Austin City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 8/14/2013 Title: ATXN2 Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/14/2013 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/14/2013 Transcript Generated by SnapStream Enterprise TV Server ======================================================= >> >> [03:04:09] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Good morning. I'm austin mayor lee leffingwell, a quorum is present so I'll call this austin city council budget session to order on wednesday, august 14th, 2013 at 9:07 a.M. We're meeting in the boards and commissions room, austin city hall, 301 west second street, austin, texas. So I guess ed, do you have a presentation you want to make before we take up our agenda items? We have two action items on the agenda, items 1 and 2. And then for the rest of, i guess you could say whatever it takes, we will just go through in order the list of departmental budget presentations. And ask for questions and discussion on them. >> Yes, thank you, mayor. Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem and members of the council. We do have a brief presentation today just to tee up the rest of the agenda for the day. Can you bring it up? So first just as the mayor mentioned we have three items on the agenda. The first is part of our truth in taxation requirements to adopt a maximum tax rate. I think everybody knows -- i want to reiterate that this is not approving the tax rate, this is not setting the tax rate for the year. This is adopting a maximum tax rate that the council would consider as we go through the budget proceedings. The final tax rate will not be approved until september ninth or in the budget readings. Our second item is to set public hearings on the proposed tax rate. Those will occur on september 22nd and the 29th. Then the final item, the bulk of the day, we'll spend with staff responding to council -- >> september? >> August 22nd and 29th. >> I thought that's what you meant. >> August 22nd and 29th. And then we'll spend most of the time with the council discussion and questions and answers related to the departmental proposed budgets. The video recordings of which were all posted online and the powerpoint slides were provided to council on august 7, a week ago. So related to the first item of setting a maximum tax rate, I did want to just recap for you some of the tax rate information. We had some slight movement on the calculation of the effective and rollback rate when they were formally published by the county, but most of the information you've seen up here before that we're going to see 5.9% growth in taxable values in fiscal year 2014, total av of 88.58 billion with one billion of new property value. The tax rate the staff is proposing is 51-point $14 in $100 of value and that is between debt requirements and o and m cost. That is a 0.8% tax rate increase over the current tax rate and it's projected to have an impact of $4.17 per month for the owner of a median valued home. Over in the table on the right we have provided for your information the various state defined rates, the effective tax rate, the mom national tax rate and the rollback tax rate and what the change in revenue would be at those various tax rates. So for example, keeping the rate at the current rate of 50.29 cents would result in a revenue change of minus $7.3 million. If council elected to go to the rollback tax rate that would generate an additional 1.6 million of revenue. So that's information for your benefit as you're having the discussion about what maximum tax rate you would like to set. Really leading up to the discussion with the departments about their budgets, we did want to recap for council the -- at a high level the various new positions that are being proposed in this budget and we also wanted to have -- provide some context in regards to quite a bit of interest we've seen and budget questions we've seen related to existing vacancies throughout the city. So we just pulled together some historical data and some information about that for you. Most of the data on here you've seen before. In fact, all of the data on here you've seen before either through the budget presentations or responses to budget questions. This shows the fiscal year '13 amended approved positions by fund. It shows the staffing recommendations for fiscal year '14 included in the proposed budget and the net change. So a net increase of 364.5 positions is being proposed citywide. 103 of those in the general fund. And really quick on the general fund, almost all of those are related to maintaining two officers per thousand, the 20 positions in parks for us to take over operations of the cemeteries and 30 positions in planning and development review and the fire department related to building inspections and permitting activities. You do see some significant increases in our enterprise operations, 63 from water utility, from the austin water utility, and of course they will be beginning operations of water treatment plant 4. They also have an added position for a very long time as the city is growing and the water infrastructure has grown, the water utility really has not been adding positions to keep pace with that. They've developed a very comprehensive staffing plan that they're intending to implement over the next five years. This is the first phase of that and there is additional positions in the water utilities budget as well as implementing that plan and beginning to address some of the infrastructure needs in the department. Code compliance, the 26 positions there I wanted to talk a little bit about. There's been a significant effort to increase the level of code compliance service levels. We added 19 positions to the budget last year. We're actually proposing 19 new positions this year. It shows 26 on the slide because we're also transferring seven existing positions from resource recovery to code compliance to establish code compliance administrative functions as independent from resource recovery. They used to be a single department, so this is part of the splitting those two functions apart. For the transportation fund we're adding 56 positions there as part of our continuing efforts to improve pavement management and to improve that instruct. Council will remember that one of the top priorities that we always hear from the community is about the conditions of our streets and traffic congestion. So that's where you see the significant investment there. In terms of the vacancies, this was information that was provided in response to a council budget question. We currently -- I should say as of july 14th we have 934.8 vacant positions in the city and I think a lot of the questions or the comments we've received is do we really need to be adding 360 new positions when we have 934 vacant positions. So I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about that and providing some context. In the general fund it's important to remember that the general fund vacancies are hugely impacted by our public safety departments where they have a cadet class process. So it's pretty routine to see while we're waiting to get that class to graduate, you see the vacancies in those departments growing. So as we have a six-month cadet class in the police department, that class is in training and waiting to graduate, the number of police vacancies is growing, growing, growing. And then when the cadet class graduates, boom, those sworn positions of vacancies drop, but guess what, the cadet vacancies spike up. So there's always going to be this interplay between having cadets vacant or sworn positions vacant when we have very few cadet vacancies we will likely have more sworn vacancies and vice versa. I have the numbers here, i think it's 226, 226 of those 327 vacant general fund positions are related to either sworn positions orca debt positions that will eventually be used to fill the sworn positions. I'm going to let marc talk a little about the city's turnover rate which is one of the factors of the vacant seize we have in the city. [03:12:26] >> Good morning. We had an opportunity to -- over the past few days to evaluate our turnover in light of some of the questions that have been asked. And as we looked across the workforce, the question that we were trying to answer is our turnover any worse or better than other employers? And industry data for other local government turnover is turnover is about 10% for local government entities, double digit. Our year to date turnover is about 5.1 percent analyze. So our turnover data is a lot better than our local government employers. It just so happens that our turnover data is about the same rate, if you will, of the vacancy rate overall in all departments. We do have some departments with higher turnover than others and ed will talk a little bit later about some of the other factors. But obviously competition with the private sector, after the positions turn over, does make it a little bit more challenging to fill the jobs after positions are vacant. We also have a large number of employees who are retirement eligible, being -- we have a pretty generous retirement system in which employees can retire -- most of our civilian employees can retire after 23 years of service or age 65 -- or after five years of service. So with that we have a pretty generous retirement system and that contributes to some of the reasons for turnover as well. >> We track vacancies on a regular basis and track the results for our departments for austin energy and austin utility. We report those results on a quarterly basis to the city council through our quarterly financial report. We went back and pulled the data from those reports going back in to the beginning part of fiscal year 2011, basically looking back at three years, just so see where our current vacancy rate was in an historical context and we're actually a little below average. The average over that three year period was 983 positions. On the next slide I talk about some of the factors affecting vacancies in the city as large as diverse as the city of austin with over 12,000 employees. But a long-term trend has been about 983 positions. We're currently at 934. The peach colored bars i highlighted for you, that shows where we transition from one fiscal year to the next. So you can see it's really not atypical around this time of the year as we're reaching the end of a fiscal year for our vacancies to be in that range of about 900 and 950 and then of course when council approved the next year's budget, including additional positions, we see an immediate spike up in the number of vacancies because it takes awhile for all the new positions to be filled and then it comes down over time. Then as we go into the next fiscal year it's the same story, we get the vacancies down to about 920, 950, somewhere in that range. And then new positions are added to address service needs and we see a spike back up. So we're right about where we typically are this time of year. Of course if council were to approve budget with new positions we would see a spike up the first pay period of fiscal year '14, but as the positions are filled throughout the year we would start to see the numbers coming down again. Some of the factors that affect vacancies, mark hit on a few of them, but it's really important to consider the timing of the cadet classes and the issues i just raised. That represents 24% of all the vacancies we have in the city right now are either sworn positions that are currently vacant waiting for the cadet class to graduate. Then those vacancies will come way down. But as soon as the cadets move over to sworn positions the cadet vacancies will go way up. So we have this loop of having quite a number of vacancies in those departments in terms of authorized positions. We do manage that through the whole vacancy saving process. We know it's going to happen so we budget the anticipated savings that results. But we need to have the positions in the budget in order to hire cadets and then move them into the sworn positions when they graduate. Another factor of effective vacancies is the hiring processes. One of the things that come to mind is in austin energy where they've made a commitment to their internal staff that in the majority of cases they want to fill their positions internally and give people a career ladder to encourage them to stay with the city, which is great, but what that results in is if you have a higher level manager that retires and you go through an internal recruitment process and it maybe takes three to four months to post the position, take in applications, review the applications, set up interviews, etcetera, etcetera, well n that three or four months what you've done is you've now filled one position, but you've made no progress in terms of closing your number of vacancies because you've just created a vacancy below that and you go through another three to four month process to fill that vacancy blow it and so on. By the time you get down to the lowest level position that's being filled from the outside, it could be nine months to 12 months before you actually get that new body on body. So it's just something to keep in mind that if that's the commitment that large organizations like austin energy and austin water have made to try to fill positions internally whenever possible, you are going to have a higher number of vacancies because it just takes longer to get the new bodies in to the organization. Departments also from time to time do reorganizations and they look at their positions and request hrd to reclassify them to meet their changing needs. That also effects our vacancy rate. And then we have a number of positions, I just gave a few examples here that I'm aware of. A number of positions that are just flat out difficult to fill, particularly in the it areas, positions with titles such as network systems administrator. These two examples here i can point to. I know we've recently recruited for the third time for those positions and we still cannot find the qualified candidates to do those jobs. So we'll be going out and recruiting for a fourth time. We're really struggling in certain areas to fill positions. And then finally and mark hit on this, I think our retirement system does have effect on our vacancy rate. You look at our organization where employees are eligible to retire after 23 years. It's not uncommon to see people in the prime of their careers in their late 40's or early 50's retiring from the city because our retirement system allows for that to happen where in other cities that might have a minimum age of 60 or 62 they tend to hang on to their longer tenured employees longer which helps them in terms of their vacancy numbers. I it want to provide an update on the july 14th civilian vacancy report, the 974 vacancies. You recall 226 of those are sworn. We talked about those a lot and I wanted to focus on the civilian side. It's important to keep in mind that these vacancy numbers change everyday. By the time I'm done talking most likely somebody will have resigned and my vacancy numbers are off. We do take snapshots at the beginning of various pay periods. On july 14th was the last snapshot we took. We had 934 vacancies at that time, 226 were sworn police. And in the last month here's what we've seen working with our departments, 213 of those civilian positions have either been filled or job offers have been made and they've been accepted. We don't have the person on payroll yet, but they have accepted the job offer. We have 350 positions that are in the recruitment process. That does not mean that if you went out to the city's website you would find 357 positions posted because some of the positions have since closed, they're now being interviewed, etcetera, but we have 357 positions that are in the recruitment process. 39 positions are in the process of being reclassified and then we do have 99 positions that are currently not filled and also are not posted to be filled. I think that's the last slide I had on the vacancies. And we do have our departments here that will be able to get into any specific questions you had about their individual vacancies. The next item you have to take up is the property tax rate and I completely forgot to make one point on this slide that I'll just leave you with, and it has to do with staff has been I think very proud of the fact that for four consecutive years we've been able to deliver a budget to council that's below the rollback rate. One of the points we made back on august 1st when we delivered the budget to you is if you compare the four years to the previous four years where the -- between 2006 and 2010 when the city was experiencing for most of those years, six, seven and eight in particular was really experiencing an economic boom with double digit sales tax numbers, we still had four years when we were at the rollback rate. I think if you take that as a starting point and contrast it to the previous four years where we've gone through what people are calling the great recession and that we've still been able to balance the budget, avoid layoffs, continue to fund core services across the board from public safety to parks to libraries to our utilities and bring the budget in below the rollback rate in each of those four years I think is really a success story for the city and our citizens. And then I would also point out don't have the number, but we thought it would be an interesting context. We are working on the number. It's like an if not situation. If we had to continue the trend of going at the roll back tax rate each year as we had down for your years, if we were to continue that trend where would we be at today? I can tell you it would not be a tax rate of 51.14. My intuition is telling me it would be a couple of pennies higher than that, but I have somebody on my staff right now calculating those numbers because i thought it might be an interesting number for you all to have. But it certainly would be much higher than 51.14. I wanted to offer that as context for the tax rate that staff is proposing. And with that, mayor, we conclude our comments. [03:22:36] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Any questions on the presentation? Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: Thanks, mayor. Ed, I really appreciate the information you've provided on the vacancies. I think it's a good start. What I want to ask is when each department comes up that they speak to the existing vacancies, that they speak to the ones that have existed for longer than six months and then provide a justification for new f.T.E. Requests. And above and beyond that i want to know what process we go through in terms of looking at those vacancies and determining whether or not they need to be a position that's funded for the next coming fiscal year while we're asking for new positions. It -- I don't know what the process is, if there is one. I know that in 2002 we closed a 64-million-dollar budget gap with 600 vacancy savings. In 2008 we closed. R a 25- million-dollar gap, city manager, when you inherented a difficult budget year. And in a memo that you wrote in april 22nd of 2009, you talked about how you instituted a rigorous review process for hiring. With general fund employees and support services departments. So I want to know is that rigorous review process still in place today and what is that process? How do we go through -- i understand that vacancies are going to always exist and we'll always be hiring and people will always be resigning, but it seems like when we hit the most difficult points, when we have a budget shortfall, that's the first place we run to to close the gap. And in years where like this year where I think we're doing fairly well, sales tax is going to be five percent above what we projected, property taxes are higher than they've ever been. It doesn't even appear that we've taken a look at those vacancies to see if we can not increase taxes to the point that we have or that we can fund other unmet needs that may be a priority of this council. So I just want each department to speak no those vacancy savings and what process they went through, if they're going -- if they're asking this council to fund vacancies and at the same timed a new employees, I just really think there needs to be a justification for that. [03:25:17] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I'm not clearly understanding because I brought this up during the initial budget presentation about how much are we actually raising taxes. So as I understand it, the effective rate, if I live in an average or median priced home, if I'm going to pay the same taxes that I did last year, that would be my appraised value, whatever it is, and I assume it's increased times the effective tax rate. That would -- that's how much tax I would have to pay. So anything above that will be a tax increase in terms of raw dollars to me. So if we actually increased the tax rate as proposed to 50.29, I see that as a 2.75 cents tax rate increase, not a .85. And so it seems to me that the $4.17 per month, which is based on the increase above the nominal rate, seems to me I'm going to be paying more than that. I'm going to be paying two and a half times that more than I was last year. So obviously I'm not understanding this and i would appreciate if you could correct me. >> I think you are understanding it perfectly and I think you articulated it well. I mean, the tax rate today is 50.29, so if you look at it just in terms of the rate the rate we're proposing of 51.14 is 0.85 cents higher. You're absolutely correct, mayor, that anything above the effective rate of 48.39, any tax rate above that amount, even freeway .40 by the state, would be considered a tax increase because it generates more revenue from properties that have been taxed in both years. In other words, the tax revenue we get would be higher even though the rate is lower because values are going up so much. So I think both statements you said are accurate. From the current rate our rate is going up .85, but the effective tax increase is more along the point of 2.75. [03:27:36] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I wanted to make sure i understood it right. >> Even at the effective rate the city does generally generate additional revenue because new construction is exempt from that calculation. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So when I go to write my check this december for property taxes, the city rate is going to be about three times as high as $4.17 times 12. It's going to be almost three times that, much higher than the one I wrote last year. >> No. That part we are mistaken on. The $4.17 takes into account two factors. We could have a tax rate reduction and still have the check you write need to be higher if it is the effective rate. So the 4.17 per month is taking into account both factors. >> Mayor Leffingwell: The 4.17 a month is the amount above the effective rate. >> That's right. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. >> Tovo: Mayor? >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Mayor pro tem. >> Cole: I want to go back. Mark, you mentioned about the benchmarking you do with vacancies for local government that's a management -- the society of humane society management is about 10 percent. >> The turnover rate, that's correct. >> Cole: I'm trying to figure out exactly how we compare to that. You said year to date our turnover is approximately 5.1. And annualized at 6.8%. Tell me what that means. >> So we experienced turnover less frequently than the industry average for other local governments. So we're about three percent lower -- our projected turnover rate for the fiscal year is about three percent lower than the berge marks we've gotten from the industry data. >> Are we managing that savings in an appropriate manner or is it for our peer cities? We're doing better than others, correct? >> In terms of losing people either through attrition through retirement or leaving for other employers, we're retaining our workforce at a better rate than other employers. Now, what occurred in terms of the management of the savings that results from vacancies, I would have to defer to ed on that. [03:29:55] >> Cole: If we're retaining more than that means that we have less of a vacancy savings, is that correct? >> Yes. If you have fewer vacancies, then we have less vacancy savings, that's correct. We do budget a conservative vacancy savings number. I mean, it touches a little bit on what councilmember martinez was talking about. As a rule of thumb we do not try to balance the budget on the back of vacancy savings. We don't do that as being a sustainable thing to do. But it is a short-term solution. If we see an immediate dip in our sales tax revenues, the quick thing to do is we need to put a hiring freeze on except for absolute immediate public safety positions. So we might be able to hold vacant some maintenance positions or -- I think that's a good example really for awhile, but long-term the impact of holding those maintenance positions vacant is going to be -- it's going to be reflected in the maintenance of our libraries, maintenance of our parks and maintenance of our restrooms, maintenance of our infrastructure. So I've kind of gone off on a tangent, but yes, fewer vacancies does result in less vacancy savings. We do budget a vacancy savings number, but generally departments have more vacancy savings than what we budget. >> Cole: If we were to use that vacancy savings, it would necessarily mean an impact on services? Did I understand you to say that? Long-term you said it would impact services. >> I think long-term, like if we have this kind of -- this long-term history of having about 900 to a thousand vacancies, that's kind of the steady state for this organization with over 12,000 employees and with all the factors i identified. That's the steady state. If we're in an economic recession and I wish we had the data going -- we do have the data going back further, but I didn't have time to compile it. If you were to go back and look at fiscal year 2009 and 10 in the midst of the great investigation and we had the rigorous hiring process in place, that was what it was all about. It wasn't that these positions weren't important and providing a valuable service, it's that we felt we could do without them for six months to a year without impacting public safety, impacting things like park maintenance and how frequently our restrooms get cleaned certainly, but during that time I'm guessing we had closer to 11 to 1200 vacancies. We ramped up the vacancies to create more savings to help us balance the budget on a short-term basis, but not on a long-term sustainable basis. We did take a lot of long-term structural solutions to the budget as well. That was part of our strategy was to balance kind of the short-term easy fixes with the long-term structurally sound fixes. [03:32:38] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Just to get the numbers straight, it was my understanding when you talk about big numbers of vacancies, that's really a little bit of an illusion as it relates to the general fund because aren't most of those employees in surprise funds and/or in public safety? My understanding was all but a little over 100 of those employees were either working for enterprise, austin energy, etcetera, water utility, which would not impact the general fund at all. And a couple hundred or so are in public safety. So it only leaves you bottom line a little over 100. >> Yes, of the 934. 141 are civilian general fund positions that could feasibly help lower the tax rate if we were to freeze them or eliminate them. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So i think this is something you have to be very careful with because if you use this sort of accounting gimmick to enable -- to make it look like you have more revenue than you really do or less expenditures, then if you choose to lower the tax rate you're impacting yourself in years ahead because that's also going to lower your rollback potential if you need to add those back, you're not going to be able to add them back when you need to because you will have a lower rollback increment. Then on the other hand if you add to expenditures, then those are going to be in most cases I think structurally built into the budget and so the next year you've got those expenses to build on. I think you -- the word you used was not sustainable earlier on? >> It's not sustainable. If we want to maintain our current level. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Short-term fix in an emergency are bad situations. So I just wanted to offer those comments. I don't think it would be a good practice to do that. Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you. I appreciate this conversation. I think that obviously everybody wants to make sure that we have as lean and mean a budget as we can and still provide good service to our -- to the residents of austin. I wonder, there's a couple of points I think we need to address. One, some of these two positions are positions that are created as a result of council directives. We have code compliance and a lot of different directives that we've asked them to take on. So I certainly understand that. A couple of things that come to mind is one is do we sometimes use temporary employees for the same job that we've got an f.T.E. Held vacant for? [03:35:26] >> Generally not as a long-term strategy, but that is one thing to keep in mind when we talk about departments having vacancy savings over and above what we budget. A lot of departments are using temps as a quick solution as they're waiting to get that permanent position filled. They're either using temps or in the the case of our public safety departments, they're really using overtime. So the fire department and e.M.S. When they have a lot of vacancies, yes, they have a lot of vacancy savings, but they spend it almost dollar per dollar on overtime to backfill the positions. So you're correct both in terms of temp and using overtime a lot of the vacancy savings we realized is used up through those two factors. >> Morrison: And I think that's a reasonable way to go, but I also think that we need to take care in that because we can get into a situation where we're using -- you can see that with a lot of the long-term vacancies that we have where we might be using temps when really we could just hire them on as full time employees. It's a better situation for them. They're getting benefits and all. And I just have to mention what I read in the article and in the paper today an article about prescott, arizona. Only six of those 19 firefighters that died were full time employees, and there's a big issue now because the rest of them are not getting full -- their families are not getting full death benefits. That's a very exaggerated situation, but we need to take that into account. Wonder if you could speak to -- obviously vacancies are going to exist because of the hiring and retirement and all of that, but is there -- we're running -- it looks like we're running at about eight percent now overall. Is there a berge mark that is a best practice in municipal government or anything like that of what to shoot for in terms of vacancies? And what might be a reasonable number to work to? >> In terms of actual vacancies, we don't have a benchmark target for vacancies. We're aware of some of the other vacancies in other cities, just calling around. I had a chance to talk to the hr director for the city of san antonio, who told me they're about 700. Their workforce is a little smaller than ours. I know houston is -- has ranged anywhere between a thousand to 4,000. There are other large cities that -- that we don't have readily accessible data on what their vacancy rate is. It's not a frequent metric that's reported. We did go back looking internally in our organization historically in terms of I think what that pay period mid july of 6.8% of our proposed budgeted -- authorized positions were vacant. That is on the low end from what we've done historically based on workforce composition. I had a chance to pull some data. Ed mentioned that there were times we had over 1100 employees, and for instance in 2006 we were about nine, almost 10 percent of our workforce authorized transfers were vacant positions. It's been steadily going down. 2007, eight percent in 2008 until now with about 6.8%. But that's as the workforce has grown, the number -- the relative number of vacant positions have decreased. [03:39:04] >> Morrison: Are we actually -- are we actually looking -- including vacancy savings in our budget, our proposed budget? >> We do have vacancy savings included in the budget. I think I might have the number here. Actually in fy 14 the total savings, this is just what we project as a result of normal attrition and turnover is 35 million in vacancy savings. >> Morrison: I forget how many new employees are being -- are included in the budget. They're not going to be AVAILABLE ON OCTOBER 2nd? >> It does. And it also takes into account some of the positions are projected to start midyear or nine months into the year, it takes all that into account. >> Morrison: Is that all available somewhere that would be-- that you can make available to us? Because I think it would help us understand the new positions, the vacancies, how it overlaps with existing vacancies? >> They can put it as a budget question and give you that kind of detail. >> Morrison: Okay. I appreciate that. And I would -- I think what I'd like to do, I appreciate councilmember martinez's suggestion that each department talk about their vacancy savings and the new employees and how we expect that all to overlap. But I think that one of the things that we could do to try and find a lienor budget is to set a lower goal for vacancies and just ask that -- I understand that there are limitations and that there are especially limitations on the general fund. But the enterprise fund that means money and cost to the residents of austin also. I'd like to set the goal at four percent or five% and ask the departments how they would handle that if it was a goal they had to achieve or why they couldn't achieve that goal. It would be a way for us to maybe ferret out some ways to find savings because the question on the street is wow, we're doing so much better, why are our taxes going up? So we have to turn over every rock. [03:41:34] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I think that's a good suggestion as we get into the individual department discussions, but right now we have two action items that we need to -- that relate to setting the maximum tax rate and setting the public hearings. We can do to that and then go to the individual departments and begin that discussion. >> Morrison: That sounds fine, mayor. I do have another point to make just in terms of our agenda. I do have some questions that -- about the budget that aren't covered by a departmental question. So I wonder maybe if we could add another section in our listing here. We have a listing for the topics to cover, sort of general financial questions. >> Mayor Leffingwell: We do have a list and I'm sure there's a way to relate it to one of the items on the list. >> Morrison: Actually, there's not, mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: What is the topic? >> Morrison: There are several questions about increases in workman's compensation and other things like that. And overall general raises for the general fund. >> Mayor Leffingwell: We're in a little bit of a difficult position here of having -- discussing items that aren't posted on the agenda. >> Morrison: Well, if i could -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: I'd like to is it the city attorney and we would have to talk about it in a particular subject. >> Morrison: This is not the posted agenda. The posted agenda, i believe -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: I've got it right here. >> Morrison: Briefing and discussion related to departmental proposed budgets. And I don't see why that can't be included, the thing that you want to discuss can't be included in that agenda item. >> Morrison: You think it cannot be? >> Mayor Leffingwell: I think it can be. Otherwise we have a problem. But it can be according to the city attorney. >> Morrison: Great, because it's something that addresses every department. