City Council Meeting Work Session Transcript – 10/15/2013 Title: ATXN CCTV Channel: 13 - ATXN Recorded On: 10/15/2013 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 10/15/2013 Transcript Generated by SnapStream Enterprise TV Server ======================================================= [03:03:12] [Gavel pounding] >> good morning, I'm austin mayor lee leffingwell. I will call this work session to order on tuesday, october 15, 9:04 a.M. We're meeting in the boards and commissions room, austin, texas. So, we begin with our preselected agenda items. I want to mention that item 29 is first on the list. I'm going to ask for a postponement of that item until the next council meeting. Some changes, it is a 31-page ordinance, some changes were just received last night from the austin music commission and I think a little time is going to be needed to digest those changes, look at them we will go to item 31, pulled by council member riley. >> Mayor, this is the item on hour trails. I was hoping to have staff to talk about this. We have chief macdonald here but we can hold off on this item until they're here to talk about it. >> They're here. >> Good morning, chief. >> Good morning. >> We've just come to the item about 24-hour trails and the question is whether we should go back to making use of trails illegal, and speaking specifically about the trail around lady bird lake, shoal creek trail, there is a lot of discussion about what it would entail to continue keeping those trails open 24 hours. I understand there has been some discussions within apd about reassignment of officers and the last I heard from apd was you felt like apd does need to do some reassignment, and in fact, will need to be doing some reassignment regardless of our decision on this, at this particular time, that you will need to be moving some officers from the dr program to patrol. Is that accurate? [03:06:07] >> Yes. As a result of our staffing studies and staffing issues, uncommitted time, we have been looking at how we would reallocate resources within the department, and so when we look to where we would pull resources from, the district representatives was one of the programs we looked at suns they are not in a first response position, responding to emergency 911 calls for service. So that is the area we were going to look for first to pull resources from. >> We looked at other identified needs for patrol, I expected to make that change regardless of our decision about the curfew at this time? >> Yes. Again, as we looked at the allotment of resources, what we have now is with the opening of the trails and our belief we need to police those trails, we're doing this on a much quicker timeline than we initially anticipated. >> You do expect you will be able to -- well, first, let me say, I don't know of anybody who advocated, on the be council, at least, for reducing the dr program. That is a highly-valued program that is desperately needed in the neighborhoods, it is doing very important work, and all of the work with our neighborhoods is critical. And, so, to the extent you're doing an assignment, that is not a council direction, that is based on the apd's just a minute, is that correct? >> Correct. It was our decision. The goal we stated when the 47 new positions we got in the budget this year complete their training cycle, about a 14-month timeline, we will look to reassigning those positions. [03:08:13] >> That is when? >> Approximately 14 months to get them trains. 14 months from when? >> From now. >> Okay. So we're talking about, then, a period of a little over a year that there would be a reduction in the officers assigned to the dr program. With the opening of the boardwalk next summer and identified needs you think that change would need to happen before -- some reassignment would need to happen anyway, regardless of our decision today suspect that right? >> Let me pipe in real quick, council member. What we've been looking at for the last couple of years is an issue of resources. You all know that we have a staff study that shows that we're several hundred officers short of where we need to be, and that is prior to some of the additional pressures in the department in terms of deployment. We've been discussing, where do we get more call takers, more people on the front lines, more officers on the front lines to do several things. One, increase our visibility as a department to deter property crime throughout the city that continues to be one of the major challenges we're facing. Number two, we've seen an increase of about 1100 calls, what we call priority one hot shot calls last year, which require significant resources to be able to mitigate those calls. And, the last piece is, we've got two other pieces, the critical low some we've been talking about where to we get those resources and what the staff, my staff has recommended is, we don't want to take them from that division because they're the ones when we get the calls about the drug house or the street level prostitution, these are the quality of life type issues in terms of crimes on the street, their lack of jumpers they have to fight a fire. They very quickly start moving resources in and start working those cases. And, so, the primary purpose and discussion of the dr program and moving those resources to address those issues, with the decision to open the trails, we had to police, you know that some folks don't think we should police them but we feel differently. We feel that we have to plus them. And, -- police them, so those resources would have been used exclusively to address what we see as a problem with response times and availability of resources downtown, especially, with the overincreasing entertainment district. What is happening in that district is, as on a regular basis, we're moving resources away from other neighborhoods to handle staff calls and a lot are fights in progress, and part of what we're focusing on, the REDISTRIBUTION OF THOSE DRs IS Actually trying to relieve those call volumes at night, so then we don't have to pull resources as we're doing now from charlie or david or baker, which is the university area, at night. So, the other piece of this is that there will be the overtime component. We feel that we need two six-officer shifts to be able to provide some resources or some visibility on the trails. In order to do that we're going to have to spend another about $300,000. So, we want to be as helpful as we can to the policy director of this council. And, it is just like we will do like every other day of the year, we try to do the best we can with the resources we have. So it is a balancing act. Starting in august, what I asked my staff to do is start tracking what kind of activity those officers that we have been using on the trail, how often are they being forced off of the trails to help. And, right now, as of august, september and october, they've handles a total of 798 incidents outside of the actual trails. So I think that illustrates that this is a starting point for us. As we continue to track this and we leave the trails at night completely -- because we're always being pushed off, we will as you have to reasays and add additional resources. The reason they were being pulled is to deal with the situation, but this is a picture of the last three or four months how they're being used to help with the issues we have in the city. >>Riley: The officers on the trail will do other duties in neighborhoods at the same time, is that right? [03:13:18] >> They will have to be pulled off so my point being, as we continue to look at this, not only will we have to deal with the nine, we may have to look at additional resources if they continue to be pulled off and we leave the trails without any resources. In addition to the $300,000-plus we will have to spend, the six officer. >>Riley: How does the number of incidents you cited compare with the number was incidences occurring on the trails? >> The trail we have for the pilot program between, actually reporting period, was a total of 0270 contacts, 20 calls, seven warrant arrests, 10 other arrests, 136, we put it up this way. >>Riley: Chief, I was really trying to get a sense of whether these officers are spending more of their time dealing with incidents on the trail or in the neighborhood. You meningitissed a number of incident -- you mentioned a number of incidents they were dealing with in the neighborhood so I was looking for the counterpart, during that same time prime, how many incidents on the trail. >> We didn't break it down that way but we can go back and tray and break it down that way. >>Riley: Apart from the numbers, you do have a sense, they're spending much of time with incidents not on the trail but instead just occurring in neighborhoods as needs arise. In a yes. >>Riley: Okay. Thanks. You. >>Mayor leffingwell: Just to be clear, to over simplify it. In the budget there was a line item for just over a million dollars that was for the cost of patrolling the trails. I guess my question is, has that changed in any respect? [03:15:24] >> No. There will be a cost attached to it. What occur, when we first were asked about this issue, what it would take, we went back and we looked at what it would take to patrol the trails at a minimum coverage that we felt as a staff would keep the trails safe. That cost was a million dollars. What we've done since then, because we lost the million dollars, how do we manage and provide a level of protection to the people on the trails. So, the best way to make that happen is to take some of our regular time officers, which look the ones we're redeploying, and chief here can give you the number on that, but those officers in addition to that, the $300,000. We lost $3 million in our overtime real dollars in the last few years, so we can't -- we just don't have the money to pay million dollars worth of overtime so we're being forced, sooner rather than later, to move the resources to the trails on a regular time. On top of that, we're going to have to spend 300,000 in overtime, it looks like at this point. >>Mayor leffingwell: Just to recap, when this issue first surfaced a few months ago, you were asked to cost it out or you volunteered to cost it owl. You were concerned when it appears on the agenda, and that cost was $3 million. Then, there was a negotiation it was decided if we outlaw pedestrians and allow only cyclists on the trails that cost could go down because just -- I guess because the pedestrians on the trail mig be, if they were there, might be more prone to some kind of illegal activity. And, I questioned that at the time. I don't know how you would ever enforce something like that. I assume it is legal or our law department would have told us already by now that you couldn't do that, but it doesn't seem right that you should take a hike and bike trail and say, okay, during these hours only bicycles can go in there but not pedestrians. If I'm a pedestrian, I'm going to be a little bit concerned about that. So there is definitely a fairness issue. That's aside from the fact that the cost did go down to a little over a million dollars. So, you say that cost is still the same. Whether that cost is paid out, it is overtime dollars or whether it is man hours from police officers who are assigned from somewhere else, it is still a million dollars. And, so, based on the surveys that you've done to see how many folks are actually using that during those hours, 10 to 15 as I recall, was the number, to make the math simple, let's say it is 10. That's $100,000 per cyclist per year to allow to be able to use those trails between the hours of 10:00 p.M. And 5:00 a.M. I am not against -- I would love to be able to have the trails open all the time for everybody, all the trails, but there are costs involved wit these things and we have to recognize that and we have to prioritize our needs. Specially as you noted, when you have a shortage of police officers right now. Your stretched thin. And, so, it is hard to find places where you can pull officers officers from for reassignment for that task. I want to, again, simplify it, no matter how you cut it, no mat you are how you discuss it, the cost of keeping trails open during those hours is still a million dollar as year. [03:19:11] >> Mayor, just wanted clarification. The mayor mentioned surveys showing there are only 10 people using the trails tonight. Are there surveys showing only 10 users of the trail at night? >> What the mayor is referring to is a traffic counter that public works has out there. In addition, our teams that are out there have kept count of when they actually observe or encountary cyclist. >> You figure about 10 cyclist as night, is that based on surveys, on an actual counter or police counters on the trail? >> That is based on observations. >> That is when a police officer on the trail actually runs into somebody using the trail. >> That is based on that and also the counter and some cases -- >> the counter shows there are 10 users on the trail at night? >> We're not using the transportation counters. >> I stand corrected. Not the counter. Police observations. >> Demonstrates the my futility of the program. Most use it for short segments to get past a difficult stretch of street. That is very unlike three result in a police encounter. That is very misleading to say any kind of a survey shows there are 10 users of the trail because we know there are many, many more than that who use the trail on a regular basis. >>Mayor leffingwell: Council member, maybe that number is not correct but that is the number that was reported this this room. >> We did some research as I was corrected to last time we had this discussion and the major cities in the country, what do they do with their trails in terms of curfews and so forth. New york city does not have a curfew but do they patrol them and it is based on the local computers. San francisco, there is no