, with council member morrison voting know. We go to item 29 and I want to say for folks who may be -- both staff and visitors that are waiting for the briefing on image austin, at this time, we will unlikely get to that before lunch. We have a number of citizens signing up to speak on 29, 31, 32. So we will now go to item number 29. Which was pulled off the agenda by council member morrison. We have nine speakers, but you can have the floor. Do you want to go to speakers first? All right. Steven potter signed up against. You are steven potter? The next speaker is rene hopper. Rene hopper is signed up against. Welcome. You have three minutes. Good day, mayor city council. My name is rene hopper. I am here to oppose this ordinance when it comes to human and civil rights. This could be the violation of federal laws for any other ones against any veteran. The definition from org, the law verb, someone stopped to ask for food or money, life one, two, three, video for definition, also, explains that about panhandling. When a child asks for food, does that call th panhandler, when the parent is the guardian that controls the food and money. We have too many ordinances and law against people who fly a sign, ask for money, sit on a bench, lay on a sidewalk, that includes even if they have an animal. I want to tell you a story real quick about a man I met at the sun rise memorial. This man came up to me and said, you are real. I haven't seen you in three years. You stopped with your car and you asked me -- you rolled down the window, if i had my map card and you told me who you were. That man told me, because i asked him if he was a veteran, if he had health care. He said no. He asked me where to go. I told him. He got his map card, he got recovery and help from us. He also got a job. He also got housing from a nonprofit organization, all to his sign, and because i stopped. As I will continue, the point here is the collaboration work. Now that our buseses charge, let me add some humor here. Picture the scene from mary poppins, poppin, the bird, she asked, for topping, nobody cares, this is part of our culture. We are an austin original. I would rather see those to stop ticketing those people wasting the court's time so a person cannot get a job or housing due to a misdemeanor or felony. There is a few factors of all people. students and downtown, how they dress, what we look like, you know, you are one of them. History has not changed since 1927, on sustainable word coming about. In summary instead of being top ten list for the meanest city in the nation, let's work together, peaceable. And may I just sum this up real quick. [Buzzer alarming] no one asked to grow up in displaced or homeless, so let the people have their freedom of panhandling continue, because the next time a business asks for my help. thank you. Thank you. And I just want to add one more thing -- and I saw this on a bumper sticker, what would scoobiedoo do. Thank you, thank you. That's worth it. Thank you. the next speak greg gibson. He is signed up neutral and you have three minuteses. Your honor, council, I am greg gibson, of travis integral care and also exfish yo of the board of directors, a rise to resources for the council and I thank you for the opportunity to speak to proposed visions of chapter 9-4, article 2 of the city code integral care of support and health related to the exemptions of city of austin subordinates referred to as no sit, no rely ordinance. We know proposed vision, specifically part four regarding applicability do no relate to any weather related events such as when a heat advisory isish eissued. And federal disease control says that certain medications, particularly antipsychotics are known for increase of heat stroke and research says that psychiatric patients are more risk to dieing of heat wave than the general population so we suggest the inclusion of weather related exemptions. It has been established this ordinance does have dispaired impact on persons with disabilities and some believe through the judicial process related to violations of this ordinance and through the downtown austin community court an opportunity for creative sentencing to improve lives will occur. However, the community court reports that approximately 44% of the their frequent defendant population has both severe and persistent mental illness and chemical dependency and 2008 travis county jail identified 814 individuals and total costs were over $3 million. Therefore, we caution the council and the courts that deep budget cuts are being proposed that will restrain the abilities to provide additional services may be subjected through creative sentencing, although it is difficult to project the exact number of people to project for losing sentences here is the number for adult services in travis county. With additional 1,300 people with actively seeking access to the services, estimated 3,300 individuals will subsequently be referred to more expensive community service alternatives such as hospitals, emergency rooms and local jails. 1,750 Chronically mentally ill adults out of 7,850 currently receiving adult mental health services and integral care will be transitioned out of services. It should also be noted that $355,000 will be eliminated for crisis services. Therefore, integral care urges the council to consider whether to add weather related exemptions to the proposed rescissions and to consider whether it is plausible or achievable given the community's resources. Thank you. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] on january 1, 2009 at our ninth annual thermal underwear party, house the homeless conduct add health survey of 501 people experiencing homelessness. The results showed that about half of all people experiencing homelessness in austin are so disabled that they can't work. Their disabilities range from strokes, congestive heart failure, schizophrenia to diabetes, etcetera. We learned that there were no exceptions to these fines for people with disabilities under the no sit, no lie ordinance. Again, this is in violation of the americans with disabilities act. Council sent the toish the health and human services committee. At that time mayor lee leffingwell instruct that had committee to explore the idea of providing enough benches for people to sit on and possibly make the entire issue moot. The committee was chaired by councilmember shade and joined by mike martinez and laura morrison. The stakeholders included businesses, downtown neighbors and homeless advocates. House the homeless had a list of 20 exceptions to be considered. For example, if a person had an award letter of disability from the social security administration, the veterans administration and mobility impaired bus pass or a simple note of disability with the doctor's backing then they would be recognized to be disabled and exempt from receiving fines. To the shock of house the homeless we were told that the concept was unacceptable and they would not consider any of the exceptions. At the end of the meeting house the homeless reminded the group about the mayor's directive about benches and as a result were all then instructed to return with locations for benches. House the homelessness returned with photos of benches with center dividers so people could not lie down and sleep on the benches, but also a list of places where benches were need and would not interfere with pedestrian or foot traffic. Again, this group would not even consider the list. Instead, it was suggested that the benches in the great streets project would suffice for the benches, period. Later upon research house the homeless learned that this was a total sham and the great streets project only included a handful of streets with no new benches in their budget. When the health and human services committee next meet house the homeless disclosed these events, but they fell on deaf ears. It was then decided to insert the word physical making the ordinance read that anyone with a physical disability would be exempt under the ordinance. House the homeless argued that conversely this would mean that anyone with a mental health disability would be subject to fines. House the homeless deyiez this as unacceptable. I asked for a meeting with the police chief and councilmember morrison to discuss their concerns. The chief said he simply did not want disabled homeless people sitting and lying down all over the city. In response, randi shade changed the language to mean that anyone with a physical manifestation would be exempt. We understood that they wanted there to be an event like I'm disabled, I'm feeling dizzy, so that is why I need to sit down. Well, we get that. But when you say you are looking for a physical manifestation, we think it suggests to plifort that he can't -- that if he can't observe a missing body part, then he should write a ticket. And here's the other problem, the bottom line: The committee is now recommending to council that a person facing a fine must create an affirmative defense to show that they have been one, disabled, and that they had had a physical manifestation. House the homeless has asked the house and human services group how councilmember morrison's husband phillip and others like him who are diabetic are supposed to be able to prove that on x date that they had needed to sit down because they had a physical manifestation. Ie, felt woozy because of low blood sugar. No one has been able to answer that question, not one person. Now you have to realize that about 40 percent of the folks that are experiencing homelessness experienced severe mental health problems. So how is a mentally ill homeless, disabled person supposed to provide an affirmative defense that no one can tell us how to prove? How does one prove that they are feeling nauseous, faint, dizzy, suffering pain or experiencing weakness? Just tell us. Councilmember shade says that this is a good pros to get people with mental health concerns to community court to get the help they need. Okay. Ethical questions aside, like ticketing people to get them health care, you've already heard the today from greg gibson from mhmr about the truncated level of mental health services in this area with more major reductions to come. But what councilmember shade may not realize is that their funds are already drastically reduced and if you suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, from seeing your daughter raped or your spouse burned to death, that you could not get treatment now. I'm with the homeless resource center everyday. Even with mhmr located in the same building, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of people with serious mental healthnesses, many hearing voices, talking to themselves, having hallucinations, who are not being served now. They are already traumatized. Does it really make any sense to force them into a urt system unrepresented to affirmatively defend against an ordinance that no -- that not one of its would be creators can tell us how they could possibly defend themselves? How about let the police officer approach the individual and inquire why they're sitting down. If they say they are disabled, I have diabetes, I'm feeling woozy, I just need a minute or two, the officer then assesses the situation, asks if he or she needs emergency care and if not, says okay, look, I'll be back through here in about 30 minutes. If you're still here and having a problem, I'll assess you for an emergency medical call. If you don't need the care you will be asked to move on immediately. If you don't move you will be ticketed and this conversation will serve as your warning. Fair enough? If a ticket is issued, the case goes before the judge and with the affirmative defense clause struck, he can make a proper determination, but without the individual being asked to fall on their own sword. The city gets to restrict wholesale sitting or lying down. Win-win. The way it looks to house the homeless, the city of austin with all its power, lawyers and resources cannot figure out how to prosecute these people, so it's asking people with mental illnesses who are an jectly he -- an jectly homeless to pro themselves. Finally, the texas civil rights project and it jim harrington ha expressed their intent and desire to sue the city of austin under the americans with disabilities act should you pursue course of action as such. Please, don't give austin a black eye. Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you, richard. Councilmember shade. Shade: Richard, I -- we've talked about this a lot. I do want to clarify one thing, that -- to make sure that you know and that the current version that we're looking at did not insert the word physical. It's physical manifestation, not necessarily visible, which was your suggestion to add that. So your example of somebody having a missing limb, that's not -- that is not in the current version that we're looking at in front of us. You have the current version, right? It says physical manifestation, does it not? Shade: It says sits or lies down as a result of physical manifestation not limited to visual observation. You didn't mention them not -- what we're looking at, colleagues, is not the version that's just about physical manifestation. It's physical manifestation not limited to visual observation. So we actually made a change since the last committee meeting and that's the one in front of you. Then let me accept that clarification and say what we think by saying physical manifestation, is there still -- the officer is still looking for a missing body part? Physical as opposed to mental, having a mental health concern or having a mental health sphect. That's what we're concerned about. We think that striking the simple word fm out of it makes it reflect the wording out of the federal law, americans with disabilities act. It says the americans with disabilities act, it's not the americans with physical disabilities act. That was our point. Thank you. Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you. Next speaker is laurie rent renteria. Laurie is signed up for. You have three minutes. Thank you, mayor. Councilmembers, I don't envy your position at all on this one. As a -- I'm still a homeless advocate although my friends and my good ally richard troxell may not think so because I do support and want to extend a great appreciation to the human service subcommittees for lieply agreeing that all these quality of life ordinances that are in downtown be extended to the entire community court jurisdiction. It took us 10 years of 30 in the morning and attending downtown austin community court and five years to convince court and a previous council that my neighborhood was receiving the impact of these quality of life ordinances downtown. And this short step here on one of the four finally brings some justice so that the community court jurisdictions are the same regardless of which of the four opens you're looking at. I want to thank you. It only makes sense. It makes it easier for the police and homeless people to know what those boundaries are. And I think that over the 11 months I attended some of the same committees that my opposition has and I think the committee has gone a long way to compromise and come up with language that will satisfy americans with disabilities act. We have food commodity in my neighborhood. People line up and wait for hours. I think that community policing takes community trust and I think this ordinance and the exceptions that have been -- the exemptions that have been added are going to go a long way because cops don't want to arrest and throw homeless people or ticket them. Cops are good people who have conflicting directives. There are not enough services. Definitely not enough benches. And the cops in my neighborhood in dealing with problems of congregation and lounging around and drinking at the bus stop, the solution for the police was to remove our bus stop -- bus benches. So if you do not have money in the budget to add benches to my neighborhood, to the east austin health clinic, to the east austin neighborhood center, to the -- the soup kitchen, to the metal recycling centers, to the tb clinic and the (indiscernible) clinic and the methadone clinic where a lot of these addicted homeless people come to my neighborhood on a daily basis, we would appreciate at least getting metro to put back the benches you took out at our bus stop. And I do support a lot more benches all over community court jurisdiction. Thank you. Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you, laurie. Next speaker is glen hunter who signed up neutral. Glen hunter. Okay. Never been before a mayor before in my life. Hello. I'm glen hunter. I just want to tell a quick story. I was in a wheelchair for five and a half months when I went to jail. And when I got out they gave me my cane back and i couldn't walk. They put me back on sixth and congress on the bus. I couldn't go nowhere. So for seven nights I slept on the benches. For six of them I got a ticket for doing so. But I couldn't move, i couldn't walk. I told them that. They told me to move. Okay, where? How? I went to brackenridge twice david's twice from right there. From the grace of god I'm getting better. How am I going to move along? I'm serious. I uld not move and I'm still badow. But that tick thing -- you can't tell me I have to be somewhere, but my body shuts down. A man sits there and he is on medication. A policeman comes up, give me your id. They immediately start writing a ticket. They don't think about what made him go to sleep. Okay? It's stupid. It's crazy. A person has a problem, help them out. They won't do that, they'll write the ticket and they'll tell you take it up with the judge. Right out their mouth, take it up with the judge. Come on. They're wasting my time, your time, taxpayers' money, the whole nine yards. They take you in there quies twies a day, you will get the same thing done. You will have your picture taken, id taken, fingernails taken, everything taken again over and over and over. It's a waste. It's a waste. Just doing like he said is causing people to have a record where they can no longer get food stamps, housing, jobs. It's really bad. It's bad on us. I just wish the council would do something about it. That's it. Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you. Next speaker is hugh simonik. And you're signed up against and you have three minutes. First I want to thank you all and I want to thank especially councilmembers shade, martinez and morrison for taking the extra time, the many months in stakeholder meetings, getting everybody's perspectives on this is an important issue and I thank you. I want to say insofar as we need an ordinance, I like how the ordinance is written for the most part. What I find have -- have great objection to is especially the latter part, part 5, section g. Section 23. And what that basically means is if a person who is disabled and sits down as a result of disability, is approached by a police officer and says oh, no, you don't understand, I'm disabled. And the officer says no, prove it in court. They have to provide some kind of documentation, something in court to prove that they are, number one, disabled, but also that they had to sit as a result of that disability. Now, if I was given a ticket, if I were disabled and given a ticket it would be easy enough for me to contact my doctor and get a doctor's note to prove that's the case. However, we had an open records request last year through the downtown austin community court, large open records request detailing everybody's name, address of where -- who was convicted of giving a ticket. And we found a conservative number. That over 96 percent of the people were given a ticket for such things were homeless. And we know that the great majority of the homeless do not have access to medical care. They do not have easy access to get a note to prove their defense. So what they do is they'll come to court. If they make it to court, and they'll typically have nothing and they'll be found -- they'll be convicted. What we're asking for is for the removal of that last part. And that makes sense. I can hear the opposition now and the reason why this is in here is because, well, if you don't have the affirmative defense, all a person needs to say is that they were disabled and they had to sit down as a result. And then all chaos breaks loose. That's not the case. That's not the truth. The effectiveness of enforcement will not change as a result of removing this. The result will be the same. Law enforcement will just have to approach it differently and say oh, well, what disability do you have? Do you need e.m.s. help? Just like richard said, do you need to be escorted to a bench? Can I come back 30 minutes later and see that you're here? It does not prevent law enforcement from writing them a ticket. And so what you will see, though, is a decrease, a decrease in wrongful convictions. Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you. Your time has expired. Thank you. [ Applause ] Mayor Leffingwell: Those are all the speakers that we have signed up to speak. Before we start our -- start our discussion, council, as 30 briefing scheduled on imagine austin. Which we're not going to be able to complete certainly this morning, but I have had a request from two of the speakers, the chair of the citizen commission on imagine austin, judge cooper, and the chair of the planning commission dave sullivan who cannot be here this afternoon. What I would like to suggest with your concurrence, is that we go with this item until five or six minutes before noon. We'll let them speak and then have the briefing later this afternoon. Does anyone object to that call? That's the way we'll proceed and so we're through with the speakers on item 29 and open for discussion or a motion. Councilmember morrison? Morrison: I want to start by reminding everybody that the real issue that we have to solve in the city is homelessness. And hopefully we're going to be making some progress on that. As for this sit-lie ordinance, I want to thank richard and all the folks at house the homelessness for raising this issue and bringing it to our attention in the first place. We've moved -- that was a long time ago, richard. But there's been a lot of good discussion and I think that as a result of your action and bringing it forward, there are definitely some improvements in what we have in front of us. And I just want to mention specifically that previously -- current ordinance as it stands right now says, for instance, that it's okay to sit down if you're in line to spend some money basically. But not if you're in line to get services. Clearly that's just not okay. That needs to be changed. We still have an exemption for a medical emergency and what came under discussion then was dealing with people who -- examples that kept coming up were what happens if you have to sit down as a result of your disability, whether it's medication or hypoglycemia or whatever. And we were trying to capture in some form or fashion a humane way to -- and compassionate way to deal with that. So we did come up with the language that's been discussed here that if there is a physical manifestation of a disability, which would include, for instance, you know, if you have reaction to a drug that you're taking to your disability and we made clear, that you don't have to have -- it does not have to be observable visually. So those are all improvements. It takes us down to me then what I think is sort of at issue here is whether or not it should be a direct exemption or whether it should be under an affirmative defense. And I do want to ask our legal departments if I could get a couple of questions answered regarding that. David douglas with the law department. Morrison: Could you give a little bit of an explanation about why -- the difference between affirmative defense -- exemption and why you are recommending that it be an affirmative defense? In consultation with the police department and -- in answering your question, an affirmative defense under state law places the burden on a person accused of an offense to prove that defense by preupon drens of the evidence, which is basically like more evidence in favor of that defense than against. A 51% analogy. The chief prosecutor has affirmed in court an affirmative defense can be mounted successful without any documentary evidence, without an expert witness. The person can come in and explain the situation to the judge or jury. And that can also be explained to a prosecutor beforehand too, who has certainly the discretion to not even go forward with the case. Morrison: How does that differ from an exemption, a straightout exemption? What's currently in the law is not technically an exemption. It says does not apply. The legal effect of that is a defense to prosecution, which means that the burden of proof is upon the state and -- the city prosecutor and in effect the police officer, the parties moving forward to prosecute the case. That burden is to prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt, the criminal standard. A defense to prosecution says that if there is a doubt, a reasonable doubt about that defense, then the person is to be acquitted, not not guilty. It places a burden on the prosecution and the police in this specific situation because disabilities -- some are going to be obvious and hopefully those cases won't ever get to citation or court, but those cases where it's not obvious, not discernible, not manifested, it's not something the police are really going to know or the prosecutor could know. And so an affirmative defense is asking -- telling the person accused to explain, and if they can do that to the satisfaction of the court or the jury, then that is a defense. Morrison: Okay. Thank you for that. And then would you also address the city's position on whether this violates ? While there is no case on ordinance exactly like this that we could find because this may be unique, because we've researched cases around the country, I do not believe so, we do not believe so because the standards that the courts look at under the americans with disabilities act is whether any ordinance, any profession, any -- any provision, any practice of government with regard to the persons with disabilities, whether that serves a legitimate government purpose. And I submit there's been discussion about the enforceability of this ordinance if the burden is all on the prosecutor or the police officer with regard to this. As you said, this does broaden the exemption for the defense for persons with disabilities beyond wheelchairs and similar devices now to any disabilities, physical or mental. Morrison: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I also want to make a gibson I think it was, mentioning weather related exemptions. And it had originally been suggested that we just start the exemption flatout, if you can show that you have a disability, and what we've arrived at is if there's an issue that you're suffering from because of your disability and -- it would be my understanding that if there's extreme weather, if there's an issue because of that, it would be following in that same situation of medical emergency. A situation like that could definitely fit into a person that had to sit or lie because of a medical emergency, and that's already in the ordinance in the city code. And the police have stated to me and in these meetings that in that kind of situation their first thing to do would be to have respond for a person who is having a medical emergency. Morrison: Right. And also I know that a city does have a -- extreme weather, extreme heat response plan that hopefully would be put into effect and be able to take care of folks. It explicitly addresses folks that are homeless. So with that what I would like to say is that personally I'm not quite sure how this is going to work out with an affirmative defense and I think we have some work to do to be able to figure that out. Specifically the standard operating procedures that the apd will have to develop, so what I'd like to see is that this -- the development of the standard operating procedures come to the public health and human services committee for discussion before the new ordinance goes into effect. I'd also like to see as we mentioned earlier yesterday and in committee that we get a report back in six months on how this ordinance, the new ordinance and the changes are working. And I think that we really need to have an understanding of the cases and how they played out. And I'm not quite sure what to ask for in the report to make sure we can have that understanding. So I would also like to see that discussion of our agenda at public health and human services next time. And also I'm glad you brawpt the issue of benches, richard. Because it does keep following through the cracks. I'm going to ask ask that we get benchesz specifically as an item on our next agenda for public health and human services so that we can figure out how to take some action. [ Applause ] and I would like to just mention that just previous to this item we passed an item that will be generating more revenue -- I voted against it, but it is going to be generating some more revenue, so maybe we can look at capturing some of that revenue for benches or something. So I hope that we can figure that out. So with that, I would like to make a motion that we pass the -- the ordinance. It's actually our ordinance that we brought together -- with an effective date of april first, 2011, with the additional direction that i just mentioned in terms of coming back to our committee to discuss standard operating procedures, the six-month report and benches. Mayor Leffingwell: Motion by councilmember morrison. Seconded by the mayor pro tem. Councilmember shade? Shade: Thank you. I think councilmember morrison has done a great job laying out all of the things that we've done to improve an ordinance that's already in existence. So I know our first speaker was here to speak against the ordinance. The ordinance is already on the books. I'm really pleased that we can take -- we did take more time than we originally planned to make some much needed changes. I'm very thankful for that. Councilmember morrison mentioned the need to delay the effective date on this so we can ensure that we have the standard operating procedures in place. That is really the key because I think that -- i think the key is that our intention certainly with respect to the exemption is the same. But the consistency with which it is handled on the street level is going to be what makes it work. And so the example that richard brought up earlier i think is really important, that we make sure that it's -- that it's in the standard operating procedures and that we're -- and that there's not confusion about when you're on the street, what you're supposed to do in the case of somebody who needs respite because of the need to sit as a result of a physical or mental disability that they may have. I also want to let you know that we had talked yesterday in a work session about making sure that we took these items in our next meeting and it became clear that our next meeting was scheduled for march the 15th, which turns out to be a bad date for councilmember morrison. I think it's really important that we have the meeting when she's there. So this morning we've been able to work through the schedule and we will be having that meeting that was originally scheduled for march 15th to instead take PLACE ON MARCH THE 22nd. It will take place at 2:00 ON MARCH THE 22nd. And that will be our opportunity to really get through these standard operating procedures and we will not -- I don't know really -- I guess I should ask somebody from legal, the DATE APRIL 1st, THE Question I have about that is if there is any reason that we can't hammer out the details and the standard operating procedures that we need to before this goes into play. Would it be more -- would it be better for us to pass the ordinance with the effective date to take place 10 days after the subcommittee approves the standard operating procedures perhaps or something like that? I think a definite date is probably the clearest thing. And we don't know for sure when that process will be completed. Shade: Right. My concern is we do not have an effective date before the standard operating procedures are in place. That we've agreed to what those are. So if the committee is going to be responsible for looking at these, I don't want to have to bring another item to post to change the date. So what would be the right way legally to take care of that problem? I'm going to be optimistic that we're going to take CARE OF THIS MARCH 22nd, But just in case. Well, you could build more time -- SO MAY 1st? You could do that. That would give us the april meeting in case. And -- it looks like councilmember spelman might have a suggestion. What I was about to suggest was that we make the effective date may the 1st and if we are in the meeting on the 22nd and we see that it's going to take longer, then we'll at least have enough time to adjust that date in a future council meeting between the times necessary. You might have a better suggestion. Spelman: I don't know if it's a better suggestion or not. I just notice that assistant city manager mcdonald and deputy chief (indiscernible) have been discussing this issue and wonder fire department you had something to tell us about how long it would take for a general order to be put together. I just spoke with chief carter and the timeline that we're discussing won't be a problem for the police department. Spelman: Okay. So they'll be able to make april 1st or may 1st? I BELIEVE APRIL 1st. Spelman: I think I'm going to agree with councilmember shade on this, that although they can have a general order together before your 25th of march meeting, you may want to revisit that general order and make some suggestions on it. So having an extra month, giving us a little bit of extra margin of safety in case the general order is not exactly what we had in mind. Shade: That was my thinking. The standard operating procedures, that is the general phrase for that. It's the same thing we're talking about? Spelman: I will defer to anybody who wears a blue suit on that issue. Shade: But we want to know how it's going to play out on the streets and what -- and we think that if you bring us -- if the law department and the police were to bring us something march 22nd and we had concerns about it, wanted to make some changes to it, we would have another meeting of our committee in april. So I think may first would be the date I would suggest. Freafers. Spelman: I agree. Mayor Leffingwell: Mayor pro tem. Martinez: Thanks. I want to make a quick comment. We're talking about -- it was brought to us about environmental conditions and weather conditions. I think it's going to be difficult to come up with some operating procedures that speak to weather conditions. But we clearly have policies in other departments that we absolutely defer to weather conditions and on inclement weather days when the temporary exceeds a certain point we don't shut off electricity. When it goes below a certain point we don't turn off folks' electricity because of the conditions that it could create. So I hope that we can come up with something. If it's 110, it's 100. It's 100 degrees outside and somebody is sitting down and profusely sweating, and it's just taking a break that we somehow factor that in. I can't believe that we couldn't in austin, texas when we know it's going to be extremely hot multiple days out of the year. So I'm just saying I hope that we strongly consider that and maybe can be creative in find agriculture solution to that request. -- In finding a solution to that request. [ Applause ] Mayor Leffingwell: Further discussion? If there is further discussion we'll have to postpone action until after -- per our previous discussion. Morrison: Just to amend my motion to make the effective date may 1 and to clarify that we're talking about discussing and providing feedback on the standard operating procedures. We don't have approval authority. Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. The motion on the table and seconded is to approve the ordinance as is with the i implementation date of MAY 1st. Is that correct? All in favor say aye? Opposed say no. It passes on a vote of seven to zero. So now, council, as we previously discussed we have a couple of minutes to hear from some people who had considerable input on imagine austin and will be unable to come back this afternoon. We'll get the full briefing after -- in the afternoon. So you can come back, right? Yes. Mayor Leffingwell: I want to make sure we have a little bit of time before 00 noon, seven minutes from now, for judge cooper and dave sullivan to speak. While judge cooper gets to the microphone, I'm garner (indiscernible), assistant director of planning and review. This item is to brief you on an important milestone to complete the comprehensive plan for the city of austin and its extraterritorial jurisdiction. Specifically we're briefing you on two work products, the plan framework and the prerd growth scenario. The plan framework sets out strategic directions needed to implement the vision which you reviewed last august and the preferred growth scenario in map form places the anticipated population 30 years out according to input from the public. And with that I will reserve all my remarks until after this afternoon. And judge cooper. Mayor Leffingwell: Judge cooper. Thank you, council. I appreciate the efforts you're making to accommodate my schedule, which I changed to be here this morning. I thank you for that. As chair of the taskforce, we're now one year into our work on the comprehensive plan and we started working with the elements of the plan framework in october. And with the preferred growth scenario this past november. We had the results of community forums series 3 and that public input in creating the general terms of where the public wanted austin to grow 30 years into the future in an effort to accommodate what we understand is 750,000 more people and 300,000 more jobs. We looked as a results of meetings with neighborhood contact teams that identified conflicts perceived to exist between the neighborhood plans and scenario d, which was one of the alternate growth scenarios that were a possibility for consideration by the taskforce. The preferred growth scenario that we are working with is a bring nation of both c and d and trying to take the best of those efforts consistent with public input and we worked for the next four months in small groups and with the whole taskforce to provide the implements of the framework, planned framework that make sure that it reflected the public input that we had. And adequately address those issues and then applied that then to the preferred growth scenario, the scenario d, which staff will discuss with you in more detail this afternoon, but we have submitted that to the planning commission, which was approve with minor changes and it will be coming forward for the council's consideration at your march 10th meeting, it's my understanding, and the staff of course will present in much more detail this afternoon and possibly some information, answer any information you have. Of course I'll endeavor to do that if you have any questions at this time. I do want to present you with what the taskforce has been doing to try to meet the schedule established by council to address the elements in the charter and we'll be starting with our working groups very shortly now to address the plan framework in the draft that we have at this time. We expect it will be tweaked and changed as we go forward, but that's where we are as a taskforce. Any questions? Cole: I just have a brief comment. I just want to thank judge cooper for patiently waiting today and also for the hours and hours of time that you have put in to this effort. And that please continue to patiently go forward with us and the taskforce. Well, the taskforce has been very patient with me as well. And I think we all are endeavoring to perform a service to citizens that may not yet be born and we recognize we won't necessarily be here to see the results of this, but we certainly want this city to continue to be a wonderful place where people want to live and for so many different reasons, but we all recognize what a great place it is. And it reminds me of a question I was asked by a university student, why should we care about the comprehensive plan, and i said because all of you want to stay after you get your degrees. Thank you, members. Council, my name is dave sullivan, I'm the chairperson for the planning