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Yes. >> Morrison: Good. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So let's go to item number 1. And we have one speaker, gus pena. [03:43:41] >> Mayor, good morning, councilmembers, mr. City manager, gus pena, native east austinite. I want to make it very brief because as some of y'all are, I guess, confused at some things and not knowledgeable on some items. So are we in the public and we don't have the staff that y'all have, don't have the statistical data that y'all have. And I put for, I should have put neutral because I am also not clear on the resolutions, but I would ask this. There are some things we do need in the budget. Times are tough for people out there. I don't care -- and I'll debate anybody that says this is a good economy, but -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mr. Pena, this item is a discussion on the maximum tax rate, not on the general budget. General needs on the budget. >> I understand that, mayor, but I made those comments and I need to make those comments. I'm going to go ahead and put neutral on my card, change it from for to neutral because depending on how much it impacts the taxpayer. So I'll leave it at that. I know what the item says specifically. I don't need to speak on item number 2. I'm an educated person, lee, so I don't need to be told what they are all about. I'll leave it at that and change it to neutral instead of for. >> Mayor Leffingwell: We'll make that change. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So on item number 1, under state law a vote on the motion to adopt a maximum proposed tax rate that the council will consider requires a roll call vote. The maximum that the city can adopt and stay within the rollback rate set by state law is 51.32 cents per $100 valuation. If we go above that rate citizens can petition the courts to ask that the city's tax rate be rolled back to our current rate, which is called the effective rate. I will entertain a motion to adopt a proposed maximum tax rate? Mayor pro tem? [03:45:52] >> Move approval. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So mayor pro tem's motion is that to propose maximum proposed property tax rate that the council will consider for fy 2013-2014 is x cents per $100 valuation. Are you going to propose 51.32? Is that your motion? >> Cole: Yes. >> Spelman: I'll second the motion. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Seconded by councilmember spelman. I would offer a friendly amendment that we change the amount to the proposed rate, which is 51.14. 51.14 as the maximum. 18 cents different. >> Spelman: That's extremely friendly. >> Cole: That is the amount proposed by staff also. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So the amount is 51.14 as the proposed maximum tax rate. Seconded by councilmember spelman. We have a motion and a second to adopt a proposed maximum tax rate of 54.14 cents per $100 valuation for the council to adopt for the 2013-2014 budget and tax rate approval of meetings in september. Will the city clerk please call the roll and required by state law so each councilmember's vote is recorded. And hold off on the call for councilmember spelman. >> Spelman: Thank you very much. Just I wanted to confirm the 51.14 cents is the maximum that we could call for, that the actual tax rate could be lower. And that we will not actually be setting the exact rate until -- projected september ninth. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I believe those are the correct dates but this only sets the maximum possible tax rate that we can consider. It could be anything below that. >> Spelman: I am just wanted that on the record. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I understand. I do that sometimes myself. Clerk will call the roll. >> Mayor leffingwell? >> Aye. >> Mayor pro tem cole? >> Aye. >> Councilmember riley? >> Aye. >> Councilmember martinez? [03:47:53] >> [Inaudible]. >> Councilmember tovo? >> Aye. >> Councilmember morrison? >> Aye. >> Councilmember spelman? >> Aye. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So the motion to adopt a maximum property tax rate of 51.14 cents per 100-dollar valuation for council to consider adopting for 2013-2014 passes on a vote of 7-o. So next we will set the date for the council to adopt the property tax rate. And for fiscal year 2013-2014. The proposed time and date is september ninth, 2013, beginning at nine a.M. At the city council chambers at austin city hall, 301 west second street, austin, texas. I will entertain a motion to set the time and date as proposed to adopt the fiscal year 2013-2014 property tax rate. And I'll entertain a motion to approve the motion that i just read. Motion by councilmember martinez. Seconded by councilmember tovo. All those in favor, signify by saying aye? Opposed say no? That passes by unanimous vote. And that takes us to item number 2, and I believe mr. Pena said he did not wish to speak, so we have no other speakers. By state law since we adopted a proposed maximum tax rate that is above the effective rate, we must set two public hearings on the proposed tax rate for fy 2013-2014. Staff recommends setting the hearings on thursday, AUGUST 22nd, 2013 AT 4:00 p.M. And thursday, august 29th, 2013 at 4:00 p.M. At city council chambers at austin city hall, 301 west second street, austin, texas. I'll entertain a motion on item 2 to set the dates for public hearings on the proposed tax rates for fy 2013- 2014. So moved? [03:49:57] >> So moved. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Moved by the mayor pro tem, seconded by councilmember spelman. >> Spelman: Question, mayor. This is a question for the city attorney. I notice from our schedule that we do not have any general budgets work sessions scheduled between now and the ninth of september. We do have -- we are now discussing two public hearings on the property tax rate. Would it be germane to the property tax rate for us to have a relatively general discussion about the budget on the 22nd and the 29th of august? >> Mayor Leffingwell: City attorney, I believe we're going to set the actual tax rate on -- as a a part of the budget hearings? >> >> Spelman: I understand. If we have additional questions, comments, we have need for additional discussion on the budget, i suspect we will because i think there's a lot of free floating questions that we want necessarily to get answers to today. Will we have another opportunity perhaps on the 22nd or the 29th to discuss the budget further or will we have to set if we wanted to do that, a separate -- either a separate line on the agenda or a separate meeting? >> I think these particular hearings are mandated by state law. So I believe that you're going to have more discussion about the budget, then you will need to post something separately from these state mandated hearings. >> Okay. If all we wanted to discuss was the property tax rate itself, would discussion be germane to the public hearing? >> If you want to just discuss -- set the tax rate outside of the public hearing, you can have more than the two that are mandated. >> Spelman: On the 22nd of august we'll be hearing from the public about the property tax rate. Will we be in a position to be able to discuss property tax rate on the 22nd after the public what are talking? >> Yes. At the public hearing you open it and take the public testimony and then the council can have a discussion about that among themselves. [03:52:02] >> Spelman: But if they wanted a more general about the budget we would have to post that as a specific item? >> [Inaudible]. You can have an additional budget discussion if you like as well, but my advice would be that you need to post that separately from the hearings. >> Spelman: Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I'm glad you brought that up because one of the things we talked about last year, on the first day of the budget reading there were a lot of proposals being floated and we had a lot of discussion and we talked as a council after that, after we adopted budget, about having a work session prior to the budget readings so that we could air ideas and offer staff the opportunity to run calculations. And it was my understanding that we were actually going to have a workshop -- a work session of that sort scheduled the week before budget readings. I think we even looked. I remember even looking with staff at some of the calendar dates. But I don't see one on our schedule. >> Mayor Leffingwell: A lot of this discussion can be held during the time we have set aside for the budget discussions, the three days in september there will be a lot of discussion. I would suspect a lot of amendments proposed to the budget during those -- during that three-day period. >> Tovo: I understand that. >> Mayor Leffingwell: The reason it's set for three days is to account for the possibility that whatever is proposed doesn't have the necessary five votes to pass on multiple patio readings. >> Tovo: I'm aware of that, mayor, but after last year we talked about allowing some time, about a week, so that we would have a work session and really be able to talk with each other and converse and share ideas and so that we're not in a position like we were last year, where we had some pretty big ideas being thrown out. And we had to recess so staff could calculate and come back. And I understand we have those three days to do it, but I thought it was a goal of the council to try to have a work session the week before to keep that discussion going on. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Could I suggest that item number 3 is discussion of all those things. If that if we get the point during the day today that we decided to need an additional meeting we can have that discussion then. But right now we're just voting on the maximum tax rate. [03:54:17] >> Tovo: I understand that, but it was jermaine to what councilmember spelman raised. We can table all of these scheduling items to later, but at some point we have to resolve them. It seems to me the best time. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Could we have that discussion later in conjunction with item three so there's adequate time to discuss all these things. >> Spelman: My recommendation was that we would have things to discuss and we may as well prove out that discussion, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be accurate. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Item number 2, we're just getting started on -- yeah. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, signify by saying aye? Opposed say no. It passes on a vote of seven to zero. Now we'll take up item 3, which is briefing and discussion related to departmental proposed budgets. And my understanding is that we're going to take these departments in order. Do all of you have this worksheet that looks something like this? My understanding is that there will be no presentation and that we've all read the budget and viewed the video, so we can ask questions beginning with the e.M.S. Department. >> Tovo: Mayor, as they come up I want to ask I have questions related to economic development and i don't see that on this list. So I put that out to staff about perhaps you could look over the list and figure out where that might be an appropriate time. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. >> Morrison: Mayor? Could I just put my questions out there that apply to all departments briefly so that it might take some time to look up answers? And that way we could at least give staff some warning of what they are? But they apply to all departments. [03:56:19] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Yes, I think that's appropriate. >> Morrison: Thank you. Looking at page 588 on -- in volume 1 of the budget, there are some increases in allocations that amount to -- taken together come to $7.7 million. So the ones particularly I'm interested in understanding are the following: The transfer out for the radio and maintenance fund is increasing from 1.7 million to 5.5 million. Worker's compensation fund is increasing from 6.4 to 7.7 million. Accrued payroll is increasing from 1.9 to 3.2 million. And wireless communications charges are going up from 2.8 to 4.1. And so those were all sort of big jumps that it would be helpful to understand. >> Mayor pro tem? We're ready to dive into questions, then I've got a few. >> Cole: Councilmember riley. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Did you ask your question? >> Morrison: I did. >> Cole: Councilmember riley had a question, mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Go ahead. >> Riley: If we're ready to dive into into questions. Thanks for being here. Want I wanted to ask about the f.T.E.'S. On the full time equivalents on e.M.S. That the number of sworn f.T.Es a proposed to stay constant in the coming year, but the number of civilian employees is proposed for an increase, to go from five to eight. I understand that those would be civilians for emergency communications. Are those doing the same work as sworn personnel? [03:58:42] >> Ernie rodriguez, director of e.M.S. And I have carey lange with me, assistant director of finance and administration. The communications are sworn positions and they do the 911 answering call taking and they do the dispatching work. >> Riley: So tell me about the three civilian positions being added. And I'm on page 38 of volume 1. We're going from five civilian full time employees to eight in the coming year. >> Carey lange, assistant director of e.M.S. These positions are not -- they are the transfer of the positions within the department and so that represents our scheduling unit within communications. So when we were going through the reallocation of positions, this is just the department cleaning up where positions are actually budgeted versus where they were sitting in the previous year. So this represents positions that are currently in the scheduling unit and they were budgeted in another unit within the department, we just cleaned that up for fiscal year '14. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] taking the f.T.E.S from our budgeted area and moving them to a different area. [04:00:52] >> Riley: Okay. And that's the office of the medical director. >> Office of the medical director, that's correct. >> And then over on department at sports services, I notice that the proposal is to go from one f.T.E. This year up to 10 f.T.E.S in the coming fiscal year and I gather those will be sworn -- well, those will be sworn paramedics, why do we need sworn paramedics providing administrative and managerial support? On page 45. >> Do you want me to try to answer that? >> Sure. Along with the -- very similar to the cleanup that we did on the scheduling side, we had several sworn positions. For example, we have in our bar and our business analysis and research unit, we have a commander there that historically has been shown as in the operations -- in the operations unit, but they are our research and development staff. We have several staff that have historically shown in operations but they are doing functions such as -- for example, the assistant chief have been showing operations but they are actually in the administrative and support services function of the department, so this is just showing those kinds of positions that are being moved into support services. >> Riley: And those positions really do need to be sworn. And this doesn't contemplate a change in their duties;es is just a matter -- it's just a matter of reclassifying them more accurately what they are doing? >> That's correct. We are putting them in the right place in the organizational design. One of the examples, the commander who is in our business analysis and research is the guy who does the work to collect our quality assurance data and he does a lot of clinical research in that process, so we use a pair medic certified individual to do that for us. [04:03:09] >> I see that, I want to talk about the fee schedule that relates to drug prices. We have had a few questions come up with that. In the video, the chief mentioned a few drug prices that have gone up dramatically. The fee schedule that we have shows the same amount from this year to next year. And why is that, if -- if a few drug prices have gone up dramatically? Are the education costs itemized somewhere? >> The fee schedule was not increased this fiscal year. We are going through -- the city is going through a process where each department is being looked at for fee increases on a cyclical basis and so that's why our fee schedule was not adjusted. We do get increases annually for -- for the prices of our drugs and medications, and we make adjustments for our requests for funding to purchase those, based on the increases we have received but because we are in the process of changing our fee schedule, we were not included in the cycle for this year. >> Riley: Got it. The last question is vacancies. Up notice on the vacancy summary that ems has 54 -- currently has 54.5 vacancies and of those, 17 have been vacant for more than six months. Now, now, those -- can you tell me about what? And why they would be vacant for more than six months, and do you have any sense of how many of those are sworn versus civilians? >> Yes, my numbers are a little different because we have included in our numbers some addition to new staff positions that have been added per our county agreement, so we have an additional 24 that have been added. Now, the reason that some of them have been open for 6 months or so has been in the transitional process going from noncivil service to civil service. In order for us to hire the individuals and not force them to reapply at the beginning of civil service, we had to become substantially compliant with civil service. So we had to go through all of the processes of redesigning our hiring process, so we were compliant and that took almost a year to do, to get our tool for that. During that time, we did not hire. So we got behind several months on the hiring process. [04:05:43] >> Riley: Okay. But you expect to be catching up this coming year? Once you have made -- >> right now, we have 20 that are already slated to be in our next academy in september. We have three academies scheduled each year with a capacity of up to 30 in each. So right now we have been able to fill all of our academies as they come up. >> Riley: Great. Thanks. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Thanks. Following up on that point, when I looked through the turnover rate, I just wanted to -- I am wondering if you anticipate a higher number of retirees this year? Because your turnover rate is your -- you are estimating it to be 5.34 and just two years ago, we were able to achieve a turnover rate of 2.14. Can you tell me what -- and is that turnover rate based on a monthly basis? Annual basis? >> We are experiencing right now about 1 and a half f.T.E.S per month, about 18 persons a career, is what it comes out to. Our busiest period of turnover is right now. It's the summertime, right before school starts again. A lot of our medics decide to go back to school. Some of them go to medical school, which is really great for them, but that's when we experience that. We do have some retirements that are coming up. Some of them are in the higher levels of the organization so we will see those become vacancies as we go down the line. >> Martinez: So what are we attributing the increase to 5.34? >> How did we calculate that? >> I am going to have to go -- we are going to have to get that information to you. >> Mayor leffingwell: Any more questions for ems? >> Morrison: I have one. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: And that is hopefully that we will be resolving the -- they come to -- they were in negotiations with ems and wondering how -- how we budgeted for it and how that might all be addressed, since we have been off? [04:08:00] >> Michael mcdonald, deputy city manager. The negotiations with the labor ems is actually going well. >> Morrison: Thanks. >> To answer your first question. A lot of with respect to the first part of the negotiations is talking about are just, you know, a combination of switching over to civil service and some of the things we need to do along those lines, so that's taking -- taking a little more time, and then some of the things that are nonmonetary, so we spent a lot of time over the last several months working through those sort -- working through those sorts of issues. Right now, as we move forward in the negotiations, I think what we have slided in, you know, with the -- you know, with an amount that is sort of equivalent to what the rest of the workforce is going to get, because we have no idea what we are going to ultimately end up with. We are hoping it stays within that, but in the event it doesn't, then we would probably have to come back to you. Okay. >> Morrison: Thank you. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Well, I want to follow up on that. When you say "come back to us," I are presume that means you will come back with a budget amendment. Where are we going to find additional revenue, should we agree to a contract that requires a budget amendment? What are we -- are we going to take it out of one time expenditures in the reserve fund? I assume we are going to talk about paying benefits and that would have a fiscal impact on the budget that we adopt. What are we anticipating and what's budgeted -- in this document, what a budgeting for at the end of labor negotiations. >> Well, mayor, I think there is a concern about compromising the conversations that are going on at the negotiations table now. And we will certainly answer the question, but the question I am marking you right now, is the impact that it will have on negotiations, so -- [04:10:06] >> Martinez: And I am sensitive to that. A simple yes or no, that we do have money budgeted is -- >> Ott: I think the deputy just said that. I am responding because i thought your question was more specific than that. You were looking for a number or something, and if that's the case, I am being asked that, I will give it, but the caution is what i said before. So what is your pleasure? >> Martinez: No, no, no, i do not want to compromise the negotiations that are going on. I just wanted to know if we are going to be seeking a budget amendment should negotiations continue down the positive path that they are? >> Yeah, and again, you know, if the it exceeds of what we stated of what we set aside what we felt the rest of the workforce is going to receive, in the event it was to exceed that, that would be a discussion that we would have with you and we would have to come back, but at this point, we are not deep enough into those discussions to be able to have that discussion now, and as the city manager said, it probably wouldn't be appropriate as well. >> Riley: Mayor. >> Mayor leffingwell: I would just say, we do have some measure of control. I mean, this is a meet and confer process, not a collective bargaining process, so we, you know, when push comes to shove, the city does have some leverage as to what the cost of this contract would be. Council member riley. >> Riley: I have one follow-up question to one of my previous questions and back to the drugs on the -- and how they are addressed on the fee schedule. And I am just a little puzzled about that because ernie, in the video, you mentioned specifically a couple of drugs where the cost has gone -- gone up significantly. >> Yes. >> Riley: And when we look on page 476 on volume 2, we see the proposed fee schedule and for the drugs you mentioned, the proposal is to keep the fees exactly where they were in the past year, and it seems like it would be a fairly simple matter to adjust those upward based on their actual costs and to bring -- which ought to yield some additional revenue which could support other programs like the community health program within ems. Why wouldn't we go ahead -- since we know the costs have gone up, why wouldn't we go ahead and make those adjustmentings in the future? [04:12:38] -- Adjustments in the future? >> Can we do that? >> Well it -- >> mayor leffingwell: If you don't understand the question, just ... >> Well, I was asking for -- what I was asking for clarification on is i thought we could only do fee adjustments at a certain cycle, but my understanding now is that we are able do that now so we will go back and make that adjustment so that we can show that and reflect it better. >> Riley: Okay. I know the department has done that and our priority -- if we do have increasing costs, it seems that we could adjust the fee schedule to reflect the actual costs and generate more revenue to support the department's programs. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Yes, thanks for that question, council member riley. I noticed that it says fees for medications are subject to change based upon changes in ems costs for those products. So does that suggest that the fees can actually shift throughout the year? And the reason I ask, is because in our audit and finance report, we also talked about the high costs of -- the amount of money you were spending beyond who was projected, as I recall, because there were shortages and so you ended up having to purchase some of the medications at a higher rate than anticip. Do you have the ability in the future to charge for these medications, in the event there are scarscies and charges and you are paying an escalated amount. >> Elaine hart, cfo. Certainly the department has the capability to change these midyear. That would require a council action on the fee ordinance, but certainly they could be proposed and brought forward at any time during the year. >> Tovo: So this caveat that is on page 476 is not -- doesn't give them an ability to do it out of cycle, so to speak? It's at the bottom of page 476. That sounded to me different from the way we set other fees, because there is that note that says they have the ability to chief are change it based on the costs that suggests they have the ability to change it as the cost increases, which isn't necessarily through a fee amendment. And if you want to -- if you want to treat that in a q and a, that's -- [04:15:14] >> well, I think what we are trying to convey here is from time to time we would come back to council to change these fees. These fees for these different medications are being set with a specific level with maybe the unnecessary caveat that as these fees change, the -- as the costs change, our fees are subject to change. It is different than some of the fees we have set up, where council actually approves a range where the fee can be adjusted depending upon market conditions. We have some of those in parts. We have some of those on the gulf enterprise fund but on these council is setting a specific level as opposed to a range. Maybe in the future if the medical costs are that volatile, maybe we want to have council approve a range of potential fees so we could change it on the fly but I would interpret the ordinance before us as council setting a specific fee with a note saying that these fees may need to be adjusted from time to time, which, again, maybe isn't necessary but it is in our fee schedule but I don't feel it necessarily gives us the authority to charge something more than council has approved in the ordinance. >> Tovo: I guess given -- am I right in the characterization of the audit and finance report, requiring medications, that there were some very big -- >> what we are experiencing nationwide is a very shortage of drugs in all sorts and emergency drugs are one of the big areas that is getting it hard. The problem we experience is we often don't know which drug will be next on the shortage list, nor do we know the cost or the impact of that shortage, so it is a moving target. And if there was anything that whoa could do to make -- we could do to make something more flexible and allow us to be more flexible, that would be helpful. >> Tovo: Would it be a feasible option for this year to very quickly convert these to ranges so you have the ability in the course of -- the next budget year to increase the fees as needed to cover the costs of the medications? >> I want to talk to the attorney who is the fee expert but if she believes it is okay and it is based on costs, she can bring that back to the dais on september 9th and bring that to the council if it is the desire. [04:17:26] >> Tovo: If not, what you suggested was to improve the range? Is that what you were suggesting right now. >> Even the range, we still want to have a fee, whatever it is, based on the actual cost of that. >> Tovo: I see that. Thank you. >> Mayor leffingwell: You can have a maximum fee, for example, and you would have to budget for that, because the end product that we are going to have is a list of expenditures that is equal to the penny to the revenue production, so you can't have that be variable. S I think you have so set some number. You can set a range, you can see a fee for this. Otherwise you don't know what tax rate to set. >> Morrison: Mayor. >> Mayor leffingwell: So i have made that comment. Council member morrison. >> Morrison: Well, I think we just need to get clear that, or understand when we are looking at, when we are projecting our revenues and you have a range in your fee schedule, are you required to actually project revenues at the top of the range, or can you be realistic about it in your projections, especially knowing that you are only going to be charging the actual cost so the net is going to be 0 no matter what it is? >> Our general strategy, if we have a range is not going to estimate the revenues at the max, it is going to be conservative and look at past history of what is recovered through the fee and then be conservative maybe relative to the history. >> Mayor leffingwell: But there f it has to be a number? >> It has to be a number. >> Morrison: The top of the range has to be a number but our projections can be based on something other? >> We do have real data -- historical data so we can pretty much contactually project our estimated use. >> Morrison: Right, and i think to highlight the importance of this -- the atrophy is that in the fee schedule that is proposed in 278 and did you mention in the -- in the -- in the video what it's actually -- the actual cost of something more like $34 now. [04:19:34] >> Thirty-four, that's correct. >> Morrison: Beyond if you use 100 units or 1,000 units. 300. >> Morrison:300 so in the end maybe total not that much difference but it does show that it had a mechanism to be able to adjust for that would be great to have as an option. I do -- speaking of fees, one of the things that came up in our earlier budget overall that addressed an item that applies to ems and that is the cost of servicing special events and whether your fees for that are covering the way they are set now. Are they covering the actual cost? >> Yes, when we calculate the cost of the special event, we calculate the overtime cost that will actually cost us to do that. Most of the time, we work with the promoters to be reimbursed for those costs. Some of the dollars that we are adding are to cover the up front costs of the overtime so we can staff it up and be there and then we recover the money in reimbursement. >> Morrison: So that -- I am looking at page 482 of volume 2 in the fees, for instance, you have basic standby unit, standby for emergency service. Is that the charge for putting -- for servicing a special event? >> Yes, that's the staff time for that. >> Morrison: That's the staff time and you have $75 per hour? >> Yes. >> Morrison: And that is the average cost of overtime? >> Right. >> Morrison: For ... >> And then if we actually make a response in that event, we will send an outside ambulance and one that's not dedicated to that and then of course we -- we do the reimbursement billing as well. >> Morrison: Right. And I see also you have set up and takedown fee. Is that what you are saying, you are trying to make sure you build in the costs of appearing -- >> that's correct, because many times we will have to set up 24-48 hours in advance. A good example of that is when we cover an event -- a large event at the new racetrack. We will be out there up to 48 hours in advance and we will set up tents and staphylocations so we can assemble our staff, park our equipment and all of that -- so we can assemble our staff and mark our equipment and we will do that 48 hours sometimes in locations. [04:21:57] >> Morrison: And I think i read somewhere that we are averaging three events per week in this town now. Is it sustainable to always be covering those with overtime? >> I don't believe so. I think that we are really reaching the point now where we need to consider a better approach. Using overtime is certainly an option that we have been using all along. The things that we don't consider along when we do this is the -- the extra workload that we are putting on our staff. >> Morrison: Right. >> And that's where I am concerned. We can only sustain that so long, and then without adding at least a small number of staff that would specialize in that, that would handle the majority of the routine events, then we are really adding quite a bit of workload on to our staff. >> Morrison: Is that something you will be thinking about and contemplating? >> It is one of the things right now, that we are looking back at all of the events we have had in the past and we are also looking at dividing those into the different types of event. The question we are asking is how can we cover some of these events and the questions we talked about is including adding regular staff -- sworn staff that can actually provide the coverage for the routine events and then for the larger events, we are looking at some creative ways. We are looking at perhaps developing a cert teams that focused on ems that has certifications that we can get credential through our medical director and that will allow us to use existing people from the community who may want to volunteer some of their time and pair them up with paid staff who can oversee their work and maybe reduce some of the costs for some of the larger events. We don't -- we wouldn't fully be able to replace what a paid staff can do in that way, but we could we could advance some coverage and it could be done at a lower cost. Those are not things that we really fleshed out yet so i don't want you to think, yeah, we are going to do that. Those are things we are considering and looking at and considering, could it be possible and if so, how would we do that. [04:24:07] >> Morrison: I appreciate that, because I think really this is something that city management and we have to think about overall with so many events and how do we handle that within the structure of the government and there are many other departments that, you know, may be putting their heads up together collectively, be able to brainstorm their ideas how to approach this because -- and I like the, you know, one of the things to keep in mind, especially for some of our smaller events, the expenses are getting really high, and to find ways, like using a cert -- certified citizen to help to lower the costs is of benefit to the small organizations that are trying to make it and bring great things to the community. So I appreciate your thoughts on that. >> Mayor leffingwell: I have one kind of off the wall question. But do you anticipate any impact in this fiscal year, or actually beyond, from the implementation of the affordable care act? >> Absolutely. One of the things that is happening is emergency medical services throughout the nation are beginning to change. We are moving from being an ems safety net to becoming mobile integrated healthcare. What we are discovering is that emergency medical services, because of the nature of what we do and the high level of training and professionalism that we attract into our organizations, we are able to do things that are more preventative in nature so the notion of continuing to respond to emergencies when everything else has gone wrong isn't the best way to do business in the future. We are looking at beginning to partner with pair groups that may help -- that we may be able to assist, manage their groups