curfew and they do not have dedicated officers. Seattle, no curfew, no dedicated officers. They do patrol random patrols in the park. Portlands had a curfew and they do have full-time park rangers. Minneapolis has afew and they use off-duty officers from 7:00 a.M. To midnight, even with the curfew, they patrol on a regular basis, they patrol from 7:00 a.M. To midnight. Chicago has a curfew at 11:00 and they're patrolled by off-duty officers. One park patrol assigned 24 hours a day. Tucson, there is a curfew, a dead crated patrol and they respond to calls for service. San antonio there is a curfew. There are six districts and one officer in that district papa troll the park. We couldn't get a response from houston. Dallas does have a curfew and each your will dictate pow to use the resources. They don't have a dedicated officer but they respond to calls for service. Over 50% of the big cities we you are said do have curfews. [03:22:29] >> Mayor. >> City manager. >> Mayor and council, we were in this decision, during the budget process, one of the things I talked about being here as long as I have, is back when the trails were not safe during the day. You know, a lot of people don't remember that, but there was a set of circumstances where what we see out there right now was not taking place, and we had to do a lot to work with the park police at times. I was in charge of assigning folks to do different operations down there to get the trails under control to where they developed the reputation this they have now. So, as the chief and I got into these discussions during the budget process, we certainly recognize the council's perspective from a policy in terms of how, you know, what funds are going to be allocated to us if we were going to get additional funds over time or the like. But, the discussion that the chief and I had on this, and the city manager, was that if a decision is made along this lines, then we're going to defer to the police chief to try to take the steps that are necessary to make sure that the trails are safe, and so, you know, again, the other thing that I talked about there, too, is, you know, certainly dealing with the criminal element all these years is one thing for sure, they know a lot more than we think they do, and they're paying attention right now. So part of the message that you're wanting to send out there is they are going to be patrolled, there is going to be a presence to deter anyone. Even as we get into statistics, I can tell from you sitting across from victims where there has been a murder or a sexual assault, they don't care as much as that. They care about the one incident that impacted their family. That's the discussion we ended up having. That's why the chief took the step and, you know, again, I think what he talked about here is as he gets additional officers trained, we're certainly going to try to take the steps we can to off set the overtime use. He. >>Spelman: Mayor. >>Mayor leffingwell: Council member spelman. >>Spelman: Chief, I want to make sure I understand where we are right now. You want to take two six-officer shifts and put them on the trails in the down town area. Is that right? [03:24:58] >> Yes, sir. >>Spelman: So, you gave us at least some statistics. I would like to see all those statistics when you get a chance to make copies for of us incidents you responded to or arrests you've made and or near the trail by the officers who are currently assigned or were until october 1, assigned to patrolling that trail. Right? >> Correct. >> Okay. And some of those incidents and arrests took place on the trail itself and some of them took place nearby. >> That's correct. The statistics I gave off the trails, we only started monitoring those -- we've got data on that from august to now. >> >>spelman: Right. These are statistics associated with the officers assigned to the trail duty, but some of the tame they had to respond to should have that is off the trail and that's -- you're able to keep track of it because you know the officers were on the trail patrol. Is that right? Into yeah. >>Spelman: A hypothetical question, I have no idea what the council is going to do with this but one option available to us is is to go back to where we were before april and close the trails again. If we were to do that, say okay, we will put the signs back up and say the trails are now closed from 10:00 to 6:00 or 10:00 to 5:00, whatever the time was, how would you respond in terms of deployment of officers? What would you do? >> We're been talking about that extensively in the office. We've got a real problem with response times, and during peak hours, and the downtown corridor, but there is so much pressure right now in terms of the dr program and stuff that although we have a been talking about pulling them, I think we would potentially put a hold on that until we get more data and see where else we can draw resources. >>Spelman: So, if we were to put the signs back up and close the trails, then you would not need to assign two shifts of six officers each to the trails in the downtown area. [03:27:06] >> Not full time, no. We have a recommendation, if you would want to know that, what our recommendation would be. >> I would like to hear your recommendation. >> Our recommendation would be this, one institute the curfew, if there are segments like we went on a ride along the other day, cycling, and invited council member riley. There was a couple of spots, on lake austin boulevard where we can put signs for that cut through, that is very, very short segment, very short segment so people don't have to go on that street in the middle of the night. If is there a few of those that we can identify that will limit and be very spring where you op it for that specific reason for that, to get people around a dangerous spot, that we identify those and put signs on both ends. The second piece is wait until the 47 are off training. Thirdly, we know that there is a lot of trails coming online in the next -- in the not-too-distant future that will require us to police those trails that we put together a stakeholder meeting, meetings with the austin cycling association, the austin neighborhood association can pick members themselves they would like on there. The police department. And, the folks at the public works to talk about exactly what is coming online in the next 12, 24, 36 months, whatever is coming online, and to come up with a comprehensive plan on how we police them and how we manage them, how we do all the things we need to do to make sure we keep them not only safe but also to make sure we keep them in good condition. Just I went out and looked at the annual report that we get, survey, and one thing we should take pride in is that the safety in our parks, the national average is 48% and we're 63%. One of the reasons people use our parks and trails is we provide a lot of resources to keep them safe, so that would be our recommendation. >>Spelman: The summery version is keep the signs up for small stretches to avoid dangerous stretches of roadway, for example. [03:29:39] >> Correct. >> You would not need to resign officers to patrolling the trails. Basically, we go back to the situation we were in back in april or whenever we began this adventure. >> That would be more than likely, but in the near future, as we look at priority one calls, you still may see that in the future. We will keep monitoring that situation. >> And you also have conversations with the bicycling community, with the trails people, with public works as to what to do with the trails that are coming online downstream,whether they should be open or closed. >> Including a comprehensive plan, lighting issues, call box issues for emergencies. We've got a tremendous system and we need to be a little bit more comprehensive in terms of our planning moving forward. >>Spelman: Do we have a record -- I agree with you. I think we really should be more comprehensive and plan these things in advance, if possible. To you have a record of the number of tickets or citations issues to pedestrians and bicyclists on the trails in the last year or two? Is that something you keep record of? >> We don't have that information currently available but we should be able to query the system and get some kind of estimate what that is. >>Spelman: My office will put a query in it so you don't have to go back. >> Great, thank you. >> Mayor. >>Mayor leffingwell: Council member tovo. He. >>Tovo: I would ask that the stats be provided through the formal q&a practice says. The statistics about how many arrested downtown and versed on the trail and the various other numbers. >> You said a process, I don't understand what process tovo the question and answer process for this week's agenda. [03:31:43] >> Okay. Toe it is -- >>tovo: It is hard to keep track of the numbers. >> We will provide this chart that shows everybody we talked throughout the country and the big cities we contacted, as well. >> I appreciated council member riley clarifying an important issue. We're getting a lot of e-mail asking that we not reallocate staff in one way or another and I appreciate council member riley making it abundantly clear that is not a job of the city council, that it is your role to allocate staff as the need demands, and as you've said, several times before, you are data driven so I would assume if there are 10 people utilizing a trail that would not be a great use of resources, at least to the extent that we're talking about. I'm unclear on how much of this discuss about providing additional staff for downtown verses the hike and bike trail. Because in our discussion here today, it has gone back and forth about the needs downtown rather than on the trails and that is really a different -- that is really a different conversation, I think. I do want to ask about the DRs. How many do we very city wide? >> Well, we have 36 city wide. If we move those nine, in essence what will happen is that DRs CURRENTLY HANDLE 25% OF A Region. 25% of the neighborhoods. Their workload will go up to 33% of the neighborhoods. >> So you are look, at making a reallocation, which again is a responsibility under your job requirements to reallocate nine out of 36. We have heard from, you know, several neighborhoods that are saying, you know, they have particularly high crime rates, so I think if you need this question submitted through the q&a process, I can submit it, otherwise I would ask that you addresshe question of how you've selected particular areas AS HE -- PARTICULAR D Rs. Why you selected particular DRs AND HOW THE NEIGHBORHOODS Compare in terms of crime rates city wide. [03:34:10] >> We have that answer. >> The areas are broke down and EACH HAS FOUR DRs ASSIGNED. That leaves each dr with 25% responsibility for their area. So equitable across-the-board. We removed one from each year so no area was hit harder than the year. So instead of being responsible for 25% of the geographic region now have responsibilities for 33% so each area was impacted at the same level. >> But, yet, in your other staffing decisions, I assume you don't use that kind of approach. I have heard the chief say multiple times you're data driven and there are more officers in yours that need them but this is a different approach and I want to make that abundantly clear, you've made a decision to be equitable across the city rather than stay in the areas with high need. >> Correct. In the dr program, every neighborhood has to have a dr program contact. First of all, crime visited every neighborhood, not different crimes and different challenges but every neighborhood has to have a dr group, so by moving nine and everybody picked up a little bit of the workload and the RETAINING DRs, AGAIN, GO FROM 25%, 33%. So in other words, if I'm a dr, today I have this list of neighborhood groups I'm responsible for, neighborhoods, and you know, effective whatever date, I have an additional 8% groups, as we wait for that 47 to be trained. >> Council member, if I can add to that, also. You are he correct, we are data driven and we design our areas and sectors based on the data, the so areas are hot of equal size. When we look at the geography of 9 city, that is based on call loads and response times. Yes, we're doing in an even manner by taking one from each of the nine areas but as we assess the allocation of the city, the break down of the city, that should lead to the equal impact across all nine. [03:36:17] >> Good point, thanks. Then, one last question for you, I think in our discussion at the last council hearing, I believe I heard the chief talk about the training that was going to be required for getting the district representatives sort of back into patrolling. Did I hear that correctly? >> I don't remember that. The training? >> I thought I heard I say that the district representatives would go -- it would be a few weeks before they would be ready to -- >> oh, you're talking about a 28-day notice where you have to notice them in order to, under contract, to move them. But, there is something interesting that we are going to CHANGE OUR TRAINING IN DRs AND Actually have, going forward, as an efficiency piece, one of the discussions with neighborhood groups is they get upset a dr has done a lot of work and we can't stop people from promoting. What we're going to do moving forward as a policy issue, if you want to be dr, you have to make a two-year commitment and 9 only way you get out of it is if you promote or get fired or something else the other piece is, when a dr is coming out and a new one is coming in, we will overlap them for a minimum of one week so, I as a dr, the out going dr, can shadow me and I can tell him, here are the people that, you know, here are the issues, here is what I've been working on so there is no institutional knowledge lost and some of the gains that have been made with working with the neighborhoods are not lost. So it is going to