commission. I just wanted to pass on to you what we did with the framework and the growth scenario. There is a distinction between the two. The growth scenario is the map that shows the density for the city in the future. And then the framework is the aspirations that has all of the things that we're asking for. And so we approved the framework. We amended it to some extent with adding in some of the elements that had come out of the family and children's taskforce from 2008. And then we also asked that when the framework goes to the work groups, they look at -- looking at the zoning capacity analysis that the city staff did and maybe work out some case studies because there is a lot of density that is added to the city under the scenario. So look at it in terms of what would we have to do to add the infrastructure? What would be the cost for doing that? So we were specifically asked in our motion that there be some case studies developed to look at how we would fit in more people and how would the cost come about. And then we've also heard a lot of complaints that there's a lot of ideal ideas that have been come out on this. And so we are asking for reality being programmed into it. There's a lot of good ideas, but a we were very specific that we wanted to ask the council to be clear, make it clear to all parties to make an effort that the comp plan reflect development realities as they are today or they may be expected to be in the future. Then the other thing i wanted to pass on is that we have a subcommittee and we're going to look at some of the requests that came from the community through the austin neighborhood council about affordable housing and the neighborhood plans and also some of the questions that came from the environmental community His afternoon, but we have submitted that to the planning commission, which was approve with minor changes and it will be coming forward for the council's consideration at your march 10th meeting, it's my understanding, and the staff of course will present in much more detail this afternoon and possibly some information, answer any information you have. Of course I'll endeavor to do that if you have any questions at this time. I do want to present you with what the taskforce has been doing to try to meet the schedule established by council to address the elements in the charter and we'll be starting with our working groups very shortly now to address the plan framework in the draft that we have at this time. We expect it will be tweaked and changed as we go forward, but that's where we are as a taskforce. Any questions? Cole: I just have a brief comment. I just want to thank judge cooper for patiently waiting today and also for the hours and hours of time that you have put in to this effort. And that please continue to patiently go forward with us and the taskforce. Well, the taskforce has been very patient with me as well. And I think we all are endeavoring to perform a service to citizens that may not yet be born and we recognize we won't necessarily be here to see the results of this, but we certainly want this city to continue to be a wonderful place where people want to live and for so many different reasons, but we all recognize what a great place it is. And it reminds me of a question I was asked by a university student, why should we care about the comprehensive plan, and i said because all of you want to stay after you get your degrees. Thank you, members. Council, my name is dave sullivan, I'm the chairperson for the planning commission. I just wanted to pass on to you what we did with the framework and the growth scenario. There is a distinction between the two. The growth scenario is the map that shows the density for the city in the future. And then the framework is the aspirations that has all of the things that we're asking for. And so we approved the framework. We amended it to some extent with adding in some of the elements that had come out of the family and children's taskforce from 2008. And then we also asked that when the framework goes to the work groups, they look at -- looking at the zoning capacity analysis that the city staff did and maybe work out some case studies because there is a lot of density that is added to the city under the scenario. So look at it in terms of what would we have to do to add the infrastructure? What would be the cost for doing that? So we were specifically asked in our motion that there be some case studies developed to look at how we would fit in more people and how would the cost come about. And then we've also heard a lot of complaints that there's a lot of ideal ideas that have been come out on this. And so we are asking for reality being programmed into it. There's a lot of good ideas, but a we were very specific that we wanted to ask the council to be clear, make it clear to all parties to make an effort that the comp plan reflect development realities as they are today or they may be expected to be in the future. Then the other thing i wanted to pass on is that we have a subcommittee and we're going to look at some of the requests that came from the community through the austin neighborhood council about affordable housing and the neighborhood plans and also some of the questions that came from the environmental community about how to deal with the density nodes over the edward's aquifer. And then the last point is we have our comprehensive plan subcommittee. We met on monday night with the analysis subcommittee from the taskforce and we're going to plan to meet once a month with that subcommittee as our regular meeting. So that we can combine our ideas and the subcommittee for the planning commission has volunteered to serve as the watchdog for how the work groups make progress. So the five or six members of our subcommittee will join some of the work groups and also just watch as the deliverable elements from the work groups come forward to make sure that they're fulfilling all of the requirements. Thank you very much. Spelman: Mayor? I'd like to ask -- Mayor Leffingwell: I appreciate your work. Councilmember spelman. Spelman: I'd like to ask you a question if i could. As usual you and the rest of the planning commission have done a good job of going through all the aspects of this. I appreciate the fine grain subtly of what you're talking about. I also realize that the only way we can get to the platonic ideal of austin, texas is by dealing with reality. I wonder if you could say something about the scenarios? You've talked about how you're approving the framework or you suggest we approve the framework. Tell me about the map. The issue with the map is for one thing, the map itself is somewhat fuzzy. If you're familiar with the austin tomorrow plan, it has a growth scenario map that just color shades in the different areas for where we want dense growth in the center and less growth in the surrounding area. This map goes into a little bit more detail in showing specific nodes where there would be density and then density along the transit corridors. Well, one challenge that came to us was the number of people that we go along the corridors, for example. If you -- one of the numbers 00 persons over a two -- 7,000 persons over a two mile stretch. I think the actual number was 7500 over a two mile stretch. People said how can you fit those people in if you have short lots or if you already have businesses there or you've got a lot of the easement for the road, for example. You can't build into the easement. So one citizen brought us the start of a case study for south lamar. And showed if you did use all of the vmu, the vertical mixed use entitlements along south lamar, how many people would fit there? And basically he came up with a number that was less than the 7500. Then also there was the issue about the costs for putting in those - - the water and wastewater. And also how would you deal with the traffic. So I know that in some of the cases where we've done master planning, for example, when we did the north burnet gateway plan, there were some infrastructure studies looked at because we talk about piling in a lot of development in the north burnet gateway plan. So we might do the same. Use the same techniques in other areas so that we can show exactly how many units could go in, how many people, how much infrastructure would we need to add. So the point is adding detail to something like this. Spelman: So you're suggesting the map is not sufficiently detailed to prove oi disprove it right now? The action request from the planning commission is approve the framework, except the growth scenario, and then allow the work groups to work on it and improve it. The actual language in our motion was to accept -- accept the growth scenario map with the expectations that the work groups would improve it. Spelman: And your recommendation to us for when we take this issue up for approval or whatever next week is we do the same thing. Exactly. Spell speak thank you. Thank you. Mayor Leffingwell: All right. We'll go to our citizens communication. And first speaker is babes k warren. Topic is poisons in your water. Welcome. You have three minutes. Can you hear me? Mayor Leffingwell: That's better. Good after. -- Good afternoon. My name is babs. I was born in 1933 in austin, texas and I'm very being from austin, texas. And if we don't do some things, I don't think you all realize what the real urgency is here to do something. You're in a position to do something. We have very bad water. In fact, to learn that it had uranium in it just really upset me. I spotted my first mine on mapt when I was in college and worked for the department of geology. I know how bad uranium is. Can you imagine having uranium in your water? No. Your grandkids and your great grandkids, they're going to be asking why you all didn't do anything about this. This stuff is poison. It's toxic. I remembered when I was a little girl, my mother had a box of rat poison and it had fluoride on it. That's the first time I ever saw the word fluoride. You've got to realize what is happening? I'm going to tell you something. I represent just myself today -- oh, heck. I have a senior moment, y'all. I can't remember the name of the people. Anyway, I was told that i could use them as a reference, and it was the -- somebody help me. What is it? Can you remember? Rae? No? The truth seekers, y'all. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm representing the truth seekers. That's pretty bad. This has been a hard day for me. I apologize. The fact that we have this stuff in our water and nobody is doing anything about it is -- fluoride for one thing I learned can settle in your body and stay in it. And I know we have the dental association, we have all kinds of american health associations saying good rid of it. The doctors don't have it in europe. They don't have it. And we've got a bunch of them writing books about it. So if you all will do just a little bit of research you will see how bad it is. Okay? It's so important. I haven't explained that before, but it is an important thing. You don't want to have that stuff in your body. It was used for other things. Now, if I can I'll tell you real fast. When I was in my 30's, 1960, I got to learn something and I think that I should tell you about it because it might change your outlook on what you're doing with everything. I heard david rockefeller and dick cheney speak, and they were filmed secretly with the hat pins, okay? [ Buzzer sounds ] and they want to get rid of all of us, 80 percent of us. Just remember that. They want to get rid of all the blacks. They're terrible people. Okay? Mayor Leffingwell: Next speaker is rae nadler olenick. Topic is water fluoridation. Thank you. I'm going to have to ask a question because it impacts what I was going to say. Did I understand correctly that the committee on public health and human services originally scheduled for march 15th has been POSTPONED TO THE 22nd? It went by so quickly. Mayor Leffingwell: I'll let councilmember shade answer that question. Shade: I did. I planned on telling you that because I knew you would be here for citizen communication. Yes, please do spread the word. Our office will be doing its best to reach out to the constituents who have contacted us already. I very much apologize, but yesterday it became clear that councilmember morrison would not be available, and I thought it best to schedule the meeting when we would have a full complement of the committee. Okay. I won't show my slide then. Anyway, so that will be the same -- Shade: It will be 00, so we'll have more time. It will be here in the council chambers because we expect that you will have a large group of people attending. And it will be -- I hope so. Shade: It be on march THE 22nd -- IT WILL BE ON March 22nd rather than the 15th. Okay. Shade: Sorry for the inconvenience. At this point then I want to clarify something. Those of us who have been speaking here regularly do not question and have never questioned that the city of austin carries out its fluoridation practices within the guidelines set out by federal health and human services, the cdc, the e.p.a., etcetera. What we are challenging is the guidelines themselves. We maintain that the standards which have been accepted universally and uncritically for the last six decades are bogus and unscientifically arrived at. That is the crux of the matter. That's what we're looking to show. The federally promoted water fluoridation program set up in the early 1950's has been kept in place ever since by interlocking, self perpetuating bureaucracies on the public's trust in authority rather than a hard science to back them up. A perfect example is what happened this past january. The cdc after 60 years of 5 parts per million of fluoride was the perfect upper level for so-called optimally fluoridated water abruptly cut that quantity by almost 07 of one part per million. Oops, we were wrong, they told us, but don't worry, we have it right now. And just trust us for the next 60 years. The trust has worn thin and the public isn't buying it anymore. That's why we hope that when we arrive on march 22nd at the meeting armed with up to date science we'll encounter an atmosphere conducive to serious discussion, not just cut and paste briefings from the cdc's and the american dental association pro fluoridation websites. That discussion has to take place before we can move forward. And thank you. Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you. [ Applause ] the next series of speakers will be speaking on the topic of senate bill 380 by senator wentworth calling for the election of councilmembers using single-member districts. The first speaker is gavino fernandez junior. You have three minutes. Good afternoon, mayor. My name is gavino fernandez with he will con sillio. And yes we have senate bill 380 and we have house bill 1175 by paul workman, district 47. So we now have two sponsors, one in the house and one in the senate. But I'm here to speak about the issue of the holly mitigation funds that you're going to be awarding today. And that is again. [Speaking spanish] this is the initial start of boycott. [Speaking spanish] at fiesta gardens on may the 20th. While this council puts 10-year liens on people in their homes for repair, yet on this venture you give them $50,000 without questions asked. Here's the check. Yet for the homeowner, the same funds -- this isn't federal funds, mayor, this is austin energy funds. This was part of an agreement that was made in 1995 and this council should follow the spirit of that intent and that purpose. Not to use it as a political pork barrel to give friends cash monies of what you're going to be doing today. Councilmember cole, you told wallace that he was a for-profit, that you couldn't help him because you would go to jail. It's a for-profit. It's a for profit. You're giving them money. Had I known -- because rich (indiscernible) gave councilmember martinez $350 that the return would have been 150,000. That is the amount of money that has been given to this organization ever since he make that campaign donation. Had our people known that was the key, that was the -- you know, wait to get money from holly mitigation, we would have all given it. Morrison: Son, neighborhood. [Speaking spanish] only their neighborhoods? All of you are going to follow suit. You don't even know who the people are that are receiving these funds, whether they'll have the event or not. We need to insert integrity and ethics into these funds. This is your call. Mayor, you could pick up the phone and say release these leases like we're going to give pacanga fist thousand dollars, no questions asked. Is that correct? Mayor Leffingwell: No, it is not. Yes, it is, because these are austin energy funds. These are austin energy funds. It's not federal funds. Mayor Leffingwell: The question was could I pick up the phone and order those funds to be release and the answer is no, I would not. You will not is what -- my statement -- Mayor Leffingwell: It's a council action. The whole council could pick up the phone. Chris, I still have your card I gave you. Gavino, I need your support. I'm running against a very popular lady. I said fine. You're an austinite. We're home boys. We'll support you. But today you're going to give out a blank check, on the other hand, cdc is considering a committee for the repair funds and people are applying to see where the funds will be shifted. It has no business in entertaining that issue. No business at all. They're only the caretakers of the funds because that was the only entity that we felt should be doing it because they are already doing it. [ Buzzer sounds ] thank you, mayor. Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you. Next speaker is fidel acevedo. [Inaudible - no mic]. And the next -- fidel is not here. The next speaker is marco deleon. Welcome. Mayor, councilmembers. My name is marcos deleon, former travis county commissioner. I'm currently going to speak on -- as the interim , which means get out the latino vote, which is the next election we'll have for city council. We'll do psa's in spanish, we'll reach out to the media to try to get this to tv. We want the latino vote to get out this year and to be a habit from this city council and the next city council elections. In all elections we feel it's important. We will also reach out in spanish because we have a lot of nationallized citizens who have not become citizen of austin and they're eligible to vote. We also want to visit the county jail for those who are still eligible to vote even though they're incarcerated. And also the senior citizens who are not able to get out of their beds to vote to good do a mailout vote as well. This is a comprehensive campaign to get out vote for the city of austin. It is so important for latinos to get out and vote. It is our right to vote. It is a privilege we have in this country and in the city. And we look forward to doing that. It's something that I hope maybe your city staff can also play some psa's within the city of austin. I encourage all councilmembers to do a psa as well. We need to go out and vote. We have an important voice in this community and i encourage the cowbsz, including the mayor, to do their own psa's, to encourage those who are not running this year to get latino vote out. Say it's important and do it in english and spanish if you can. It is posh for our community to -- it is important for our community to understand that this is our voice, this is something we have that's very powerful in this country. And very powerful in constituent. And the elections will be changing in the next few years and we need to get ready for that. The state legislation is going something about the council. For some folks it's not quick enough. For me it's not quick enough. But that's my personal opinion. But I think it's very important, as the discussion gavino had, all these things that people had discussion of fluoride, all these discussions depend on one thing, who is going to vote and who is going to vote for it and is that individual going to carry your agenda. Thank you very much. Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you. I support your efforts 100 percent to get out the vote. Next speaker is francis martinez? Topic is again senate bill 380. My name is frances martinez, member of el concilio. I'm here to talk about the voting, to stress that it's important to vote. [ Inaudible ] [speaking spanish] many countries do not have that privilege to vote. I stress again to let's get out the vote, especially the latino vote. And early voting date is march the -- may the 2nd THROUGH MAY THE 10th. Again, the election is on may 14th. And of course the votes -- the voting places are open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. And it's very important the last day to register for this election will be april the 14th, april the 14th, so that you can vote in may. .. [Speaking spanish] joe quintero. The topic is senate bill 380. Good afternoon. My name is jose quintero with the greater east austin neighborhood association. I'm here to support the senate bill 380, basically based on the fact that the city of austin is one of the most discrimination cities in the united states. You might be number one weirdoes, but you're still number one discrimination against our neighborhood. So that we hope that this senate bill will pass and we hope that none of these councilmembers show up like they did last year to oppose this kind of senate bill. You can't control what you're doing to east austin as it is right now. That's why you people meet in secret. We had a problem, we had a councilmember and we have nothing but attorneys and instead of people who represent people who can run for elections for our neighborhoods. Not people that councilmembers come here and promise that they are supporting our neighborhoods when they're not. And all this planning goes back to the cesar chavez neighborhood plan. There's your leader. That's the people you listen to. We're activists in our neighborhood. We oppose you. We should oppose you. And we just like what you're doing and we'll come to voice our opinion. That's the purpose of democracy. And if chief acevedo wants to start something, he ought to start the (indiscernible) with y'all. Because now the community are considered the terrorists. The fusion center that you voted should be implemented on your thing, on everything you do behind closed doors. You have a confession to make. I hope that it gave you enough conviction to recognize that. You talk about (indiscernible), martinez. You go over there, we've been fighting for that neighborhood for years. Gavino, we've been fighting. You allocate monies that have been allocated to these people based on boundaries and you use the boundaries of the cesar chavez neighborhood plan. Laurie, is she the only one that tells you what to do? Where did you get the consensus? To allocate this money? How did you appropriate that measure? Did you come to the holly power plant people? Oh, we'll put a lien on your property. And by the way, mike, you don't live in east austin, okay? You don't know nothing about east austin. The only people you know in east austin are the people that sit on that committee and implement comprehensive zoning, non-compatible - - next to what they call mexican shacks s that compatible? A three-story condominium next to an 800 square foot house? And yet when we come here and other neighborhoods come here, y'all just beat people to death like hyde park, beat them to death over a doggone building. I don't know what it is. That's what you do. Go look in east austin and see if it's compatible. Stay out of my neighborhood. Mayor Leffingwell: Your time has expired. Paul hernandez. Can we get him that portable mic there and help him with that, please? Oh, he's going to stand? Okay. Welcome. You have three minutes. Thank you. My name is paul hernandez. Native east austinite. And yes, mayor, I will stand. Someone has to stand up and let you know that what you've been doing and what the liberal establishment of this city has been doing to those of us who supported it back in the '70's and '80's, only to be betrayed in the '90's until now. And you are the city council, the latest city council to betray us. I have seen the city, I am 64 years old. I have seen this city grow not to be a great city, but to be an ambitious city. To be a greedy city. To be a city that doesn't care about its low income citizens. To be a city that wants to purify downtown for the downtown dwellers. It's a city that cares more about bike lanes than it does about transportation for the poor, for the handicapped and for the elderly. I've seen the city grow in so many negative ways that i am embarrassed to say I am from the city of austin when low income people come and visit us. It is too expensive. You've made it that way. You made this a city for the elite. F affluent, for those that are already have the means by which to live and live well. And the rest of us have to suffer. The jobs being brought to this city are not the jobs that my children can take. My children are not college knowledge indicated. My children don't have the type of skills for the jobs you're bringing in. They can't be engineers. So where are the jobs for my children? Senate bill 380, we went and asked senator wentworth, a republican conservative, to do us a favor, a favor that the city council has refused to do in over 30 years. Marcos deleon was a plaintiff in '73. I was a plaintiff in '76 for single member districts. Since then we've been working this fight. And now, mayor, you've come up a endorsing single-member districts. Why? Is that because senator wentworth put up a bill and because you have a republican- controlled house and senate? Mayor Leffingwell: Is that a question? Is that a question? I've supported it ever since 2005. How come you've not implemented it, mayor? Council has the power to implement single-member districts. It doesn't have to go to the voters. It doesn't have to be a proposition. You could do it if you wanted to. I don't think you wanted to. I don't think any member of this council wanted to bring up single- member districts. So what are we supposed to believe? You, mayor, or mike martinez. Do not impede 380. We've been asking for it. Thank you. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] so the last speaker is philip green, topic is wasteful spending. Welcome. Thank you, council members. I've come to you today to ask for a vote on the issue of water fluoridation. You have been presented with testimony from dentists, parents, doctors and professionals alike showing that even small amounts of fluoride are damaging to bone, endocrine and thyroid function and in dozens of STUDIES HAVE LOWERED IQs. It is well documented that only 9 parts per million fluoride has criep he would entire communities in china, india and elsewhere. This is a list of 17 countries)that have banned fluoridation altogether. Most are -- included on this list is japan, belgium, israel and sweden and most of european nations. Naturally occurring fluoride in midland and kyle has led to health warnings that tap water shouldn't be consumed by children under the age of 9 yet here in austin we pay to have it added to our water, ignoring science and the rest of the world. Mosaic industries, whom austin purchases its medical grade fluoride, confirms that the hexa flooric acid is a byproduct of producing phosphate fertilizers. Also public water utility on its own web site has warned that fluoride may be damaging to infants' teeth, as stated by the cdc and the ada. Under texas state water code section 26.001. Pollution is defined as the altercation or contamination of any water in the state of texas which deems the water injuring to human beings. The city's fluoridation policy is by definition altering our water and damaging to segments of the population and is a blatant act of pollution under texas state code. I believe I can speak for texas citizens for fluoride free, not a battle or class action lawsuit by the one brought by the state of washington. We simply want fluoride out. The epa and hhs have called to reduce fluoride levels by half after their own studies showed that an average of one part per per million across the united states is damaging children's teeth. If fluoride at 7 parts per million is life-threatening and at 4 parts per million according to the epa is an environmental contaminant and according to the hsf, at one part per million is damaging children's teeth, then why do you think that .7 parts per million will be anything but damaging. It is time for action and call this to a vote. Time to stop water fluoridation. A hearing addressing this issue has been scheduled for and i thank representative martinez, shade and morrison for being present, but I say that the council has heard enough evidence that warrants an emergency vote to end water fluoridation immediately for the risk posed to the public health. You have that vote. Act today, end water fluoridation now. [Applause] those are all the folks signed up to speak, in general citizens communication, so now, council, without objection the city council will go into closed section 071 of the government code for confirmation of council to take up item 45 relating to open meetings act, item 46 to discuss legal issues relating to randall barnett versus the city of austin. Note any objections to going into session on the items announced. Hearing none, the council will now go into executive session. Martinez: mayor? There's several folks here for item 71. I'm trying to get an estimate of when we may take up item 31. They've been here all morning and -- plan to take up item 31 when we get out of executive session. I can't guarantee anything, but item 31 is the next item, so depends on when we get out. An hour, two hours, we just can't anticipate how long that will be. Mayor Leffingwell: We are out of close the session. In closed session we took up legal issues related to items 45 and 46 and did not complete discussion on 45, so we'll be going back into executive session later on tonight. Now we'll begin -- I believe we're up to -- we had begun a discussion on the comprehensive plan and we'll resume with that if the staff folks are here. (Indiscernible), planning and development review department. We know you have a packed agenda, and so succinctness is in order and we'll try to meet that goal. Is the powerpoint -- there we go. Our presentation has a little bit of background information, and then greg clakston is going to take you through the preferred growth scenario. And then one of our consultants, david rouse, who is standing at the end of the podium, is going to take you through the plan framework. And then we will conclude with a little bit of information about next steps. So once again what is a comprehensive plan? I'm not going to get into an extended discussion, but our city charter, council, is very specific regarding what a comprehensive plan should be for the city of austin. It says it should be a policy guide for the entire planning area, that's the city limits and extraterritorial jurisdiction. And it also specifically says that it should be reviewed every year and considered for update every five years. So the framers of the city charter understood that a growing city needed to have a mechanism to continually review its comprehensive plan. So what should it guide? The charter is specific here again. It's very broad. It says it should guide budget and spending authority such as the capital improvements plan. It says it should guide a full gamut of regulatory authority, zoning, watershed regulations. It should guide and integrate and coordinate. It's the vehicle that should coordinate all those -- all of the regulatory powers. Perhaps each more important, successful comprehensive plans have really sought to develop partnerships so that the plan becomes a platform for partnerships with other local jurisdictions in the and with the private sector. This slide you've seen before, I i don't belabor it, each phase of the process is intended to build on the previous phase, but two work products we are bringing to you today complete phase 2 and prepare us to start phase three. We emphasize the need for thousands rather than hundreds of austin stakeholders. Many efforts, the taskforce -- you all with your announcements and press conferences, the planning commission, the staff and consultant team, many efforts were made to get people involved. This happened in the form of about 160 meetings that were facilitated by neighborhood associations and whoever wanted to hold a meeting. Self-facilitated meetings. We call those meetings in a box. Staff, consultant team went out and met people where they're already gathered in public places. As you will recall, we called that speak week. Thousands completed various surveys as we went through this process. We did a statistically valid survey. So we meet the goal of thousands of input. I want to point out that this isn't total number of people because some of these are repeat inputs. This is 14,000 inputs. So the vision that you reviewed in august and approved as a step towards completing the plan, just very quickly it's written as if it is 2039. And the vision is in 2039 that austin is liveable, natural and sustainable. Mobile and interconnected prosperous, values and respects its people. It is creative and is educated. You've heard from judge cooper and david sullivan, and they send their appreciation for taking them out of order this morning. So with that we can go directly to greg claxton. Thank you, councilmembers. Greg claxton, planning development and review. I'm going to talk about the first of our two big work products that we have for you this afternoon. The preferred growth scenario, which is the overall concept for the direction of growth and preservation over the next 30 years in austin and its e.t.j. Garner mentioned our three big phases of community input so far, some of those have involved the public working with maps, surveys and broad open-ended questions. We think we've heferred a few things consistently from the public throughout that, in all of the different mechanisms that we've had. And that's generally a preference for compact development over sprawl, redevelopment over green fill development, preserving and protecting the edward's aquifer, floodplains, neighborhood character. A preference for mixed over separated uses and for a complete transportation system. I'm going to walk through the big components of the preferred growth scenario first and tell you a little bit about what we expect for those for austin's future. And then show you how those lay out on the map. We have four mixed use centers and corridor concepts. Generally these are focused on mixing residential uses, jobs, services, as well as other uses, civic, parks, schools, that kind of thing. Typically our mixed use centers and corridors are going to have a strong connection to transit service, and there's a large emphasis on having well designed spaces, parks, plays is as and the streetscape itself. The largest of these is our regional center. Something like a downtown, but also smaller versions of that as well. These are generally going to have a higher proportion of jobs than some of the other centers because they are intended to be a broader draw from the region. We expect to see a range of sizes and types of these regional centers. Some like downtown and any likely redevelopment of highland mall would be very urban in character. Some would be more spread out, such as what is likely to happen at robinson ranch. The key thing for all the regional stz and all of the mixed use centers in general is a good connection between workplaces and jobs -- workplaces and homes, homes and services. Tone centers are mid size mixed use center, and we've been using the mueller development as our primary example of that partly because it has that urban town center core of it surrounded by lower intensity neighborhoods. Neighborhood centers is the smallest one. It's the scale of -- about the scale of our current station area plans, however we also expect a number of smaller neighborhood centers scattered throughout the city that are more focused on services for the residents rather than accommodating population growth. Last our mix used corridors are similar in scale to the neighborhood centers, just raise lind yarly. And we -- as with all of them we expect to see a mix of types and uses along these. We don't expect to see, for example, all vertically mixed use buildings along the mixed use corridors. Most -- the preferred scenario identifies most jobs being located within these mixed use centers; however, we do recognize that they will continue to be -- there will continue to be jobs that aren't as compatible with residential uses, so we've carved out a few industrial job centers. We also expect to see continued residential infill growth in established neighborhoods. Here the idea is adding housing units that doesn't disrupt the overall character of the neighborhood. Whether it's the addition of small townhouses or apartments or garage apartments. Last, we do expect to continue to see some green fill residential growth. Probably that's going to come out more in our final growth concept map, but here we've identified it just a little bit in the preferred growth scenario so that we can have a discussion with the working groups as to how to have these be quality places also. Those are our land use components. We've also -- the preferred growth scenario also looks at the transportation system with the idea of voting a complete system where all of the different components support one another. We expect to have -- right now the preferred growth scenario uses the campo 2035 arterial map. We expect, for example, direction to develop a collector plan coming out of the comp plan. And we need to work with the working groups on identifying innovative tools for dealing with our most congested roads such as i-35 and mopac. The preferred growth scenario identifies a number of high capacity transit routes. Right now we're using this as a very broad term to encompass high capacity computer rail, regional rail, urban rail as well as bus rapid transit. While the preferred growth scenario doesn't call out specific routes for bikes and pedestrians, we do believe that bike and pedestrian friendliness is key to the mixed use areas and we do expect to continue to -- that plant will support continuing to improve our bike and pedestrian facilities throughout the city. I'm going to step back a moment and explain how we go got to the specific map we have now. Our community forum series number 2 that occurred last april and may we had 457 participants go through a chip exercise where they created 63 maps of how to accommodate austin's future population growth. Review those 63 maps, we identified four general ways that they were accommodating that growth. One was distributing it broadly within the planning area. One was distributing throughout the planning area, but keeping development off of the edward's aquifer. One was focusing all the growth in these mixed use centers and then the last scenario d was focusing growth within austin's traditional north-south access, kind of along i-35 and mopac. At community forum series number 3, 4700 people weighed in on these alternate future scenarios. About 46 percent selected d as their first preference. 