so, for example, we may be able to work closer with home hospice services to enhance the services that they provide, maybe save them some dollars in turn for some reimbursement for ems. We are also looking at beginning to partner closer with hospitals. Saint david's has already provided some funding for us to expand our community health program. Now we are working with seton to do the same thing. So there is all kinds of opportunities to begin to partner better. We do think the pay mechanism is going to change entirely. In the early years, in the hospital industry, hospitals are required to provide certain data before they could be reimbursed. And that very data was used to determine what the performance the hospitals should be achieved and today that is being used for pay for performance strategies that are willing implemented in the hospital industry. Our guess is that -- and our prediction is that very similar method is going to be applied to ems. [04:27:01] >> Mayor leffingwell: And presumably, you would have more fees recovered as a result of more people having access to health insurance? >> Yes, that's correct, and also the broadening of the definition of what ems does. Right now, ems only gets reimbursed when we transport a patient who needs care in an ambulance to a hospital. What we are finding is that strategy isn't the best strategy. Sometimes people need to be transported to other places that may be able to provide better care for them in the long run. So we need to expand a way that we are reimbursed and the different types of reimbursement that we might be able to get. >> Mayor leffingwell: I just want to get that on the table, because it's coming up on us now. The enrollment period, shameless plug here, begins october 1st here in austin and there will be a community wide effort to show those in the coming months. Thank you very much and to a question that was asked earlier, after consulting with the city attorney on this subject, the posting language for item 3 is broad enough so that we are not limited to discussion of departments listed on this list. We can discuss any city department, any city department's budget and -- and its potential impact on property tax. So we have a very broad scope of things we can discuss here in the next six and a half hours. >> Mayor, can I also add that my staff, in response to council member spelman's questions, about a budget hearing, the council when it adopted its meeting schedule last year, included two bubble tears, one on the -- budgetaries, one on the 22 and one on the 29, so you will have an opportunity on those days to discuss the budget again and get public impact on that before you have the public meeting on the ninth. [04:29:03] >> Spelman: So it won't be on just property tax rate but on the budget, also? >> Yes, we already did that last year. >> Spelman: Thank you very much. >> Mayor leffingwell: I thought I said that. So try to go in order here next. The next is fire. So fire away, council member martinez. >> Martinez: Thanks, mayor. I want to ask a similar question. I know negotiations are not as fruitful or have not been, and we are actually at an impasse but the same question I want to apply in case we reach the negotiations is there anything allocated in this year's proposed budget in anticipation of restarting negotiations and essentially getting to an agreement? >> Again, council member, what we -- what we -- the way we approached this, not knowing what we were going to actually ultimately come up with costs with each of the departments that we had anticipated set aside as anticipating what we were doing for the rest of the workforce. >> Martinez: Understand. >> In the event we were going to get a contract. >> Martinez: Thank you. Chief, first of all, this blew me away when I saw this in the budget information, 140,000 responses this year is just an amazing number. And I just -- I commend the fire department for achieving all of its response time goals. The number of community events that you are attending engine requests is over 500. That's at least one a day and two in many cases. So overall, I think the department is doing extremely well and I commend the chief and all of you. I did see something that stood out and I want to ask for a little more information on. When I looked at the number of juvenile fire setter assessments completed, just two short years ago, we were at 44 and this year we are proposing there will be 85. What do we attribute that number to? Are we seeing more incidence of juvenile fire setters or are we creating a broader outreach program to prevent more juvenile fire set eggers. [04:31:20] >> Chief of staff, austin fire department, and specifically, sir, the general fire center program is just being enhanced. The chief's vision for us to be out in the community is reflected in a lot of the events that you talked about and the numbers in the outreach and that includes our outreach in fire investigations regarding the juvenile fire setter program. We know that it's important. We know that early intervention makes a difference, and so that's why that increased focus is there. And I also have the fire marshal who also oversees investigations directly. I can let him speak to that further. >> Again, the fire marshal of the city and I think he answered it very well but we have essentially assigned a full-time person, one of our gorzyckis now works on the juvenile fire setting program full-time. -- One of our members works on the juvenile fire setting program full-time and we have the court where it's more of monday date of the court and not just voluntary compliance and through those series of actions we are hopefully we can -- hopeful we can reach the level of doubling our service to the community. >> Martinez: Thanks, chief. There was another performance measure we used to put in our budget information, chief, and that was the number of fire deaths. I don't know if we measured that against, I don't know if we did that exactly but we used to track that rigorously. Why have we chosen not to put that as a benchmark or performance measure in the budget? >> Talking about using it in reference to the -- a per capita number? >> Yes, I just remember -- i mean obviously the goal was zero, we want zero fire deaths and that used to be something we would strive for and we always put as a performance measure and i don't see it in this year's budget so I want to ask how many fire deaths occurred this past year and what we attribute it to and what we anticipate for next year? [04:33:27] >> I believe the number -- >> the number is 6. I can't speak as to why it is not in the documentation. I will let dr. Paulson answer that. >> Assistant director. It is one of our key measures so it shows up department wide and in the presentation, chief kerr covered that last year, last year actual, it was 6 but the estimate for in year might be three and it is now termed number of unintentional fire deaths, partly because of the incident that occurred last year. >> Martinez: All right. Thank you. >> Spelman: It is on page 57, council member. >> Volume 2, volume 1. >> Martinez: That's on there. >> Council member riley. >> Chief, I want to ask about a number of new positions that are proposed to be added that are sworn positions that are not directly involved in regular fire fighting duty and i want to ask about those and what caught my eye is on page 61, where adding 6.6 new sworn positions in engineering and inspection services to ensure fire code compliance. On page 64, for the one stop shop for adding 3.4 sworn full-time positions to provide development services and assistance to the city's one stop shop. On page 69, we are adding 5.5 sworn positions to outreach, in operation supports, provide outreach and recruiting. I have to ask, I do believe there is a higher cost associated with using sworn positions personnel in positions like that and using civilian personnel. I realize there may be some good, legitimate reasons why those really need to be sworn personnel but I wanted to ask if the department has carefully considered whether there are opportunities to -- to rely on -- on the civilian employees to carry out some of these duties and whether it is really necessary, that sworn personnel in all of those positions. [04:35:50] >> To start with the very end of your question, council member, we do, in fact, do that analysis, where it's necessary to use sworn personnel as opposed to civilian. It is driven by texas local government 143, the statute that sets out how we are supposed to run the department. But we kind of anticipated you would have these questions. That's why I had the fire marshal for the vast majority of the positions you spoke about are within his division, so I am having him talk about that specifically and what the roles and the responsibilities are of these particular folks. Some are sworn. Some of them are civilians, engineers and administrative and other folks. Chief. >> I think the answer is really short. It is that it is a state law requirement -- well, there is two laws. One is, with 143, anybody that carries out fire prevention duties must be a sworn position of the -- of the city. The other part of that is the texas commission on fire protection has passed legislation that also requires anybody that does a fire -- a life and fire safety inspection be a certified fire inspector, so that's -- that's the short answer on why those individuals are sworn. >> Riley: And would that also apply to positions in the city as one stop shop? >> Well, that's an interesting number, because -- the reason it is not a whole number is because those individuals that are in those positions are broken up into -- across the sections, so while -- while one lieutenant inspector may be 20% allocated to one stop shop, 60% allocated to engineering and inspection services and the remaining to the other portion. Planning development i believe is the third portion that we divide across. So the answer is yes, all three of those sections conduct the same physical job description, which is they go out and they conduct fire inspections. It is just where the money is allocated as to which shop and where the budget numbers lie. >> Riley: And how about in outreach and recruiting? [04:37:50] >> I am not familiar with the community outreach portion. >> Riley: Unless we are adding 5.5 sworn positions in outreach? >> Actually, this is similar to what ems is describing. Part of this is trueing up where we moved other people from other sections into that area. So they aren't new positions. Those are positions that existed elsewhere and we moved in to cover the functions. In many cases they were already moved into fiscal year '13. We are just taking care of putting them in the right place for the '14 budget. >> Riley: My question is why do they need to be sworn versus civilian? >> The same statute applies there because these particular positions are doing a public education function through the community outreach program. Those have to be sworn positions. >> Riley: Okay. >> And really, they are a force multiplier. We have about 900 people assigned in operations and those are the folks with who are doing the daily reaches to the schools, the different community centers, the different functions and these sworn positions help develop that curriculum, help schedule that, help get those folks out there. >> Riley: Okay. Thanks. >> Mayor. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: I want to follow up, council member riley, basically the civil service statute says if you have a uniform personnel performing a function, and you want to add resources to that, it mush performed by another uniform personnel and that's why they have to be sworn positions. We can negotiate that via collective bargaining but that would have to be something that would be discussed in negotiateses, if we wanted to switch any sworn positions to civilian. If. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member martinez -- morrison. >> Morrison: There you go again. >> Mayor leffingwell: So much alike. >> Morrison: I know. I know midyear we added -- we have been working to get the new wildfire division budgeted and up to speed. Could you give us a status on that and remind us what we did last year and what we are looking at in terms of funding and maybe there is vacancies, I don't know, maybe where we are in staffing that, in the staffing plan. [04:40:01] >> Yes, ma'am, the wildfire division was actually set out in two phases, in last year's budget, council did approve, thank you, the phase one of wildfire and then midyear, we came back to you and you approved funding for almost all of phase two, with the exception of two lieutenants. That's -- that's the remaining portion of our phase two implementation. Wildfire is up and running. We expect to have our community wildfire protection done the end of september, so very shortly. The wildfire division has been involved in prescribed fire and fuel mitigation of over 2,000-acres in and around the city. The -- the assistant director of wildfire is certainly hired. Those positions are all filled and they are really making fantastic progress. The -- the things going forward, we looked to possibly next year's budget, and the opportunity to get those two additional lieutenants as part of that outreach program. We looked to further engage our workforce in the fuel mitigation programs in developing the partnerships across the region with the different agencies that we work with, so we expect that we will continue with -- at this forward pace for some time and you see in the news, we are concerned about tree mortality and some of the infestation of deals and stuff like that and there was a pretty catastrophic drought in 2011. So those are things we are trying to watch and pay attention to, in addition to upping the acres every year in the amount of fuel mitigation we are doing. >> Morrison: Great. When we do prescribed bonds and all, are we just doing that on public land? We don't do that on any private land. Is that correct? >> Currently the prescribed fire is on public lands, but we look to develop a program where we can do it on private property and -- and that's part of the community engagement that we will leverage the community wildfire protection plan that this council approved money for. We should have that plan in place the end of september, we will leverage that plan in outreach to the -- the private landowners to figure out ways we can make their community more fire adapted, which is really the goal here. [04:42:28] >> Morrison: It is good to hear because when I was starting about this and learning about some of the prescribed burns, it appears if we are also not able to work with private property owners, we have got of sort of a big hole so I see how important that is. And can you describe how we work -- you know, the water utility has a lot of land. Can you -- do you work with the water utility and how does the division of labor hash out there? >> We have been very closely with the water utility. I think they have somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000-acres of preserved land that they manage. And the water utility is responsible for the management of that -- of that property and maintaining that and ecological balance. What the fire department does for them is when part of that management includes the description of fire, in order to remove fuels and those kinds of things. That -- that fire prescription is approved by the fire marshal, chief tanzola and our wildfire administrator and a big chunk of the workforce that are doing that are doing that work out there, are austin fire firefighters and that is an understanding we have with the water utilities. We can continue to work with other departments, such as the parks department in agencies outside of the city ands art part acres and that is something I spoke of earlier. >> Morrison: So I guess we are being as efficient as possible in terms of our fire fighting and management capabilities when we have management for that, like in water and in parks. And you say we've got an understanding that gets it laid out? >> Yes, ma'am, we do have that memorandum of understanding and we are also looking for more efficients. We are really at year one and half year of phase two of implementation of the wildfire division. We have learned a lot of things but there is much more work to be done so we are going to continue to identify efficiencies and figure out a better way to skin a cat, if you will. [04:44:39] >> Morrison: That's great. And I know our police department has a fancy new helicopter. Is that also integrated into your plan? >> Yes, ma'am. [Laughter] >> the -- about a year ago we developed -- actually set a meeting with agencies in and around the city, so we have agencies like star flight, texas military forces, police department, national safety and so we have all of those about aircraft safety. There is an aircraft meeting if you will, so we have common plans so we can leverage all of those particular assets in the event of a wildfire so austin are very much a partner and part of that. And what we find is this wildfire problem is spread across the region and it takes all of those agencies collaborating to really be the most efficient we can with our tax dollars. >> Morrison: Right, absolutely, a regional response and collaboration. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Morrison: Okay. Thank you very much. >> Mayor leffingwell: And, in fact, the apd helicopter is equipped to be able to engage in fire -- with the extra equipment, it can be put on to help with fire fighting. >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor leffingwell: It is always the intent. I want to follow up. Council member morrison raised a very good point about the wildfire division and the division between the water utility and the fire department and I want to expand that just a little bit to talk about equipment. I assume that the water utility is not acquiring its own fire fighting equipment, or is that the case? >> I couldn't tell you, sir, what they are doing today. I know that through the wildfire division, they have a equipment that they use prior to standing up to our divisions. I know they have that in their possession. I have not talked with the director about his further plans for the purchase of equipment, and we haven't looked at areas where there could possibly be duplication. That certainly is something that I think the fire chief and the director could -- [04:46:50] >> mayor leffingwell: I think we definitely want to look at that because we don't want to be setting up another mini fire department within the water utility for that specific purpose. You know, I realize the wild lands division beinger and his staff have a very important -- the division and his staff have an important place to play in this but it should be an oversight role like here is where we can burn and here is where we can't burn and so on and the actual oversight of that burning, in my opinion, should be an afd function. >> Spelman: Mayor. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member spelman. >> Spelman: I would like to follow up on that. It is my understanding that the opposite was true. That the water utility was in control of those prescribed burns a few years ago and only recently has the fire department been called in. Is that accurate, or am i wrong? >> That's pretty accurate, council member. >> Spelman: So presumably, they have the know how to be able to do prescribed burns and they have the equipment to be able to do it properly. Is that right? >> The knowledge base is there. The equipment is there, but to the scope that they would conduct those burns, I am not sure they would have the staff -- what we would provide is a pretty large workforce and now, with the phase two of the wildfire division, we have the technical ability to be able to do those very same things. >> Spelman: I have no question, whatever but the water utility and fire department working together will do a better job than the water utility was able do all by itself. >> Absolutely, sir. >> Spelman: But it does appear that we are working along with track that the water utility either was not doing those burns or was not doing them well and you came along on your white charger and are going to save the day and in fact, what is happening, we are adding value, we are doing a better job going forward than we are in the past but there is no -- than we have in the mast but there is no reason to think the water utility was doing it badly at all? [04:48:50] >> No, there is any notion that the water utility was doing it poorly. What we know is the scope of the issue is greater than the simple -- not simple were r -- but the wild lands they were managing, the 40-acres -- that is a very small portion of all the land in and around the city, the scope of the problem is much larger than what the water utility could possibly do and really, the mayor is correct, that mission does lie within fire and we are tooling up in a in very close to being able to manage that completely. >> Spelman: The scope is larger and the need is larger today than it was pretty much at any time in the past because our drought conditions are worse than they have been for a long, long time? >> That is exactly accurate, yes, sir, that's correct. >> Spelman: Thank you, sir. >> You are welcome. >> Morrison: Mayor. >> Mayor leffingwell: You wanted to say something, deputy. >> Deputy city manager michael mcdonald. And I just wanted to make a couple of comments on this discussion because certainly, particularly after the wildland fires that occurred, you know, a couple of years ago, goode and I had the water utility chief sit down and talk about this. You are correct, it was not so much an issue that water was doing it incorrectly, it is the way these conditions are and then of course the fire department being in the business of putting out the fire, it was also recognized as a good training opportunity as well for them, and so there is cooperative discussion there. Now, in the past, certainly there was equipment that was purchased because that is what we are primarily doing but we are what we are moving more towards is in the issue where they are having these types of burns, that the fire department would be present to oversee it. >> Mayor leffingwell: That was my concern, just duplicating services and duplicating equipment, it seems to me it would be more efficient to have this collaborative effort with the appropriate division of responsibility? >> Yes, and we are still working with transition and all ofrthis but as council moves forward, you are correct, it would not be good to be duplicating equipment and everything so we want to make sure we try to monitor that. [04:51:00] >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: And I do think this is budget related because it is such a huge issue for us, that we need to continue to stay focused on. But to add a little more disclosure to this. Isn't this a point of contention with local 975 and there was some legislation that was attempted this past session, speaking directly to this issue? >> Well, there was a point of -- I think it was more of a point of contention because they wanted it mandated in that way, and to be quite honest, we disagreed along those lines. We think that something like that should be a decision for council and the city manager in terms of how we go about moving forward, but in terms of what we put together and when we sat down with the water department, my understanding is not -- they were okay with what we were doing but they wanted to take an additional step to make it mandated and we didn't agree with that. >> Martinez: Sure. And I support y'all in transitioning. I think afd is better suited as the mayor mentioned but i do realize if it is a best practice that the water utility has done, it needs to be a transition period and I think they can still work together in tandem, using that institutional knowledge and then fire being a part of it as well. >> Absolutely. Council member, again, i think we are all in accord along those lines. The only thing we kind of disagreed with is whether it should be somethings that mandated and we feel that it should be a decision that the city made. >> Martinez: Do you know if that was a topic of negotiations? >> Yes, I believe it did come up as an issue. >> Martinez: Okay. Either way, the bottom line, you know, wildfire mitigation is a huge priority for us and i appreciate the department's efforts in that regard because we are not out of this drought and the danger still exists, so, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Council member morrison. >> I really appreciate this conversation and we have another chance to talk about this. I have learned a lot about this. To take it one step further, wildland fire mitigation can actually be looked at in a very far reaching way by ensuring that our land development code is -- a new land development code, which we are spending a lot of money on just to ensure we are talking about budget, really needs to take into account some of these issues of climate change and the new reality and how that affects how our -- what we should require in our land development code for protection and mitigation. Do we have anyone with land and fire expertise that are slated to have expertise in the land development code rewrite process? [04:53:50] >> You are spot on, council member. That's part of the greater issue. We do have someone slated to be at the table. The process is that we would get the community wildfire protection plan in place the end of september. It helps identify the risk and helps point it where the issues are, but part of dealing with that risk is dealing with the development of homes and -- and achieving a fire wise community, if you will, and that is your -- you are right on. It is part of a building code. It is how we build the houses. Is it ignition resistent? Is it vegetation back and is it proper vegetation in there? And because austin is a very large city, the problems are diverse. In western area you have different slope and different types of vegetation, as opposed to eastern part of the city. Each of those things need to be addressed specifically but that is our goal as well. Once we have identified the risk and can talk about it in a very scientific manner, we can then begin to discuss it as part of the land development code and where we might be able to put some things in place to achieve a fire wise community. >> Morrison: That's great. I am really glad to hear that and I know we have quite voluminous hazard mitigation already which i am sure you all had to do with a couple of years ago but that will allow us to take that to the next level and it is a perfect opportunity timing wise since we will be rewriting the land development code to get it intrinsically into the code. I forgot. One more question. On fees, you have proposed some fee increases in here? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Morrison: And some new fees, also. And I gather some of those are to deal with the volume of inspections that you are doing and also special events. Could you talk briefly to both of those issues? >> Yes, ma'am. I will let chief tanzola speak to that because he knows better than i. [04:56:02] >> Again, tanzola, fire marshal and it is a fee structure and we proposed a fee very chuck in the majority of our fees. That was done after significant research in the top cities in the state and we found we are far below -- as much as 60% below of what cities were charging for like fees. So we only proposed to raise the fees so we will still be the lowest in the state. However, that we can compensate for the a. Of effort that's being put out by the department. -- For the amount of effort -- and also, the fees are simply to capture the cost of doing business. I think when ems was speaking, they talked about the amount of effort before and after these events. Southwest by southwest we did 300 site inspections of the 48 hours prior to that week. Of the 300 site inspections, we received almost no fees for them, because the way the fee structure originally was set up. It did not address special events. So a lot of these fees are set that now we have increased workload and we have to visit these sites prior to conducting a special event, essentially. >> Do we have any labor cost capturing that can basically come back next year and tell us whether or not the fees of actually dividing up that service? >> Yes, we do that evaluation. We are capturing how much it cost us to do business. It's my opinion that the fees will never reach what it costs us to do business. So much of what we do is an hourly basis and has nothing do with a set fee. For example, an inspection may have a set inspection fee but that doesn't cover the three or four hours required to conduct the inspection. So I guess that is the short answer. Yes, we have done an evaluation, I don't know if it will ever reach the fee structure. >> Morrison: That is one of the topics we have been talking about -- a city wide issue. And to make us the lowest in the state is nice for affordability, something always in our minds, but how do we keep this in mind and make sure that we have an opportunity to tap that as revenue -- I want to make sure we have the choice, tapping that as new revenue versus raising property taxes. That's the kind of thing we are looking at and I am not quite sure how to handle it. I don't know if we are on a regular schedule for all of our fees. I think we talked about that earlier. Can we do that as reminder? [04:58:42] >> We talked about that earlier, part of last budget cycle, in particular with the audit and finance committee, this idea of getting on to a regular schedule. We are on a regular schedule now. We have put a process in place to be working with our departments to ensure that the fees they are charging, a, are based upon cost of service and the fees we are charging are below that cost of service, and then, I this I i don't have seen, some of the preliminary results of that in terms of the discussions that audit and finance has had with the parks department in the fees they assess and how close or not close do we want to be with cost and service for some of those parks programs and what do residents pay versus nonresidents, so those discussions are happening. You know, this year we really were looking at our community service department's parks and health and library. I anticipate next year we will look at another group of departments to try to get on a three year cycle so in about three years, you will be hearing again about parks and library fees and do we want to increase those, this whole part between taxes and fees. >> Morrison: And it is not a simple discussion, obviously and the discussion on parks fees, we have been addressing a lot that the issue, well, the cost of services is really more than a lot of families are going to be able to afford so we make a conscious decision to not charge the cost of service, but if -- if we are on a three-year cycle so that every three years there will be at least a body of the council having that discussion, so we can be conscientious about those choices we make, I think that's as good as it's going to get. >> I would like to add that we are making a good faith effort to calculate how many hours are spent on special events in particular. It's a new area for us so it will take a couple of cycles to really hone how many hours, what sorts of activity to try to get an approximation of what you are asking for. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] [05:01:51] >> I think as we continue to evaluate our fee structures and I would like to see a more regular -- as mr. Mandino said, a more regular regulation so we can keep our fees where they need to be. We thought for the current year it would be burdensome to go too extreme on our fee structures. >> Tovo: I'm just concerned that it's burdensome on your personnel for their doing 300 inspections in 48 hours and you don't have the personnel you need to do that because it's an unmet need. I assume that has not been incorporated into the budget. The increased staffing for special events. >> It's a mask. >> We have four lieutenants for fire prevention and two lieutenants for special events. That's going to increase the whole staffing. I think that's what she's talking about. >> Tovo: Would you mind saying that again, at which levels? >> We have four lieutenant inspectors that we are requested for our fire inspection section and then an additional two for special events. >> Tovo: But is there still an unmet need of one captain and two lieutenants? >> There's an unmet need of one captain. >> Tovo: Okay. >> And that has more to do with spanning control than revenue generation. >> Tovo: Very good. And then last question, the mobile food vendor inspection, I notice those fees didn't increase and i thought it was your presentation, budget presentation back in the spring that talked about some of the increases from -- it may have been health and human services talked about the increasing number of inspections related to mobile food vending units. I'm wondering why you looked at that and didn't determine that that was an area that needed -- >> the fees we're currently charging we felt were sufficient to charge the cost of the f.T.E. That's doing the inspections. >> Tovo: That area is well staffed? >> At this time, yes. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. I guess if we can put in a plug, throughout the budget cycle you've heard lots of questions about special events and we've certainly heard from the departments, interest in staffing for special events. So if there is an event about what fee structures to look at for the next year i would say that groupings that related to fees that pertain to special events would be a high priority. [05:04:14] >> I would agree. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Thanks. Municipal court. Any questions for municipal court, bacc? Councilmember riley. >> Riley: Thanks for being here. I just have questions on a couple of points. Is starting with red light cameras. I just wanted to find out -- figure out what's going on with that program. And we've been at 10 cameras for a few years. In the amended budget for the current year we expect to go up to 15 and we expected something like a 60% increase in the number of cases filed and so we upped the budget by over 60% from 660,000 to over a million. Its estimated actually came out -- we stayed at 10 instead of going to 15. We were right at -- for the current fiscal year we were right at 660 as we had been before. And now for the coming fiscal year we're again expecting to bump up to 15 and to see those increases. And so budget shows that similar increase. So I just wanted to find out what happened with this? Has there been a hiccup in getting the additional cameras in place and what happened to that roughly $400,000 that we budgeted for in the current year that we didn't wind up needing? >> I'm not sure about the 400,000 that we ended up not needing, but let me start with the program. The program could conceivably have 15 cameras. There needs to be a study before the cameras can be put up. The police department identified several intersections quite sometime ago where its potential to put the cameras. And then it goes to transportation, you have to do a study and make sure that they're eligible for the cameras. Those studies have not been completed. I have quite honestly kind of left it with mike mcdonald, the city manager on that, to help us move that along, but we delayed it because there were a number of pieces of legislation this year that would have done away with that program. So we waited for the legislative session to be finished in order to decide what to do with that. So now I'm working with acm mcdonald again to see if we can pick up where we left off and decide what to do with that program. The judicial committee has expressed interest in going ahead with that contrast. [05:07:26] >> Riley: I'll be interested in hearing more about that. I know there are peer cities that have far more cameras in place. Obviously this is not really a matter of revenue or the budget. This is really a matter of public safety. That's what really should be driving the number of cameras that are placed. But there are a number of places that cameras can significantly improve public safety so I'll be interesting in hearing more about where we are on looking at our intersections to -- and to examine whether we should be placing more. And obviously there are implications for that. And the implications -- there aren't really revenue implications. To the extent that those generate revenue those go into the general fund. >> No, it is a special fund. >> Riley: It does come back to the municipal court? >> Yes. The city has a traffic safety fund. If there is more revenue than expenditures, the excess of revenue over expenditures is split 50/50 with the state. So we get 50%. For the first three years or so we did have some money we split with the state and we kept the balance in that fund. The last couple of years our expenses have exceeded revenue so we used the money in that fund to keep it even. So we haven't gained anything over the life of the program, but we haven't lost anything as of today. So we're looking for to next year if we expand we expect to make probably get more revenue than expenses, if we expand the program. Or we move some cameras that have been traditionally very low and there hasn't been an issue at a couple of intersections. >> Riley: Okay. I'll look forward to hearing more about that and particularly from the public safety standpoint to see if that is a program that we ought to be expanding. [05:09:28] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I was just itching to jump in here, but councilmember riley first raises a couple of points versus a good question to ask. And second, is really we would like to make less money. This is a program we would like to make less money because that means fewer people are running red lights, but I have to say that -- I'm sure councilmember spelman was going to say this too, the judicial committee discussed this a long time ago about both adding additional cameras and moving cameras that were there. And I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed to see that here we are I don't know exactly how long, but it's been a good six months that we made this recommendation. And I'm going to follow up and see what we need to do to expedite this process because this -- six months is a little bit too long. Councilmember spelman. >> Spelman: I agree with everything you said, mayor, and I was just about to make those points. Let me add a couple of others. The police department did a study on the effects of red light cameras. And as I remember, and correct me if I get it wrong, they concluded that putting a red light camera up at an intersection reduced the number of vehicular collisions by about 30%. >> I seem to recall that number. >> Spelman: Can I hear from the police department to verify that number? That would be great. Until further notice I will say 30%. In any case it is a substantial enough number that it makes a lot of sense for us to keep up the cameras we've got. It also seems to me to make sense for us to put more cameras up if we can find more places for them. And the question I've got is do you have authorization to put up more than five cameras in this budget or is budget usually the place where we give you authorization to arrange for installation of cameras? >> We have a contract with the company and the contract has a maximum of 15. So if we need more cameras than that it would be a contract issue and would come back here. We have 10, we can go to 15. Other than that it would be a contract issue. [05:11:46] >> Michael mcdonald, deputy city manager. And mayor, I just want to speak to the question you raised with the discussion you had with the judicial committee. As rebeck that said, we were moving along because when we studied the intersection there were some intersections which it was a good thing. The violations were down at some of those intersections and that's part of what we're trying to accomplish. So we were doing a combination of things looking to see which ones we should move and which ones we should add to, but we did get in a discussion early on about the legislation that was coming forward that could possibly do away with the program. So it's not that we haven't been working on it. We've been working on it. It's just that we didn't pull the trigger on it because we want to make sure everything was going to be okay with the legislation. So I think we're going to be well equipped to move forward. >> Spelman: The legislature did not pass a bill banning it. They're still legal in texas. >> Yes. >> Spelman: It's my understanding that the contract calls -- by the terms of the contract the folks we're contracting with make money off of all these cameras. >> What was the question? >> Spelman: I can't remember the name of the -- >> red flex. >> Spelman: Thank you. Red flex makes money off the contract. We're not paying them to do this. They're installing the cameras and skimming some of the fines off the top. The state and the city split what's the remainder of those fines after they've taken their expenses off the top. Is that accurate? >> Red flex gets a flat monthly fee per camera per month. The revenue doesn't make any difference with them. They get a flat amount. Any revenue in extent of expenses is what we split with the state. >> Spelman: Gotcha. Sounds like we need to think about moving cameras around from places that we don't need them anymore to places where they still could be useful. Do you have a list of more than five intersections that we could put those cameras in? [05:13:52] >> That was part of what i was speaking to earlier is that the police department had began to look at that. And then too some of the intersections that may not produce quite as much revenue, we still may want to try to keep some of those there. That's what we moved forward trying to work on those intersections in anticipation that if nothing changed in the legislature, we could move forward. >> Spelman: We're doing this to prevent collisions and deaths, not to make money, of course. >> That's correct, councilmember. There are some cities that if you look around the country that you place based on violation rates and not on injury and collision rates. Our position was we wanted to look at collisions. I don't have the numbers. The reason I came in is because somebody told me you were asking about has this reduced collisions. And they have reduced collisions in the city of austin. And we would be very happy to update our data and then move the cameras. One of the things that illustrate a of cities do, and what I would recommend, when we do that leave the boxes up. That way we can always come back to those. Because people get conditioned. They know that that intersection is enforced with red light traffic cameras so they'll start stopping more frequently and the crashes go down. But then after you move them, after awhile they get conditioned to start going through them. So if we leave the boxes it makes it a lot easier to move the cameras around and I think it would make a much more effective program. >> Spelman: Chief, do you believe that we have more than 15 intersections where these cameras would be valuable? >> I'd have to look at the data, but driving around here, traffic is a huge issue in our city. We're losing a lot of austinites. We're at historical highs. Intersections where a lot of people unfortunately blow red lights and a lot of our hit and run leave the scene crashes happen at intersections. And one of the other benefits to have these red light cameras at at the intersections is it actually captures the crashes and gives us information to go catch the bad guys. So it would be -- I believe that we could find more than 15 intersections if that was available. [05:16:02] >> Spelman: Okay. >> I will say don't take a little bit longer when the intersections are at state highways because then we have to get permission from the state or federal government on that and that does take awhile. Even putting up the first 10 took over 12 months to do. Five might be what we could do in a year. We could look at more. >> Spelman: Okay. You are looking for more and chief, you're looking through the com statistic process for where they could be put into place. >> If you look at places that have bumper to bumper traffic, people blow the red light a lot and we're looking to save lives and reduce injuries. >> Cole: Mayor? >> Mayor Leffingwell: So with the legislature out of session for almost a year and a half we're safe to go forward with this program, i guess. We'll be following up on this. Mayor pro tem? >> Cole: I noticed that the municipal court technology fund that you assess a four dollar technology fee on people with misdemeanor or a deferred disposition. And I'm more concerned in this budget that we don't go through a process of disproportionately burdening our lesser income. So can you tell me a little bit about this fee and where it originated from? >> I'm going to say in the late 1990s that it was passed for courts in order to get improved technology. It was just a way to finance the changes that courts rely on technology. Without burdening the general fund. So the city has had that for more than 10 years. And it hasn't changed. It's set maximum by law as four dollars and that's what it's always been. >> Cole: Let me just ask the budget question that i just want to submit what it's been used for this year. Because we are assessing potentially as much as four dollars a month total for our property tax increase, and in this case we're assessing a four dollar technology assessment against per individuals, per misdemeanor charge. So in relation to the total budget this particular fee is pretty high. And I don't know the specifics of what it's going for. And I know we have some other fees related to parks and other things, but this one I'm not familiar enough with. [05:18:38] >> We'll get that. >> Cole: Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember riley. >> Riley: Just real quickly going back on red lights. Is there anything about the current contract with red lights that restricts us from contracting with another vendor to place additional cameras? >> I don't know. I would have to check. >> Riley: I hope as we continue the discussion that we look into that. There is at least one other vendor out there suggesting that in the interest of public safety we could place significantly more cameras out there and that it would be -- not only would it reduce accidents, it would actually be revenue positive for the city. So I think we ought to be slower that. Exploring that. The last question is about the juvenile case manager fund addressed on page 97. We -- in current fiscal year we expected to go way up on that, almost 100%. Up from 375 up to 725. We actually wound up falling far short of that. This year again we're expecting another big jump in that, over 50%. Why the big increase and why didn't it actually materialize this year as we expected? >> The increase in expenses? >> For the juvenile case manager fund. >> There are at least two positions -- there are at least two positions that we've never filled that have been put in this particular fund. This fund can only be spent on juvenile case managers. And quite honestly the number of cases being filed against juveniles have gone down. We have expanded our alternative sentencing with the people that we have, but the number of cases has declined quite significant. This budget shows -- this budgets for all of the f.T.E.'S, but there are vacancies. There's two that have been vacant for a long time. We are however for this year some moring with the prosecutor's office a diversion program so juveniles maybe could handle cases before they're filed and so that it doesn't become on the criminal record. And we're just starting that. But if we do that it's probably going to be a little bit more case manager intensive. So we haven't asked to reduce those two f.T.E.'S yet until we work out this new program, but there are two that haven't been filled in a long time. That's the main difference. [05:21:15] >> Riley: And the number of cases is going down. >> I'm going to say one thing about that. The schools work really, really hard to handle their students before they have to file. And I think they've done a great job. We still get some, but i think they've done a good job. They're working real hard not to have to file criminal cases against students unless they feel compelled to do so. >> Riley: I see. So just the question whether we really need that full 741 budgeted this year, given that we budgeted a similar amount. We are falling several hundred thousand dollars short of where we began. It raises the question of whether we could shave some amount off of that amount that's projected to be spent this year. >> For all these special funds, they are special use funds. State law says that you can use them for. So if we do shave it off, which I have no problems doing, it can't go in the general fund. The building fund, general security fund, none of that can go into the general fund. >> Riley: And that applies to the juvenile case manager? >> It does. It can only be used for court juvenile case managers. You did do an interlocal agreement with the county and we have a pilot program with them and we're paying for two case managers there. So a little higher than this year, but we could shave them, but the funding is going to stay there. So the only thing that we can do is right now the law allows 5-dollar court costs. We charge four. We could drop it to three for now. I would like to try the diversion program for these cases that are not criminalizing some kids maybe for the first one. I really want to try that. But and we might need someone on that, but we could wait and come back. [05:23:20] >> Cole: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I really support the direction of the questions today about really looking at vacancies a and seeing if there's an opportunity to find some savings there, but I juts want to highlight the point you raised that you are starting a new diversion program. They will require significantly more case management. If the diverse program begins then it would require more case management so you would likely need those staffing positions. >> If everything works well, and we hope so, we would like to be able to work a little bit closer before the cases are filed. Then our options are limited. >> Tovo: I think there's a lot of -- I would say i really support that direction and I think it's supportive of the efforts of the joint subcommittee has been exploring with their judicial supports work group, which I'm sure nobody wants us to go into detail about here, but I think it's a real goal for this community to have more diversion programs. I would suggest we not look at those vacancies as an opportunity for finding additional funding. As you've suggested it's real limited in any case. >> It's limited anyway. So we could, but it won't help the general fund at this point. >> Tovo: I appreciate you digging into this issue. Councilmember riley. >> Morrison: A brief follow-up to that. The program that we did an interlocal with travis county that came out of the joint subcommittees and it's an exciting program and i know there's interest in expanding that. That's another growth area and the idea is just to be efficient and collect all the resources when a child is having trouble with the justice system. I'm excited about that possibility too. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: I wanted to ask, in two years we went from 31 security incidents and we're projecting 125. What do we attribute that substantial increase in security incidents. And is the severity of the incidents increasing and what are we doing to mitigate that? >> [05:25:27] >> the number of security incidents is actually increasing. It's mostly at our door, though. People coming in and forgetting they have weapons. We handle that, but we're getting a lot more people that forget that maybe their weapons shouldn't come into the courtroom. >> Are we talking about knives or handguns? >> Mostly -- yeah, mostly knives and switch blades. That type of thing. If they're illegal the police get involved. If they're not illegal we keep them and give them back. >> Martinez: I appreciate the explanation because when I saw this, for me a security incident would be to respond to some type of situation. In this case you're literally counting a security incident as someone who goes through a metal detector with something that's prohibited from coming into the court. >> That is part of it, yes. We are counting those and there has been an increase. >> Martinez: Okay. So I wanted to ask the question that I just asked generally before we started. You have nine total vacancies as of july 14th, four of which have been vacant for over four months. And you're asking for one and a half f.T.E.'S. Can you give a little more detail as to those vacancies, the nine and then the four that have been vacant for over six months and then the one and a half f.T.E. New requests for this year? Yes, I will address the vacancies and pete will address the ftes. Of the four that were there for sometime, as the cases have increased, police citations have picked up over this year. They've been getting -- actually, they're getting back to historical trends. So the case is back. If you recall it had gone down for a number of years and we had held a number of positions open to see if that trend continued down or whether it's going to come back up again. And it has come back up again. So we have started filling those positions. So we did have some vacant for a long time. Of the positions that you're talking about, we hired two temps and we hired them as temperatures to see if the case filing stayed up, and they have. So they are moving into two of those positions. And another one of the positions was already offered. So we only have one remaining where the people are either here or offered that's out there. And we're going to fill that and put it in our phone unit because those calls have gone up. [05:28:25] >> Martinez: So that's three of the four over six months and one of those is going to remain open. Can you speak to the other five that have been less than six months? >> Okay. I'm looking at the ones that were open over six months. There's an account associate who starts -- less than six months. There's an account associate that starting on september eighth, about two weeks ago. That one is over six months. That one is still open. This one is over six months. The research annual cyst, she started july 15th. The june 13, the research analyst senior starts august 25th. These two court clerk assistants, two temperatures are moving into them -- temporaries are moving into them. The court clerk lead has already been filled, but that will open another position. The supervisor was june of '13. That one is new and also in progress. Deputy court clerk, less than six months the deputy court clerk, the new deputy court clerk started on monday. The court case manager in the south service is division, that one -- those two we're not going to be filling, but we're hoping not to -- I guess there's three there that are not filled. And then the hearing officer, we added a severe officer when we added cameras at red lights, but that job that we had a hearing officer for parking and he was able to handle it because we don't have that many hearings. We don't need that one. That one is in the camera red lights and we do not need that one. And the case managers we were holding. So we have one that we've advertised for, but if we don't fill it, we don't fill it. [05:30:30] >> Martinez: So I don't want to have each department go through this long explanation. >> I'm sorry. >> Martinez: No, no. I wanted you to slain it to illustrate a point. I don't think that's necessary for today's budget discussion, but it's critical to adopting the budget because if I tracked her correctly, there's five positions that are not going to be filled. >> Yes, in the special funds. >> Martinez: At an average of 50,000 per fte, that's what I want to do when I say that we need to take a critical look at this. This is our first non-emergency department and we've already identified five vacancies that are not going to be filled. And we're asking for an additional one and a half ftes. That to me is what I'm referring to about taking a look at these vacancies from a critical standpoint and determining whether or not we can find some cost savings. So I would like that detailed explanation on vacancies above and below six months and then additional fte requests for each and every department. We have 17 departments that are making requests for fte's that is lower than the number of vacancies they've had for more than six months. And here we have our first department and we found five vacancies that are not going to be filled. I'm just a little bit shocked by that. >> The only -- four of those positions are in special purpose funds and we can't put them in the general fund. But I do understand what you're saying. >> Martinez: But the public doesn't understand that and I don't understand that as a councilmember. So that's why we need to have that discussion. >> Okay. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I agree and i support that discussion, but I want to clarify the four. Of the four that are in special funds -- I didn't follow all the detail. Are two of them the case managers we spoke about? >> Two of them are case managers. One is an associate court case manager, which is also in that fund. They do a lot of the legwork for the case managers. So three of them are in that special fund. The hearing officers in the camera red light fund and there is one that we have advertised, but we haven't filled it yet. And it was open a long time because of the tickets being down. [05:32:52] >> Tovo: But the four that are in special funds, two are related to the diversion program? Or are there -- >> yes. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. I think we're done. Thank you very much. It is approaching lunchtime. What's your pleasure? Should we go ahead and take a break at this point and we'll be back here -- we'll go into recess until a quarter of 1:00. We'll begin when we get back with the police department. [07:03:40] >> We absolutely need those 47. Like I said earlier, we actually need more than 47. We have -- I'll give you 47 as an example of what we're doing with them. We actually offer 15 upgrades of the 47 for (indiscernible) control that was not in the proposed budget, but in the preliminary budget. We're hoping to add another lieutenant to the public crimes unit to help manage that problem. As you know one of the challenges in our city that we've talked about every year is property crimes and the property crimes, we're hoping to get 10 additional detectives out of the 47 to be able to reduce the caseload for the property crimes especially and hopefully be able to -- even though we're hoping to increase more our closure rate and success rate in terms of getting out to folks. One of the things we're doing with the 47 is you know use of force is something that's really -- we in the city, any time there's a use of deadly force by the police department, it's a huge emotional issue for our city. It is -- it's something that is not taken very lightly. It relates to use of force and self defense and the things that we're going to keep our folks safe that is second to none. We've had high standards. As you know we've had a tremendous problem downtown where we've had a lot of growth downtown building up, not out, but they are building up. The residents are continuing to move there, businesses are continuing to move there, hotels are being built there. We want to build and maintain the level of policing in the downtown area that we've had with the downtown initiative, but unfortunately because we are so short and we're constantly moving resources around, constantly moving resources around, we're hoping to use out of that 47 too 22 positions for our downtown command. We created a separate command. I don't know if you remember that, but we used to have -- we used to have that as part of baker and -- it was baker and george. Well, downtown is such a unique place with so many special events and so many things going on that we put them as a stand alone with my commuter, one cadre of leadership and concentrate on the area. And 22 of those would be for that position. Another position that we want to use with that 47 will be our crisis intervention team. We have a lot of folks with mental health issues in our city. And unfortunately, I think everyone knows that I'm preaching to the choir and there's more need than there are resources and one of the things that we want to do is increase that crisis intervention team by one detective. The current crisis intervention team, what they do is work with known clients to try to keep them on the right path and to try to intervene before they do something like take their own lives or hurt somebody else. Unfortunately what's happening lightly is we don't have enough officers and we want to add that there. And I can go on and talk about some of the springs that you want to do with the 45, I can give you that information. It doesn't have to two with the two per thousand, but to do with there's a lot of things going o a lot of needs and I think the 47 reflects the fact that if we were to put everything that we actually need, and i believe that if we talked openly and honestly about it, with the city, that a good number of the residents of the city could agree that we need them, but it's a matter of cost. What we need and what we can afford are two different issues. We're keeping at the 47 even though we believe that there's a justification for much more. [07:07:42] >> You're in a position that every other department in the city is in. Your needs exceed your capacity. And whatever capacity, additional capacity we can grant you is not going to to be as much as you would like available to provide the needs to serve the needs that you want to deal with. In particular you're suggesting 10 more detectives to help increase the clearance rates. 22 officers to focus on downtown. >> That's right. To add to that demand it really hasn't had much of an increase even though downtown in the short time I've been here in six years, it's changed completely and if you look around the central core, everywhere you look you see the -- the cranes are back in the city of austin. They were gone for a couple of years, but every one of those cranes represents more work. >> Spelman: Again, you're in the same position as every other department that the city is in. Why cannot you meet those needs by reallocating the resources you already have. Because we already reallocate the resources on a weekly basis, community policing to move resources around. One of the things that I can add to when I got here and started doing that, if you recall back in 2007 when i took over the police department it wasn't data driven to the extent it needed to be. We had a staffing formula where they just put eight cops -- every shift had eight cops whether you needed them or not, regardless of data. That was costing us probably a couple million dollars a year in overtime. And I put a stop to that. I'll never forget the city manager at that time that marc replaced said how did you do that? I said it's simple. I told the cops it's a waste of money, not the way to do business. We're going to put the cops where we need them. And now instead of having eight cops on every shift we have six cops sometimes on a monday during the day and then on friday night we might have 20 cops with that same overtime dollar. And so we're constantly moving our resources, we're constantly analyzing our resources. And it's just a total new way of doing business. And quite frankly, we get -- I get beat up a lot. I try to take brunt of it so you won't get the calls, but when it comes to a lot of our lower level calls and our property crimes, there's a lot of disespecially chant. Right now with the -- disenchantment right now with the police department because of our challenges in terms of dealing with that. One of the things that we wanted to do with the additional 45 is increase our proactive, uniform patrol where we know in policing that one of the biggest deter rents to crime is having a visible police officers and a police car with a cop dealing with somebody isn't as great as a deter tent. As a police officer it's 10-8 clear, engage and driving around neighborhoods looking for anything that is out of hand. And when you only have a 22% what we call uncommitted time that simply isn't enough to have the kind of impact we want to have and maintain the quality of life that I think our citizens want. Spell and you can't get to that committed time by allocating resources. You've reached the limit of that. [07:10:54] >> We've squeezed the resources pretty good. >> Spelman: Let me explain why I have a concern about this. And I -- the way this has been described in budget it sounds like another 2.0 and I'm very happy to hear you talking about need for downtown, need for more detectives. That level of detail seems to me to be the right level of detail for us to be talking about what it is that the police department needs. That came out in part at least in your answer to -- in councilmember morrison's question that has come out much more fully in your description to me. I would prefer in future budget years that that level of description, that level of business case reflected in budget terri request so we can actually see why there's a need for 47 and not 42 and why they need to be allocated to the places they are. That's missing at least in this budget document and i think it would be better for the public and certainly for me as a decision maker to understand what it is that you're really trying to accomplish. >> We can give you all kinds of descriptions. >> Spelman: Okay. And I'm particularly happy that although that 47 may match 2.0 per thousand, it's not motivated by the 2.0 per thousand, it's motivated by some other stuff. >> I think you just hit it on the head. It points to 2.0, but it doesn't match our need and doesn't -- truly if you saw the need that -- if you saw the need that we actually have and you saw the 47 and said do you know what, this is actually pretty reasonable because they're able to justify a true need for 200 cops or 300 cops or whatever the number is, and they're only asking for 47. So we're getting some bang for our buck. When there truly is a justification for 300 police officers, there's still performing with 47 and i think you would be very proud of your police department if you saw some of the things that we can provide even for the 47. >> I've seen enough of the police department over the years to know they're a great group of people who do very good work. My primary concern here is to be sure this we're managing our scarce resources as well as we can. I have a couple of questions specific on this. I've got -- I went to your earlier budgets to get a sense for the primary justification that I was given to understand for more patrol officers and we need to deal with calls for service. Turns out calls for service are not in the patrol section of the budget, but they are in the communication section because it's the number of calls for service answer and dispatched are critical performance measures for dispatchers and to the call takers. I was able to get information on the blue line on the top is the number of 911 calls received going back to 1999, the actuals for '99 were available the fiscal '09 budget, so I went back as far as I could go without going down the street. From '99 we were just shy of 800,000 total calls for service. And in 2013 we had just shy of 800,000 total 911 calls for service. That total increase over the course of that 15 year period is about two percent. The number of calls that we actually dispatched in '99 and 2013 is almost exactly parallel. There are some years where we're dispatching more, sometimes fewer, but more or less we're dispatching about a constant proportion and the number of calls that we dispatched in 2013 is just about the same as its number we dispatched in 1999. It seems to me that calls for service, the work load -- if that's a primary determination of the work load, the number of calls for service is about flat. I understand there's a lot more complications. Exactly what are the calls for, what are the calls being dispatched for, how long does it take to get to them and so on. But on a broad brush basis we don't have a lot more calls even though we have a lot more customers. We've got a much bigger population, but they're not making any greater demands, at least en masse, on the police department than they were. [07:15:02] >> I don't have an answer for that. I've looked at that and i think it was either councilmember morrison or you. One of you asked about call loads. >> Spelman: That was us. E the hot shots, the priority ones are up. We're scrubbing them to make sure that we're comfortable and we'll bring them back to you. We're not done with them yet. Let me just say this: We can't just looks at the calls for service themselves. When I was a young cop and in your profession a police report was call crook, arrested same. Now the pc affidavit there's so much that goes into taking the call, processing the call, processing the prisoner, processing the report that the profession and the requirements of the legal requirements over the years have changed where -- it requires a lot more paperwork today. So even the calls themselves are -- take longer. So it takes people out. So to me the number one parameter that I look at as long as our sergeants are doing their jobs and guys are tied up somewhere doing nothing shooting the breeze, what's that uncommitmented time. That uncommitmented time for us is low right now. It's well under what the national standard and what the national I think -- what the experts would say would be. >> Spelman: Why is it that the same number of calls were taking more time is because are you suggesting we need to prepare more complicated reports than we used to? >> If you look at this city in 1999, what traffic was like in 1999 to get the calls, if you were living in adams sector and you get -- and I've actually taken calls up there for an armed robbery in progress where i went code 3, started off at mopac to get up to the really north part of adams sector, took me about 15, 17 minutes just to get there. Let me assure you that one of the things that I would hope that you would each one of those dollars doesn't go as far because wages have gone up, the cost of the benefits have gone up, so not only have they reduced the overtime dollars, but the ability to stretch that dollar in terms of the value of that dollar has gone down. So there's a lot that's gone into how stretched we are. [07:17:50] >> If the primary reason we need more police officers with the flat number of calls is that each call is taking longer, one of the things we can't do much about is the city is bigger and you have longer travel times. But the travel time increase over the last year has only been about a minute. It takes longer when you get to a call. More need for backup. Maybe the backup policies were different or so on. More officers is one way of dealing with this. Another way of dealing with this might be to revise the backup policy or our strict supervision practices. >> As long as I'm a police chief with all due respect, we have what's called a contact and cover policy in this department. A lot of major police departments operate with two officers in each car. We get a lot of pressure sometimes from the union and others that want to see two officers in each other. From my perspective, that is very costly because you have two sets of eyes in one car. And as long as I'm here as chief there's no way that we cannot have the policy that we currently have, which we have a contact officer, which is the primary officer, and then we have what's called a cover officer, which is the second. That's the argument with the fire department for three and four. So I understand what you're saying. Wire not going to send the cal vacanciesry. Other things that have happened that is really important is we're always looking for best practices. We just instituted a policy a few months ago that if we have a call of somebody in mental distress that we know is a person that might be suicidal or is in struck distress that we just don't respond one or two officers. We respond four officers. I think the cost when something goes wrong you can't even put a dollar to. There's a lot that goes into the drivers of our need for more officers. It's not just call volume. We could probably spend the rest of the day talking about that. We should talk over lunch. [07:19:58] >> We have a great time talking about this, but i have six colleagues that would have an issue with it. The only thing I would consider is the length and complexity of reports. We might consider a burglary call or for an auto theft whether an officer needs to be there the entire time taking away the report, that way they can hand the report off to some extent. >> That's another efficiency that folks can now file the reports online. Some of the -- some of the reductions there in the call or -- not flat, because we have gotten the increases is that folks actually go online and that wasn't in existence. That's another efficiency that we added. We've added a multitude of efficiencies to actually stretch our ability to -- for our current resources. So we can prepare something for the council to show you the evolution of the police department in the last six years where we started, what our starting point was, and where it is today. Just for example, we used to have everybody working on new year's -- on christmas day. People get paid double time on christmas day. We did the work load analysis and realized that by having even the criminal sometimes take off christmas day, that we could -- we save $125,000 by adjusting our deployment on that one day. So we can actually prepare something that is comprehensive to show just how much we've added in terms of efficiencies. >> I imagine giving people off christmas day would be good for morale as well. I guess what I'm getting at is there is an explanation for what I'm talking about. It's certainly more complicated than we just got the officers servicing the same number of calls. It's more complicated than the stuff reflected in this budget. I believe that I at least would have more about these complications and what are the justifications there are than just call for service and work load is increasing because the calls for service has actually been decreasing since 2008. [07:22:00] >> I want to remind that i know we may not look at it the same, but the perf said that 58 was not the way to go, but that is what we're trying to accomplish this budget year. I think the two per thousand again, you're right, we're right, we're all right. It's not a good metric. But at the end of the day when we big down, and that's -- dig down and that's what they did. We look at a lot of things and they came up with we didn't have enough officers and their higher number reflected more than two per thousand. Spell I was able to use the -- >> Spelman: I was able to use the fact that we have budgets online going to 2001 to take a longer look at our time series. Put the next slide up, if you would. >> The number of officers assigned to first response or patrol or the names have changed in various names since 1999, but the number of officers assigned to what we're now calling patrol is just shy of 699 and now it is just -- with the additions in the coming budget if approved were just over 800. The total change in patrol officers has been almost 50%. 