create more efficiencies in our doctor program. >> They sound like good chances. It sounds like a contractual lag time of 28 days. >> And we post those vacancies, they are officers that this that is a positive assignment so those officers would be the noon SELECTED AND THE DRs WOULD GO To full the positions they vacated. So, the only other training issue that may come up is these officers will have to be bike certified and things like that. The big issue is the contractual requirement for the 28-day notice. [03:38:35] >> Thanks. >>Mayor leffingwell: Chief, as I understand, your recommendation, if I understand it correctly, it makes a lot of sense. We basically go back to where we were last april and then in the meantime, work towards having a process and method for reopening these trails. With regard to defining what kind of infrastructure we might need as far as lighting and so forth and a better handle on exactly what is needed whereas far as patrolling the trails. So, with that, if that is your recommendation, affirmative or not, is that your recommendation? >> Yes, it is, mayor. This is a huge change in policy for a city that the policy exists for a reason, and I think what caused a lot of, you guess, the debate is that we're very process-driven as a city. These trails belong it everybody. They belong to the neighborhoods, cyclists, pedestrians, and there have really not much of a process for everybody to weigh in. I can tell you that there are a lot of opinions out there, including the cycling community. Not everybody in the cycling community wants it opened without policing. Some do and some don't. If we're going to be thoughtful about the trails and the future of the trails and keeping them safe and accessible and build upon this feeling of safety, which someone of the reasons people use them, we should have a more in depth comprehensive process. But I think in the interim, if there are spots like council member riley identifies on the cycling along, I think an interim step that can be done very quickly there is a couple of segments like at lake spin boulevard where it is a few hundred feet to avoid being on the street, we put up signs and that makes it easy. Some issues we have, I want to take that, which is a very good point, around there, that's a lot easier to police and the fear the few now using them are afraid they're writing a ticket, it gives them an opportunity to avoid a couple of dangerous spots without worrying about getting a citation. [03:40:55] >> That makes sense. It seems like the way to proceed and you a complicate that is approve this item with additional direction to go ahead with the in connection studies and stakeholder involvement to find out, talk about costs and infrastructure and all those issues. And, then, come back with a prop that is fully informed for the council to make that decision. >> Mayor. >>Mayor leffingwell: Mayor prome. >>Cole: I appreciate this issue that we have to police them if they're open and our opinions about a safety issue, but if they assume the risk we, we don't have to police them to that extent. You are saying we feel like we have to police them and we need to take people from the dr program. Is that correct? >> We weren't sure where we were going to take them from. It is like we have life guards on duty in the pools. To me, this is akin to leaving the pools open at night and no lighting and saying have at it, you're on your own. Police are the life guards during the day and they should be the life guards at night and we should not have people open. It is a resource issue for us. We're always trying to do more with less and sometimes we're the victims of our own success as a department. >>Cole: I totally understand that and I understand the people who said that actually being on the street was less safe than taking the trail, especially for the short distances that we had to go and so we wanted to do that for that short time. So, I want to go back to what you wering about with the other cities that you surveyed. I noticed that you use the words, a lot of times, dedicated patrol and nondedicated patrol. >> Correct. [03:42:56] >> Do you know, were those decisions made in a liability context? There might be a legal question we have to talk about. It is one thing to say it might be open, like a swimming pool, and another thing for us to say they're goto be open but there no dedicate pad troll. That doesn't mean -- patrol. That doesn't mean no patrol but no dedicated patrol the decision could be in your purview to keep it only at a 90% level and 10% for the trails and that is total flee management purview. We haven't made that as a policy decision or if we need a policy decision about the number of drs taken, we actually do that. Did you get any sense from those other cities they were actually giving people notice about how much police patrol was being provided to particular trails? >> No, we didn't have that discussion. >> We asked go b staffing models, got their information. Whether you open them, you have a greater duty. When you jump the fence at nate and swim, you do so at your own risk. That does have an impact. >> I want to make the point that I think we're saying something different with we signage to say there is dedicated patrol verses not having dedicated patrol with the hours do we or do not keep the trail open. [03:44:57] >> Chief, I appreciate the recommendation that will allow us to move forward and make the most of our trails and do it in a way that is fiscally okay with most of us. I have a question, I will go back to some of the numbers and make sure I understand that you gave us earlier, when you started out by talking about thenumber of incidents in august, september and october that our trail patrol officers addressed that were not trail incidents and it was 792? 798. >>Morrison:798. He guess we can apsalm those incidents would have occurred even if the officers were not working on the trails. Who would have responded to those incidents if they haven't been the would those have been absorbed by the downtown patrols this. >> That is a tough hypothetical. There were felony arrests, cite and release, what will happen is there would have ban further degradation for response times or the capability to affect those arrests or handle those type of calls, including, excuse me, collisions and things of that nature. >>Morrison: Were those mainly downtown incidents that you're talking about? >> I would say, yes. Part of the discussion with the focus groups, they don't see this as a trail issue only, they think is a downtown getting more as opposed to the rest of the city, so I think there is a lot of education that needs to go on as we make this policy decision. To talk about what are the challenges. The challenges we're trying to keep everybody happy as a police department, with the resources that we have. >>Morrison: I understand that. I want to key in on the sentiment there is a draining of city wide resources to address the events, not just the events but the on going entertainment district nature of downtown. [03:47:13] >> The ever-growing entertainment district of downtown, now has the east side and what people don't understand is that, if we dedicate resources to downtown of those hours, that means we're not moving people from baker, we're not moving people from charlie, we're not moving resources from david. Nothing operates in a vacuum. Our accident constantly moving resources all over the place. Right now as we speak, there is probably resources going from one sector to another. There is no such thing as only helping downtown. We impact downtown, we have a positive impact. That means it is a lesser impact on another neighborhood, if that makes any sense. >> It doesn't make any sense to me. It sounds to me like if you have more going on downtown you need to remove somebody that is not downtown and put them downtown, which lessens your resources outside of downtown. >> But that is already happening and it is happening city wide. That's what happens when you're short on resources. We constantly have to move resources around so that's part of why I want to start keeping this track in august as to what is going on and this is something we have to keep an eye out. >>Morrison: One other thing I was confused about, and that is I did hear you say earlier that, if the trails were open, we would take one dr from each area and put them on the trails. >> Correct. >> Okay. And, then, I thought I heard you say today is that even if we don't oh the trails, we're going to do that. And then I thought I heard you so, we're just thinking about doing that. Are there any plans right now to move the drs out of their dr positions? >> The drs have been part of our discussion. We have issues we're facing as a growing city, we're discussing how do we put more boots on the ground in terms of first responders. The drs have been part of that conversation. Quite frankly, they may very well be used in the future to impact the issues we're talking about here. We only have three months worth of data. We don't -- with the opening of the trails 24 hours, it was going to happen now. Without the opening of the trails, we probably with a get additional data at least up to the midnight bewitching hour there before we make any other decisions on that. [03:49:41] >> So the answer is no. >> The answer is more than likely -- >>morrison: My question was, are there plans right now move the drs? >> Yes, we had noticed them to carry out this council initiative. >>Morrison: If we approve this item, we don't open the trails, then there are no plans right now to move them? >> We would probably postpone that, yes, ma'am. >> I guess I just want to say, we've heard a lot of input in the fast weeks about how important drs are and all that they bring and what a great investment they are in our communities, so I think that as you go forward with that discussion, to be able to have that dialogue and address those issues is going to be really important. I understand it is you know, your job to do the allocation of resources but we're hearing a lot about how important they are so I urge you to have a broad dialogue about that, if you do that. >> That's why we're really hopeful that we be thoughtful and have a process for a very ificant policy decision laura morrison I'm talking about something a little different. If we have a broader discuss about the trails and bicyclists and that, that is one thing you have to deal with the growing demands in some areas and you are considering moving drs so address that. I'm asking that you consider having a broad dialogue account community when you are making those plans because we are hearing a lot about that. >> We would. That is a huge issue. We would. I mean, time is ofhe essence for us, that's why we were trying to do something. That's why we were where we are at. We are the people's police and we try to help them as best as we can. >>Morrison: People's police. You hear me, city manager. Thank you. >> The only thing I was going to chime in on is I think what the chief is talking about, d rs have been moved before. Okay? They've been moved before, so this is nothing new. When we created that, part of that is thed a junction it other officers in that area because they didn't solve it all by themselves. In the past we've been mindful and walked on egg shells before moving them but there are certain circumstances that one has to be moved for a month or something like that we try not do to that but that continuity discussion with that community being familiar with that dr and the positive work that is done. >>Morrison: I think part of this discussion needs to be acknowledged that this is a recognition of how great our drs are and how beloved they are by the community and how effective they think they are. [03:52:48] >> Absolutely. >> Some of the dialogue needs to becation and what the reality about them. I appreciate that. Thank you. >> Mayor? >>Mayor leffingwell: Council member riley. >>Riley: Chief, this past friday, about four days ago, you sent me an e-mail saying, quote, as we look at our critically low uncommitted time and degradation of our response times, we are going to move nine positions, regardless of the decision on the trails. Period, end o paragraph. Now, that -- there is no mention of we're going to look at this a little further, collect more data and think about it a little longer. We are going to move nine officers, nine positions, regardsless of the decision on the. Trails. That seems very different from what you just told council member morrison. Has there been some evolution? >> I think you know after that e-mail, we're trying to make everybody happy and we can't, we don't have the resources to keep doing and keep everybody happy. The bottom line is, we continue to get beat up on the drs and they don't want it and we're trying to avoid it. That's why the recommendation is to postpone this, have that comprehensive look. Quite frankly, we're going to continue to look at this data, this critical data and what is going on in the bewitching hours. We mayave to come back but in deferrance to the community, we prefer not to do that I am assaying let's hold this off so we don't have to do ever do that. We're trying to help you, you are ataking hits pause you're trying to balance and help everybody and help you be happy and at the same time do our job, which is to keep people safe. I think you're focusing on transportation and the safety of the cyclist but we have to focus on the policing piece which is not j the trails but is everybody. So, they still may have to go, but I would rather wait and get more of this data. We've only gotten three months worth. Again, it is about resources, shortage of resources and how do we continue to leverage and manage all of them and keep everybody's policy decisions moving forward. We did have about an hour conversation that afternoon about it and I think you know