46% Selected c. We also asked for a second choice and the numbers there were reversed, about 50 percent of people selected c and 25% selected d. Out of these results, our approach to creating the preferred growth scenario was to start with scenario d and incorporate some of the aspects of scenario c that people seem to be responding to. This generally took the form of removing some of the density and intensity off of that north-south access and shifting it on to some mixed use centers along sh 130. When we did this, when we were working on the preferred growth scenario, we were looking at balancing other concerns as well, coordinating with the future land use maps from the neighborhood plans, coordinating with the campo center plan, recognizing likely development, that is existing planned projects, recognizing where some of of the intensity in scenario d was probably unlikely to occur over the next 30 years Residential infill growth in established neighborhoods. Here the idea is adding housing units that doesn't disrupt the overall character of the neighborhood. Whether it's the addition of small townhouses or apartments or garage apartments. Last, we do expect to continue to see some green fill residential growth. Probably that's going to come out more in our final growth concept map, but here we've identified it just a little bit in the preferred growth scenario so that we can have a discussion with the working groups as to how to have these be quality places also. Those are our land use components. We've also -- the preferred growth scenario also looks at the transportation system with the idea of voting a complete system where all of the different components support one another. We expect to have -- right now the preferred growth scenario uses the campo 2035 arterial map. We expect, for example, direction to develop a collector plan coming out of the comp plan. And we need to work with the working groups on identifying innovative tools for dealing with our most congested roads such as i-35 and mopac. The preferred growth scenario identifies a number of high capacity transit routes. Right now we're using this as a very broad term to encompass high capacity computer rail, regional rail, urban rail as well as bus rapid transit. While the preferred growth scenario doesn't call out specific routes for bikes and pedestrians, we do believe that bike and pedestrian friendliness is key to the mixed use areas and we do expect to continue to -- that plant will support continuing to improve our bike and pedestrian facilities throughout the city. I'm going to step back a moment and explain how we go got to the specific map we have now. Our community forum series number 2 that occurred last april and may we had 457 participants go through a chip exercise where they created 63 maps of how to accommodate austin's future population growth. Review those 63 maps, we identified four general ways that they were accommodating that growth. One was distributing it broadly within the planning area. One was distributing throughout the planning area, but keeping development off of the edward's aquifer. One was focusing all the growth in these mixed use centers and then the last scenario d was focusing growth within austin's traditional north-south access, kind of along i-35 and mopac. At community forum series number 3, 4700 people weighed in on these alternate future scenarios. About 46 percent selected d as their first preference. 46% Selected c. We also asked for a second choice and the numbers there were reversed, about 50 percent of people selected c and 25% selected d. Out of these results, our approach to creating the preferred growth scenario was to start with scenario d and incorporate some of the aspects of scenario c that people seem to be responding to. This generally took the form of removing some of the density and intensity off of that north-south access and shifting it on to some mixed use centers along sh 130. When we did this, when we were working on the preferred growth scenario, we were looking at balancing other concerns as well, coordinating with the future land use maps from the neighborhood plans, coordinating with the campo center plan, recognizing likely development, that is existing planned projects, recognizing where some of of the intensity in scenario d was probably unlikely to occur over the next 30 years and continuing to work to better coordinate land use and transit. I think the starting place for understanding the preferred growth scenario is on some of the things that we are looking to protect. Certainly the edward's aquifer came out with very strong support from -- continuing support from the public, floodplains, protecting those especially , also came out as a very important value. Our six regional centers really form the core of the preferred growth scenario running from lakeline far to the north down through downtown to what we're calling southside at the far south of the planning area. Our town centers fill in in between those, but also start to pick up some of the branches to the east or west. West to oak hill or east out to 290 and 130. Our job centers right now are primarily located around existing industrial type uses, either landfills or for example the biggest cluster of these industrial job centers is tied to the airport. Our major transit routes really focus on that north-south direction, but you can see some of the branches off to the east and west. Again along 71 out to oak hill or up to 290 and 130. And some of our major roadway changes that we've identified for improvements. You can see the spread of neighborhood centers and mixed use corridors that fill in the scenario. And then some of the areas we've identified for expecting continued residential growth. Where those circles are over existing neighborhoods, that's infill. To the east and northeast that would be the green fill development. Taken altogether we think this is generally how the public prefers to accommodate future growth. And with that I will -- i would like to introduce david ross from wrt. Thank you, greg. I'm david rouse, principal with wrt leading the consultant team for this project. I'm going to briefly walk through the plan framework, which is the other main product that you have before you of the last few months of work. And what is the plan framework? Very simply it's a series of elements of building blocks we are calling them that reflect what is required by the city charter, but also some additional ones have been added based on public input. So the organization -- i think I went past one actually. Okay. So some overall themes in the planned framework, first of all sustainability, particularly structured around the three. I will return to that. Creativity and innovation, both in the process and implementation has emerged as a key. And actually central to sustainability, regional cooperation. And also an idea of outcomes. The outcome of this planning process when it's implemented is looking to create complete communities in all areas of the city. The components of the building blocks, each one of these -- there are seven of them. Each one makes a connection to the vision, which is as you know you endure just a few months back and had the public input. Set strategic directions for action. This is important. This is where we're now starting to move towards action, implementing the plan. And also connects to the idea of sustainability, again across the three e's. There are seven of the building blocks, and what I'm going to do now, there are actually 188 strategic directions and council will be very happy to know I'm not going to go through each one of those. Instead what I'm going to do is what we thought we would do is we would paint sort of a picture, give you an overall idea of what's in these building blocks. Just to get a sense. You have the document. You can see the detail. They are recognizing that land use urban form and transportation need to be considered together and integrated. They all support each other. And transportation particularly supports what your land use pattern wants to be. And what that helps to do is create this idea the city of complete communities where people can meet their needs within the short trip without driving across town to get to their grocery store or whatever. And all parts of austin will be accessible by all means of transportation. Moving on to the second one is housing and neighborhoods. This is a really key one and we've heard these two ideas here. Austin is a city of -- several ideas are important. Diverse neighborhoods where housing is accessible and affordable to all citizens. So now again this building block has set the direction for action. How do you achieve that? And there's some more specific directions in here if you look -- start to lay that out and give direction to the working groups that will come along. Throughout austin there's a variety of housing that meet the needs of a diverse and growing population. And austin's housing will be resource sufficient and sustainable, ie energy efficient, green building, saving money for residents. Moving on to economy focuses on austin as the economic hub of the region. Looks at high-tech, bio tech, green, emerging technologies. Very important the creative industries, music, film, gaming, digital media, etcetera. And local businesses, big and small, the mainstay of our economy. And there are links across all three e's, you can think about this, but the economy is very important to echo and creating live waimgz for all residents of austin, that is really a key direction moving forward. Conservation and environmental resources. Austin must conserve, protect, support our national resources. This includes water, environmentally sensitive areas, natural habitat, range land and farmland, agricultural resources, local food production, addressing issues of climate change and air pollution, green infrastructure, the urban forests are also aspects of this particular building block. City facilities and services. This one actually encompasses several components, utilities, water, wastewater, drainage and solid waste. Public building services and facilities and also parks and recreation and open space. So the idea is that public facilities are accessible to all residents, serve as models of sustainable design. Again, looking at utilities, providing affordable utilities and promoting energy, conservation and a shift towards renewable energy. Public safety is part of this building block, improving collaboration with a community public safety provider so that resident safety is ensured. And finally I mentioned parks and recreation, providing quality recreational, outdoor experiences, and helping to promote healthy lifestyles, provide access to natural areas. The next building block is society, family, children, education, health and human services. A healthy community promotes active and healthier life-style choices. Community health is a real big theme. And families and children throughout the plan framework. So improved community health with equal access to health care. Here's a tie to the economy. It created educated and diverse workforce to sustain austin as the region's economic engine and that helps in terms of creating jobs for the residents. And again the idea of complete communities with access to community services, safe neighborhoods and quality education. The final building block is culture, which covers arts culture and creativity and historic and cultural preservation. We will support and value austin's artistic, cultural and creative community technology and their contribution to the city's identity, economy and quality of life. And historic and cultural resources. Preserve and maintain and absolutely reuse as necessary historic buildings, neighborhoods and sites which reflect the city's history and heritage. That was a real quick tour through the seven building blocks. I just wanted to pause now and revisit -- there were three directives city council set for this process at the beginning. And just to sort of go back -- I think it's good to revisit those. I think we are on track to achieve these. The first one is community engagement and as garner said, there have been about almost 15,000 touches, people involved in one setting or another in the process to date. And it's what we call a value driven process. Really what the vision and the plan framework and the preferred scenario reflects are the values and aspirations of people that participate in the planning process to date. Sustainability, i mentioned that. Again, environment, economy and equity, the three e's. But what this plan is doing and starting to now define specifically what does sustainability mean for austin? We've heard a lot about local vibe, creativity and innovation as being part of that. Now where we are in the process is we're now poised to move on to implementation. The third thing that city council has done is we want a plan that will be implemented. It will guide action moving forward. And that's where we are actually right now as we get ready to start phase 3 with the working group is to start moving from policy to action. So you see this diagram here. What this shows on the left, the planned framework, the strategic directions I went over, the preferred growth scenario that greg went over, these are intended to work together. There's a lot of direction in those strategic directions about how you translate and make the preferred growth scenario serve a guide for policy and decision making moving forward. What the working groups will be doing over the next six months or so -- I think garner will fill this out a little bit in just a minute. It's now to take the strategic direction. We now want to move them to action. They set really good direction. How do you actually accomplish these and what should the priorities be? At the end of this period we will have a set of prioritized action moving forward and the preferred group scenario that now will be refined and fleshed out a little bit to become a growth concept map, I do want to remind everyone that the comprehensive is a framework document, it's a 30,000 square foot document so that the role the working groups will not be to go on and figure out land uses in every core and neighborhood, but better flesh and frame out that growth scenario and the concept map that decides decisions in the next level of planning moving forward which will take place at the neighborhood and the corridor level. So with that I think I'll turn it back to garner who will wrap up. He mentioned there were remaining issues. We've listed I think the ones they mentioned. There are issues that the taskforce identified and travis county identified regarding the extra territorial jurisdiction, especially development along 130. There are issues about the character and density of mixed use corridors. We did a lot of work on trying to look at the comprehensive plan and relationship to neighborhood plans with neighborhood contact teams and neighborhood stakeholders, but there's still work to be done there. There's work to be done regarding development over the aquifer. The taskforce and planning commission recommended that we not show 45, the length from the dog leg to the west over to 35. On the growth scenario map, staff would identify that as an issue that deserves additional discussion and analysis as we go forward. This is scheduled on your agenda for a public hearing and possible action in a week from NOW, MARCH 10th. The working groups have had two (indiscernible) and well attended orientation sessions. Thursday night we had over 80 folks come. And then tuesday night we had another 100 people come. They're anxious to get going. They're very excited about the potential for the plan. And we're looking forward to working closely with them. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] groups can be in the process of reviewing it and refining it into the final phase of the comprehensive plan and the growth concept map. So with that we are open for questions. well, I'll ask you one quick question, and I notice you mentioned that sh 45 southwest was not in the plan, correct? It's not on the preferred growth scenario map, no, it's not. well I'm not sure I know exactly what that means. I'm certainly not advocating to build sh-45 southwest, not at all, but I do want to point out that it is in the campo long-range plan. It is not currently in the tif, and it is not in the city of austin. So I guess in the e.t.j. Yes. Mor lefn you have to address it one way or another in the plan, but it's my understanding travis county has already purchased the right-of-way for that road. 216-26. Mayor leffingwell: 21626. Yes. so that portion is in the plan, the portion 21626? It is not showing on the plan, as recommended by the planning commission. It was in the staff's draft. so -- all right. I'll leave it at that. It just seems like, you know, it may be built. Maybe we should pay attention to that fact, whether we want it or not, but I'll leave it at that. Council member spelman? I have several questions but I'll keep them short. We have a map, we have a list of strategic directions, 181 strategic directions -- 188. Spelman: 188? At some level strategic directions stop being strategic and start being tactical and below that. [Laughter] but never mind, we have the sense of where the see needs to go. I'm on that. At what point does it start making sense for us to have a conversation with pflugerville, round rock, or our regional partners to make sure that the matching up makes sense? Right now, right now going forward. In fact, we have had some planning staff members volunteer to serve on our working groups, and we were real pleased with that, and we want to reach out to the other cities and both invite them to review our work, make sure that they can comment on it, see whether it coordinates with their plans. We're also recommending that they communicate upwards to their planning commissions and city councils, and so we really think that's a critical step in the process, and it absolutely has to be done. to have done so before this point would be premature. We doesn't have anything to to show them -- yeah, you're plan has been to allow the citizens to of the planning area to weigh in first. what shape, to the extent we know, what shape are the plans in the surrounding jurisdictions? Are they pursuing the same track we're on? Do they have plans already? What's that look like? Buddha right now is doing a -- buda right now is doing a comprehensive plan. Davis georgetown completed one five years ago. Cedar park has a comprehensive plan. Pflugerville? Pflugerville has just finished one, I believe, so yes, most of the suburb communities are experiencing rapid growth -- that are experiencing rapid growth have used this as a vehicle for their planning process. what form will that communication take? Has it got to be mostly staff to staff or our working group will invite citizens of pflugerville and round rock? Or what's that going to look like? We certainly want to invite anybody that wants to participate on the working groups. That would be great. I don't know if everybody has time, but what -- we answered that question already. We do know that staff from buda wants to participate, and they've signed up. The others will be sent a draft plan once it's complete and invited to comment, so -- and then we'll forward the comments through the process. presumably we've already got -- they have a formal plan and we have a copy of that, and is there somebody on your staff who's looking that over, looking for mismatches, compatibilities, things like that? Certainly the transportation planning staff has continually looked at that for coordination because of campo and the relationship with the zero street network. We have collected the plans, and yes, we've looked at them. so if there's something besides a four-lane going into a two-lane is an obvious problem for the transportation guys, but i can see there might be other mismatches which we ought to be aware of. Yes, and as you'll recall, the third part of the sustainability grant really set up a process to do this on a regional basis. It said that we should seek to use locally adopted comprehensive plans as a platform for reach no dlolg, understanding those plans run those jurisdictions' regulatory systems and spending systems, theoretically, and the region needs to have a mechanism to coordinate those plans. So we think imagine austin will provide an important platform and the sustainable grant from hud provides funding for that, and it is the third part of that grant that was awarded to us. Spelman: okay. So we also have an institutional framework to plug this thing into, not the ad hoc -- yes. two other questions, and these can -- just to give me a sense for what kind of things are likely to be coming up first once the working groups are [inaudible]. The comprehensive plan has got two pieces in it, one piece accompany each of the two sections of the framework, and you're going to have -- since [inaudible] prioritize actions, I wonder if you can give me a sense of what kind of capital improvements are obvious, but what other classes of actions you might envision being floated in that next stage. I can see -- it's a question -- is it a question specifically which ones need to be prioritized? I think virtually all the actions need to be prioritized, because if we're serious about doing something, it's better to have a handful of high-priority item than a hundred that nobody knows where they're going. But particularly the capital improvements items definitely need to have a prioritization, and as well as priorities for -- I'm assuming that additional more detailed