50% over that 15 year period. If the number of calls for service is flat or increased by two percent, it's basically flat, and the number of officers available to respond to those calls has gone up by almost 50%, all those other factors must be extremely important in order to sop all that time so we only have 22% uncommitted time because i don't believe we did an uncommitted time survey in 1999. I remember thissing we didn't have enough officers at the time. We needed an increase. A 50% increase is a big increase. Those other factors must be extremely important. And if there's something we can do about those factors, that might be an additional way of dealing with our uncommitmented time problem, which I agree is a huge deal. In addition to or instead at least to some extent. That will give you more officers. >> If you look at from 1998 to 2014 just in the time that I've lived here, six years, the special events just continue to grow in this city. One of the things that i started, good, bad or indifferent because I've got to balance my budget at the end of the year, is that we use undue resources for a lot of the events. That takes them away from patrol. You have to police the events because we've had cases -- instances where we've almost lost venues from unruly crowds and the last thing you want is to have something like at the park overhere, three south by southwests ago where things were starting to get knocking down and then we had one right by the police headquarters where they started talking rocks and bottles. So there's so much that goes into what's happened in this city. You really don't need to i think study too much when just living here I've seen the changes in the growth of the city, in the number of people visiting our city and in the number of people coming here every weekend. We're a destination location that creates issue. And the other thing that is important is not just the calls that were received, but the calls that are actually prevented by having an appropriately staffed police department so we don't increase the work load more than it already is. [07:25:23] >> Spelman: Some of this feeds back into how many calls we have and how we're dealing with it. Let me show the comparison here. The red line is number of calls actually dispatched. The blue line is number of police officers available and it's getting bigger and bigger all the time. My point is not that we don't need police officers. Not that we don't need 47 police officers, although I'm not totally convinced we do. That's something you can work on for the next three weeks. But that there are a lot of possible explanations for what happened and we need to look not just at the simplest explanations, we don't have enough police officers, let's put more police officers on it. There are complicated and additional complications, what's the best way of dealing with special needs populations, dealing with special events, what's the supervision backup policy that we ought to be implementing. What kind of reporting practices do we need. What does the report look like, how long should it take and how do we make it easier and faster to write and so on. There are a lot of things going on here. From our point of view the easiest way is it put money on at it. You need to engage in all the complexity you need to talk about, but I need to know and I think all of us need to know what other things you're doing to be able to explain that graph. Let's see the next graph too. Patrol is the biggest single use of funds. The second biggest use of funds is investigations. Let me see the next graph if I could. The crime rate famously has been going down since 1992 or so. I never put a pencil to it until recently. You need to look at the numbers. The actual number of crimes has only gone up slightly. Violent crimes has gone up by about 50% since 1999. The number of violent crimes has gone up by about 15%. The in of property crimes has gone up by about 15%. It's not flat, it isn't increasing, but of course we have that tremendous increase in population much, much greater than 50%. That suggests on its face -- again, it's more complicated, that the work of the detectives who are to follow up -- do follow-up investigations and try and pull those crimes is going to be increasing by something like 15%. But the number of general assignment centralized investigators has more than doubled since 1999. Now, I know this is more complicated in at least one way, back in 1999 a lot of investigations were done in our field commands. We had investigators assigned to each of our then -- [07:28:03] >> we still do. >> Spelman: All right. This is just centralized investigators. I've pulled out the number that was easy for me to pull out rather than the number doing the most justice to what it is you guys actually do. On the other hand we don't have twice as many investigators as we did. It's hard to know how many investigations are happening in the field commands because of the way it's allocated. It looks to me on its face that we have a lot more detectives than we used to chasing a very slight increase in the number of crimes. Next slide for comparison. So this asks -- again, this is a similar question, do we really need more detectives given that crime is almost flat and we've had more than 100% increase at least in the number of general assignment, centralized investigators over the last 15 years. Again, I'm sure complexity is involved in this stuff, but I need to see these complexities. From my point of view it would be helpful for me to see what the complexities looked like and what justifications there are short of putting more money into the detectives. It has something to do with how the detectives are allocated, how we -- which crimes we follow up and which ones we don't. What kinds of follow-up are being done and as you know probably better than I do, there's a lot of good research study suggesting that some activities of detectives are systematically more effective in leading to the closure and clearance rates than others. I feel I need only to point out that we actually cleared war crimes in 1999 than we did in 2013 despite the fact that the number of at least general assignment detectives more than doubled. I'm sure that's very complicated too. You've got a team of detectives. For example, if you're working in organized crime division and you look at what's going on on the board, you wonder what's going on in texas here, we are a border state. If you took a snapshot at the footprint of -- of 14 drug cartels in austin in 1999 and looked at it now, i can assure you it's grown since that time. What is sad is human trafficking has become a real challenge here in texas. It's not just one detectives. It requires a team of folks. The nature of the profession and the nature of the business and the nature of the challenges and the crimes that were investigating today, we didn't have detectives doing the cyber crimes. It was unheard of. Some of the things that are going on now are things that -- so it's not -- as you would say an apples to oranges comparison. You can't just look at the data because the complexity of policing as changed, the challenges faced by policing has changed. Since 2009 we now have a homeland security aspect of there's just so much that's changed in the -- in the environment in our city and our nation that it's really difficult to compare apples to oranges. You know the challenges we have from overseas and other folks that are -- they're amongst us, they're around us and those are things that we didn't have to deal with like we did. So the entire complexity and the entire mission of policing, especially in austin, where we're very -- I think as our footprint increases in terms of our visibility on the international level, it makes me a lot more nervous as a police chief because we william more of a plum target for people to -- especially with u.T. Here and some of the other things going on. Spell I'm not talking -- [07:32:39] >> Spelman: These are only detectives assigned to property crimes. These are general assignment detectives who handle those green and red -- >> let me check those now and get pulled from their caseload. They don't have the money to do it. I'm pretty confident they didn't have that kind of owe that many special events in the 90's and even the early 2000s. It just continues to grow. >> Spelman: Mayor and council, I'd like to do this once on one department, the police. The biggest reason I picked police is because I know police better than the know the other departments. My staff and I have been working on the relationship between work load and staffing in other departments and were concerned that there is not a clear correlation between increases in work load and increases in staffing or. The other thing to do as a council is to say here is the problem, take more money, hire more fte's and deal with it. A more complicated nuanced and certainly more cost effective approach is often I suspect there's a lot of reasons why for example 22% of the time is uncommitted in the patrol force. Maybe we can deal with a lot of these things by dealing with report writing, by dealing with who handles special events, by dealing who pays to handle special events and so on. And not just say okay, we'll write a check and give you 47 more officers. I'm not sure where we're going to turn out with all this stuff, but I do think we need to look more closely at that correspondence between work load and resources. And recognize that reallocation of the current resources mayor -- or changes in other conditions which lead to high resource use now might be a better solution in the long run than just writing another check and dunning the citizens for the difference. I'll have more to say about the police department later. I wanted to let you take a deep breath and let everybody else get in. Thank you. [07:35:08] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Looks like this might be a deja vu event, doing the same thing all over again. We're having the same discussion that we had last year. Of course I appreciate all the work that you've done. >> Spelman: I think it's a qualitatively different discussion than we had. I don't want to belabor the point, but I want to make sure it's made. Last year and the year before that and the year before that we were talking about why 2.0 per thousand is the wrong metric. We're not longer talking about. We're now talking about a much more interesting and important issue and that is how do we respond to changing events, changing work loads in terms of resources. It's a much more interesting question. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I'm going to get to that too, but I didn't interrupt you when you were speaking when I get through we can certainly have a bit more of a discussion. But I don't think the t 2.0 per thousand is a totally worth number. I don't think it should be the primary number, and went through this discussion last year when we said okay let's spend $100,000 for a consultant to determine accurately what we really do need. Be and of course we came up as we all know with a much bigger number of the actual needs of the police department. So to me the 2.0 is not the scalpel, it's the ax. To me when we get down to 2.0 per thousand, what that's telling -- that raises the red flags for me. And that says we better start doing something here or we're going to be seriously undermined in the near future and in the near term and intermediate term, far term, whatever. So that's where the manning formula comes into play. Certainly you can take a more sophisticated approach and I think we've done that. We've had the study done, which again showed that we need more officers, not less. As to reallocation, I think chief, you spoke very eloquently and I -- accurately about the reallocation that you've already done as far as effectively using the personnel that you have. There have also been numerous efforts that force multiplication that we've seen such as cameras. That's just one example. But the bottom line is when talk about reallocation in various city departments, it's not quite so easy to talk about doing this and seeing if it works in public safety. Public safety as we know from the surveys that we do periodically to guide us in the budget process is our number one priority. Every year police department, fire department, e.M.S., Sometimes e.M.S., police department, basically those three have been top priorities. So we can't really venture into the area of saying, well, let's try to do it this way or do it that way, make big changes and see what happens because public safety is too important. You've got to err on the side of being conservative as far as the number of officers you have on the street. Back to the formula. Obviously it's a very rough cut, but impossible to take into account all of the different factors that go into determining exactly how many officers you need. That depends on so many different things, depends on changing technology. We talked about types of crime. It depends on changing demographics. All kinds of things like that. So that's why you've got to have kind of a backstop when you go into this. Yes, look at more complex factors as you go through the process, evolve into that, but at the end of the day we have to have a backstop and for me that backstop, not the accurate number, but the backstop is the formula. Manning formulas are used in industries in all different kinds of fields. And they have some applicability here, i believe. They're not the ultimate answer, but they have some meaning for me. Did you have -- [07:39:29] >> Spelman: Calls for service are flat, cops are up 50%. That requires an explanation, that's all. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Well, you know, calls for service is not reflective of everything that the officers do. And I agree that probably some explanation is in order. I think some explanation has been given, but there's -- it's not just the time per call, it's there are probably many other things that officers do besides just respond to calls. Hopefully we have some time available for proactive policing. We have some time available just to have a presence on the street. Having an officer or patrol car -- walk-by or drive-by in a patrol car is a deterrent to crime. I think we can safely assume that. So I think it's -- it's a useful statistic to see how the calls for service have varied over time, but it's not the only factor. Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: I want to thank councilmember spelman for sparking the conversation. I don't think we should ever be afraid of critical thinking and a critical conversation. I'm sure that the chief welcomes that. You know, it's almost almost being portrayed as the notion that was portrayed this morning, if it doesn't affect the general fund we shouldn't have this conversation. I just think that's inappropriate. We are dealing with a three billion dollar budget. And if we can't ask questions of each and every department in detail and get justification and explanation, then maybe we don't need to be here at all. So I look forward to the conversation. Obviously public safety is a huge priority of mine. You all know that. It's no secret. But I think it's important if you have questions that you need justification to make your decision as a councilmember, I'm going to 100% support you in getting those answers because they'll help me make those decisions as well. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Based on that comment i guess I need to clarify, councilmember, that I'm not criticizing your inquiry at all. I appreciate all the research you've done and the questions you've asked. That was not the intent of my answer. Councilmember morrison. [07:41:46] >> Morrison: Two things. One, and maybe this could be a longer written answer, but one of the perf suggestions were to civilianize 29 sworn officers. So I wonder if we have a plan in place to do that. >> We have not had that plan in place because as we said last year, one of the things that we were trying to accomplish is on the front end get up to where they recommended the 257 with the sworn, so then we can be assured that we're properly staffed in accordance with that plan. Then turn around and take the 26. Part of our 45 that we had asked for in the first part of the budget cycle, we took backed out the 26 from the formula because our plan was once we're up to that strength is then work on the civilian positions. I think that that is a very valid thing to do and it's something we support. But again, when you aren't to the level that they recommended with the sworn, the challenges -- I can't take that civilian and when things start getting bad turn them into a cop, but i can in a pitch use a cop to do some of the things that they talked about in their report, which is not optimal, but it's something that we would be very supportive of. >> Morrison: It's not optimal because at this point we're paying the level of a sworn salary to do a job that doesn't require that expertise. >> That's correct. And the other piece of it is it's not optimal to reduce the sworn positions until we get to that full speed. >> Morrison: So you want to hold those even though we don't need that job to be done by a sworn person, we want to hold it so that if a sworn person is needed above and beyond the numbers that you have, you will have that excess there. >> It is what we do now with detectives. It's part of the challenge detectives that we have to use them if backfill because we don't have the overtime dollars and sometimes special events, they get waivers and things of that nature, so we're forced to use people that should really be focusing on doing the detective work. So it's a really -- I think it's a synergistic negative effect when you do that. [07:44:04] >> Morrison: So that's just something on down the road. I have one question and then -- and on page 115 of the budget. And this might be an ed question, I'm not sure. But the expenditure changes, one of them that's noted is that there's an increase in expense refund for airport police personnel increases. And then it's a number in parenthesis. So does that mean that airport -- the airport is -- is sending less money to the police department or more money than last year? >> It means the amount that police is charging the airport is higher. So just because of wage increases going on, the cost of those officers that work at the airport is higher and so essentially there's an equivalent increase over in the airport's budget. So the way we do is we budget the full cost of those officers and we budget the full cost there, but then the expense refund is that negative amount is what -- that we basically gets backed out because it gets charged to the airport. >> Morrison: Okay. We have a lot of negatives going on there. I get it, I get it. >> It balances out on the aviation side there. That's how much they're paying for those services, so it shows up as a cost. We want that cost to be reflected in the airport's budget because it's really their cost. >> Morrison: Is that cost pretty much just straightforward a certain number we know that a certain number of officers need to be assigned to the airport and so we just charged them for that. >> My understanding is that the airport users, the airlines pay for those costs and when we want to have an increase we actually have a meeting and everybody is part of that discussion to get to weigh in on that discussion at the airport. >> Morrison: Okay. And then I'll just make sort of a general point and follow it up with a detailed question. But in terms of making sure that we do have opportunity to understand one of the -- the biggest part of our general fund budget, when i look on the budget -- in the budget document, in budget detail by activity, and try to make sense out of it, sometimes I see the dollars we're spending going up, but the performance projection degrading. Sometimes I see the dollars allocated to the activity is as going down, but the performance improving. And sometimes there's some big changes in the amount of dollars that are going on and so I wonder if maybe some -- really some activities by definition are moving somewhere else. So I think what I'll do is follow this up because you have many, many activities here. I don't want to go through all of them. Follow this up with a detailed question. And just ask for an explanation of why we might see performance go down, but the costs go up or the opposite. [07:47:19] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember riley. >> Riley: Chief, I've just got a few questions. I'm going to start off with the 24/7 trial pilot. -- Trail pilot. As you know when that was initially suggested there was some discussion about to what extent it would require a police presence on the trail. And because some felt that we would just be legalizing an ongoing practice. Others felt that we could see how far the new trail users -- and accompanying increase in the calls for assistance on the trail. At this point in the pilot, what data do we have to indicate that there is an ongoing need for a continuous 24 hour police presence on the trail? >> We're compiling data. What we're finding is we're averaging about 10 cyclists out there at night that we're encountering. Sometimes it may be double count because people are in different parts of the trail. Did you ask a question in writing? Because I saw something -- >> Riley: We have submitted some. I'm not sure if there's a written question on that. >> [Inaudible]. >> So far june, july, august and september we have 1,080 contacts going on. We can actually give you that report. We have information on the dogs on leash, backups, the different type of enforcement action that's been taken and we're keeping very close tabs on that. So I'll give you an example. We've had 731 park curfew violations that we've been able to detect since we're out there. 28 alcohol violations. We've observed so far in those months 642 bicyclists out there. There's been 645 public contacts. [07:49:28] >> Riley: Chief, I'm sorry -- >> it's not as great in terms of the amount of activity that -- we didn't know. But so far that's what we have so far is what I just described. >> Riley: At some point when we have unmet service needs that include thinks like overtime related anomaly for special events in the amount of 415,000, can you help me understand why we would build into the budget some million dollars for 24 hour trails and yet something like the increased needs for special convenience would be left as an unmet need? Why wouldn't we leave it to department to evaluate that -- to provide -- to provide overtime on an as-needed basis. >> Well, I think that because when we first started that discussion we weren't sure the -- there's a big unknown. >> Riley: Right. That's why I asked about what data we have to indicate there's been a flood of new trail users. And so far I haven't heard anything about an increase in trail usage associated with making use of the trails available 24 hours. >> Right, because we didn't know what the number was to start with. All we have is the information that we're getting from this pilot. And one of the discussions that we had when we set up the pilot midyear this budget year was that we would do it for 12 months and then we would come back, report and that we would either say we can back it way off and we don't need it or we can use existing resources. I think it was the great unknown that really out of the caution -- we have had one homicide in the last few months on the trail. So in answer to your question I still think that if we're going to have people riding there and we'll keep it open we should have some presence. But until we're done with the actual study I would rather have some real data for at least those 12 months, then come back and in the next budget year we may be able to say we can absorb it or we can't absorb it. And the other challenge is at night happens to be the busiest time for patrol guys. [07:51:36] >> Riley: Exactly. All the more reason why i would question a commitment to a police presence on the trails 24 hours when we know there's unmet needs for police presence in other areas. And the homicide you mentioned, was that a bicyclist who was on the trail of a hours? >> No, I don't think it was -- >> it was not somebody who was there as a result of -- who is taking advantage of the new policy. >> No. >> Riley: So that was not a result of the adoption of the policy. >> Correct. >> Riley: I want to ask about the number of citizen complaints over on 129. This just struck me as peculiar. We've seen -- this year we're at -- >> which one? >> Riley: This is on page 129. This is the -- the citizen complaints for the police. On page 129, volume 1. This just struck me as odd because this year we're at -- we're actually at a three-year low of 41 citizen complaints. And yet for the coming year we're -- we're expecting 126 citizen complaints. Why would -- why are we predicting that kind of a jump in citizen complaints against the police? >> I don't have an answer for that. Why we would expect that. One of the things we're proud of is that citizen complaints are way down. One of the things that the monitor has said publicly is that she's going to -- and my five-year anniversary, margot, the statesman wrote a story that external complaints were down, internal complaints were up and one of the things that the monitor talked about, she wanted to work diligently to make sure people understood the complaint process, so we were anticipating that. I'm not sure why it went up. It shouldn't have gone up because it's contrary to what -- >> Riley: If you can just look -- [07:53:38] >> it might be a typo. Could be a typo. We'll get back to you. >> >> Riley: I also want to ask about another number that struck me as odd and relates to the department's annual carbon footprint, not the top priority, but it is still included in budget detail. I wanted to ask about it. For the current fiscal year we had estimated -- the budget called for a drop of about -- about 19 percent in the carbon footprint, but we wound up arriving at actually the carbon footprint remaining constant from the previous year. There's no change at all. Instead of the 19% drop that we had anticipated. So for the coming fiscal year we're now projecting about a 36% drop in the carbon footprint. What is going on with that? Why did we expect that kind of a drop? >> That is outside my expertise, the carbon part of it. >> Riley: I know it's odd. [Overlapping speakers] >> that's a great catch. Can we get back to you, councilmember? >> Riley: I'm just curious about that. And the last thing I wanted to follow up on is some questions councilmember morrison was asking about that relying on -- about whether there are opportunities to look to non-sworn personnel for some functions. And in particular I wanted to ask about special events. As you know, special events have placed -- have put demands on the department and there has been ongoing discussion about how we can manage that. And we're putting a lot of work into how we manage special events. One idea that has come up in the course of those discussions is whether there might be some rule for non-sworn personnel in helping manage special events. In particular things like traffic control. There are some other cities where the police departments have worked with the city to develop a force of non- sworn personnel who are specially trained to manage traffic and other issues associated with special events. The other idea is we want our sworn cops out on the street fighting crime as opposed to waving people through intersections a the special events. I've heard there may be some receptiveness to that within the force. And so I just wanted to see that if from your perspective that the department would be open to some further discussions, exploring whether there is a possibility of developing a specially trained force to deal with special events and reduce the demands on sworn personnel for things like traffic management not associated with special events. [07:56:27] >> I'm glad you asked that question. It's a good question. The question might have come up from somebody to get rid of the cops at all of them. Two things are going on. One, state law requires for traffic management to be a peace officer. And we also have municipal code section that talks about that. But one of the things that I'm happy the city manager worked on with us in this contract is that we've been at the reserve program since I've been here. And now by contract we are in the process of starting a police officer reserve program and our whole goal with that reserve program is try to reduce the number of active duty officers for these special events. Obviously, it's going to take some work with our union and stuff, but I think you will see in the next -- in this fiscal year you will see us moving very quickly police officers because ultimately what people -- what people don't realize is that those police officers aren't there just to direct traffic, they're there to work as a deterrent and especially after you see what happened in boston is to look for suspicious activity. If they see a guy in this weather now wearing a big coat they will probably ask some questions of that person. They're there for a lot of reasons other than just a traffic management. And if you look at what just happened in venice with what happened with that transient who ran people over, they're looking at changing venice beach. I want you toed in that they're not there just to direct traffic, but there no other reasons and that's one of the things that we're working on is a reserve program that you will have a police officer, but at a very low cost to the people of austin. We're proud of that and in the contract and that will be a big part of doing what you're trying to get us on. We're supportive of that. >> And I heard -- i understand that there is -- that there is obviously a need for sworn personnel at special events. The question is is there any potential role for unsworn personnel to step in and ease the burden on our sworn personnel in any respect associated with duties that are currently being carried out by sworn personnel? [07:58:38] >> There are. And I think they're already -- the people putting on these events hire a lot of security that are already doing a lot of the work. And what remains is police officers at the busy intersections and things of that nature. And what the reserve program is going to get us to do is going to reduce by having reserves the cost tremendously. I think you will be very happy because the people see a person in a uniform and it won't be a person that's costing 40, $50 an hour. That person is costing significantly less. We will come back again including our own residents at the special events. We are open to that what you're describing, but there are some requirements by law as it relates to intersection. If you look at when it's off the streets that's a different story. You have -- we already used the private security folks that are doing the winding and everything else. All that's really left is the traffic management piece on the streets and there are state laws that really have some specific requirements and it's also municipal section that asks for specific requirements. But we'll be able to address that by having a reserve program that we got in this practice contract. And I think you will be really happy with the results once we get it up and running and it's a priority for us. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] [08:00:53] >> ... He would have a police officer over at colorado street, and you would have one over at san jack, and then a cop at itself and they have barriers and then outer barrier, and then if we want to add it up, that reduces the number of officers it takes and we already minimized that and you have seen how we do it, we probably cut it in half. >> Tovo: I would like to know if we can push that a little further and just have barricades, in lieu of having barricades and officers. I continue to hear from people who go to other states and say other cities do it very differently and they don't have nearly as many sworn officers involved in their special events in terms of barricades -- barricade -- >> barricade control points, yeah. >> Tovo: Thank you, I was thinking manning but -- >> officers. >> Staffing. >> Tovo: Staffing. Thank you. I don't know if the difference is practice or it is state law or what, so that would be helpful if we have a better sense of that. >> I would just throw out one word of caution, one of the worst times of my career was the santa monica farmers market when a man named george weller went down the street four blocks and it reminded me when I was a kid, the nuclear, the cold war videos that we -- we have to be careful where we don't worry so much about this and there were 70 bodies in the street and people with life altering injuries and what they had to pay for lawsuits would have paid for staffing for years to come. I know what we are trying to accomplish but I hope we are never -- we never put safety over -- put safety a backseat when money when it -- backseat to money when it comes to the events. So we want to -- but we want to work with people and we want to be around at praise and stuff so we reduced a foot print. When you see the reserve program, you will be pleased. It is a great program and will the rest of the state? [08:03:13] >> Tovo: And of course we want our visitors and everybody who attends the event safe. But we also need to be mindful. We heard so many times during the budget process that it doesn't bear reporting but I heard you explain one of the needs for an increased officer force has to do with special events. We really need to figure out what these events are costing the taxpayers of austin because if we are continually not recovering our costs, that burden is falling on the taxpayers. We need to be honest to them, you know, about what really that amount is, because there is a great benefit to our city of having these events, but. But there is a financial cost and as much as possible, we need to -- we need to make sure we are covering those costs, from the event promoters when they are private events. So I have a couple of other quick questions. Do you have a sense of what your department -- what the revenue in your department takes in each year from unclaimed property? I can submit that as a budget question. >> I don't have any sense on that. >> We don't have any sense on that, because -- it got whispered in my ear by the assistant director, purchasing takes the property and the one disposes of it and we don't get any funding from that. >> Tovo: It doesn't stay in the police department. It goes to the general fund. Okay. Thanks. For instance the chemist we added midyear. Can you give us something about how it paint r impacts -- >> they are hired. They are on board. We are just about -- we are caught up and we are keeping up with the workload and, again, I want to thank you on the behalf of not just the people of austin but also the criminal suspects who were waiting for all of that time. It is fantastic and we just had the event last week and I just give them their superior service award. Our forensic scientist second. We are proud of that. Thank you. They are up to speed. [08:05:16] >> Tovo: There is no more backlog, they are caught up? >> That's correct. >> Tovo: And you anticipate you will need that level of staffing for next year? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: Last year it was not listed as highest priority need but midyear it was listed as clearly a very high priority need and as you remember, we had a discussion midyear about why it wasn't ranked higher. Are there any current needs on our current list that could potentially become -- >> a crisis. >> Tovo: I was trying to avoid that word but crisis level by midyear? >> Will you let us look back and come back at a written response to that? >> Tovo: Yes, if you think it is something we should pay particular attention to. I appreciate the answer -- i asked early on about our discussions at the extent to which the police department is working with other departments including pard and I guess I need to be a little more specific about this and I can submit as a budget question if necessary. To what extent -- I know you are research driven and collecting a lot of statistics about crime in different geographic regions in our city. To what extent was that information made available to other departments in the city? For example, do you make your stats of youth crime in our neighborhood available to the parks department and library department so they can take that into account so they can consider what programs would be of benefit to the community? >> Our crime data is available to everybody, our partners and every resident. It is pretty easy to get so it is available to everybody. We are starting to work a little closer with the station department -- i always confuse, the howard shop and the ones that pick up benches and stuff because we have to be a little more strategic where to put those because they have been a hotspot for crime, when we put up the benches in town so our crime stats have gone up on the roof so we are willing more selective and collaborative as we discuss these things. It is available to them and to residents and neighborhood groups or anybody. [08:07:23] >> Tovo: By available r available, I would like there to be some kind of conversationta takes place. -- Conversation that takes place, or like here is the memo. Perhaps we can talk about what makes sense but short of having our city departments having to go and look up the crime data, i wonder if there are ever any kind of focused conversations about, you know, what kind -- between the police department and some of our departments that deal, you know, in this case I am thinking about youth. About what kind of programs that community would need. It seems like mr. Rundberg may have a good conversation with aiding to reduce crime in that. >> And our city partners are part of that process. >> Tovo: I would really like to get more information about that so I can either do a budget question or -- >> great. >> Tovo: -- Through your office, through your department. Thank you. >> Mayor leffingwell: So if I could just follow up, i think certainly we should continue to look at special events. It occurs to me -- I don't have any data to back this up -- but I think one of the factors that may be increasing a little bit of the costs and manning and barricades and so forth is a couple of years ago, we went through this process of trying to minimize street closures, so now we probably have a more complicated barricade structure and we also have a -- want to open those streets up as soon as possible and that, no doubt, requires a little bit of extra expense and perhaps extra personnel. That's just one thing that we might take a look at. And I agree that we should take a look at the cost, what are the special -- what the special events cost us, but I think when we make that analysis, we've got -- it has to be a comprehensive analysis. Not only the direct impact, a beneficial impact, such as increased sales taxes and hotel taxes and car rentals and so forth, but also the economic impact, the ripple effect throughout the community. You talk about big events, you know, typically an event like this sxsw or formula 1, we are talking about economic impacts in the hundreds of millions of dollars and we've got to figure out the total benefit to our citizens, not just in taxes but in -- you know, how it affects the overall economic health of the community. So. Council member morrison. [08:10:00] >> Morrison: I want to thank council member riley for bringing up the issue about who is staffing the events and all, the barricades. That's something that I have been hearing about, too, just to let you know, i don't think it's the same people necessarily that the other council members have talked to, but the question to a citizen. I guess we close 6 street on 6:00 p.M. On weekends and we have an officer standing there and it looks pretty, you know -- it raises eyebrows of why we have our officers having to stand there -- >> are you talking about the weekends? >> Morrison: Yes. >> Those are detect officers, they are standing the there until the next fight breaks out and 6 street -- 6:00 p.M. >> Well, they don't close them then. That's inaccurate, unless there is a special event going on, sixth street is usually closed on weekends, about 10:30 or 11 based on -- and the businesses want us to push it further into the night as possible, because if your are park side cafe or one of those nice restaurants that they worr business, so on most weekend knights, it is 10:30, 11:00, sometimes as late as 11:30, so I don't think that is -- >> Morrison: Maybe I got incorrect information or heard it incorrectly. The other thing I want to bring up is we do have references in our code as you mentioned to law enforcement because of the state law that it's the -- certified law enforcement officer has to be the ones that serving the security purposes on our streets for special events. But one of the changes we made, what used to happen was that oftentimes, constables and other law enforcement folks that were lower costs than our officers were providing the service, and we had a discussion a couple of years ago and that got changed. There was some controversy about it. That was still allowed but i understand they had to come to you to get it okayed and approved. [08:12:01] >> Yes. >> Morrison: Before. So do you know off the top of your head if anybody is coming to you and asking for the alternate approach? >> If they go to the special events office and I don't know of a single -- and i doubt it has happened because the constable would be calling me if they said no, so people are using constables, I know they do for a lot of events. We never said no, especially for the local. Now if houston pd wants to come to do things in my city, I will tell them no -- no offense to houston pd but we do things differently than they do. >> Morrison: You are saying when they are asking for our constables to do it, it is always approved. >> We never -- >> Morrison: As far as you know it's never been -- >> yes, if the constable did that, they would call us and say what is going on and we would be hearing from them directly probably. >> Morrison: Okay. Thank you. >> Martinez: Mayor. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Chief, I want to ask you to give us a little more detail on the reserve officer program, how many reserve officers you anticipate bringing on this year, if any, what the cost impact is, if they are going to be retired apd or can they be retired sworn peace officer, saint eds, u.T.? >> The contract requires they be a retired apd officer and I would prefer having apd officers because I have control and I know the quality of those officers. We haven't worked out all of those details yet because it is in development stage, but I am hoping to have it done sometime this year. And chief mcdonald is a big part of that negotiation. I think he wants to add something there. >> Council member, the way it is set up in the contract is not -- wouldn't have to bring them on and pay them a salary. It is really on an event by event basis, so the major events, sxsw, acl, there are five major events that are used specifically with that with some opportunity to expand it if the union is comfortable with it. >> So for this entire contract term, it would only be the five events that we use reserve officers on a contract by contract basis? [08:14:09] >> Yes, all of the major events and gosh, I don't have it in front of me but i think there may be a provision in there that we can look to the union to expand it during that time but I am not sure. >> You have some more? >> Yes, I work with chief mcdonald and others during the negotiations, and the first contract is limited to the five or six events that the city manager has addressed. The attempt was to get our foot in the door, to kind of start this program and make sure that it is working for us properly and then as it is, we will define it further. I don't think there is any resistance on the union side as well to implementing this on larger basis, but just to get started, we have limited it to these six events to make sure that we craft it in a manner that will work on a larger scale. >> Do you anticipate enough interest to cover those special events? Or will it be a blend of existing uniform officers, full-time officers with reserves? >> It would be a blend and that's been the intent from the beginning, is not replace all uniformed officers. I think we have to have a mix. What we are working through now is defining the training requirements that we have for these individuals, uniform specification, so there is a lot of early work we are doing right now to set this program up and then once we've defined all of that, training requirements, licensing and all of that, then we actually put it out in the level of interest. I can tell you that we do have -- I don't know the exact number but we have had many inquiries from retired police officers wanting to know when the program was going to be underway and they at least expressed an early interest in the program right now, so we are hopeful this will allow us some savings as we move forward. >> Is this year's formula 1 going to be the first year we deploy -- >> I don't think we will be ready. >> I don't think we will be ready. We want to -- council member, we want to make sure we get it right, because if we -- our goal is to be successful. I would rather not rush it. Make sure we have our ts crossed and our is dotted because this is a big moment for us and we would have gotten and I think that -- quite frankly, I think it is going to take most of this budget year to get it done. I would rather underpromise and overdeliver. I don't think it will happen toward the end of the budget year but we are working on it very diligently and there is a huge interest -- one thing I love about it. Obviously I won't get a guy that was -- or a lady that was -- not too many of these exist but never a good officer to be a reserve. What I love is it keeps our good people to have social knowledge in mix with our younger officers and I think it would be a really good synergy that will help us to continue to build on the department and so there will be a lot of benefit to it, not just that benefit but the sharing and knowledge and so forth between older guys, retirees and the younger folks. [08:17:03] >> Martinez: So switching just a little bit. I did want to commend you. Out of all of the departments I have gone through in detail so far, apd is the lowest usage of sick time per 1,000 hours worked. And I think you should be commended for that. >> Thank you. >> Martinez: With as much hard work as you put in and the stress level of your job, I find that to be interesting and rightfully so. >> Thank you. >> Martinez: So I want to pass that on to the officers and all of our city departments -- and everybody is doing well, everybody is in the 30 hour range but you are noticeably of 28 per 1,000 hours worked. >> Thank you. And workman's comp, you would be -- a year ago i looked at it and re re do you seed workman's comp by 50%. We really manage our injuries and that's another efficiency -- when you pay attention to injured employees and you tell a doctor we don't -- they needs to answer the phone, it is amazing how quickly they recover, as opposed you don't and it is another one of the efficiencies that we are very proud of. Thank you for noticing and bring that up. Make sure everybody knows. >> And maybe a number of your citizen complaints were combined with the council's question during budgeting. [Laughter] >> Martinez: I know there was a spike there -- >> yes, I was wondering when answering questions. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: This is a question for council member spelman. Are you able to put the slides that you showed on your website? >> Spelman: I am and I will. I will give you the back ground of the spreadsheet, too, if you want to take a look at it. >> Tovo: That would be terrific. Thanks. >> Mayor. >> Spelman: Council member martinez is not asking the vacancy question so I will do it and it will be brief, mayor. I want to add. Ed, I understand we have 118 cadet positions in the apd budget. Is that right? >> Yes. [08:19:03] >> And the reason for the 118 apd positions is you are running an academy now which will be completed in december. We are rung an academy which should be completed in december. Is that correct, chief? >> We run -- we run -- council member, we run two large academies a year. >> Right. >> Spelman: And one smaller academy which we call our catch up academy that we use for a modified class which is a reduction in time and we are getting great people by the way. The last -- the -- they weren't happy about that and now they are happy with that. >> They are happy of having experienced officers even if they don't grow up here? >> Yes, but we are very shrektive who we pick. >> Spelman: At one point between october -- well, over the course of the fiscal year, there may be a point where we have 118 people in the academy at one stage or another of training. Right? We have one now, we started one this week and probably start the lateral transfer academy sometime later this year but after the fiscal year has changed, so one point or another, we will have 118. But we will not have 118 cadets throughout the entire year. I just want to be sure i understand the fiscal treatment of that. Approximately what vacancies savings can reasonably expect to be getting from that 118 cadets? >> Well, I can just tell you -- I am looking at the number right now for fiscal year '13, we budgeted $2.6 million of vacancy savings from those cadet positions. We know they aren't going to to be all filled at the same time. Year to date, we realized 2.3 million, so we are right about on track. >> Spelman: It is easy to be on track because we now how big the academies will be and how long they are and how they are going to start. >> What we do is we look at our budget -- we don't say that -- we look at our budget, especially our modified class, where are we on our budget because one of the things I have been proud of is we don't want to go over budget. That's my number one priority. That's our number one task. We don't go over budget. So we -- that's how we look at and we determine that last class, where are we at in the budget. Forget f.T.E.S, we are looking at where we are at dollars and cents when you decide -- because you will never have 100% vacancies filled. You lose five people a month, that much, but what it will do is give me an extra 500 temps. We will always be moving people around but -- but -- but -- but we do our catch-up once a year, where we look at -- we don't look at f.T.E.S but where we are at with the budget and how many we can afford to hire and that's how we determine our modified class at the end of the year. [08:21:52] >> Spelman: Because those lines are not filled for most of that year, then we are adequately taking into account the vacancies savings that is expected and then we can expect fairly accurately how much they will be? So we are talking somewhere in the order of $2.6 million? 2.6 is what we budgeted in fiscal year '13. >> Spelman: That is really too bad because I was hoping the lines would be filled 2 for 53 weeks and I could get $2.6 million back for somebody else but it was worth trying. Thanks. [Laughter] >> mayor leffingwell: Okay. Thank you. >> Spelman: Thank you. >> Mayor leffingwell: That's four departments out of the 21 completed so far. Animal services. >> You didn't bring any puppies with you? >> Mayor leffingwell: Any questions for animal services. Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Abigail, i guess we will start off with the vacancies we have. You have 5.5 vacancies as of july 14, 4 and a half of those were vacant for more than 6 months and the proposed budget has one f.T.E. Increase. Can you explain those? >> Well, actually -- we will start with the vacancies as of whatever date ed is using. Of those, only one of them was vacant longer than six months. Two of them are filled, two others are -- all the other three are posted and one is in interviews right now. So our vacancy right is fluid when you have 2/3 of your staff are working in kennels and taking care of animals in that way, especially when we are dealing with such a large number of temporary employees, we have a lot of turnover, and so it's i think to be expected. Our line staff are some of the lowest paid in the city so that's not surprising. The other positions that are higher levels, one of them was one of two deputy chief positions, which we took the opportunity when that position came available pretty much right after i hired it to look at the organization and work on a reorg. Animal services was made into its own department and over three years had 6 f.T.E.S added and each of the 6 f.T.E.S were part of the implementation plan. None of them were attached to animal services becoming its own department so we have been spending the last year really looking at our organization, its structure, where do we have gaps, how can we fill the gaps. So that position has been open for six months, has been reclassed twice, actually, and that position, unfortunately just got reposted today. So that's the reason for those longer openings. [08:25:00] >> You mentioned the use of part-time employees. Can you give us some numbers as to how many part-time employees you are using, kind of on an average base basis? >> Temporary employees? >> Martinez: Yes. >> Almost two years we had an average of somewhere between 18-22. Average of 20 temporary employees and what I will say is we have done this no kill thing for three years now. In fact, we have met our goal for 29 months in a row and we are pretty clear on how many people it takes to do that and so we are having to take resources from wherever we can find them in our budget and pay temporary employees to keep up with the workload. It is two things, really. One is the animal care standards. There are state minimum standards for how much time you take to care for animals and in light of the no kill programs, we have more animals to take care of than we used to, and we haven't adjusted for that in our f.T.E.S, so that's one of the issues. The other is as part of the no kill plan, our goal was to basically double the number of live outcomes as close as we could and that takes people. That's more adoptions. That's more return to owners. And it's a greater length of stay, so today we have more animals for a greater length of time and that simply takes more staff. >> Martinez: So where have you found over the last three years additional resources to cover the costs of your temporary employees? >> Well, we did get some money added into our budget last year for temporaries to help us run our off site program at town lake. That has helped some. We are taking -- we are using the funds that are designated for the off site program to pay for the staffing that is necessary to -- to staff all of the ken themes that we are now -- that are now full. So it's programs that we could grow to help with prevention side. We are using sort of on the day-to-day operational side right now. >> Martinez: Great. I want to ask this as a budget question and then just have you respond later if you don't have this info. Page 148, you have the percentage of animals that are transferred to your partners. Can you provide us a breakdown of who those partners are and how many -- what percentage of that percentage is given to each partner? [08:27:24] >> Sure, there is a report that details that. There are probably close to 100 partners on that list. >> Martinez: I see. >> So in terms of each of the individual shelter and rescue partners we work two are austin pets alive and austin humane society and then -- >> Martinez: The you can just email that as a budget question, that would be great. >> Sure. >> Martinez: Obviously we want to commend you for achieving 90% outcomes for 29 months in a row. I know how difficult it is even with the new facility. I know row are doing everything you can and my understanding can you have kitten r -- you have kittens running all over the place on top of boxes and computers but that to me speaks to your level of commitment and the entire workforce, for that matter. They are willing to spend their entire workday with animals crawling all over them so we don't have to euthanize them so we can kind a forever home or foster home. I appreciate your efforts. >> Cole: Other questions, colleagues? Council member morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you. It is amazing the work you all do and the whole community, it is a community wide effort. I noticed a couple of transfers going on here. One, do we have the animal cruelty officer moving from your -- your budget to apd? Did I read that correctly? >> Well the two -- yes, the two detectives and the civilian specialist were always apd employees. However, animal services was transferring money to pay for these employees. We felt it was just more efficient to have the funds where the people were so we just transferred the funds back to apd. >> Morrison: I see, so you had a -- you didn't get just an extra $131. >> Oh, no. >> Morrison: I was hoping that might be true for you -- >> Morrison: An extra 131,000. [08:29:24] >> And do you have a new interlocal with travis county? Things have shifted around a little bit? >> Yes, we have a new agreement coming up this fiscal year and we will probably negotiate on an annual basis until we settle something longer term as we consider growth options but the cost model did change and we are seeing revenue increase for that to keep up with the service delivery. >> Morrison: So I know one of the things that has been discussed in health and human services committee is the -- working toward a more regional approach to animal services. Is that part of your discussion with travis county and the interlocal? >> It is. Things are sort of preliminary at the moment. We are in sort of a -- a conversation phase with other municipalities within the county and with other counties. We met with williamson county a couple of weeks and will work with other contiguous counties to determine what the need is and what approach is feasible and what are the fees and how to progress from there. So it is progressing, it is obviously municipal speed to, -- >> Morrison: So light speed, right. [Laughter] >> moving right along. >> Morrison: Well I would imagine there could be a real increase in the effectiveness and quality of service just region wide but also increase in efficiency which, you know, if we can provide some of those services and they can pay us to -- other municipalities to cover it, it will cost them less in the end than having to cover it themselves, I imagine in some cases. >> Absolutely. We are already in some places where we are working together as a county to provide services to the folks who live here. We need to look at the technical pieces of that and who is paying for what and how. We will be able to work that out sooner than building regional shelters of course and we will go toward that goal. The other issue is we have to focus on building capacity. I talk about capacity a lot. There is capacity in terms of canal for animals that need it and -- kennels that need it and also enforcement and as the population grows, enforcement needs to grow and I pair it with what chief acevedo shared with you the last few hours but you get the point. We need to grow there, too. [08:31:39] >> Morrison: In your discussion about regionalism and animal services, how do you address -- well, it is unclear to me that everybody has the same goals in animal services. You know, we have a 90% live outcome rate. How is that being addressed? I imagine that could cause some trouble in terms of trying to merge services? >> I don't think it will. We star williamson county because they are sharing the same idea and out of capacity as well and other reasons and so we are in the same boat of that. You don't have to be all in of 90% but you do have provide the minimum level services provided for animal control and the outcome of those animals isn't necessarily the priority -- the same priority as austin has. However, if we are all doing things in the same way, we can provide the enforcement -- and the prevention that, in turn, sort of provides the live outcomes on the other side. So I don't think it's going to be a conflict. Attend of the day, i haven't -- at the end of the day, I haven't found one person in the conversation saying they would rather see animals euthanized. When you put it in that context, nobody is going to go there. >> Morrison: Yes. >> We are actually working well together and on the same page and happy with the progress. >> Morrison: I would hate to see a situation down the road where there is a cross dedication of services but you might have a different expectation of -- if one of the parties -- in terms of outcome, if one of the parties picks up the issue versus another, because you can see the tug of war that would go on there. >> Yes, I think the opportunity that we have is -- you mentioned it yourself. It is a community effort so where municipal dollars can't fund something, private partnership dollars can. We already rely heavily on that with the partners we have. So I think as a community we can overcome that. [08:33:45] >> Morrison: Thank you. >> Cole: Any other questions, colleagues? Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Next we will hear from libraries. >> Cole: Helling low. Any questions for libraries? >> Mayor mayor pro tem, i want to circulate out to you the version of question 49 related to vacant positions. I just want to make sure, as we continue to have questions on vacancy everybody has the same information. When we initially posted the questions, we had six months versus less than six months, the columns were transposed. We replaced that question on the internet about a week ago. I just want to make sure everybody has the correct version where greater than six months and less than six months are in the right column so I will circulate that all around and that way if these questions continue, I will make sure that everybody has the same and correct data. It didn't make the total at all. >> Martinez: When you say transfee structure posted, you mean what showed us vacant for six months is the current vacancies and what is current is what was actually six months? >> There is two columns, one for positions view can't more than six months and one vacant less than six months, the column heading needs to be reversed. So those who are less than six months are more than six months but the corrected version has been on the web for over a week. I just want to make sure, somebody printed it out maybe two weeks ago, they may have the wrong data inside. I wanted to circulate it and made sure everybody has the same information. >> Mayor leffingwell: Any questions for library? Council member tovo. >> Tovo: I have a couple of quick ones. In your budget presentation last spring, and I believe in the unmet needs, there is a discussion about to use library ends? [08:35:55] >> Yes. >> Tovo: As I mentioned earlier, we don't have a document that updates the unmet needs so it is not clear to me -- unless there has been a specific discussion in our budget book or in the budget presentations of the videos, it is not clear why the unmet needs got in the proposed budget. Can you give us update, are those in the budget? >> No, we asked for two and they are not included. >> Tovo: And I will be able to figure this out from unmet needs but the approximate dollar amount associated with the request? I can't put my hands around those. >> I believe it is 624,624. >> Tovo: It strikes me it is an important need. You are librarians and perhaps you can speak to expansiveness of the role and I think it was in the the work session recently that council member morrison was talking about public libraries -- audit and finance you were talking about public libraries -- i am paraphrasing but the prevailing role of promoting historical democracy and how important it is and everything and it is an important role of promoting literacy and it starts with our youth librarians and the work they do with our patrons. So can you talk about the importance of those and why it is a critical need? >> Yes, absolutely. We have youth librarians that deal with a spectrum of ages, from newborns to todd hers all the way to 18 years old and some focus in particular on the teens and those are housed or located in branch libraries where we have teen centers of connected centers, connected youth is what it is called now. Those in particular, they focus on developing computer literacy skills with the youth but they also deal with all of the youth and all of the needs that they have. In areas where we have a high percentage of young children and families, we have youth libraries foe us canned -- youth librarians that have story times, introducing children to literature and starting programs that get them interested in literature and get them interested in using the library and reading. We are short two librarians. All of the branches are covered. I think somebody asked us a question through the question process and all of the libraries are covered, although old quarry and yarborough have youth librarians, we share youth librarians with branches that service the two locations. [08:38:46] >> Tovo: In other words, two libraries have half a librarian? >> Yes. >> Because they are traveling back and fort forth? >> Tovo: In looking at some of the departments that were getting additional positions. We will get to economic development -- make we will get to economic development later. You know, we are adding 6 positions there, a contract of new compliance person, a program manager, a program special -- we are adding staff, so I would like to know from the city manager -- why this was not considered a higher priority, because it seems to me in ensuring equity in our city that the four libraries need to have the staffing they deserve because it is really an important thing to have the librarians and in my experience, they aren't just doing programming but also wandering around, talking with youth, suggesting books, taking proactive attempt, too. >> Right. >> Tovo: So thanks. I will leave it there for now. Thanks. I think that's my main question. >> Martinez: Mayor. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Ed, I am looking through the spreadsheet you landed me. You have the explanation of what is posted on the website was incorrect in terms of vacancies over six months and vacancies less than six months and that you fixed that a week ago. I am looking at the information that I had previously that showed the library department had 19.23 vacancies, less than six months and the memo you just gave me says that 19.2 vacancies were less than six months. So there is no change. You just gave us an explanation saying that they were transposed, and it is the exact same on the memorandum that you just gave me. So were some correct and some incorrect? I just think that is a pretty big mistake we have made here when we are trying to get through this budget, because this is identical to what you said was incorrect. [08:40:57] >> I can tell you that the version that's out there now, that I handed out is the correct numbers, the 19.23 for the librarian. I think brenda can verify this, has been vacant less than six months. >> Right. >> Martinez: Correct but you said the previous posting, which is what we took -- what we have been working from was transposed and it is not. It says 19.2 vacancies for less than six months so -- this is the same document we have been working on and i am seeing some of them are transposed but this one is not. So where are we correct and where are we incorrect? >> Where we are correct is the version on the website just now that I just passed around that are the correct numbers. >> But some of them appear to have been correct the first time around. And you said that they were not, that they were all transposed. >> That was my understanding, is that those column headings had got replaced. That was the information that was given to me by my staff. I can tell you now that the numbers are correct. >> Martinez: Okay. I am just pointing out that's a pretty big mistake. It was inaccurate for you to say they were previously transposed when I look at the department that came before us and it wasn't. >> Mayor leffingwell: Other questions? Council member spelman. >> Spelman: I won't go on for more than a couple of minutes but I want to ask about an answer that my staff put into the ply prior department. Brenda you and your staff answered us about performance measures used by peer cities in the country. I take a look at that and saw there is a big difference between two different classes of city departments. One class is like austin police department, fire department, ems, the funds where the workload is external to the department and the job of the enterprise fund or city agency is to deal with workload as best they can. We need firefighters to put out the fires and cops to put out the calls and so on. Some other agencies, libraries I think is a prime example. The external -- we have a large effect on how much demand there is for a service and libraries are a good example of this. If you put this slide up, this is just a scatterplot of -- I think it is 19 peer cities that were on that spreadsheet you gave me, and materials acquisition budget per capita, how much money is spent per portion of the city in acquisition of materials, which I think put under materials management services in the budget. That red dot on the lower left is austin. We have one of the lowest materials acquisitions budgets per capita in the united states based on the peer cities in that group. The vertical axis is books circulated per capita, how many books actually go out the door on annual basis per person. Again, we have one of the lowest circulation rates of any of our peer cities around the country. The fact that this is a pretty clearly straight line suggests that there may be a strong causative factor here. If you've got a lot of new books, you will have a lot of people beating down your door to borrow them. If you don't have a lot of new books, if you have a small number of new books, the small number will get circulated but it is going to take a little bit more time and you don't have as many people walking in the door to do that. Circulation, I think, is a critical performance measure of the library, we want books and videotapes and other things circulated. That's what you are in business for but we can get more circulation, it looks like, by spending more money on materials to get the kind of things that people really want to get. Next slide if I could. It is not just circulation but how many people walk in the door in the library. This is library visits per capita versus materials acquisition budget and again we are the red dot on the lower left and we haven't spent much per person per acquisition in the last ten years because frankly we have been robbing the library department to pay for every other department in the city and we have not surprisingly enough, one of the fewest library visits in our peer cities across the country. Is it illiterate city and spend more bookstores than anybody else and they don't spend more money on libraries which makes more sense than newly made bookstores because you haven't as much money as you wanted to and needed to for new materials for people to check out and just come to the library to take a look at. It is a preamble between two things that there is a distinction between the fire department and police department that we have to fake the workload as best we can and libraries and parks, where we have a tremendous amount of effect on the workload, by taking care of the parks and making sure there are youth librarians available and newer materials and things like that so I think we need to treat our lie libraries and our parks differently than providing resources to them than police, fire departments where the demand is also external. I think this is maybe one of the reasons why parks and libraries has until at least this year, taken it on the chin every budget year of having to cut back on library hours and having to cut back on lie librarians and materials acquisitioned because we didn't understand the distinguish between demand external in the fire case and the demands that internally generated with the libraries. We can get more people in the library, these data argue, if we get more materials and the policy we want to look at. I apologize for the iteration. Does this make sense to you? [08:47:19] >> I would. It is the same. >> Spelman: It is much faster of -- and i appreciate that. [Laughter]. The other thing I want to say is this suggests to me we are absolutely on target of spending about 20% more than last year than we have on previous acquisitions. This has been going 250-$300,000. I think it is a good start and if there is a way to scavenge more money to increase that further, we can see that red dot move slightly to the northeast. Thanks. >> Thanks. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you. In terms of general comments on top of what council member spelman has said, you all provided an answer to question number 26 for us when I asked sometime back, like where else -- where do other cities get their funding for libraries because we are so low in all of that? I thought maybe there was some secret -- secret sauce they were able to put together. The bottom line is that most of them are funded by cities. >> Right. >> Morrison: And the interesting thing is if you look at -- you just have to wonder why is it that jacksonville, florida, with about the same population as us can dedicate $40 million to their libraries and we can only dedicate 25. Why can san francisco with 812,000 dedicate $82 million to their libraries and we can only find 25? You know, maybe they have much bigger general fund budgets, I don't know, but you just have to wonder -- the same thing goes for denver and boston. They are both actually smaller, about 600,000 and they have 30 million as opposed to our 25. So to me that says what's different about our approach to balancing and allocating our funds. That's the question you are asking. I think we are all asking. I hear a lot about the need for more library services, especially in our underserved areas, so just to follow up on the other question about youth services, youth librarians. I want to get real clear. Are you saying we have a dedicated youth librarian in all of the libraries except for the four that share two? [08:49:34] >> That's correct. And those four have part-time. >> Morrison: Part time. Because I was hearing some call for youth librarians in different libraries that you didn't mention and I thought it was because the folks that were mentioning the issue thought there were no youth librarians, maybe we need it double, are they dedicated to teen as opposed to earlier in childhood or something that could have made that confusion? >> I may have used the wrong branches. I am trying to think of what. >> Morrison: We can use that as a follow up but I want to lend my voice that I think that i, too, can find some shifting around, especially in light of -- we know that other cities can do it and can find ways to put more -- allocate more of a priority for their libraries and i think we ought to be that kind of city, too. I think -- that's all. Thanks. >> Mayor leffingwell: I don't know if you have any comparisons to texas cities in there or not. I would be more interested in that, because I know that in other states, the city funding is a lot different from us. >> Yes, I do have a chart that includes texas cities, and you probably heard me say before, you really don't want to compare yourself to texas cities because we are all down at the bottom. >> Mayor leffingwell: Yes, I think it is a lot of the way city budgets are funded in texas. >> Yes. I can get you that chart that includes texas cities if you would like to see it. >> Mayor leffingwell: All right. >> Morrison: And, mayor, if I may, if maybe ed or somebody can help us understand why it might not make sense for us to compare ourselves to municipalities outside of texas. That's who I am hearing might be the case here, that we are having constraints of how we are funded here in texas, versus -- am I being unclear? Sorry. So what I heard -- what i heard was that -- while other cities outside of texas are able to find a lot of funds for libraries, overall in texas, it is a problem, and it might be because of constraints we have on the way we fund municipalities in texas and I just like to understand those constraints. [08:52:04] >> Mayor leffingwell: And or the options that are available to us. >> Morrison: Or be in another state. >> Mayor leffingwell: It could be grants or a lot of out -- a lot of states grant money to cities to help with their budgets for various departments. >> Morrison: Right. In fact, as I see the information that you provided, we do get 250,000 from the state and 293,000 from the federal and, yes, there are other state funded cities. >> Spelman: Mayor. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member spelman. >> Spelman: Intellectual honesty requires that i mention one other possible explanation for this. Texas it is a state where ignorance is cool. [Laughter] >> that's harsh. That's harsh. >> Spelman: It is a possibility. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member riley. >> Riley: I want to ask a question I asked three years ago and it was about transfers. At that time, the information that we had had been just about 2 million transfers of the three prior fiscal years. Do you have any sense as to whether that -- what the trend has been sense then? Have we seen increase in transfers since then? Or has the number of transfers been going down? >> I am not sure i understand your question. Let me see if I can get to that page. >> Books being transferred from one branch library to another. >> Sorry, I tho you were talking about funding. >> Books being transferred from one library to another. >> No matter where you reside in a city, if you want a book sent to you from any location in the library, we will do that. >> Riley: And as of three years ago, it had been about 2 million -- a little over 2 million transfers over the prior three years? >> It actually increased a little bit. >> You think it's grown since then? >> Yes. >> Riley: I was asking about the cost of it and at the time the estimate -- once we looked at all of the different costs associated with doing those transfers and that goes from taking the request to finding where the book is, from plucking the book out, moving it and getting it in the right hands. Once you tally up th costs, we have that each transferred cost somewhere between 5 to $6 per item. 5.12 to $6.37 per item, phyif we are talking about hundreds of thousands of transfers a year, that's a pretty significant position on the library. [08:54:39] >> Right. >> Riley: So it just raises a question. If we are -- if we are absorbing something like $6 a year -- per item for -- for -- it could be the hundreds of thousands of items per year, raises the question of whether we ought to be considering some nominal fee. Say a dollar per transfer. The same way that -- when you go to barton springs, you pay a small fee to get into the pool. If you go to the library and you want to dive into some book from another library, you would pay some -- a dollar to -- to -- to partially offset all of the costs that the library bears in -- in handling that transfer, and that would be, if we did that, that would be pretty significant inflow that could be used to -- to address currently on that need. I think when I raised that before, there was some resistance because that just wasn't consistent with library practices. Do you have any sense of whether any other libraries around the country are looking at fees of that sort or would some sort of fee like that make any sense to austin? >> Well, I have several answers to that question. First of all, the reason that we do this is it really makes our very small collection bigger. I think it offsets the fact that we have so few books, that we are willing, no matter where you are, get them to you. It is the most popular service that we offer our citizens. I hear about it no matter where I go, no matter what event I attend, somebody says thank you for doing that. It is so helpful. That's sort of the resistance on our part. Other libraries do it all over the country. >> Riley: Do the transfers? >> Yes. >> Riley: Out without any fee at all? >> Without any fee. But let me also mention that we are looking at a new model and it is called floating collections and we are in the middle of exploring the possibilities of implementing that as a model, where, when you return a book, it stays with that branch, so we wouldn't have as much of a dependence on delivery. We probably wouldn't include the central library but we are exploring right now other -- there are some other libraries across the country that are doing that and we are exploring the possibilities for austin and we have to work through some issues about what happens if there is contested about a book and that sort of thing. We have to work on the issue of what if a whole lot of books come back to this branch and not as many come back to this branch. There is sti a delivery aspect so we have equitable across the system, so there is a lot to work out but it would probably mean we would have to depend a little bit less -- couldn't do away with the delivery and the system that we have in place but it would -- it would be depending on that a whole lot less. We -- we could explore doing that charging -- everyone if we didn't -- we could explore charging for delivery. It adds another element of workload, to though, on staff to do that. [08:57:51] >> Riley: Have we looked at whether there are any library systems around the country that are imposing any kind of fee from transfers from one branch to another? >> We did. I don't know the number. I can get that to you. >> Riley: Do you know if we did that more recently than three years ago? I know which -- >> I don't think -- do we have any benchmark -- >> okay. Okay. Do you want to talk into the microphone. >> Assistant director. I did just an overall fee benchmark study about three and a half months for most of the peer cities and I did not see a fee for that type of service in any of the cities that I looked at. >> Okay. >> Riley: I only ask because it is the -- it imposes purchasing costs on the library and given our already constrained resources, I was looking for a way to mitigate that cost and you also have been other exploring others with mitigating that cost and the option you were calling it -- >> the floating collection, yes. >> Riley: It sounds like it would be worth exploring. It could somewhat mitigate the city's transfers because it would eliminate bringing the book back to the place it originally came from. You might just well need to take it someplace else but it could reduce the cost of transfers, so I appreciate your efforts on that. >> Well, I don't know if we could -- we also just explored what you just mentioned which is making everybody bring the book back to where they brought it. The truth is, they won't, so we are going to still have to have a delivery system. So we pretty much put that idea aside. We explored it but we know that it probably would not work and so we put that one aside and we put our energy into looking at floating collections. >> Riley: Well, I appreciate your efforts and I look forward to hearing more about what you find out about it. >> Mayor leffingwell: Council member riley raises an interesting question, and I would be interested in doing it, not in this budget but in future years, what can the library do as far as raising funds, fees for various services, to augment the money you get in the budget. That would be an interesting exercise for me. I am reluctant to consider that option. I think free public libraries are very important, but for a lot of services, I think you can explore whether or not to charge fees. [09:00:20] [One moment, please, for change in captioners] >> Tovo: And since we were talking about it I wanted to kept on this last point. I remember that conversation and I think it's an having one and I think it's valuable to explore this discussion of how the library could raise more revenue. I want to put in a plug for keeping the transfers for the very reasons you said because not every collection has the same books. And as we talk about affordability, and we do a lot, our public libraries are the main source of books for many students in our community to get the books they need for their research papers, for adults, for job searching. A lot of families in our community can't go to a bookstore and buy the books they need and they need their libraries for that information. And austin is a big place and they may not have the transportation they need to get to oak hill library or to millwood or some of the others that have the information they need. I think we need a transfer system that is accessible to all and keeping our fees at zero seems to be the best way in my book, so to speak, to do that. I would also say it probably has great benefits on our transportation on keeping folks off the road. And cutting down on people driving from library to library potentially. If that's a selling point. Anyway... For what it's worth. [09:02:25] >> Mayor Leffingwell: They could do that on bicycles. Have the books deliveredly bicycles. >> I don't know if it's an option the library would consider. Anyway, thanks. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you very much. We're now six out of 21 and I think we need to start looking at plan b to try to finish this discussion. Code compliance. >> Any questions? Okay. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: Thanks, mayor. Can someone explain the graph in correlation to the numbers that are associated with it? Again, it's another -- what appears to be a major mistake in a budget document. When you look at 2010-11 and it shows cases investigated at 24,300 it tracks on the graph at 15,000. The next year is at 15,000 and it tracks about -- at the 20,000 level. The next is 18,000 and it's higher than 15,000. And then in 2013 it's 19,000 and it's lower than all the rest. >> Councilmember, looks to me like the numbers are correct. They do accurately reflect the number of code compliance cases that were investigated, but the -- the graph itself, the bar graph, seems to be incorrect. [09:04:31] >> Martinez: Okay. That's good to know because as long as the numbers are correct we can operate from decent numbers. So with 16,992 anticipated cases to be investigated, if we're seeing a reduction of that high of a percentage, can you explain the need for justification for more FTEs IN YOUR PROPOSED Budget? >> Yes, sir. We're expanding programs. Certainly looking at the short-term rental program, expanding that and we would double the staff from three to six. We would add staff of multi-family program. It would add operations side and investigation of sections 11 staff members. And then additionally five support staff with seven support staff being reallocated from austin resource recovery. It could be slightly more or slightly less, but next year we're anticipate doing even more inspections. As a result of moving toward a more -- more proactive program. Especially with most of our inspection investigations that we do. They're based on complaints that will call in the 311 and those numbers fluctuate on the graph. Those numbers fluctuate according to the number of complaints that we get in, that we get called. But we're moving toward more after proactive program and if you go out on a complaint, you don't handle that complaint and then move to the next one. You handle that complaint, but you also check the immediate area to see if they're similar complaints in that area. That's when you're starting to get more proactive instead of just reactive. And it's going to have an effect. It will have -- the impact on our caseload, caseload is going to increase as a result of that. That's why we're asking for more staff to handle these kinds of cases. Another example is you go out on a multi-family property, on a complaint, the complaint might be that I've got holes in the wall, I've got leaky plumbing in my apartment unit. So instead of just going to that unit, doing that particular unit and leaving the complex, now we're getting more proactive. You look around the complex and see if there's other issues, particularly structural issues that you can see from the exterior of the building. So as you become more proactive, you'll see my prediction is 2013-2014, those numbers are going to be a lot higher. And it's going to be higher because we've added more proactive inspections than we have now at this time. [09:07:38] >> Martinez: If your prediction is they will be higher why are you predicting a budget that is saying it will be lower? >> Well, that's my opinion that they're going to be higher. I'm not sure why this number is lower, but my prediction is the numbers will be higher based on what we're planning on doing now, the implementation program they will be higher. >> Martinez: Can you explain what your vacancies, you're requesting 17 new FTEs BUT YOUR DEPARTMENT Shows 17 vacancies right now. >> Most of the 17 we're in the process of hiring right now. Getting the positions filled, but there were some delays as a result of -- this year was a different year for code compliance. We restructured the department and as a result of doing that we end up reclassifying a number of positions in code compliance. We added some positions for inspectors. Now we've got an inspector career ladder that starts at trainee as goes up to the highest position. Inspector a, b and then investigator position. So we started filling at the top and as we filled at the top it created other vacancies at the bottom, kind of a domino effect if you will. And we had to make sure that we got the reorganization done before we filled some of those positions. So that took a little while. In reclassifying those positions. Secondly -- thirdly, we've had turnover. We had a turnover rate and people getting promoted and some retiring. So it took a little while to find it to get those positions filled. Additionally we want to make sure that code compliance we have to make sure that we get qualified individuals. And for code compliance in the state of texas you must be registered with the state of texas and that registration requires completion of a class and passing -- passing of exam to do that. So finding qualified individuals sometimes is a challenge. I tell you that we found-- a lot of times we filled positions by finding qualified persons in other cities. A number of persons were hired from san antonio, some from dallas and surrounding cities in the austin metro area. So we're actively filling those 17 positions and certainly we have some delays in getting those positions filled. [09:10:08] >> Martinez: Dr. Smart, my staff mentioned this number to me. I can't find it in the budget volume right now. Is it true that we have a goal of investigating -- that each investigator has a goal, maybe it's an entirely policy, of trying to achieve 260 completed investigations a year? >> That's close. >> Martinez: Per investigator. >> The benchmark is 260 cases. Kind of a caseload, per inspector caseload, 260. Right now the caseload is over 500. So the issue is how many cases can an expecter handle, effectively handle at any given time as part of the caseload. It's kind of an industry standard and what we project is a reasonable number for a caseload here in the city of austin is about 260. So by adding staff we reduce the overall caseload of those inspectors. Of course going proactive we'll have the opposite effect so somewhere in the middle we should fall in there. >> Martinez: When you take out weekends and sick leave and vacation, 260 comes out to about one case per day. That just seems like that's a low number that we would want to establish a goal of investigating only one case per day per investigator. >> Well, I think we're -- i think we're mixing up caseload versus properties inspected. >> Martinez: I see. >> Caseload is the average number of cases that you have as a result of doing inspections and issuing notices of violations and citations. That caseload requires follow-up. You follow-up by going back, inspecting the property until it gets into compliance or going to the building and standards commission and testifying about the status of the case or going to municipal court and testifying approximate the status of a case. That's how many cases you have in your caseload at any given time. The number of inspections is a completely different number. An inspector can do on average anywhere six to 10 inspections a day. All of those don't result in outstanding cases. Some of those cases -- some of those inspections or investigations result in properties that are in compliance and they're able to close it and move on. And the others require notices of violations or citations so it becomes part of the caseload. [09:12:41] >> Martinez: Okay. Going back to the graph and now comparing it with the numbers that you have on page 181, I just want to point out to you that it still doesn't correlate because in this -- a page 181 you have the proposed 2013-2014 proposed total number of cases investigated and the graph shows the 16972 number which looks like a slide down to your '13-'14 estimated number. If you're predicting that by ADDING THE 26 NEW FTEs That you will have more cases, give us your projections as to what you think they truly will be. Maybe it's 18-5 and that's what you were referring to when you said you predict a higher number than 16,000. I would like to just get accurate information. >> We'll certainly go back and look at that graph. You're right, it's not -- they're not in agreement right now. So we'll go back and look at that and update that and make sure it's accurate for you. >> Martinez: It's also not in agreement with the numbers in terms of years, it's not in agreement with page 181 as well. >> Thank you, sir. >> Spelman: Mayor, like councilmember martinez I've noticed some anomalies in the budget presentation I'd like to figure out what's going on with them. My staff asked a question, which you kindly responded, asking about what justified the rather large growth in code compliance staff over the last three years. And you calculated over us 69.16% GROWTH IN FTEs IN Fiscal year 2012 through fiscal year 2014, i understand where the number came from, and you broke it down into case investigations, licensing and registration and support services, three primary program activities that you're providing with us. But there's an interesting anomaly here. In the response to the question, you said we're increasing case investigations by 12, five for single- family, four for multi-family, two for commercial, one for training. Okay. Sounds good. Three for licensing and registration and only 11 new FTEs FOR SUPPORT SERVICES, Finance, safety, hr, things like that. Now I'm looking at the budget here and I'm getting a very different story. I'm looking at case investigations and I'm seeing that the number of investigators, the number of inspectors who are going out and answering these 311 calls, you're projecting to go down from 60.5 to 58. That would be a reduction it looks to me in case investigation staff. A net increase of about four and a half in licensing and registration when you take haulers and the registration compliance and so on, all the things you take into account. And then an increase of 24, almost the entire increase of fte's would go into support services. So which is this? Is most of your increase of 26 going into services that provide -- something that provides direct services to customers, investigations, or is most of it support services? [09:16:07] >> Again, this is -- you speak of anomaly and this is kind of an anomaly year for us in code compliance. We're still fairly new department. We've been around I guess three years now. We've been doing shared services with austin resource recovery and we've been sharing human resource services, customer service, financial services, all of those have been shared services. This year we're moving to split. So we had requested 19 new positions for this department and most of those were inspections and investigations. 11 of which were inspections and investigations. With moving toward split services, which was decided after our initial budget request, we're allocated seven support positions from austin resource recovery. So we had requested five in our request. Now that 27 and five is 12 and you're right, 12 is more than the 11 that we're asking for? Investigation inspection. But it's allowing code compliance to become a stand alone enterprise department. We will have our own human resources, our own financial staff, our own customer service staff. We'll have full support staff in that department. But it negates down the road having to asking for additional support functions because this is the year that we're splitting off from austin resource recovery. >> Spelman: So many of these are transferred from austin resource recovery, so there's a no net change in financial position just coming out of their pocket and putting in your pocket. I understand that. Are there some other positions over and above the transfer from austin resource recovery, is there not? >> It was the five that we had already requested in support support yes. [09:18:09] >> Spelman: I thought you said the seven were actually transferred. >> Seven will be reallocated from austin resource recovery. Of the 19 that we had originally requested, five of those were support function positions. >> Spelman: So you're asking for five more in addition no those being transferred. >> Yes, but I would put it the other way. We asked for five and we were also given the seven reallocation from austin resource recovery. We had already asked for the five and then we got seven on top of that. >> Spelman: That more or less matches what you sent me in response to my question. It's very different from the impression one gets in this budget, which is it's all going into support services. That's where 24 of the 26 are going to be. Why am I getting the wrong impression there? There will be people providing immediate customer services including in the departmental services section of your budget. Yeah, I'm not sure why you're getting a different understanding from that and I me need some help from budget to explain that. >> Spelman: You told me in response to my question that you had 12 new people in case investigations. You have three more people in license and 11 in support and that adds up to 26. We're on with the 26. Now I'm looking at the budget and I'm finding two and a half fewer people in case investigations in the printed budget, four and a half more people in license and 24 more people in support. So is it 11 more people in support or 24 more people in support? If you don't answer right now or etcetera too complicated, I don't need the answer, but at some point I will need an answer to this. >> Absolutely. It's somewhere, may be miss allocated, but you're right about the 12 number. We have 12 going in case investigations. Five of those is for neighborhood code enforcement. Four of those are going into the multi-family program. And two are going into the commercial inspections. And there is one who will be a training officer. So that is the 12 that's going in the case investigation. [09:20:28] >> Spelman: Okay. Currently you've got -- it says here 60 and a half FTEs IN CASE Investigations, you will be increasing that by 12. Would that be to 72 and a half? The printed budget has 58. >> I don't quite see that number, mr. Spelman. >> Spelman: I'm looking on page 181 of volume 1 where THE 2012-13 ESTIMATED FTEs For case investigation are 60.5 and the 2014 proposed is 58. That looks like a reduction of two and a half. And that is the only budget detail page for (indiscernible). >> This is the case financial manager. We had some reallocation in fy 13, we had some support staff that were in the case investigation group. In fy 14 we created additional units so that we CAN TRANSFER FTEs TO THE Correct call centers. So in the process of reallocating the budget, restructuring it, we're also restructuring our accounting structure. So next year we'll have additional budget units so WE CAN PUT FTEs IN THE Correct area. That's why you see that going now. Smell spell so midyear when all of this moving around as happened, if you were to look at your snapshot for budget detail by activity and case investigation, how many people would I find in that budget activity? >> In fy 14 you will find 58 it that you see here. Now, let me preface that in that the reason you didn't get response to the rest of your questions, at the last minute we realized that there was a problem with the reallocation so we're checking that out, working with the budget staff and hopefully we'll get that to you as quickly as possible. So the bottom line is correct, there would be 117 for code compliance, but the reallocation is a little bit off now. [09:22:47] >> Spelman: I'll look forward to seeing that addendum to budget so i understand that things are moving around. If we have -- that was preface to the one that concerned me more. If we have 60 people now who are inspecting, responding to 311 calls and inspecting buildings, and if we're following up on mr. Smart's I think really good idea that while you're out there look around for other buildings in the area while you're inspecting a unit, don't just focus on the unit, but focus on other things you can deal with in the structure. It only makes sense to do that. That will be more work for our inspectors to do. And we have fewer inspectors out there responding to the 311 calls out there looking around at conditions. If it's going from 60.5 to 58. But you're suggesting in performance measures that the number of days from the first complaint to a non-judicial compliance or transfer to the judicial system will go down from 96 that will go down in 2013 to 80. We have more inspectors and work to do how how can they do it faster to go down? >> Well, while working with staff we've been increasing our efficiency of our staff. Particularly with technology. Making sure they have the technology in the vehicles so that the vehicles operate like a mobile office. When they're out on a property, they can pull up a lot more information than they used to have access to. We have access to amanda and being able to pull up the status of the case. Case history on a particular property, they can pull up tcad information as far as ownership as it is documented by tcad, pull up utility information, pull up google maps or gis information. So hopefully the increase in efficiency is what we're, looking for in allowing inspectors to do more than they have been doing because they've got better tools to do the job. [09:25:02] >> Spelman: So they're taking a lot of time at the home office looking through the computer, looking at tcad trying to figure out what the utility information looks like, who owns this place, able to do that faster in the car on the spot. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: They will still have to fill out the same report and the inspection itself is not changing. They still have to go to the unit and look around, here is the water leaking and trace it back to where it's coming from. All that stuff isn't going to change much? >> That's correct. And in a lot of cases they'll spend more time either at that location if it's a multi-family location or in that neighborhood checking the rest of the block if it has a similar type violation. At the same time we're increasing efficiency we're also increasing the number of proactive inspections they'll be doing. >> Spelman: I'll be asking you more questions about that because the -- it seems like we're asking more time to spend on location in the core inspector, which to inspect, it's to look for problems, to compare the problems to the building standards. And then to write up a report. Sounds like most of that hasn't changed very much. They may have access to some useful tools in their car rather than having to come back to the office to do the same computer checks. But the core -- it's not clear to me yet how the core work of the inspector is going to be made considerably more efficient because of that. So I'll ask several more questions and we'll have more conversation about that. In addition to the number of days that we get compliance or transfer of the judicial system going down considerably, you will also mentioning that the average number of cases of inspector is going to go from 538 to 260 despite fact that inspectors are going down and cases are going up. Is this a long-term goal that is put in here in place after real estimate? >> That's correct. As part of our five-year forecast that is the goal is to get down to the 260. We realize it's going to take time, it's not going to happen overnight, it's not going to happen in one year. It's going to be a progressive kind of thing. We'll be measuring annually looking at the am change in caseloads and how it's increasing or decreasing with the goal of getting to the 260. It looks like the proper number for -- I appreciate the goal of 260. 