what we're trying to accomplish, trying to make everybody happy, and we just can't. There is just so many resources we have and we don't have a bottomless well of resources. We do, with this item, what we do with a lot of critical items that we really have a comprehensive discussion. What is the expectation? What are the expectations? Not just what we hear from, but the austin neighborhood councils, let them put together a committee and I can reach out to them of what they want representative. Have parks and rec, public works, police on there quite frankly, ems and their first responders to see what is coming around in the next couple years. In the interim, put a couple signs up in the most critical spots we see like on lake austin boulevard, our officers will see from this point to this point you're okay to go around. That is, everybody is giving a little bit if we take our recommendation. [03:56:29] >> Mayor? >>Mayor leffingwell: Council member martinez. He. >>Martinez: So just to be clear, that e-mail is a misstatement. There is no plan to move the drs. >> I don't think it is a misstatement. >>Martinez: So they are going to be moved regardless -- >> no. >>Martinez: I'm not trying to trap you up, I'm trying to understand what is going to happen. >> What we're trying to do is help people. >>Martinez: I understand. So am i. I'm trying to help you by getting a clear message. >> If we don't keep them open, we're not going to move them at this time. We will continue to look at this data and if if continues to be we're constantly moving resources at night away from other noons and our response times get further deg dated, we may have to come back but that will be a more in depth conversation. >>Martinez: If we accept your recommendation, no drs will be moved at this time but they will be part of a conversation moving forward depending on the demand and data you collect. >> Correct. >> You mentioned in the past we have looked to drs and, in fact, you just -- I didn't know this but I didn't know drs were created kind of with the sense that in high demand times drs may be taken, so what I would lake to see is, when did we do that in the past and what were the driving factors. How long were they moved from the dr position and what changes to put them back in the dr. You do understand what I'm saying? >> I can tell you, council member, that would be a very fluid response. What I mean by that is, if you go back, you remember the neighborhood center, the drs grew out of that so they were always supposed to be the ones doing the problem solving, long-term and help in this area by never regards at first responders. If a man got high an issue came up, classes, there were issues we may have to pull a dr back for a month and then put him back because we were running short, maybe a shift, end up having six officers instead of nine. So, there was sporadic decisions and I think that is part of what the chief is saying here as you takes a look at that in the process. You know, it's where do you have that demand and where you do pull from? >>Martinez: Sure. Maybe four officers are off with injuries on the job so you have to pull a dr to back fill? So there could be a dr today operating patrol, or no? [03:59:15] >> More than likely, no. They get pulled off, for example, luciana, that is a huge community policing program for us that spreads seeds of hope for a lot of kids that wouldn't have them. During christmas, that season, holiday season, you know, drs are helping a lot with that. There are times when, if we have a specific crime problem where we need more boots on the ground, we will say, hey, you point why you up drs. So -- pony up drs so they're like any other resource, they focus primarily on the neighborhoods, but sometimes someone in the region will get together. For example, in a neighborhood you might have a speeding problem and you decide let's all go work traffic enforcement for the next week to get peopleo slow down in that neighborhood. Quite frankly, if you write enough tickets for a few days in a neighborhood, people get conditions for before three or four months then start being bad again. So, those are the kind of areas sometimes they help, as well. >> Let me add one other thing to my response, council member. Certainly, you know, I talked about the importance of store fronts and where the d rs evolve, even when we've made these decisions in the past, they are very sparingly. You don't see that occur that often. Probably occurred more in the past when I was there than it does now because they've grown in popularity and in importance. So, it doesn't occur as much, but the chief has to look at things across-the-board when he's dealing with a specific problem. >> Great. And I appreciate this conversation, because from the e-mails that I've read, I do not get the sense that the community understands that drs are going to be pulled from time to time when necessary. I realize it is rare, doesn't happen very often, but I think the community would like to have a sense of what triggers that at some point. I know it is fluid, hard to pinpoint, but if we're going to do that, maybe start that conversation about these are the rare instances that we do ider this because based on their e-mails, I don't think that -- I didn't understand it, I will speak for myself, we do pull drs from time to time during high demand response needs. [04:01:33] >> But not for extensive periods. The one time of year they're pulled for a few weeks and not pulled completely but the focus on something sells really blue santa, which is our, I think, our number one -- it is a great program and they do a lot of good work. Without the drs, there would be no blue santa because they do all the heavy lifting. >> Okay. Thank you, chief. >> Thank you. The people's police and people's republic of austin, very appropriate. [One moment please for change in captioners] [04:04:06] >> Tovo: Let me restate it. This resolution --did you have a comment about my other question. If I may, the basic idea is to reconcile the two plans, the main street affordability -- the density bonus plan and the downtown plan. That was described by ms. Robinson the last time it came out. Based on 40 feet up to eight to one, you have to follow the bonus system. It's on site affordability. To go beyond that, you're subject to a regular downtown plan it's a different matrix -- it's a point system, it's a mechanism for increasing your density based on the density bonus program. And that could be fee in lieu. It's a combination of the two. >> I get to talk to the rationale. The density bonus program allows -- provides a path for developers to get to 12 to 1 with on site. Am I correct in that? >> Yes. >> Tovo: What you've done is taken the rainy street district back to eight to one. It seems like there's multiple ways to achieve the end you're looking for. If you want properties to develop to 15-1, one easy way may be to say they can develop to 15-1 under the same provisions for the rainy street density bonus program, ie on site affordability. That was such a key concern that gave rise to the density rebalance commission. What's the rationale at cutting it at 8-1 and having the the density program kick in? There are other community benefits. [04:06:25] >> Riley: We had the discussion about the downtown dense tip bonus system. We did have the discussion unique to rainy street. And in particular, I think, the need to preserve affordability in the neighborhood was an important part of the discussion. On site affordability was a key element and that's something we preserved through this approach. In balancing the two, we recognized that there are some additional considerations that we didn't see the downtown plan -- that made a lot of sense that were based on a -- a more -- a greater body of experience with downtown development and the -- and the density bonus system and so that the effort was just that, to apply some of that additional experience on and into this new system. And just the balance through. You're right. You can draw the line in a different way and have it more -- you can stick with more than just the rainy program. You can have just the downtown program. This was just the balancing of the two. >> Tovo: I guess I would ask you to consider having the density plan kick in from 12-1 to 15-1. The piece that was not covered by the rainy district's density bonus. So, again, providing a path for those developers to achieve what they can achieve thr the downtown density bonus program and other areas of downtown to seek some of the community benefits that are provided for the downtown density program, but not have this what I would perceive is a little bit of a step back from the rainy street affordability that allowed you to get to 12-1 but required the affordability. We have to encourage the building of affordable housing in different discussions lately and we had some discussion lately about how to use the tools to do that. On site, housing is a best way of doing that rather than fees in lieu. It gets us a little closer to our quest for geographic dispersal. I asked for you to consider that, to have the downtown density bonus program kick in there. [04:09:06] >> Cole: I want you to know we did consider that, this resolution does not do that primarily because we want it to be with the downtown austin plan and put the communities in a place at a lower level at the 40 f.A.R. And also, another major reason, and I'll let jim speak to this, the applications for the staff in not having to use the gatekeeper requirements of rainy street and also the downtown austin plan. Can you speak to that? >> We looked at two or three different scenarios by which you could blend or overlay one program on top of the other. Councilmember tovo is describing how you leave the rainy program intact so it leaves any requests for f.A.R. To 12-1. And any request from 12-1 to 15-1 would be handled by the downtown austin plan. I -- if I'm allowed to give you at least my recommendations on that, I'm not highly enthused about that. Some of the basic ten epts is they should be be fairly predictable and transparent and relatively easy to execute. If you laid the downtown program on top of the rainy program at 12-1, they would have to go to 40 feet and decide the on site affordable housing. Once they got it to 8-1 and went to 12-1, they would have to go to the aala carte program. And then they would have to go to the other communities of the downtown plan. 50% of that bonus area would have to be achieved through on site or fee in lieu of affordable housing benefits and 50% could be achieved in some other way. My recommendation on that is that doesn't pass the basic sniff test of ease of execution from the applicant and from the point of view of staff administering that program. There's a gradation here. But to my personal sniff test, that's laying one layer upon another layer upon another layer of processes that an applicant would have to go through to get to that point. You could do it that way but I wouldn't do it in the balance program. [04:12:11] >> You're having two different programs. Fewer layer, overlaying fewer layers? >> That one involves the most layer -- that option where you allow rainy to apply up to 12 and downtown density bonus to go from 12 to 15 involves the most layering of processes one upon the other. If I think of three different option, one option you mentioned a moment ago would be you could not even apply the downtown program to the rainy district and if you just changed 12-1 in the existing program to the 15-1 program, the rainy program would apply and you would allow projects to get to 15-1. That's one option. That's probably the least layering. But it doesn't bring to the table some of the ben if I wants and attributes of the downtown program. The third option would be the intentio of the makers of this resolution would be to leave the rainy program up to far. Affordable housing. On site affordable housing, and 5% of total units up to an fao of 8. At 8, that's easy to administer. That's just running the numbers of how many square feet are within the 8-1. And what percentage of the units are within that. The gatekeeper requirements would kick in and the other elements of the downtown plan would kick in. It's a little more layering but it's a balancing of the two different extremities of the different options. 