plans, corridor plans, neighborhood plans, station area plans, may be received, comprehensive plans sort of generally say what the community's priority is for pursuing those additional plans, is doing a new land use code, big project, frequently done after a comp. plan is adopted? Is that a priority? I think that's something that the community needs to give us some feedback. I think that one depends on the recommendations of the plan. If it's obvious that the plan, when it's complete, is -- the tools that we have right now are insufficient, or inefficient, to advance the community's goals as reflected in the plan, the way to resolve that is to look at our land use code. That's one way of resolving it. I'd like to just add to because I think another aspect of this is we call it capacity building, and looking at partnerships, and comprehensive plans now are really going beyond sort of that focus on physical development land use, which is so important, but when you're dealing with things such as public health and community hels, for example, are there bridges and partnerships you can make with health care institutions, and actually that's a really important point of these working groups, is hopefully we can get representatives from a lot of different aspects of the community involved and get involved and make commitments to implementation moving forward. So I think partnerships will be another important aspect of the implementation program. so we can presume the final result of this won't just be for land use map or changes in our land use processes, but it might be changes in who we make partners with, what kind -- it might even be programmatic or budgetary. Absolutely. Because the input that we're getting is not just land use. The folks have been -- they want to talk about, you know, affordable housing and health care and public health and, you know, equity and other issues, so those definitely need to be developed -- addressed, and the way they're going to be addressed is through partnerships and bringing together a lot of organizations that are work working on those issues and getting everyone the same direction and focusing and setting priorities. apropos, the last question with regard to the growth concept map. You were talking about 30,000 feet a few minutes ago and this whole plan is really focused -- it's not focused [inaudible] 30,000 feet. And we expect the final result of this growth concept map to be also at 30,000 feet or should we expect that to kind of drill down to levels [inaudible] it starts meeting the on the ground issues more. It -- a comprehensive plan is general, and it needs to stay general, but it needs to be an appropriate -- a balance between the community's aspirations and reality. We can't go overboard in either direction. If we go down to the details and lose sight of the forest for the trees, this plan won't be worth the paper it's written on. So we need to reach this balance, and the mechanism that's in the scope is to take this very general preferred growth scenario and start translating it in a growth concept map, which would be adopted at the end of the process. it turns out i do have one more question. Earlier -- I forgot to ask this -- I meant to ask this earlier. Dave anderson came by earlier to describe the planning commission's recommendations to us [inaudible] sullivan -- sorry, although I think david anderson voted for t and david sullivan suggested that it would be a good idea for us to develop some case studies, by which I think he meant some examples of ways, particularly, of dealing with mixed-use corridors. Is that something your staff is in a position to do? Well, we've already looked at mixed use corridors, and I think your staff has the results of that in respect to the zoning on the ground. And with respect to a translation of the future land use maps that are associated with each neighborhood plan, we took the step of translating those maps into potential zoning districts, and we took those zoning districts and generated math out of those districts, and then compared that. I know it's a stretch but we compared that to the math that was used for the chip exercise. And for the most part the corridors that we looked at, certainly the existing plumb, if you take them to their maximum, if isn't always reegistic, would -- realistic, would accommodate the densities of the chip exercise. why is it not always realistic? The neighborhood plan -- planning process has colored maps that are associated with a range of zoning districts, and it envisions the zoning process, and the planning commission and city council actually going through a rezoning process, if an applicant asks for that, and they're not entitled to go to the maximum. They need to show that contextually it works. so yellow on a flum is single-family houses but the density of those houses is flexible? For example. That would be one to calculate, because it's either single-family or duplex, so that one, I have a reasonable degree of confidence in. give me a better example. The commercial district, the office districts, the highway commercial districts, the mixed use districts. couldn't remember the colors associated with those. For all of these, then, there is a degree of density associated with those. Yeah, they have -- there's a specific matrix. There's a list of zoning districts that are associated with that color. and -- and it's not assumed that the property owner is entitled to the maximum so pick a color, there's a certain number maximum level of density and you've calculated how many jobs people could get if everybody went out to the edge of the envelope in each flum, each neighborhood plan. We did nearly the maximum and did existing zoning, so we have that range. so if everybody went up to the maximum we could get x number of additional people in our current neighborhood plans? Yes. Spelman: okay. But it's unrealistic to expect everybody to have to go up to the maximum because they often would have to request a zoning change and the zoning change would have to ensure that that is compatible with what else is going on. Yes, absolutely. That's all very correct, but also the factor of existing investment on land. Many of these properties have a high degree of investment and are really not going to be redeveloped. at least not for the foreseeable future. Yeah, right. Can I just add one thing? Because one thing to think about is when you develop that growth concept map, it's not just a map, but there are also descriptions of the land uses, and what we've done today with the chip exercise, it was deliberately simple, so there was a chip that was probably a 7500 whatever, i think that's what dave sullivan talked about, residents along a corridor. Typically when you do descriptions of land uses you do it in terms of ranges of density because it could be from this range to that range, because it's not as prescripted because this is part of the flexibility built in. This is part of the refinement concept, and we'll flesh out the descriptions and give an idea what that means and the ranges. do you have an idea what sullivan was actually talking about when he was talking about case studies? Do I misunderstand him? I heard him, I may be wrong, and I'd be happy to talk to david some more -- i heard him say we needed to do additional work, maybe on some corridors both in terms of infrastructure availability to accommodate the density as well as how it relates to zoning on the ground, and available vacant parcels, underdeveloped parcels, so forth. And I don't think he was suggesting that we do it citywide, maybe do some test case. I think the idea was test cases. I look forward to seeing what you come up with for those. Thanks. council member morrison. Morrison: thanks. Just to follow up, it was my understanding that he also explicitly said that some of the case studies would look at cost of infrastructure to accommodate the density in some of the corridors and other things like that. So I guess I want to focus in just on one question. Dave sullivan mentioned the planning commission recommendation, judge cooper, the task force recommendation, and both of those, as I understand it, were pretty consistent in terms of requesting that council accept the map with the expectation that the working groups will improve them or make adjustments to them, but we also -- i noticed on your last slide, the staff request for council action is to endorse the plan framework and the preferred scenario. So can you talk a little bit about that difference? Sure. I'm not sure that we're that concerned with the words he used. I think what we were really concerned about is that we recognize all the public input, all the work that's been done, all the direction that has been provided so we can, as a stepping-stone, to complete the plan. We don't want the direction -- we hope that the direction wouldn't be an invitation to unravel or go backwards, but to go forwards. Morrison: okay. Because I think that there's -- you know, there's -- it's been a rocky road. Yeah. -- to some degree, and I think it seems like we're the a pretty good place now in terms of there are still some people that, you know, wish that we would not move forward at all. Other people probably wish that we had gone forward a lot more quickly, but we've got just a set of issues still on the table, and i think that the -- going forward with the attitude that we really need to -- we acknowledge that we still adds those things, it is somewhat of a semantic thing, but I think it's very important that we do that. So my question for staff is, for the action on march 10, will you be sure to prepare the planning commission recommendation for us to consider? Certainly. Morrison: okay. Thank you. council member cole. mayor, I want to say a couple of things. One, I think that the guiding principles in particular have had a lot of public input, and i appreciate the fact that you- all went will you that process, especially for our city of austin. And second, I know you're bringing it back on march the 10th, and I do agree with council member morrison that it has been a rocky road, but it's time for the pouring of the concrete to begin. And so we want to recognize that the working groups will work on the unresolved issues, but we're trying to stay close to our timetable. Thank you. thank you. Well, thank you very much. Thank you, mayor. we'll see you next week. Thank you. so we're still on this morning's agenda, council. 31 was pulled off because of a number of citizens have signed up to speak, so without objection we'll go directly to the speakers. Gavino fernandez, jr. Is gavino here? I don't see him. Donating time to gavino is marcelo tafoya. Is marcelo here? No. Elisa rindon motaya. Is she here? No. Marcus. De leon. And debbie russell. So none of those folks are in the chambers. Francis martinez? Here earlier. Annie ferris? Annie ferris? Less than evidence davila? -- Lenny davila? And donating time is johnny la moan. Is johnny in the chamber? Okay. Saldania. Leonard -- leonard davila? Mayor. mayor pro tem. I want to take a point of personal privilege to thank these guys. 00 this morning. This happens frequently. We apologize, but we appreciate you hanging in there for this item. This is the holly cultural contracting item that we allocate every year, and these folks put on incredible culture arts for us in east austin, and so i want to do just thank them for hanging out today, being here to speak. Thank you. so leonard -- johnny la moan is not in the chamber. Johnny is on his way. He just went down to the garage for a bit. you've got three minutes. Before he shows up before you finish you can have his time. My name is deny erd davila. -- Leonard davila. I'm a long-time resident of austin since 1960, and what we're doing is we're -- we want to do these events to promote our mexican-american culture. What's happened over the years, we see a lot of hispanic events, and we're -- our objective is to promote our mexican-american culture, native -- we have a lot of talent. We're doing it particularly during "south by southwest" because the whole world is here. The whole world is in austin, and we feel that our community has a lot to offer the city of austin, as we have for decades. And we just wanted to be inclusive and show what our community has, because we have many great things to offer, talented people, talented music, and this event that we're having, we call it the mexican-american experience. We're also having medical organizations that are going to come out and help try to get vouchers for children who can't afford medical care. We're getting our community involved with nonprofit organizations, and we would really, really appreciate your help in putting on this event. It's going to be a free event for the public. We're doing two days at the emma barrientos mexican-american culture center, and all of this is to show off what we have. We'd like to put on -- while the rest of the world is here we want to show everybody what -- what austin -- what else austin has to offer. And I'd like to invite everybody out, and I do have some cards here that show what our event is, and everybody more than welcome to come out and participate and see what we have to -- what we have to offer, and it's all good. And I thank you for your time. thank you, leonard. Is paul saldana here? Paul is signed up for. Sharon velasquez? Sharon is also for. Welcome. You have three minutes. Good afternoon, mayor leffingwell and pro tem martinez and members of the city council. My name is sharon velasquez. I am here as a member of fiesta of austin, and I am supporting agenda item 31 to provide funding for the cinco de my oweo, the conjunto fess, the mexican-american experience and the pan american festival. Since 1978 fiesta has provided the city of austin, the hispanic community with events at fiesta gardens celebrating the history, culture, music, dancef the mexican and mexican- american americans with diaz I seis. These were promoted the courage of tejanos. There's been provided funding back into the community for college bound hispanics and a community dinner. Continuing these events is crucial to the hispanic community. I urge your support and passage of the agenda item. Thank you. thank you, sharon. Rich garza? And donating time is reyes reyes. Not in the chamber so you have three minutes. Good afternoon. First I wanted to -- my name is rich garza. I'm the producer and co-founder of the pechanga festival. I would like to thank you for having us up here today and for your consideration. I'd like to start real quick, laura rent rea would like me to read something. She had to leave so I want to honor her request. Dear mike, I had to meet with reverend jaime about the holly plan team. Can you read this into the record for me? Lorri rent rea wanted to say that she and her husband sabina were members of the holly good neighbor program and continue to support the process of funding community based programs, projects in the holly neighborhood that enrich our clurmt arts, subsidize visa for area and residents dents and pay for police to patrol our area near the soup kitchen and methadone clinic. With only one year holly good neighbor funding left, we support spending money for two groups that have tejano music -- or for the groups that have tejano music showcases at the max so they can raise money to make sure mac is used to showcase our musicians during "south by southwest," because "south by southwest" has never helped showcase our musicians. They take over venues forcing latino artists out of the city. Thanks, please pass item 31 without changes. And I just wanted to also say that, again, thank you for your support over the years -- over the years our mission with this event has been service, with everything that we've done we've -- we strove to support the artist community and the neighborhood, in the area, and then the hispanic community at large. I'm very proud of the good work that we've done, that we don't really heavily promote in the neighborhood with the schools, and more importantly I'm very proud of what we've been able to accomplish as far as putting latin music sort of at the forefront for certain windows in this city. Last may we had the cover of the austin chronicle, ahora si and the austin 360 all showcasing our event, and at a time when sort of, you know, tejano music and where it fits in culturally in this town has become a political issue, for us to be able to kind of showcase that and bring that to the citizens of austin is -- it's an incredible accomplishment and something that we're really proud of, and I just ask for your continued support this final year. Thank you very much. thank you. Those are all the folks we have signed up wishing to speak. Linda ramirez is signed up for. Questions? I'm just going to read off the rest of them. Signed up against are paul hernandez, rube inmontoya, gloria marijuanao, lorri rent rea, julio velasquez, gilberto rivera, rube incaleros, feliz -- beginning with roberto -- lorri rent re a, they're sent up for. That brings us down to gabriella val les quest also oh evalez quest for and gab ingarcia. I want to add more context to the item that was before so I want to thank the folks that help put these events on, but what we're talking about literally for the first time is two tejano latino music events during "south by southwest" that are free and open to the public, and as they both mentioned, they'll both be at the mac. Spot fi -- is diez yseis. There's a more hip younger group, but they're incorporating the younger into their program, and that happens at fiesta gardens in may. And the austin conjunto festival, by johnny did he degollado, who does the conjunto festival. Fish oh part of what they do they reach out -- because of this consideration we've asked them to reach out to the local schools surrounding the holly power plant and they put on music programs for those kids, try to get them interested in our culture, and that's really the purpose of this, is to not let this aspect of the tejano culture die and go away, because it is, it's waning and waning and waning, and it's evolving as well. Some of the newer music is the kids that grew up in east austin, they play a little different, maybe a little louder sometimes, but it's all who we are, and, you know, without programs like this, it's going to be hard for us to maintain. So with that being said, the rich garza just spoke that probably nobody caught was he wanted to thank us for this last year of funding, because he's right, the holly mitigation program goes away. And so more than likely some of these programs are going to be struggling next year to be able to continue these efforts, but we wanted to support them as much as we could as a city, and that's why we've brought these items forward for the last several years. I will be working with them as hard as I can to make sure that we maintain our partnerships and that we try to keep these events going for as long as the community wants to have them. Thank you, mayor. With that I'll move approval. mayor pro tem moves to approve item 31, second by council member morrison. Discussion? All in favor say aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Opposed say no, passes on a vote of 7-0. Brings us to item 32, which was pulled because some folks signed up against, and the first speaker is roy whaley. Is roy in the chamber? Not in the chamber? Bill bunch? Bill bunch? Not in the chamber. Len han is signed up for but only if there are questions. Those are all the speaks we have. I'll entertain a motion on item no. 32. Council member shade moves to approve item 32. Is there a second? Second by council member riley. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Opposed say no. Passes on a vote of 6-0, mayor pro tem off the dais. 34 actually now only has one citizen signed up for -- and not wishing to speak, but willing to answer questions. So we can enter -- unless there are questions of that person we could entertain a motion on item 34. Council member spelman moves approval, second by council member riley. Discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Opposed say no. Passes on a vote of 6-0, mayor pro tem off the dais. Item 35 was pulled by council member spelman. actually, mayor, I was under the impression we actually passed this on consent, but I have had my questions answered on this item and I'll move approval if we need to do so. Mayor leffingwell: okay. We do. Motion to approve by council member spelman, second by council member shade. Discussion? All in favor say aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Aye. opposed say no. Passes on a vote of 6-0, mayor pro tem off the dais. That brings us to item no. 36, With frank -- we have frank herrin signed up to speak, lorri rentrea signed up for. If there are any questions only, lorraine atherton signed up for not wishing to speak. So frank herrin? Is fr in the room? Frank is not here, so those are all the speakers that we have on item 36. Council member morrison moves approval, second by council member spelman. Discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Opposed say no. Passes on a vote of 6-0, mayor pro tem off the dais. So that brings us to item 40. Signed up to speak now only one person, lorri rentorrea, not here. So I'll entertain a motion on item no. 40. That was council member cole moving approval, council member morrison seconds. Discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Opposed say no. Passes on a 6-0 vote, mayor pro tem off the dais. So those are all the items on our morning consent agenda. 00 p.m. zoning cases. thank you, mayor and council. I'll present our 2:00 p.m. Zoning ordinance and restrictive covenant items. My name is greg guernsey, I'm director of the planning and development review development. 47 is an item that would require at least six votes of the city council. I can certainly read that into the record. I think mayor pro tem is just in the foyer, if you'd like to have a full council when that item is considered. i think that would be preferable. would you like me to read it into the record and then -- well, let's just not consider it on the consent agenda pulled for discussion. Can we do that? Guernsey: yes. all right. 48 is case c14-2010-0147. This is a project located at 11301 old san antonio road. This is to request rezoning to multi-family residence, low district or mf-2, district zoning with conditions. This is ready for its third ordinance reading. I see now we have a full council. Would you like me to read in item no. 47? yes, unless someone wants to pull it off consent. Okay. Go ahead. 47 is case c814-2008-0145. It's known as the park pud located at 801 barton springs road. This is to rezone the property to planned unit development or pudmp combined district zoning. I would like to note a couple things. You had asked this item go to the design commission, and on your dais you actually have, I believe, the -- a memo that kind of speaks to their actions, but I'll sum it up very briefly to say that the design commission recognizes this as a tract that's located within a buffer area adjacent to the neighborhood. They felt that the front of the structure met superiority, mixed use, pedestrian active, but the rear not so, being more of a stark face facing the neighborhood. Also, there was a discussion with our law department, and after speaking with them we have removed the references to financial contributions that were part of your first reading action, and third, we've also spoken to austin energy green building program, and the applicant as well with regards to that. The owner has agreed to comply with the current two staff green building program rather than under their previous old three-star. I understand the two-star is actually more stringent than the old three-star that was used in the past. We do have a representative here from austin energy green building program if you'd like further details, but they're happy. The applicant is happy, and staff would suggest that change be reflected. And with those items the staff would offer this as consent for second and third reading. all right. So the consent agenda for those items where we've already held a public hearing is to approve item 47 on second and third readings, and item 48 on third and final reading. That is the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve? Council member cole moves to approve the consent agenda. Is there a second? Second by council member shade. Is there any further discussion? Council member morrison. I'd like to be shown as voting no on no. 47, please. all right. Council member morrison votes no on 47, so that will require all the remaining votes to approve in consent agenda. So all in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Opposed say no. Passes on a vote of 7-0 on item 48 and 6-1 on item 47 with council member morrison voting no. thank you, mayor and council. Let me read -- of the items I can offer for consent, the zoning and neighborhood plan amendments. These are where the public hearings are open and there's possible action this evening. 49 is case c14-2010 (0192 for the property located at 8116 big view drive. We have an applicant request for postponement to your march 24 meeting, and I can also offer that as a consent postponement. 50 is case c14-2010-0202 for the property located at 1127 bastrop highway service road. This is to zone the property to general and commercial services or cs district zoning. The zoning and planning commission's recommendation was to grant general commercial services, conditional overlay, or cs-co, combining district zoning, and this is ready for all three readings. 51 is case c14-2010-0203, for property located at 1115 bastrop highway service road. This is to zone the property to commercial liquor sales or cs-1 district zoning for tract 1, and general commercial services or cs district zoning for tract 2. The zoning and platting commission's recommendation was to grant the commercial liquor sales conditional cs-1-co combining district zoning for tract one and cs-co combining district zoning for tract 2. And this is also ready for all three read ifntion. 52 is case c14-2010-0207 at 510 west 8th street. The applicant has requested an indefinite postponement of this item. When this item does come back to you we will have to renotify the public in newspaper and by mail. 53 i c14-91-0015 (rca) for the property which is a restrictive covenant amendment to the property located at 5617 fm 2222, staff is requesting a postponement of this item to your march 24 agenda. 54 is case -- which is also related to item no. 54 is case 0 # for the property located at 5030 and 626 bastrop highway. This is a neighborhood plan amendment to the montopolis neighborhood plan. Staff is requesting a postponement of this item to your may 12 agenda. The related item is a zoning 55, case c14-2010-0138 for 526 and 626 bastrop highway. Staff requests a postponement of this item as well to your may 12 agenda. 56 is case npa-2010-0021.02. This is for an amendment to the austin tomorrow comprehensive plan for the east riverside/oltorf combining neighborhood plan. For 1406 to 1506 parker lane. Staff is requesting postponement of this item to your march 24 agenda. The related zoning case, 57, case c14-2010-0140, for the property located at 1406 to 1506 parker lane. Staff is also requesting a postponement of this related item to your march 24 agenda. 58 and 59 are related. 58 is case npa-2010-0025.01. This is an amendment to the oak hill combined neighborhood plan, element of the austin tomorrow comprehensive plan for the property located at 9726. This is a change of future land use map to commercial land use. The planning commission's recommendation unanimous recommendation, was to grant this change to the designation of commercial. 59 is a related zoning case, c14-2010-0175 to rezone the property at 9726 circle drive to warehouse/limited office conditional overlay, neighborhood plan, or w/lo-co-np combining district zoning. The planning commission also recommended the zoning change to w/lo-co-np combining district zoning and this is ready for consent approval on all three readings. That concludes the items i can offer for consent. Mayor leffingwell: okay. So the consent agenda for those items where not yet held a public hearing is to postpone item 49 until march 24, close the hearing and approve on all three 50 and 51, to postpone item 52 indefinitely, postpone item 53 until march 24, postpone until may 12 items 54 and 55. Postpone item 56 u march 24, and 57 postpone until march 24, and to close Pplicant has requested an indefinite postponement of this item. When this item does come back to you we will have to renotify the public in newspaper and by mail. 53 i c14-91-0015 (rca) for the property which is a restrictive covenant amendment to the property located at 5617 fm 2222, staff is requesting a postponement of this item to your march 24 agenda. 54 is case -- which is also related to item no. 54 is case 0 # for the property located at 5030 and 626 bastrop highway. This is a neighborhood plan amendment to the montopolis neighborhood plan. Staff is requesting a postponement of this item to your may 12 agenda. The related item is a zoning 55, case c14-2010-0138 for 526 and 626 bastrop highway. Staff requests a postponement of this item as well to your may 12 agenda. 56 is case npa-2010-0021.02. This is for an amendment to the austin tomorrow comprehensive plan for the east riverside/oltorf combining neighborhood plan. For 1406 to 1506 parker lane. Staff is requesting postponement of this item to your march 24 agenda. The related zoning case, 57, case c14-2010-0140, for the property located at 1406 to 1506 parker lane. Staff is also requesting a postponement of this related item to your march 24 agenda. 58 and 59 are related. 58 is case npa-2010-0025.01. This is an amendment to the oak hill combined neighborhood plan, element of the austin tomorrow comprehensive plan for the property located at 9726. This is a change of future land use map to commercial land use. The planning commission's recommendation unanimous recommendation, was to grant this change to the designation of commercial. 59 is a related zoning case, c14-2010-0175 to rezone the property at 9726 circle drive to warehouse/limited office conditional overlay, neighborhood plan, or w/lo-co-np combining district zoning. The planning commission also recommended the zoning change to w/lo-co-np combining district zoning and this is ready for consent approval on all three readings. That concludes the items i can offer for consent. Mayor leffingwell: okay. So the consent agenda for those items where not yet held a public hearing is to postpone item 49 until march 24, close the hearing and approve on all three 50 and 51, to postpone item 52 indefinitely, postpone item 53 until march 24, postpone until may 12 items 54 and 55. Postpone item 56 u march 24, and 57 postpone until march 24, and to close the public hearing and approve on first reading only items 58 and 59. and mayor, we did get an ordinance available for you for 58 and 59, which should be on the dais, and so we can actually offer those for all three readings on both those items and you can -- won't have to deal with that on another day. items 58 and 59 to close the public hearing and approve on all three readings. There's no objection. Motion to approve the centd consent agenda? Council member spelman moves, council member morrison seconds, discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Opposed say no? Passes on a vote of 7-0. thank you, mayor and council. That concludes our zoning items. tough zoning cases. All right. So without objection council will recess this meeting of the austin city council and call to order a meeting of the austin housing finance corporation board of directors, and we have director betsy spencer to take us through the agenda. Good afternoon, board of directors, betsy spencer, treasurer of the austin housing finance corporation. I offer three items for you today. Two on consent. 1 are minutes from the meeting from january 13 and february 10 -- I'm sorry? go ahead. 3 is to approve a resolution authorizing the adoption and implementation of a customer privacy insurance program for the austin housing finance corporation. This act is responsive to federal requirements for consumer credit information protection. 2 is a resolution authorizing the issuance of austin housing corporation multifamily housing revenue bonds for the marshall apartments in an amount not to exceed $6 million. but that is not on the consent. Nos. so the consent agenda is items no. 1 and no. 3. That is correct. Entert entert ain a motion to approve those. Council member cole. Council member morrison seconds. All in favor say aye. Aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Opposed say no. Passes on a vote of 7-0. So now we do have speakers signed up on item no. 2. Do you have a presentation first? I do not. i think we've talked about this before. So we'll go ahead and go to our speakers. First is tracy witt. Tracy witt, and donating time to tracy is christine verana. Is christine here? No. James medina? James medina? No. Andrew roberts? Andrew roberts is not here, so tracy, you have three minutes. Thank you. Good afternoon, mayor and council. I'm tracy witty and I'm president of sweet hill neighborhood association. You already know that there has been and continues to be overwhelming opposition among sweet hill robertson hit to summit housing partners plan for the base section 8 property known as marshall apartments. You know that more than 175 stakeholders signed letters in opposition to the psh component of the project. You know there is an open-air drug market two blocks from the apartments, alcohol sales next door and crack sales across the street at 12th and and lynna. You know that psh research recommends [inaudible] psh in such areas. You know you're facilitating a total project cost of 7 million for a property that will only be prays a prized at 5.6 million. Facilitating a deal that afford no affordable housing, you you did the -- section 8 property just 1.2 miles from marshall. You said you believe that you're saving affordable housing units with this deal. The property was not for sale. The appraisal says highest use is of subsidized housing. Summit had to go back repeatedly to the owner offering more and more money until it was too good to pass up. Does that sound like a dire situation to you? Do you have evidence that amerisouth won't renew its contract with hud? What justification do you have for facilitating a 35 million acquisition price for a property 5 million, especially when the city faces a deficit of 40,000 affordable housing units and this project creates? How many more times do you plan to help summit overpay po prpts that's no-no danger of conversion and to perform what affordable housing experts have described to you as only a cosmetic renovation, one that guarantees at most 10 to 15 years of project life? How many more times do you plan to make creation of psh units a requirement for providing summit or some other company significant public resources to acquire and renovate section 8 properties in zip code that already lead the city in low income housing units per square mile. If you look at the next to next-to-the-last page of the packet that I gave you, you'll see a map. There are 556 project-based section 8 unites within two miles of each other and 329 2 miles of each other in low to moderate opportunity areas. And if you look at the front page, I really -- I don't understand why award $5 million in forgivable loans over the last 13 months to a company whose current house seems to be lacking some order. Summit owns more than 80 properties across nine states. In the packet you will see that three florida section 8 properties have fiscal scores? The low '60s, 59 or lower is for hud to have enforce him. I hope the manner in which these properties have declined is not indicative of what the residents of marshall have to look forward to. I don't see why any companies in this condition deserve go bond money to create zero units. I and my neighbors have listened to everything you said and we don't understand why psh has to be a part of this project. thank you. Thanks. stanton strickland. Stanton strickland. He's not in the chamber. Lorri rentorea is signed up for, willing to answer questions. Margo gerana is signed up against, not wishing to speak. Mayor pro tem, our board member, vice chair, martinez moves approval. Is there a second? Second by board member spelman. Further discussion? All in favor -- council member -- excuse me, board member riley? I would just like to ask staff to respond briefly about the concerns that were raised -- concerns that are raised about the track record of summit housing with respect to other projects, and I guess I have two questions. One is to what extent does, a, an applicant's past history with other projects factor into the consideration of their application for these funds? And secondly, are there any mechanisms in place that would help ensure that the -- what happens on this project is of sound quality? Let me try to answer question no. 1. Our experience with summit to date has been on the elmridge project which we had no problems at all. We have not, to my knowledge, reviewed their portfolio in florida, but we do review their financial assets and the viability of the corporation, and to that extent there have been no problems. But our experience to date with summit has -- we've had no problems on the elmridge project. 2, the quality of the work going forward, how do we assure that? I have several responses, the first of which, this applicant is applying for tax credits through the state. That is a very rigorous process. There are land use restrictions and there's a lot of compliance that the state will -- elements that the state will ensure that this owner will comply with, as well as our own organization. We have a process for annual compliance and site oversight, so we will monitor this project, as we would any project, on an annual basis. Riley: okay. Thanks. Additi additi onal questions? Entertain a motion to -- we already have a motion, don't we? That's right. All right. All in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Mayor leffingwell: aye. Opposed say no. Passes on a vote of 7-0. So those are all the items on our ahfc board of directors meeting, so without objection we stand adjourned from that, and we'll call back to order this meeting of the austin city council and go into recess, and after a short recess we'll go directly into executive session. So I will read into the record without objection the city council will go into closed section pursuant to 071 of the government code for consultation with legal council to take up one meeting, and that is item -- one item, that is item 45 to discuss legal issues related to open meetings act. Is there any objection to going into executive session on that item announced? Hearing none, the council will now go into executive no carrierringconnect 5 Mayor Leffingwell: We're out of closed session. In closed session we took up and discussed legal issues related to item 45. Council, I believe that concludes our agenda for today. We will adjourn at 5:45 p.m. Morrison: All right. So today we have singer/song writer matt the electrician. Matt's unique name is when he would not have enough time to take a shower or change clothes after working as after electrician all day to perform his songs at night at austin bars and clubs. Each after quitting his day job, the name stuck. Since then he's been a finalist in the mountain sage new song festival, the telluride festival and the rocky mountain festival. He has toured in support of THE WEEPIES, aaron McKeen and bob schneider. Matt's song valedictorian was featured on a recent episode of eli stone and the lifetime show army wives. He tours all over the world and has recently released his sixth studio album, animal boy. I want to comment that matt was with me on the delegation to ajita, japan, which is our sister city, and played at the music festival. And he is a rock star in japan. [ Laughter ] so welcome, y'all. Take it away. This is my friend from denmark and she and I wrote this song together as part of the house of songs exchange program in denmark in a haunted medievel castle. It's called ghost story. ♪♪♪♪ [ applause ] thank you very much. Morrison: Thank you, both of you. So matt, can you tell us a little bit about your website and where we might buy your music? My website? My website is matttheelectrician.com. You can find us on the house of songs.com. And you can find my music all over the internet and also at waterloo records, of course, here in austin. Morrison: Do you