260 sounds like a much more reasonable number and one which you can get better inspections on, better life for inspectors. The number here is an estimate for what it is going to encounter on fy 14, it will be considerably higher than last year's estimate because we have fewer inspectors and more inspections to do. Last point I would like to make on a general one is that this budget has a lot of performance measures about activities. How many people are going to have, how many things their going to be doing, but we don't have what I think is most important in measure of code compliance which is do we get compliance. What is the status of the living conditions that people are working in or living in are we getting buildings that are actually up to standard or getting single-family houses up to standard and so on. That's the kind of performance measure which i understand is going to be hard to measure but it's the kind of thing that we're really looking for all of our departments to do is to bring up the quality of life for all of our people and that's a missed opportunity I think in our budget. [09:28:48] >> The bottom line is how much do we preserve and improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods by enforcing these codes. I think all of these codes that we're enforcing, all of the codes that you have adopted tend to lend themselves towards promoting health and safety. And so that is certainly our goals. Sometime it not as easy to measure that. Certainly you know it when you ride through the community and you see the environment itself and whether or not we've improved that environment, whether it's clean e safer, healthier. That's our bottom line right there. >> Spelman: Mayor, i misspoke. I have one more thing. I'm glad we agree on that. That is that I would put code compliance in the same bucket as fire department, as e.M.S., As police, as many of our other agencies that are largely responding to external complaints that's because mostly what you have been doing in the past. And I notice that in the fire department, 88% of all of our people are having direct -- all of the fire -- the fte's and the fire department all have direct contact with the service. They're putting out fires. 84% OF THE FTEs AND E.M.S. Are responding, emergency medical services. It's hard to calculate the number for police. And I won't dare ask art because it will take me 20 minutes to get an answer out of him, but it will in be in the neighborhood of 80 on 90% of the police force is engaged in direct contact with our customers. I can't do any similar calculation for code compliance and in the next budget if we implement the way it's written it will FEWER THAN 50% OF THE FTEs In code compliance and they will be out there delivering direct services as i understand it. We're going to have a further conversation about that, but seems to me the code compliance is sufficiently similar to our law enforcement agencies that I would be much more comfortable if that number were bumped up to 60, 70, 80% like the other public safety agencies. Fundamentally you're providing for public safety is my understanding for what codes does. [09:31:00] >> I don't disagree with that. I think that's certainly our goal. And again, this is an anomaly year and the last three years for code compliance, being a new department, we're having to gear up and we've probably got right now gearing up with support staff, making sure that we've got staff to handle all of our human resources, financial customer service and all that. As we go forward then we can -- if we have a solid support staff then we can focus more on those inspectors and those persons out there in the neighborhoods inspecting properties actually making that one on one eye to eye contact with our customers. I think you will see that as part of our five-year forecast more and more inspectors and less and less support. >> Spelman: I look forward to those conversations. Thank you. >> Riley: Do we currently have any inspectors working nice and weekends? >> Yes. We actually added this past fiscal year evening work. I mean, saturday work. We have inspectors out there on saturday. And a lot of things happen in austin on saturdays, work without permits, signs that are put up on rights of way. Those kinds of things. So we've got a crew of inspectors that are handling that on saturday. And of course we do a lot of the special events that happens evenings and weekends. >> Riley: Okay. And will any of the new inspectors be working nights and weekends? >> Weekends for certain. Nights are like special calls. If we get a call -- and sometimes we do -- there's a problem at an apartment complex or a dangerous situation happening at night, we've got inspectors on standby that will respond to that. >> Riley: Okay. We are in a position to respond to complaints 24 hours. >> Yeah, 24 hours. And we do. [09:33:03] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you. I'll look forward to the corrected numbers because the way I read it right now in a department of 117 employees, a third of the employees are in support services. And hopefully that's wrong. Hopefully we can find a better way to manage our folks on that. -- It was hard for me to get took place information about the short-term rental and your performance in that program. On know on page 178 there was disas part of the registration and licensing compliance and adding two code inspectors and one program specialist were going to be added. So did we start with three? Employees when we kicked of that program? And then I go to the licensing and registration and compliance activity page on 182 and it doesn't mention short-term rentals at all. I wonder if you could help me understand what was the work load last year and how you see it coming out this year? >> Last year was the start of that program, short-term rentals, type one and type two. Type one being owner occupied and type 2 being non-owner occupied. To just three employees. Two inspectors, one program specialist. And they ended up having a fairly big work load. The program specialist actually processed all the registrations and all the paperwork. We end -- we're around 500, I think 500 short-term rental licenses now and growing. The two inspectors were used to review the application that came in. A lot of information was required on those applications to review it and then if necessary go out to the site and inspect it to make sure the information is correct. We've also been using them to check advertisement for short-term rental. There's a lot of advertising going on for short-term rentals that are not necessarily licensed. So so we are checking that information and seeing if they're going to operate for short-term. [09:35:28] >> Morrison: A friendly reminder. >> The other three included in budget for fy 14, contingent upon whether council takes action on type 3 short-term rentals. That's what those three are four. You have to duplicate the present time. There are two inspectors and one program specialist. And type 3's would be really multi-family short-term rentals. We think that three would be a big start as far as handling the caseload that would come in from multi- family. Testimony may be more or less than what we're guess that at a time mating, but we think the similar number as type one and type two would be appropriate. >> I guess would it be appropriate to have some performance measures and reference the sh 130 storm rental parts of the licensing and registration activity in the budget? We don't have performance measures? There was no way to get any of that information except for the description in the first place. So long-term, basically this is a start-up program. And you might -- I forget, was it an annual registration required? An annual license required or is it -- is it a one time thing? >> Yes, it's an annual license. In fact, nearing the end of that first year so it's time for renewals a those that short-term rentals are out there. Our staff will be sending out renewal notices and following up on the renewals. >> Morrison: It might ease up a little bit when the whole community is educated and once you've got everybody on board, but you wouldn't expect the work load to drop significantly. >> Still start-up and trying to identify what the universe is. I think the initial estimates on short-term rentals was 1500. We're coming out around 500. We've still got to find out if there's more out there and how can we make sure that all of them out there are licensed. There may be more staff out there that we need to handle that program, but being a start-up program right now all three are busy. In fact we had extra staff when we geared up last year. Wednesdayed up reassigning, temporarily reassigning extra staff to get that program going, get it off the ground. [09:37:59] >> Morrison: And do you -- so if a complaint comes in to 311, do you cover that complaint also? >> Absolutely. And the inspectors are used to help cover those complaints. >> Morrison: Do you know how many of those complaints are order? >> We're not getting a lot of complaints on the short-term rentals, not a big load. >> Morrison: All right, mr. I told you so. [Laughter] so it would be interesting to get some numbers on the complaints that are coming in hopefully in 311 can code those -- has coded them a special way and the resolution j a snapshot of that would be real interesting. >> I think you also want probably 911 also, 311 and 911 on short-term rentals. >> Morrison: Thank you. >> Cole: Thank you. Any further questions? Thank you. Next up we have health. Questions for health and human services? Councilmember morrison has a question. Councilmember tovo has questions. Councilmember martinez has questions. Whoever has questions just start. >> Martinez: Yeah, if you could walk us through our vacancies. It looks like you're actually reducing that number of total positions. Is that because of the transfer of the animal services out of health and human services? [09:40:08] >> Carlos rivera, director of health and human services. >> Yes. There is one position being transferred for 14 out of health into animal services. And that is for the county direct position that retires. That's the city, the city position that replaces that per the ila. >> Overall we had 12 vacancies, six of which have since been filled, five of which are recruited and one being held in agreement with travis county interlocal. >> Martinez: Thank you. >> Tovo: Another issue that we talked about as an unmet need, but I can't figure out the extent to which it's included in this budget before us. Can you talk to us about the senior meal program and congregate meal program and the extent to which it's funded in the budget? >> The congregate meal program is by funding meals on wheels and more through our social services rfp. And we also in partnership do some work at some of our neighborhood centers with -- at some of our neighborhood centers with the addap and also at -- at some pard facilities. >> Tovo: So we had -- we had brought forward a resolution to add $75,000 to the current budget. Perhaps we did it into the parks budget. Am I -- okay. That's a question for pard then. Okay. Thanks. Then the only question i have for you all, could you address the women and children's shelter? I know that there is $400,000, I believe, in this year's -- in the proposed budget for funding for the women and children's shelter, but I would like to get a sense of where -- how far is that going to get us? I know we're in august and i believe that there is a schematic design that was being worked on. And the deadline is right about now. And can you give us a very, very quick update on the progress on that and whether there was an opportunity to make more progress in this next year of actually going forward with those renovations and the extent -- and the expansion. And if so, $400,000 probably won't get us there. [09:42:37] >> Fortunately kim has been leading this project also so I'll ask her to answer the question. >> Councilmember, we are working with the engineering and architectural firm at the moment. We did get a verbal report last week of their progress. Their official report is due to us the first week of september. We are scheduled to bring that back to public health and human services in your september meeting. And we are working through those schematics and those conceptual drawings and those proposals of what can we accomplish currently in our current budget along the lines of expansion as well as remodel of some of the current facility to address some issues in the current facility as well as we've also asked the architects to give us some conceptual plans around future expansion possibilities of that property. >> Tovo: So just to kind of recap. We have about four million in -- that was approved in last year's bond package for the expansion and the renovations. And so if the planning goes well and you can actually break ground on either one of those portions, either the expansion or the renovation or both in this next year, again $400,000 is not going to get us -- it's not even a drop in bucket of what would need to happen there. But what would you do? Come back to us with a budget amendment? >> If we're far enough down the road to be able to do any construction in fiscal 14, yes, ma'am, we would dom back to unteamed with our capital budget. At the this point in the planning process which we have fast tracked so we are moving much faster than a normal project may move, as well as the bidding process we need to go through for contractors and whatnot, we wouldn't anticipate actually doing construction in fiscal 14. We're doing as much as we can to fast track that. >> I really appreciate that. It's such a critical need and such an immediate need as I know you know. So I'm glad to hear it's being fast tracked and I'll look forward to getting that detail in september and relieved to know that if we needed to do a budget amendment to keep that on -- moving forward as fast as you're able to then we have the ability to do that after september. [09:44:51] >> Absolutely. >> Cole: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Thanks for all your work on all that you do. I know there's been a lot of planning going on, there's accreditation in the works, which will be very exciting. I think we're going to be one of the first in the nation to be -- that are public health accredited? >> Hopefully the first in texas. About number 10 or 11 in the nation. So not bad. >> Morrison: That's great. One of the things you mentioned which we were able to work through with lots of help from our finance was being involved in the 11-15 waiver, medicaid waiver. And I see in the text it says that that looks like it will net us an additional two million to be able to delve into public health projects. Can you point to where in the budget that shows up or is it not here yet, so it's not in budget yet, it's for a future year? >> I missed the question. I apologize. >> Morrison: I was asked what the expected two million dollars that we might see from the 11-15 waiver program, is that a future year projection so i wouldn't see the two million anywhere here in this budget? >> You won't see it in budget. The way the program was set up senior like as an off- budget special revenue fund where these revenues are being funded out of that program. Basically be an interfund loan from the general fund and then as the federal funds flow in it will reimburse the general fund monies that were started. So we have to report back to city council in regards to the the accounting and the collections and revenue from that program. It's similar to grant funds. The health department also has a lot of grant funds that aren't explicitly shown in the budget pages here because they're multiple year funds and that is a budget document. We do have a grant section in the back where we talk about our grants, but the funds for the 11-15 medicaid waiver are not reflected in this document. [09:47:06] >> Morrison: I see. I think whatever -- however it's documented is one thing. I just want to make sure that we all are able to talk at the council level about the use of investing those funds on the next go round once they start coming in. So I just want to make sure that that gets to be part of the discussion at the council level either during the budget or I don't know how it would be handled. But I realize that's on down the road a little bit. >> Sure. And staff would need to come back to council with any future investments of those funds. >> Morrison: Right, with proposals. >> That's right. >> Morrison: Good. But anyway, that's an exciting opportunity we have. Let's see, one of the issues that's been raised, probably to multiple of us, is that the funding for workforce development has been taken from sustainability and moved to health and human services. Is that capital i.D.E.A. Funding that we're talking about? >> No, it's capital idea funding -- it's not capital idea funding. >> That funding is out of three different contracts. That is easter seals, the goodwill industries and life works. >> Morrison: Okay. >> And that is money that is really a funding change, it's not changing the contracts or -- it's just moving it out of sustainability fund into the general fund. >> Morrison: Okay. And does anyone know why the capital idea funding is? >> It's part of social services fund. >> Morrison: Because that's one of the issues that have been have been raised and I don't know if it's one of the community concerns of speaking of capital idea that really we should get our brains around thinking that it is a workforce development, not a social service contract. So the idea was suggested that we move it from the health and human services to economic development. >> Cole: Councilmember morrison, let me ask you, have y'all discussed that in health and human services or councilmember martinez, either one? Has that been a point of discussion? That's what I asked them when they came to visit. [09:49:15] >> Morrison: Not that I'm aware of. Not that I remember. It's something that we could certainly get on the agenda. >> Cole: I would be curious for you to sort that out because I know we went to basic needs and we changed our metrics and doing things differently. Y'all have your hands around that much better than I do. Of course I support the idea right now dr.What I know about it, but I would be interested in your comment. More I wonder. Mr. Lumbreras, do you have a comment? >> Good afternoon, burt bum breast cancer as, assistant city manager. We met with capital idea and we've said that it is certainly a policy discussion that council needs to have and I do suggest that it be a suggestion at the public health and human services committee as a start and certainly something that the council needs to entertain. One of the things we're doing as a staff is putting together -- these are contracts that generally are-- even though they're kind of under egrso, programs are administered through health and human services because we have the staff that matches and looks at the performance measures and those contracts through health and human services. But we do have other workforce related type of contracts that we need to take a look at. So I think it's only fair to look at that as well as others to see the nuances and differences in all that. And let council make a determination from a policy level as to what you want to do with that. So I do suggest that it go through the public health and human services subcommittee. >> Morrison: I know we have a meeting next week and I believe we might have social service contracting as an agenda item. >> That's correct. It's posted broad enough -- to where we could have discussion. >> Morrison: If you could help us to include that. And I do want to with regard to social service contracting we are talking staff has brought forward a recommendation to sort of overhaul the way that we do it, and there's been -- there's still a lot of conversation going on about that and we're discussing it at health and human services often. Could you remind me of the timing, mr. Rivera? We went through quite a long arduous process. And signed the contracts a year ago march, is that right? March of 12. And they were -- they were half a year and then a year contract, but extendible up to 30 -- how many months? 30 month contract and we expect to extend them or request to extend them another year. But we're not really -- we're not redoing or reinventing the framework, we are refining it. [09:52:01] >> Morrison: I'm glad to hear that because I was getting the feeling that it was being reinvented. And we want to make sure we take the lessons from all the work, not just the council, but the community went through and moved forward in advance from there. >> We're actually making a lot of progress and looking forward to presenting to you soon. And giving you an update on where we're at. I believe that we made a lot of progress and with the assistance of our partners. Lower more great. Thank you. >> Martinez: So carlos if you're saying that we had a 30 month contract with a 30 month extension, are we going to apply the revisions in between that period? Or would they not kick in until the option period is over? >> They were 30 month contracts with annual optional renewals. It would be a 12 month optional renewal if the city decides to exercise that renewal. So the understanding is that the renewal wouldn't be under the current terms and then the renewal would then allow additional time for the new, if that's necessary. >> Martinez: If we make revisions, let me be real clear. If we make revisions those revisions would not apply until two years years from now if we were to give the 12 month extension. >> Exercise the 12 month extension, that's correct. >> Martinez: And just so my colleagues know, the reason it's posted for next week is because there's still an issue with the agency aggie about longer term sustainability. It's hard to go out for funding from other sources when you only have a 12 month agreement or a 30 month agreement. What they've asked us to consider is a two- year agreement with a two-year option, which I actually think makes sense now that we're moving to four year terms as councilmembers. But it could sync up, if you will, with the budget process, with the council term process. Again, it's just the start of a conversation. It was brought to me within the last few weeks. They're just finding it difficult to forecast and plan three to four years ahead. They're a 30 month contractual agreement with the city. I told them we would begin that conversation. I think it could line up -- if we come back with some revisions that we feel are more appropriate, maybe we can restart this process and create a little more stability for them with some of the revisions that staff is going to real. [09:54:40] >> That's a great point. And one of the reasons why we are going to be asking for the extension is because the current environment is very difficult for social services, public health organizations, with the sequester and the aca, we have a very fluid environment. So that's why we're going to ask for some additional time. >> Martinez: Okay. I think we should reach out to the agencies. Some of them might prefer that we not give them the extension if they felt like they could compete for a four year term as opposed to another 12 months. So that's the kind of conversations we need to have with the stakeholders and see where we end up aligning ourselves. >> Cole: Okay. Thank you very much. Colleagues, it is 4:00. It is very obvious that we're going to have to have another meeting and I want to discuss with you a few minutes about whether we should stop at 4:00 or push until five. We've had a full day. Or go ahead and talk about another date. I know I would be happy to stop at 4:00, but I will stay until 5:00. I'm perfectly able to do that, but I would like your comments on that. >> Martinez: Sure. I would like to throw out that it has been a full day. I'm happy to stay until five, but would love to stop at 4:00. The only way i will agree to stop at 4:00 is if we come to an understanding as a council that we need to have at least one more and possibly two more of these meetings. Because as you can see we've gotten through one-third of the departments in a full day's work. >> Cole: Well, we have our first public hearing on AUGUST 22nd. So that leaves -- and we have a work session on august 20th. So that leaves august 19th and august 21st as possible dates that we could meet to hold on your calendars. And I assume the city attorney can post stuff for potentially both or half a DAY ON THE 21st. I'm a little leery about all day on the 21st with the council meeting on the 22nd. [09:56:42] >> Morrison: And mayor pro tem, we do have a meeting, emerging technology meeting on the 21st at 3:00, and we're trying to work through a refined schedule for the google fiber community connections program and we need to have that program -- >> Cole: It doesn't sound very important. >> Morrison: It's very important. [Laughter] >> Cole: I'm just teasing. >> Morrison: So if we did wednesday the 21st if we could do just a morning. I'm taking councilmember martinez's point that how little we accomplished getting through the -- that we probably need to have a backup also so that we're READY FOR THE 22nd. Not that we need to use that backup, but let's say that we go ahead and try to post for august the 19th at 9:00. And hopefully finish august 19th, but also post august 21st from nine to 12. >> Morrison: I hate to THROW IT OUT, BUT 23rd, Friday the afternoon, could be -- >> Cole: We have a public HEARING ON THE 22nd. Isn't that right? So let's try. Let's see what happens. Do have any comments, councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Mayor pro tem, we usually don't post for it in time, we just post the start time and you go until you go. >> Cole: Okay. That sounds great. >> Spelman: It might be useful for our staff to have a sense for when it is that we're going to quit so they have an idea for when in the queue they stand. I also would like to point out that we don't necessarily have to be done with all departments before our first public hearing on THE 22nd. If we still have some more departments to talk to BEFORE THE 22nd, I THINK We'll be able to handle the public hearings just fine. [09:58:42] >> Cole: Okay. >> Tovo: Mayor pro tem? Thanks. This is a good plan. I would like to also just suggest that -- I think this kind of q and a for the different departments has yielded some very important discussions and I'm glad that we're going to take the time next week to really work through the other ones in the same way. We just get -- I feel like i get a lot more out of it than I do in the q and a process which is enormously valuable, but being able to bounce ideas off is critical. But I would suggest that we keep in mind the 3rd of september as a possible day of doing what I talked about earlier, having that kind of prebudget hearing work session. We have -- we're scheduled to have an ae meeting in the morning from 9:30 to 11:30. I would justl beginning at noon. I will have to make a few changes to my own schedule. Beginning at noon just have that kind of initial sharing of thoughts or proposes that we might roll out the following week at our budget hearing. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] >> Martinez: ... And everybody else had different proposals and it was to get to one day in that budget hearing and I think a prehearing to discuss potential proposals a wholly appropriate so that maybe we can get all three readings done in a fairly decent time frame. [10:00:50] >> It is very difficult on staff that day. >> Martinez: Yes, we had to recess, time out and recalculate and all of that stuff. >> Cole: Are you getting to actually hold a date now, council member tovo. >> Tovo: Our schedules fill up quickly but I would propose that we tentatively pencil that in on september 3, beginning at noon. >> I agree. >> Tovo: I am sorry, we probably need to start at 12:30. >> Okay. >> Okay. >> And I know last year, it was okay for us to work off this wish list. Staff had to scurry around and figure out what the wishes were and this is a much more transparent way for us to put them on the table and have the information available and you guys did a great job last year. >> Cole: And our first budget reading day is the ninth? >> Yes. >> Cole: So you will have the weekend to work on it, ed. [Laughter]. >> Cole: All right, any other discussions, comments, concerns. >> Martinez: Yes. >> Cole: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: I want to finish -- I want to officially turn my opening question this morning that was not responded to into a budget question so we can get a response, and that is: What was the rigorous hiring process instituted in 2009 when we used vacancy savings in a budget shortfall, and is that still being employed today? And if not, what is the current process? >> I will be happy to respond in writing. I think I could respond now if you'd like. >> Martinez: Sure. >> What occurred in 2009 was a memo was sent out to department directors basically saying that, you know, etheir authority to fill the positions that are authorized now acquire an assistant city manager approval. So it is extra layer. Department managers are looking at the positions and managing the positions. You heard chief acevedo talk about that in deciding the cadet classes. It is not just how many positions they have but where they are with their budget and the director doing that and we added an extra layer in 2009 and there was a panel we established that I was on along with the h.R. Director and two assistant city managers, I remember assiststant city manager goode was one of them but we would have people review every single request to approve a position that required approval from the group to move forward and the extra scrutiny is not just whether this positions is needed but is this a position that we absolutely can't do without for the next 6 months or a year to generate that vacancy savings, is it something we can't do without, without impacting the public safety or having like a very serious degradation to services. So they, you know, really had to justify things over and above just the normal process of the city council as authorized a certain level of staffing for each department and then the department directors are at their discretion to manage their budget. That was the initial level of review. We are not doing that -- that panel has been dispersed, I believe around 2011, when we stopped doing that, when the economy started to improve. [10:04:03] >> Martinez: Thank you and lastly, I would throw out there for us to start thinking about -- one of the budget practices that we have that I think is good budget practice, but it causes some practical realities that may not be as pleasant is that we predict a sales tax growth for the coming year in our budget process, and anything that comes in above that gets wiped off the table for us to discuss during the budget process unless it is a one time expenditure. I think we need to have a full conversation about what do we want to ship that policy and apply it to some of these unmet -- shift the policy and move it to unmet needs -- while I realize you don't want to make structural changes with money we are not predicting to come in next year but i see we predicted 3% growth last year. It is going to come in at 8% this year. That is 5% wiped off the table that we can't use for anything other than one time expenditures and or putting it in reserves which I think we should maintain a healthy reserves but this year we are predicting 3 and a half percent sales tax increase at the year and finishing at 8%. Just a half a percentage point makes a big, big difference. So I want y'all to think about it. I am certainly thinking about it. That 5% that wiped off the table because of our budget policy is really causing some pain right now that we aren't able to grant all of the requests -- >> Cole: Council member martinez, how you suggesting that we handle that? >> Martinez: I personally would like to have a conversation about whether or not we fund our libraries an additional day with that 5% that's been wiped off the table. I realize that is a structural change but we budget on an annualized basis, so we will visit that next year again. I just think there are some things that have been taken offer the table for us to consider -- off the table for us to consider because of our policy that I would like to revisit whether or not we can put them back on the table. Swimming pools hours, library hours, things of that nature. [10:06:08] >> Morrison: Parks. >> Martinez: Parks. That is a lot of money hanging out there -- i understand why the policy is in place. It is there for good reason, and I will support this body, obviously, in the decisions we make as a whole. I would just like to have a conversation with y'all to see if you would be willing to use some of those funds for some of the unmet needs. >> Cole: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: I am certainly willing to have that conversation. I want to mention that already the request was made to add egrso on to this list of departments. What we don't have on here and we rarely ever look at are service departments -- support service departments and there are a few on here that are at the very high level in terms of percent, total f.T.E.S as vacant and so I do want to make sure that we have the opportunity to discuss those -- those departments specifically, the ones that are, say, over 9 and a half or 10% vacant. >> Cole: To list them? >> I am say hrd, cmd, real estate and smdr and some of them are small but it makes sense to look at them so hrd and cmd and -- >> is there a particular angle? >> Morrison: Particularly looking at the vacancies and the new f.T.E.S that they have, in light of that. >> Cole: You also want them as part of council member martinez's request for the vacancy analysis? >> Morrison: Certainly by the vacancy analysis but specifically a place on this list that we are working from. >> Cole: I was just trying to narrow it so we could get it in terms of concentrate on what you want. >> Morrison: It is specifically why the vacancy's understanding -- why the vacancy rates are as high as they want. >> Cole: We will have an answer to the question and list them on the list. >> Morrison: List them on the list or maybe support services as one so we don't have to go through each of them individually because it is not to be complete -- [10:08:09] >> just to make sure. [Multiple voices] >> we have a broad posting. This is just an internal list that was passed out this morning. I had never seen that. We will continue with the general posting that we have that gives you lots of latitude to discuss any department's budget and i will ask, I guess if it was finance together to -- >> Morrison: Maybe if you could ask egrso and one line for support services department or how -- internal services department. >> Cole: You see the one that she is concerned about that? >> Absolutely, that is to help us keep track of the departments that we have waiting to answer your questions. As the city attorney said, we are posted to have any department you'd like to come before and answer any questions so we can certainly add those to the list. >> Morrison: That would be great. Thank you. >> One question I do have, the departments that presented today, do you have a need for them to go back to the work sessions, or the you want to continue questioning them? >> Cole: No, I think we are complete and we thank them for the services today. >> Let me maketure I capture this what you posted. You want a session similar to today on august 19 and one on the morning of august 21. You then want a september 3rd, I am calling it a prebudget discussion, and you want that to begin at 1:00 p.M.? >> Cole: Yes, prework session. We don't need to be posted for action. We just need to -- >> discussion. >> Cole: Discussion, yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Cole: With there being no further business, this meeting of the austin city council, without objection, is adjourned.