have any upcoming shows here in austin or are you on the road again? I do. I have a big show over at the cactus cafe on campus on MARCH 11th, SO NEXT WEEK. And I'll be playing a little bit later tonight at flipnottics with eta here. Morrison: Before we finish I want to read this proclamation. It says be it known that whereas the city of austin, texas is blessed with many musicians whose talent extends so every musical genre and whereas our music scene thrives because austin audiences supports good music produced by legends, our local favorites and newcomers alike. And whereas we are pleased to showcase and support our local artists. Now therefore i, lee leffingwell, mayor of the live music capitol of the world do here by proclaim MARCH 3rd, 2011 AS MATT The electrician day in austin, texas. [ Applause ] Mayor Leffingwell: Our first proclamation tonight is to recognize and honor a group of folks from the african-american church community who have worked so hard for many years to try to address the problems associated with the disease aids. Which for so long has been considered for many people a death sentence. And now that has changed and we're very happy because with all the work that is done, not just in addressing means for a cure, but also in addressing the spiritual side of it and addressing an educational program for actual prevention. All of those things together are important, and the group of folks behind me now have been very active in doing that. I want to thank them. Let's all give them a big hand for doing that. [ Applause ] I'm very pleased to meet minister joseph collins for the first time. It's a pleasure to meet you. And I've known pastor delynn clark for a long time and actually been to his church and worshiped with him. It's good to see you, pastor. I have this proclamation to read in their honor and then I'll let both ministers come up and say a couple of words. It reads, be known that whereas african-americans make up less than 10% of austin's population, but account for nearly 50% of all reported hiv aids cases in our area, whereas the black faith-based health initiative and collaborative partners have been working with churches to inform, educate and empower the community with respect to , aids, health issues and whereas thanks to the involvement of more than 40 local churches, hiv-aids educational presentations, preventive workshops, hiv testing and referral, health fairs fairs Will be made available to citizens to help solve this major health challenge. Now therefore i, lee leffingwell, mayor of the city of austin, texas do here by proclaim march 6 through the 12th 2011 as the national black church week of prayer for the healing of aids. So congratulations to all of you. And I'll present this first to pastor clark. To the mayor and all of you who are gathered and the great people who make up the black faith-based health initiative. We are honored today. And you know, there's some challenges in life. We can't fight this in isolation. Those of us at the greater mount zion church community, more than 2,000 strong, delight, rejoice in our partnership with the black faith-based health initiative and we look forward to many years to come working with them to both prevent as well as to serve those with hiv-aids in our community. We are also urging other african-american communities of faith and those african- americans with corporate influence as well as influence in the government sectors to join with us to do all that we can to stay the growth of this pandemic in our community. One of the things that we're most profoundly passionate about is us taking ownership of what we see and not closing our eyes and operating in silence. The truth is that what has been state understand this proclamation, the numbers, they represent faces, they represent voices that are not being heard and they represent people living in fear. Hiv-aids is the leading cause of death for those between the ages of 18 and 34 in the african- american community. And that's tragic. That's tragic. And we're saying as a community, we're joining with the black faith-based health initiative and saying no more, not on our watch. And we want to mobilize all of the churches, all of our churches who believe that jesus came to heal the sick. To do it, be a part of the healing process. So we're just delighted to be a part and delighted to be here. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well said. [ Applause ] good evening, my name is minister joseph collins and I would first like to say thank you to mayor leffingwell for the proclamation and giving us this opportunity to address the citizens of austin. I have the privilege of sevenning in a couple of great -- of serving in a couple of great organizations. One is the great faith-based health initiative, which is a nonprofit five oc three here in austin. It serves central texas by informing community organizations about minority health disparity. In other words, those diseases that for some reason -- and we don't always understand why, why certain diseases impact certain populations more frequently and more deeply. I'm also privileged to serve on the city of austin hiv planning council of which mayor leffingwell is the ceo. That organization is funded by the ryan white foundation, and we have the opportunity to allocate and distribute about 2 million a year in service to people that are living with hiv and aids. You know, it's really interesting. Some may ask why is it necessary to have an organization or efforts that are aimed at hiv for african-americans or other chronic diseases. You know, some of the finest minds in health care and in social services are thinking about why hiv affects certain populations and makes certain people more vulnerable than others. We don't know why. You know? We know poverty is a driver. We know that stigma is a driver. But we really don't understand all of the social did he term nants that make -- determinants more likely to hiv and aids than others. We are committed to find agriculture cure for hiv and the bottom line is that while things like race and social orientation and gender may give us some clue as to why certain populations are vulnerable, at the end of the day hiv is a virus. We're all in the same boat and we need to find the solutions for all of us. We thank you for this proclamation. We're excited about it. This march 9th actually from the sixth through the 12th is the national week of prayer for the healing of aids. And my organization black faith- based health initiative, is the local sponsor for that -- that event. And we're excited about it. On march ninth pastor clark has been gracious enough to host the national week of prayer for the healing of aids celebration services. We would invite all of you to come out. If I can use a social term, it's not just a black thing. Everyone is welcome. Everybody is welcome to come out and enjoy the singing, enjoy the music and enjoy the message. We thank you, we appreciate it and mayor, thank you for this proclamation. [ Applause ] Mayor Leffingwell: It's my honor to issue a proclamation in honor of the peace core, especially the central texas heart of texas peace corps association which serves austin and the vowrnding area. Mainly u.t. students, right? Is that fair to say? [Inaudible - no mic] Mayor Leffingwell: From all over, but a lot of u.t. Students. I've got here more than 1400 alumni serve and 77 are currently serving. So a large participation. Established in 1961. The peace corps is basically -- I remember when the peace corps was established, let's put it that way. And what a big and innovative thing it was. And what a grand vision to actually make her go out around the world and engage people and try to help them with all kinds of basic skills and some intermediate skills actually to help them have better, healthier lives in a number of ways. So I think the peace corps founded by president kennedy and actually the first head of the peace corps I believe was sergeant sliefer, who was president kennedy's brother-in-law. So really a landmark event in our history, and it's so good to see them still flourishing and still doing good works. So I want to read this proclamation in their honor, and then I'll pick up chandy wagner to say a few words on behalf of the peace corps volunteers. Whereas in march of 1961, president kennedy established the peace corps to promote peace and friendship across the globe through volunteers who share their expertise in the areas of education, busins, health, agriculture, youth development, the environment and more, and whereas the city of austin is home to both the heart of texas peace corps association with a member of 200 return one of the leading campuses providing volunteers. alumni have volunteered and 77 are currently serving. And whereas in conjunction with the peace corps's 50th anniversary, return volunteers are holding a day of service with their family and friends to aid austin's multicultural refugee coalition in gardening, crafts, computer literacy and building maintenance projects. Now therefore i, lee leffingwell, mayor of the city of austin, texas do here by declare march 5th 2011 as peace corps day in austin, texas. Congratulations. [ Applause ] it is a popular peace corps saying that if you give a man a fish he can eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish he can eat for a lifetime. I think all us have heard that phrase throughout our training at some point. Peace corps volunteers, american men and women have gone throughout hundreds of countries in the world, developing countries to assist other people in learning how to build their own communities. We have assimilated and given up the comforts of our home to go to the communities and becoming one of the locals. Throughout that process we initiate a very important intercultural exchange whereas people there can learn about americans and we are just like all of them. We have the same dreams, aspirations as they do. We can also assist them with technical assistance and help them build sustainable development projects such as being able to provide clean water, such as teaching them how to be educated, teaching teachers, training nurses, a variety of projects. Not only do we go to other countries and teach them about things that we have here and help them build upon what they already have, but we also return to our own communities to build upon what we have. There are -- austin, being the community that it is, attracts a lot of peace corps volunteers, so we bring about information from the communities that we have lived and served and bring it back to austin. We contribute a great deal to the culture here in austin as well. We do a lot of volunteer service projects through the heart of texas peace corps association such as the upcoming volunteer day on march fifth. If you would like to go to our website you can find out more about that. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] so we're here tonight now to remind you of why I don't O fish he can eat for a lifetime. I think all us have hea that phrase throughout our training at some point. Peace corps volunteers, american men and women have gone throughout hundreds of countries in the world, developing countries to assist other people in learning how to build their own communities. We have assimilated and given up the comforts of our home to go to the communities and becoming one of the locals. Throughout that process we initiate a very important intercultural exchange whereas people there can learn about americans and we are just like all of them. We have the same dreams, aspirations as they do. We can also assist them with technical assistance and help them build sustainable development projects such as being able to provide clean water, such as teaching them how to be educated, teaching teachers, training nurses, a variety of projects. Not only do we go to other countries and teach them about things that we have here and help them build upon what they already have, but we also return to our own communities to build upon what we have. There are -- austin, being the community that it is, attracts a lot of peace corps volunteers, so we bring about information from the communities that we have lived and served and bring it back to austin. We contribute a great deal to the culture here in austin as well. We do a lot of volunteer service projects through the heart of texas peace corps association such as the upcoming volunteer day on march fifth. If you would like to go to our website you can find out more about that. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] so we're here tonight now to remind you of why I don't run marathons anymore. [Laughter] actually, this is to command and congratulate two of austin's finest, austin/travis county ems, emergency medical technicians, or paramedic. You're both paramedics, even better, for a lifesaving event they participated in where they happened to be off duty and were out running a marathon. And one of their fellow marathon rrs collapsed along the way and what a good day for him that these two guys were nearby. So the city wants to offer you our congratulations and recognize you officially with a distinguished service award on behalf of the city of austin. So there are two of them, and they're pretty much alike, so I'm just going to read one, and so when I get to your name I'll say state your name, and you say state your name, right? [Laughter] no, you don't have to do that. I'll just read -- I'll read both of your names. Distinguished service award for his quick response and ability to put his safety training into action, george gibbons and jerry mere error, are deserving of public acclaim and participation, and participating in an out of town marathon, city of austin paramedics george gerry moreau, sprang into action when they saw a crowd crowded around. They took turns providing chest con compressions until the new orleans arrived. At the finish line they received their medals and received the good news their patient had survived, and thanks to their heroic actions on their behalf. This certificate is presented in acknowledgment of gerry moreau and gibbons's reaction for their heroic actions on this 3rd day of march, by the city council, signed by myself, mayor lee leffingwell. Thank you very much, guys. And you were going to speak, george, so, george, this is yours. [Applause] I'd like to thank the austin/travis county ems employees association for sponsoring us on the run. They allowed us to get to new orleans, and we just were fortunate to be in the rice place at the right time kenon in a time of need. Everything worked prerveg b perfectly. I would strongly encourage everyone to lerve cpr. Bystander cpr saves lifers undoubtedly and we were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to have a positive outcome with MR. McKENON. [Inaudible] it's going to a hands only cpr so people worried about having to do mouth-to-mouth and ventilations, you can still assist compressions only. The city of austin does something where anybody can learn cpr in ten minutes' time and it does make a difference and does change lives. I have to say, because this is one of the projects that hi office is working on -- a volunteer coordinator is working on, to actually get more and more people, sort of a pyramid scheme of people who know how to do cpr, so no matter where you go you'll be safe, and the new technique -- we have a dummy upstairs in my office, if you want to come up and practice, but it seems so easy, just a hundred compressions a minute, just real quick. So -- a lot better and easier way to do it, so if you have an opportunity to practice, get certified, please do it. [Applause] I have another distinguished service award for one of our great employees here at the city of austin, here at city hall, works for our good friend, the city clerk, shirley brown. Shirley gentry brown. She got married a couple years ago -- few. A few years ago, and is the city clerk's office, as many of you know, is one of the few offices that work directly for the city council. So it's very important that we have somebody, especially in the city clerk's office, which is responsible for so many things with regard to records and managing the agendas for council meetings as we go through it. Sitting over here at this desk and doing that work, and all the great employees that work for shirley make heruch a great success, and the man we're honoring tonight with the distinguished service awards is one of those employees. So I'm going to read this distinguished service award for his outstanding contributions to the creation and development of the on-line council meeting information -- meeting information center for the city of austin -- I just used that too, it really is good. Bob guss, crm, is deserving of public acclaim and recognition. The information center serves as a one-stop source for people to access city council meetings. Sips its debut the site has been instrumental in transparency to the cities of austin. From one location the citizens were access the meeting agendas for the current, past and upcoming meetings, approve meeting minutes, videos and ordinances, work papers, drafts and other records by meeting date. The site is currently getting 210,000 hits per month. We're pleased to acknowledge bob's fine efforts on behalf of our citizens via the certificate presented the 3rd day of march, 2011 by the city council of austin, signed by myself, mayor lee leffingwell. Congratulations again, bob, for your fine work. And do you want to say a couple words? Okay, shirley? It's really a privilege for me to be here. I see my job as a director as one of hiring good people and then get out of their way and letting them do their job. This is certainly an example of how successful that can be. Bob had a vision and while i couldn't quite get my arms around it I trusted him and said, you know, let's work on it. And the jury says, you know what? 210,000 People think it's important to go there every month, and it's growing just in leaps and bounds. So it's a great thing for austin, and I'm just really proud to work with somebody who is this talented, this committed to customer service, and this creative. So I've asked bob to just share a little bit what his vision was and how we got to where we are today, but it's just a great pleasure, mayor, to work with somebody who is so talented. [Applause] thank you very much, shirley, and thank you, mayor leffingwell. Where this started was basically requests that were coming in from citizens, confusion about where they could find information. In a lot of cases this information was already available on the city's web site but in a very fragmented way. For instance, if a citizen wanted to know about a matter related to council, they would have to know, for instance, if that meeting had not yet taken place, they had to go to one place on the web. If the meeting had already tan place, there was another location to go, video, another place, transcripts, another place. If they wanted to see executed ordinances, resolutions, another location. Historical archival documents another place. So the vision here was, is there a way we can bring all of these resources together through a portal so that even though they're fragmented under the covers, as far as the citizen is contended it looks like a seamless interfaces bringing everything together in one place for them without having to do a lot of hunting and without incurring any additional expense, that is, leveraging technology that the city already had in place without having to go out and buy anything. So that's really what were the two driving factors behind this, getting the information available in one place and not spending a lot of money to make that happen. So it's been very, very gratifying to the response of the city departments, who are also interested now to get in the queue to get on board with this. We've expanded this to the board and commission process. It's been gratifying to see the response of citizens as well who are actively using the system. Thank you very, very much. I'm grateful to shirley torques yvonne good had all, and all the staff -- to the folks in the public information office who were supportive in this. The ctm organization, who are also very responsive to this, as well as the folks in the austin history center. So thank you, thank you very much. [Applause]