12 to 15 is the most layering, less is 18 to 1, 15-1. And then allowing it to go to 15-1 which with the intent of allowing as much affordability as possible. I wonder if our housing staff could weigh in on what you think the impact might be and whether there is a need for on site in that area. [04:14:35] >> If it would be helpful to the council so I could be facile in talking about this, I looked at a hypothetical project under those three different types of programs we're discussing here. And I at least have my calculations to the number of units produced under the different options, the amount of money that maybe would be produced and so forth. If that's helpful. Either you can ignore it and we can revisit it on thursday or whatever. But if that's helpful, I can share with you copies of that. >> Councilwoman tovo can get her answers? >> The neighborhood housing and community office. I would say we continue to hear from our advocates, our stake holders around the spirit of intent of rainy. Not to say I was involve in the conversations at that time. But one of the attributes out in the doesn't bonus the way it's structured is the on site requirement. I want to be diligent. A shift in that now, we're working in a resolution back in august to move forward to ensuring that an affordability requirement period is signaled in an amendment. So within a discussion around this amendment, we would want to get very speci guidance to take that into account as we're moving forward -- I believe you all received a memorandum and will be moving forward with the community development commission and the ordinances around the proposed amendment. I would tell you we would participate in hearing from our advocates and the community commission that the on site affordability remains pertinent in discussion around the rainy density bonus. >> Councilmember morrison? [04:16:39] >> Morrison: I get the issue if we think about the density bonuses in two clumps, one is the affordability. The other is the other benefits. And so you're suggesting that you don't want people to have to switch from rainy benefits from -- with it going from 8 to 12 to the benefits going from 12-15. You ear trying to make 245 so there's only one set of those other benefit criteria that they have to fit. Is that -- >> my recommendation -- I'm trying to stay away from any recommendation that veers into policy. That's obviously your purview, not mine. I was speaking simply to administration of program and participation of a program from the point of view from the applicant. The administration from the point of view from the city staff. So my comments have nothing to do with your decisions as to what form of benefit serve your policies. I'm talking about the process in essence under the one where you apply this rainy. You have 5% affordability after 40 feet. The 65-point a la carte system to get to 12-1 far. Then the gatekeeper requirements of downtown kick in. In addition you have to achieve your additional far through some kind of affordability benefit. Speaking of range of process and participation in the program. That to my mind, there's a threshold. To me, that's cross the threshold to the area where you're not achieving some of the basic predictability affordability ease that we had on the downtown plan that ought to be a benchmark for a successful program [04:18:45] >> Morrison: I can understand that if you're looking at to get a certain -- one set of rules or programs you have to go through to get from 8 to 12. I get that could be problematic and challenging. I wish I had made a little chart in a nice form to share with everybody. But it seems to me there's one option we might not have looked at. That is because we're talking about the affordability requirement and then the other benefits. And if we think -- when I think about thetown bonus program, the downtown bonus program, it's split into two also. It's an affordability requirement and another benefits requirement. Have we looked at and considered -- I think we all agree, to get the 8-1, we're going the rainy affordability. Have we looked at and considered when we go from 8 to 12, we plug in the rainy affordability requirement to the affordability requirement for dap? I don't think we talked about that possibility yet. Because that way we would still be able to achieve on site getting to 12-1. But nobody would have to do the -- the correction of programs in the rainy requirement for the bonuses any time you're going to be doing the other benefits, it would be the dap benefits. So that would be an in between option. I would like to say that I think it's a tradeoff because the rainy affordability requirement is 5% of the dwelling units for if dap affordability requirement, isn't it 10%? >> It works out to 10%. The downtown plan program expressed it differently. In rainy, it was 5% of the total units. In the downtown plan, we expressed it as essentially you get 10 bonus square feet for every one square foot of affordable -- on site affordable housing. So it's roughly 10% in the downtown plan. [04:21:05] >> If we're going -- let's say we go up to 8 and we have 5% of all of those units, we're going to add the project. We're going to go from 8-12. We're doing rainy, we get 5% of those units compared to if we're doing the dap affordability to go from 8 to 12, we get -- we're just looking at the code four feet? >> Correct. >> I'm getting -- -- >> Morrison: Do you see my point? I wonder if there's the option of the option of staying within the on site requirement, 5% going from 8 to 12. But kick them in to the downtown gatekeeper and other benefit programs so that they're never having to address the programs in this rainy street -- excuse me, c-4 in the rainy street. Do you think it's at all doable? Do you think about it? >> I think so, yes. I think they're probably -- I think you can probably accomplish this in quite a few different ways other than the three we talked about plus your fourth. If you don't mind if I can ask you a question about yours. If the project wants to go to 14 or 15 then, would the affordable housing benefits kick in at 12 then? >> Morrison: Yes. I think that -- I think we can consider having -- I mean it could go either way at that point. They're going to switch sometime, right? They're going to switch from the rainy affordability to the dap affordability to 8 or 12 or not at all. The way it is now, it's 8. This way you switch at 12. I would like to push all the way to 15. I think at least getting it to 12 would allow us to give a not to that original intent. [04:23:19] >> I do understand the option, the distinction you're making. The option you're proposing there would remove some of the layering that I expressed concern about. Because, in essence, the 65-point ala cart thing would go away. You would use the rainy program in essence -- so I understand I want. >> Morrison: Maybe you can give us thoughts about that between now and thursday. That might be an in between. The question really is, is it feasible from your point of view, from a practical program mattic point of view to plug in the rainy affordability to the dap program where we've got that block -- if everybody remembers the beautiful -- I have it right here. The beautiful flowchart from the dap and this block up here is about affordable housing. So the question is can we plug in the rainy affordability there without -- and have it still make sense? Well, I will -- what I'll do is probably try to add a fourth sort of column here. >> Morrison: That would be great. >> To illustrate how yours would play out. >> Cole: Mayor? >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mayor pro tem? >> Cole: I want to ask existing rainy doesn't require residential, does it? Buildings? So would that be a kink in this option? >> The existing rainy program, the I'm going to look to the ordinance right now before I start talking. The existing rainy program -- and I'm looking specifically at section 25-2-739 of the land development code, said the residential or mixed use building, the maximum building height p height is 40 feet. This does not aplue to 12% of the units that are available as for the affordable housing units. But in essence, the 40-foot height limit that exists in rainy applies to residential projects. If someone were to develop a purely office project, purely a project in rain yip, the 40-foot height limit would not apply. The 40-foot height would be a project that would include residential unit [04:26:14] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember spelman? >> Spelman: The easiest way to implement councilmember morrison's suggestion is to have the downtown program with the respect of f-8 and remove the option in fee in lieu require all affordable housing on site. Because downtown density program provides a choice of on site or a fee in lieu. We just remove the fee in lieu option. That would be the easiest way to handle it. Again, I question the whole argument, on site versus fee in lieu, we get more units than fee in lieu. We have more requirements on site. What's the crosswalking between these two. How many more units offsite do we get versus the on site stuff. And since jim's given us some numbers of what the fee in lieu would like like in this case, and the metric -- if I gave the folks in housing another $1 million, how many units would we be able to construct with that $1 million. >> One option, I want to make sure -- on site means on site. Once the fee if lieu is created, there's other options as to sort of both the location and the type of unit that they would deliver. But I suspect the answer will be a sliding scale depending on where and how you spent those dollars. >> Tovo: The fee in lieu goes to the site. Unless the cost is codified, it allows us to use the fee in lieu in multiple areas. Apologies if I don't answer your question directly. We're looking at $100,000, $150,000 to build new construction elsewhere. But something in the housing trust fund does not preclude for the funds to be utilized for rehabilitation of unit elsewhere as well. [04:28:22] >> Spelman: Okay. And so -- what you've been doing up to this point is using the housing trust fund for a combination of new instruction and rehabilitation of old units, which are not up to code and are not habitable but will become habitable or stay habitable. If I were to look for an on average -- the current use of the housing trust fund over the last couple of years, $1 million is how many units? A minimum of ten units. A minimum of six units. Between 6 and 10 is all of the money were spent on new construction, it may be considerably more than that if we're spent in our usual arrangement of some new construction and some rehabilitation. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: If you can in the next couple of days give me a sense of what that combination looks like and what the million dollars can buy us, in'd like to hear about it. >> We can do that. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember tovo? >> Tovo: I think those are both good suggestions. I would ask in providing the responses if you could give us a sense of whether those dollars could be spent anywhere in town at that level. For ple, I think I heard you say $100,000 to $150,000 per unit. Could that be -- could you construct for that amount anywhere in town or just certain areas of town? And also give us some sense of the size of the project. The extent to which fees in lieu really help us with the goal of geographic dispersion. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Any -- mayor pro tem? >> Cole: We wanted to point to mitch robinson's schedule. It's already very, very helpful that we'll make this policy discussion. It shows that the current resolution as adopted, which is option three, is that correct, mr. Robinson? [04:30:31] >> Yes, the current resolution as I understand the language of it is illustrated in option three. >> Cole: That would result in 12 affordable units on site between $50,000 to $1 million in fee in lieu to discuss how that could be spent. And I think you have one number one would be -- actually -- do you have an option that contemplates going from 8-1, from 8-1 to 12-1, then 12-1 to dap? You don't have that option yet? Or is that option one? >> Option one is you allow -- you don't tinker with the rainy program at all. And you just say the downtown program kicks in at 12-1 and above. >> Cole: Downtown. That would be the point system from 8-1 to 12-1. >> Yes. >> Cole: So that really is option one? >> That's the one that I expressed some reticence about. >> Cole: Reticence about because of application to staff and potential developers. So in that option, we only have -- we had 17 affordable units. So we're considering 17 affordable units and a fee in lieu of $234,000 and $468,000 versus the current rez lights of 12 affordable housing units and a fee in lieu from $500,000 to $1 million? >> Yes. >> Cole: Okay. >> I hope it's clear. I have a company notes page that actually provides a little bit of a narrative and calculation and background on the calculations. It's not abundantly clear looking at a number on the table. What I included ed was sort of in response to a question that councilmember morrison said a few weeks ago which is provided and just sort of a comparison of the two -- the two different existing ordinances or statutes, the downtown density program and the rainy that talks about the different characteristics of each. It's not an evaluation of hypothetical. It's just what attributes of the two different programs. [04:33:01] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: I wanted to make one more comment. The affordability benefits and the other benefits. To make it to the program from a practical administrative perspective, the list does not have to switch between when you're looking at the other benefits going from rainy benefits to the dap benefits. The fact is we are going to -- we have two different ways to capture the affordability benefits and we acknowledged that we're going to keep the rainy street affordability benefits to a certain degree. So that is going to switch. The question is where is it going to switch. That for me is the question that we need to deal with here. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Thank you very much. Next items we can consider the two together. Items 41 and 42 pulled by councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Yes, these are items that councilmember martinez and I brought forward along with mayor pro tem cole. So they are similar as you'll see. I wanted to explain why they're similar. First I wanted to explain that we need to make some adjustments to the dates that are specified in the resolution just to be absolutely accurate. I appreciate the staff for weighing in at a couple of times. I'm sorry I missed their point on this. On this particular one. On october 1, they posted signs on the cemeteries, on november 1, they'll start tagging items, as I understand it, people will have 30 days to remove those and it will stagger a bit in terms hoff the cemeteries and when they begin to be tagged. Austin memorial park is slated for november 1 tagging, documenting, and being provided with notice. Ever green is actually january 1. I'll make the adjustments before and repoet boast of these items on thursday -- or before thursday. But the reason there's two resolutions came from a discussion that councilmember martinez and I had. There was a concern that with number 41, we're directing the city manager with an adopted city rule. That posed some concerns. Maybe I'll let them articulate them that posed some concerns about whether we were stepping out of the policy rule. For as an alternative for the council to consider, we have instead a number 42, expressed our position as a new policy. I think it makes much better sense, frankly, to -- to call a halt on moving forward with enforcement of the cemetery regulations, allow there to be some discussions with stake holders and with the public. Stake holders are the public. But the parks board. Others who want to participate in that discussion, and then have staff return to council -- city council return to council with a proposed policy that takes those concerns into account. However, if we need to, we should just adopt the policy as the council that provides the individuals with explicit ownership over their will burial plot in terms of grave ornamentation and then have the discussions and re-evaluate that policy if need be. So that is the distinction between the two. The first be it resolved clause. This is no items on the burial plot pending the stake holder process. The other two be it resolved are repeat in the next one. In 42. It's the city managers directed to recommend the policy avoiding the burial plot subject to the burial plot. I can talk about the rationale for bringing this forward. I feel strongly that practices of ornamenting a grave are very personal choices. They are often grounded in religious traditionings and cultural traditions. As I went to some of the historical cemeteries like oak wood, you can see evidence of some of the same things that are going to be enforced. Some of the older grave, there are perimeter pavers that are in place for 100 years. That's what's going to be enforced in the austin memorial park. I think this is a matter of great concern. I do not want to see the city move forward with enforcement of requiring the removal of personal objects, at least without having a consideration about where we might set that policy in a way that allows people to honor their deceased loved ones in a way that's meaningful and provide the safeties that we all expect in visiting our public facilities. Councilmember martinez. [04:38:29] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Can I work in a quick question. You're not proposing there be no standards at all? For what goes on to -- you say granted ownership of the particular plots. That way they could do with it whatever they wanted to. I assume I heard you wrong or you didn't mean that? >> Tovo: I anticipate the policy -- if we're reconsidering the policy, I assume there's going to be more nuance to that. But I believe under state law, people own the actual plots. There are allowances. Every municipality can regulate and private cemeteries as well can regulate what goes on there. But I believe we need -- right now the rules and regulations basically limit people and our staff can chime in here. I've got them in front of me, but limit the ability to have, for example, perimeter pavers, objects that aren't flowers. There are time limits on how long you can have flags there and other things. And I believe those rules should be much more flexible. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I believe there should be some rules, obviously, some standards for what kind of decorations that you can put on these grave sites. Some of the things that I've read about that are going on now, haven't actually seen them but read about them in the newspaper, unopen beer can, toys, that kind of thing. I think frankly you not only have to respect the persons who have loved ones in those particular plots, but also everybody else. If it results in something that the entire area becomes trashy looking, that's a matter of concern to me. I have an uncle that's buried in the cemetery out by hancock and so I have a consideration that surrounding of where he was buried be maintained in a way that's respectful to him. My parents are buried in a cemetery off of 290, william cannon, that's a private cemetery and there are strict standards about what you can put on these grave sites. In addition to that, I have read that people are going outside their own personal plots and putting things down, like mattresses and so forth. Whatever we do, we have to have regulations that maintain these areas in a tasteful -- it's not just whatever you'd like to put out there. You have toe respect for other people that have loved ones out there too. [04:41:25] >> Martinez: Mayor? >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: Your points are extremely well taken. That's why we have this because everybody has a differing opinion on what is tasteful and what is not tasteful. I did not contemplate there being no regulation at all. We've seen some photos of some things that obviously there are of concern that are safety hazards or could be detrimental to the environment in terms of hanging stuff from trees, things of that nature. What we want do is hit the pause button and have that conversation so that we can come up with, in my opinion, a much more reasonable approach rather thaning here's a notice. These rules have been in place for 40 years. Even though we haven't been imposing them, we will start on november 1. What you've been doing for the last ten years I against the rules. That to me is what I heard the most that caused the most angst. We have veterans' groups that are very upset about some of the veterans are buried in the cemeteries that -- were killed in action. We heard caretakers from those plots. We don't contemplate anything than having a meaningful discussion about what is the most appropriate and allowing the folks the time to give that input and to share their concerns with us, as well as steph. We met with staff. My staff has met with parks staff. Totally understand their concerns. They are charged with maintaining our cemeteries. It makes it difficult when you have to maneuver around objects and deal with certain circumstancings. As it relates to this item, I do also appreciate the concerns that were brought forward. But I disagree that it's outside of our bounds from the policy realm. I believe that the maintenance and operations of our cemeteries is completely within our policy purview. And I referred to, in the conversation with law -- or with city manager, I referred to it previously that we all voted on, plot 64 on raymond street was put to sale by public works. It was put in the paper. Put up -- sold to the highest bidder. As soon as it was made aware to us, we put an item on. That item directed the city manager to not sell that property and come back to us with options of what we can do. So I fail to see how that wasn't -- that same standard applied to this resolution wasn't applied then when we voted on it 7-0 to direct the city manager not to do something that he was fully capable of doing under his authority. We felt differently about the piece of property that the city owned. Likewise, this is the -- the city is a city of austin piece of property. And there are some rules that are trying -- that are attempting to be imposed that we feel like we feel strongly that they -- that we take the necessary time to have these conversations. So I think this is within our purview. I think we should strike this conversation with some plot owners and caretakers and the families and loved ones and do it in a little more methodical approach as opposed to giving you notice and start enforcing the rule [04:44:52] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Ask the city attorney to comment on the difference between the two examples cited? >> Everybody is aware that the policy gives information to the manager and how to implement the policies for the city and the city manager directs it city employees. Some of you articulated this very clearly moments ago talking about the trails. That's the way things would work. If there had been times in the past that you have been more directed, if that had been after a conversation. This is a place to have a conversation about policy. And I think you all are doing that. We would certainly recommend that you use the item 42 and withdraw item 41. Because item 42 is the one that talks about policy. And then as you talk through things, you can give guidance about that. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Was that your intention, councilmember tovo? Withdraw 41 and leave 42? >> Tovo: My intention, I'll let councilmember martinez speak to his, but to bring it to the council. For the reasons you sugged, I would prefer not stating a policy as we are in 42. We're allowing ornamentation of the burial plot subject to the plots. It doesn't capture the kind of nuances that you're talking about or I would expect would come from the more deliberative stakeholder discussions that I would anticipate would take place as a result of either resolution. I would say in terms of our intent, as hitting the pause button and allowing us to have that conversation and then craft a more nuanced policy, I think 41 is the better choice. Either it will have the same effect of giving us time to have a conversation about how best to allow more flexibility in terms of grave ornamentation while also respecting that they need to be safe environments and respectful of other visitors as well. [04:46:58] >> Mayor Leffingwell: To me, item 41 is flat and 42 is round. I could support item 42. Because I truly believe it's round. I don't believe it's flat. And item 41 blatantly interferes with the city manager's authority. That's my opinion. I'm no lawyer. But it happens to be the law department's opinion. >> Spelman: If I may, it is also my opinion, likewise, with respect on 41, that councilmembers know that already and in regard to the sell of property on there, I see that as different in the sense that ultimately the sale of property is a matter that ultimately has to come before council. And since you are the ultimate decision makers in that case, you became aware of it and took a sort of action to tell us that you didn't want that to occur. In the event we had gone on anyway, it would have been d.O.A. Because you get to make that decision. In this case we're talking about an operational issue. The practice that is in place, I don't want to talk about necessarily the enforcement part of it, because I think the specific day-to-day basis how they were doing doing that. So I see the language in 41 that we're talking about here as a -- as a direction to me to direct staff about an operational issue. That already exists. 42, I think, asks the manager to develop a policy that at the end of the day, it's acceptable to council would for the time being, at least, preclude the removal of the kinds of things that we're talking about and provide sufficient time for the development of a policy ultimately that would be in place on a permanent basis. So, with a much higher level of comfort, with item 42 than it is with 41 because we think that 41, that language does -- will be on. [04:49:08] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember martinez? >> Martinez: The main reason we brought it up today is so we could have a public discushion about it and share those opinions and positions of what we think it does and doesn't do. I'm fully comfortable moving forward in item 42. I'm comfortable knowing that you understand our concerns. You fully asked them. And you're willing to take council direction and move forward with creating a policy that meets the goals we talked about in the resolution and some of the issues, quite frankly, we brought up this morning. So completely understand, appreciate the exchanges of information and your explanation. Just wanted to leave it on today so we can talk about this and so I could get a direct response as to what is the difference? Because I cited one resolution, but I think if I spent a little bit of time, I could find multiple resolutions of us giving explicit direction. >> Spelman: Let me speak to in a in the broadest sense, there are times, there have been times in the past, there are still time, when I have the same kind OF CONCERN WITH RESPECT TO IFCs To be quite frank with you where I do believe and the attorney's office believes that the language -- the directive LANGUAGE IN RESOLUTIONS IFCs Will go beyond policy. That's no secret. Probably said that for the first time in 2008 when I first arrived here. So it's no secret. It's just that at some point, you have to get past the battles and trying to -- I'm being candid about it, and try to have a conversation to understand what the number or numbers may be trying to achieve that you try to craft language to help you do that. I know the city attorney spends a lot of time doing that. On the other hand, there are times when we are compelled to raise that issue to let you know that we have those concerns and we do our utmost to persuade you to modify -- to modify your language. Because at the end of the day, this is a council manager form of government and there's no ambiguity about that in the city's charter. [04:51:26] >> Cole: Mayor? >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mayor pro tem. >> Cole: I wanted to talk to councilmember tovo -- sometimes we all have crossed the line a little way one way or the other in terps of not doing policy. Sometimes management crosses the line as it suggests policy issues too. We have to give each other a little bit of wiggle room with on that. But I do think that item 42 is a preferred way to approach this with the actual policy directive. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison? >> Morrison: I appreciate the discussion. I can certainly think of examples but I'll leave that aside now. I just want to make sure that I understand that if we pass item 42 from the city manager's point of view, will the enforcement then be suspended because we are going to be in the process of selling out the policy that has been adopted? >> My assumption with respect to the language of 42, given the development of the policy characterized here that council's intent would be for it to have immediate effect. If that's the case, if that's the intent, then it will stop. In the meantime, we will be working on policy language consistent with the rest of the language in this resolution that would ultimately come back for consideration. >> Morrison: Okay. Sounded like a good alternative. And, you know, the bottom line is when it comes down to it, with all of the philosophical discussions that we have to have and we talk about, the bottom line is, you know, your understanding the concerns that we're hearing and trying to address, it usually works out. >> Spelman: Now give the staff an opportunity. Because I know that in the absence of enforcement in the short term, they do have some concerns. Now is a perfect time to express those so you're aware of them. [04:53:27] >> Assistant city manager? >> Obviously the intent of the resolution is very clear that there's a policy consideration here. The way we read that resolution, it pretty well, you know, sets out a process in a you want to look at best practices, you look at the cultural and the sensitivity ethically, you know, related issues with the diverse cities. So we're going to look at that piece of it as well as the stake holder process that the -- if I'm reading the resolution correctly, there's a stake holder process going through the parks and rec board. So that would be our intent which when he would not enforce. We go through the process and come back. >> As I'm looking relative to something else. I think we all understand what you just said. But given the policy in the short term that the intent of the meet effect which means we stop, the opportunity we have here is we express the concerns from an operational standpoint. >> I wanted to make sure we applied common sense to that direction, to basically suspend the cleanup. I want to make sure you don't feel you're prohibited in removing that. >> Director of parks and recreation. Pleasure to be here. That would be our same sense. Mr. Mayor and you understand working with city manager and city council aids that we had expressed our concern. There's a backstop in the respective resolutions that would allow for us to remove the safety concern. And even move beyond the boundaries. See relaxing the rules enforcement. It's for possibly people to come forward. But some more limitations that may exceed what we would consider to be acceptable. Shared standard practice or possibly even beyond that. Even now, there are a lot of discussions happening by the city attorney's office with certain groups that are wounded. Certainly inflammatory in symbolism and text. I would say an added nuance would be to allow for some sort of limitation on not just safety and boundaries to the plot, but also allow for enforcement based on -- not sure how to word it, but based on any limitation -- [04:56:17] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I would -- I would expect that. You know, it's something that's inflammatory. There could be racial statements, for example. There could be -- there will be pornographic statements, things like that, I would expect that you would use your common sense on items like that. >> Correct. We are here to express our support. We're happy to go back out there and review the issue and engage stake holders and go to the parks board and make sure you have the recommendation and the support back to council. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison was next. >> Morrison: Yeah, just a follow-up question. That is, why now? Why did this get raised right now? We're working over some more personal ability. So maybe it came to light. Why now? >> Troy huffman, division manager. In april we took over some. The concerns that came to us from the stake holders and the folks that visited the cemeteries was the lack of uniformity, just some of the ornamentation that was out there that wasust really outrageous and a little past their plots. So that's one of the major concerns. We wanted to address those as we came forward. We wanted to put our best foot forward. I think we've done that. We've really stepped up on maintenance and operations. The cemeteries have looked better now than ever before. This is part of this, because we started to do some cleanup. Another part of it is maintenance and operations with some of the ite -- items. As the ornaments become a little larger, it becomes a little more difficult for staff to do the maintenance out there. We're fortunate. Thanks for the staff we received in the budget that we receive in the past year, almost $2.4 million to address a lot of these things. Going be addressing some of the headstones that are falling over by the trees that are dangerous. But also one of the things that slows us down is the large monuments that become permanent. They're putting down pavers, they're putting down gravel. And we'd be happy to share a lot of these pictures with you folks. And so it's really a maintenance issue for us. Can we work around it? Yes. Is there room for some compromise? Yes. That's what we want to do in the future is to have this discussion with our stake holders. I think we can do some things that will make our -- that will make everybody happy. But my concern in the short term is that if we -- if we get really lax in enforcing the rules, you might get some things that put their foots down and hold in place. That's how we got to this situation. We didn't enforce the rules 15 years ago, ten years ago, we didn't enforce the rules. That's how we got this point now. This does open the door for conversation. [04:59:24] >> Bottom line is there's no emergency. We've been dealing with this for quite a while. I do think that this interim period could be interesting. Obviously the examples are inflammatory and inappropriate materials there might be some. But I'll let my colleagues who both seem to jump in at that statement comment on that because that could get us into challenging areas and if we do go there, I can assure you we'll hear about it. >> I hope they will be really full discussions because, you know, if we are asking -- if we are asking people in one cemetery not to put papers, again, what do we do about the graves that are 100 years ago that have iron fences around them? We have learned for many years, it seems to me, to maintain grades that are not uniform, including the historic cemeteries. They are not uniform by any means. They are beautiful mosaics on some and concrete stone -- it is very -- it is very varied but I saw some but more commonly I saw an angel( statute jew that is currently not allowed, a flag beyond the holiday time. There are other things that I hope we have a policy that, again, allows more flexibility while still, of course, making sure that these are respectful places for people to visit their loved ones. Just to clarify my answer to mayor leffingwell's concern before, I don't think any of us are talking about what happens outside the bounds of the buriel plot and certainly you can address the concerns regarding health and safety concerns so this won't effect any changes in that regard. [05:02:18] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Jesse, do you have any examples of previous cases where you felt -- where staff felt there were inflammatory items or language? >> I would show -- again, I am dareful in how I comment regarding some current conversations that are occurring at the moment, but this would -- no, we have not been involved in cemeteries all that long, obviously. It's more forward thinking and what we have in the works at the moment compensates for having council member martinez. >> Martinez: One thing that has been mentioned -- now that I think about it -- like we allow haured cemetery tours around halloween, that seems to me inflammatory if I have a loved one I want to rest in peace to have a commercial operation charging for tours to try to scare people on halloween night. Are we -- is that going to be part of the discussion going forward, whether or not we will allow that to continue? >> We will, sir. At this point in time -- again, bear in mind we are city officials and we are obligated the enforce the rules that welly at this point have no choice but to follow what is on the books until such a time a change is made. So those are the things that were put in place before our time and we are certainly looking at all of those items but I think it's right and proper for us to have that conversation now and determine -- certainly not our wants and needs. We have certain preferences when it comes to maintenance, but we certainly -- we are here to reflect the wants and needs of the citizens of the austin and we can do that through conversation with them. >> Martinez: Thank you. >> I also want to add we are going through the city process right now and the particular topic of tours and cemetery revenues we are trying to look for, that topic has come up and will be discussed and presented through the master plan. Whether it is supported or not, that's open for discussion. Right now the tours that are being sponsored are nty staff and so now that we have more control over the city -- I mean, more control over the cemeteries itselfs since we are there every day, I don't think this will go on very much in the future until we have these discussions. [05:04:48] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Thank you. Item c1, hispanic latino quality of life advisory commission appointments. I assume that is council member martinez. Who posted this item? >> Martinez: I did not. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Who posted this item? >> Mayor, I can speak to it a little bit. I know I have had separate conversations with various council members. This simply, I think there was a discussion that council member martinez had at the last council meeting, just simply conveying to you that there were applications in hand with the council in terms of consideration. I had suggested in conversation with council member morrison if council wanted to have an opportunity to have some discussion about the process moving forward, that this might be a way to do that. If not, it is certainly at your leisure and your pleasure when you want to move forward but I think I was certainly trying to provide an avenue for the council to have an opportunity to talk amongst themselves and november forward in consideration of the applications so I guess it is my fault for putting it on here. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I didn't say "fault." I just asked who is going to talk about it. >> Martinez: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Now I absolutely remember the conversation. [Laughter] and the reason bert put this on is because I mentioned last week possibly we put this on a few of the next -- the next few work sessions so we can talk about who we might be potentially looking at as an appointment so we have a well rounded advisory commission in the end when we make all of the final appointments and that's why it is on today. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Any comments? >> Morrison: A question. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: Council member martinez or somebody might be able to remind us. There are some specific goals that we adopted when we created this committee about what arenas we wanted to cover. Can you remind us what those are so we can be keeping those in mind? [05:06:58] >> Sure. I think definitely the working group focused on a number of key areas an started out with an initial focus and them expanded it. They were looking at everything from youth programs to health issues, to education. You know, what do you call it? The civic participation, which is another one I thought was a very good area to include. So those were some of the topic areas. I think part of the challenge here is there is a number of the initial recommendations, priorities for the first year that span all of the specific issue areas so it's hard to say, you know, what is it that they -- that this commission would like to do first. The objective of the commission would obviously look at -- start looking at the whole report. You know, start vetting out specific issues and recommendations the first year and then we would have staff work with them very carefully to bring forward either low hanging fruit type of items that could span either of those issue areas or opportunities or the ones that they feel are more critical moving forward so even though it spans a number of the critical areas, it could be in any one of them, I guess is what my point is. >> Morrison: Great, I will just throw out to my colleagues that I haven't had a chance to dive into all of the applications yet but one of the areas I had been thinking about focusing on is the health area, to let you know I will be looking at that. For anybody that missed it, the new york times on sunday, had a really fabulous article on the back page of the front section about the -- some of the work going on here in austin about hispanic outreach and the latino health forum and how important -- the works that going on in terms of reaching out for signing up for health exchanges and things like that so I am going to be looking into that realm myself. >> Riley: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member riley. >> Riley: I appreciate the comments and I will put it out there that I did meet recently one one of the applicants. Her name is dr. Yolanda padilla and works with the school of social work and authored many papers regarding the hispanic quality of life and it was very interesting and we will be hearing from her this thursday. [05:09:16] >> Martinez: And I made an a in her class. [Laughter]. >> Spelman: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member spelman. >> Spelman: We haven't made appointment yet, we will be in two weeks. >> Martinez: Likewise -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Sorry, mayor. Thank you. I am going to take this time to continue this conversation with you all. I don't want to rush into making an appointment until I guess I feel more comfortable that we have a good group, but obviously we have a lot of folks calling us, wanting to serve on that commission. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Any other comments? Okay. Thank you. Council member master. >> Morrison: This is not a comment on this item but I wanted to make a comment on another item before we go on to the briefing, if I may, if we are ready to move on. >> Mayor Leffingwell: If it is a brief comment. >> Morrison: It is a very ief comment and that is we have impact fees -- several items on impact fees, numbers 2, 3, 73, an council member riley and I are going to be requesting a time certain of 6:30 for those items. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Very good. So now we will go to the briefing item which is -- >> Tovo: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Project connect central corridor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: I need to slip out to a police retirement and need to make this comment now. We have a requirement for requests for aids walk austin and I heard from the sponsors and I want to say that I am also going to contribute $250 from my office budget towards those costs, so however that needs to happen. I don't know if I need to say it again on thursday, but that's my intention. I understand they still have a gap if anybody else wants to use their fee waiver budget in that way. >> Morrison: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Uncil member morrison. >> Morrison: I appreciate that, council member tovo and just to let you know, you know, we had a discussion some time ago about whether or not constables could provide the law enforcement requirements and the answer was yes, they can, as long as the chief signs offer on it. Well, it turns out that we -- signs off on it and it turns out we need to reform our system because these folks like these folks are being told they may not use other law enforcement so we are hoping to get the cost of this down. I don't imagine -- I imagine any contributions are still going to be needed but just to let you know, we are working on that because some misinformation had been passed on that they weren't allowed to use constables and the police chief said he never turned anyone down and so we want to make sure there are some requests going on. [05:11:48] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I will say for the record my long-standing policy is to not approve fee waivers that go directly to payment for public safety, only for right-of- way only. So with that, we can go to our briefing. Ed. >> Thank you, mayor, robert goode, assistant city manager. I want to take a few minutes and set the stage for kyle, to remind you all what we are going to brief you on today. As you remember, the transit working group led by mayor leffingwell and council member spelman, worked for 18 months to put together a regional vision of high capacity transit systems for our area. And the next step is what should be the next investment, the next investment in that vision and so we are working again with mayor leffingwell and council member spelman at central corridor advisory group to determine what the next investment would be. Obviously you all immediate to be engaged in that. We have a decision point for you in december. We have a briefing today to give you background, data we are collecting and the data we are collecting, and another update in november and a decision point of december. So I wanted to kind of lay the background on the aggressive timeline that we are moving on as staff and engage you in the next few months for that decision and I will turn it over to kyle. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Before you start, I want to say I am compelled to make this statement before every discussion of the central corridor, because there has been so much information out there in the media, in other places. In fact, in the local media a couple of weeks ago, there was one of these dualing editorial type things where the map was showed as the city of austin/capital of metro proposal. There is no such thing, there is no such animal at this point in time. We do not have a proposal. That is the mission of the advisory group, is to determine what that alignment is, and our first step as we go forward is to -- before we determine the alignment in the central corridor is to determine what the first subcorridor is going to be and you are going to go through all of that in these briefings. But once we determine what the subcorridor is going to be, then that will kind of lead us towards the actual alignment of the urban rail in the central corridor. Again, there is no proposal now. That's what we are trying to figure out. [05:14:35] >> Thank you, mr. Mayor. I am kyle kahee with hntb and pleased to be serving as the urban rail league for capital metro and the lone star rail district. We have had a number of opportunities to visit with you regarding the central corridor and high capacity transit study we are doing but I look forward to this meeting with the entire council and as robert said, we will be back a couple of times over the next year as we look to make important decisions about where the next investment for high capacity transit will be. There is 7 items I want to cover you. It is not intended to scare you. It is basically how I am organizing my thinking right now, but clearly the most important part we will talk about at the beginning is an important context for this is and that is project connect. I know you all have had several discussions and I will frame that discussion around the project connect effort that has gone forward. Then I want to zoom in on the central corridor efforts. We will talk a little bit about our work plan moving forward. Our public involvement efforts which are an essential part of our program. We will talk about the detailed efforts of our study area and subcorridor areas that the mayor indicated and we are moving towards an evaluat of the subcorridors and then I will frame up what I will go back to you on november on. Quickly I want to talk about project connect. I want to applause the community, the city, and capital metro and others in undertaking this effort. Obviously there has been a lot of regional planning that has gone on -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: Lone star rail, too. >> Yes, lone star, too. The regional effort that campo has done has been very positive, has been very future oriented but what has been missing has been what I will call integrated transit system plan and that's how these multiple investments for high capacity actually come together. What we are going to be talking about is subsequent to that project connect effort, that transit system planning effort, and that's actually digging into specific corridors that look at alignments and modes and actually come up with a project that will move through the project development process. When project connect was done, there were three major focus areas for that are one to look at it from a system perspective, organizational perspective and a funding perspective. You will see an important component for each one of those. From a system perspective, how will this transit system actually come together and be woven together. That's a very important part that there is a functionality and you don't have to go from one mode to the other. We want it to be easy to do those moves. The other part of this is organizationally, focusing on making this a joint effort. As y'all know, this is not something that capital metro can do. It is not just something that the city does. It is what we do together and so that important organization is a part of project connect's thinking, as is the funding. Funding is really where the rubber meets the road on a lot of these efforts. There isn't just one magic source of funding out there. It is using awe of the tools in the tool box to be able to move this program forward. The results of the project connect effort is illustrated on the slide in front of you. This is what is called the project connect vision map. It took a couple of years of everybody's time and effort and sweat to be able to put it together. As you see along the three items of system, funding, and organization, there were three really critical -- those three critical areas. We are connecting 25 centers and the airport in this system. That covers four counties and 13 cities, very ambitious program but it I again worth compliments that we have a -- worth complementing that we have a regional vision for high capacity transit moving forward. The other part is the funding aspect. We understand at a very broad level -- high level cost estimate $4 billion. We believe we can fund half of that right now so the challenge is to find the other half of this as we move into the corridor studies subsequently. In organization, and I want to really emphasize one of the key concluding aspects of project connect is interlocal agreement between the three cities. I know you signed that interlocal agreement between lone star, capital metro and of course yourselves. My understanding is that lone star has yet to actually write the signature on the document but they have received the authorization of the board to be able to go forward with that so we are waiting for that final signature. But that interlocal agreement is key to being able to move forward into the corridor planning studies that we are doing on central corridor. So, again, I am very impressed and very pleased that we have that as a product of the project connect effort. The last thing I have on project connect is, as you looked at that vision happen, there is an identification of nine project connect corridors. These are travel corridors that exist within that four county area and you can see the a little bit -- we have three or four of these that are shaded back but out of those nine project connect corridors, five of those were established by the transit working group as having high priority. Two of the five had highest priority. They floated to the top. Direction was given to the member organizations to conduct corridor studies on the north corridor which capital metro is doing right now and the central corridor. That is the focus of my presentation. I wanted you to know how we got to the central corridor around frame that up to you as background. [05:20:35] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I would like to acknowledge mayor mcgraw of round rock who is leading that evident on the north corridor and it is -- leading that effort on the north corridor and it is well on its way. >> Very good. I want to zoom in on central corridor work efforts which will be the subject of you and the community over the next year and more. The ideas that we -- we sat back -- there was a proposal a couple of years ago about going to the miller airport -- the mueller airport area and the public had a response, why are we going to mueller, why did we just make that decision? In reviewing our thinking about that, we took a step back and said, we need to open our books and have more transparency on that discussion and be able to show our work and show how we come to whatever conclusion it is. So we have developed a work plan with the three partner agencies that will allow us to get to that decision point, that by taking a little bit of a step back to get there and making it open. We are going to focus on high capacity transit. We understand there is a very strong need for local bus system. That's not our focus. Our focus is on building the higher capacity transit, whether it is brt, bus rapid transit, light rail, urban rail, something moving larger numbers of people to their destinations. From their work to play and to home. And so that's going to be our focus. The other part of this is developing a work plan that has a very strong decision-making orientation. It's not just a matter of studying this for another couple of years. We've got to be very deliberate in our decision-making thinking. We have a transparent and inclusive process and work plan. It's sequential and logical. From my perspective, the most important one, is it's efficient. We have to be extremely mindful of how we do things so that we are smart about our process. We've oriented our work plan around two major phases, if you will. I will kind of use phase 1 and phase 2 during some of this briefing. The first one is selecting the priority subcorridor. You heard the mayor talk about the difference between subcorridor and alignments. Phase 1 is actually taking a look around the central corridor and I will give you a graph to support this in a minute but the first question is which direction are we going? Are we going to mueller? To lamar? To south congress? To the airport? Understanding what is happening in the central corridor and understanding which of those subcorridors has the greatest demand and greatest need for a high capacity transit investment is the focus of phase 1. Once we have established that priority subcorridor, then we will look at alignments and modes. What we mean by that is we will look at specific streetalignments, are we using trinity? Red river? Those are the questions in phase 2. Also we will look at modes. Again, we are opening the books a little bit to say this is not just about light rail or urban rail. It could be about bus rapid transit. We want to make sure we match our investments for the need that we see that is owe there. Is that is out there. So what I am showing on the slide in front of you is our phase one work plan. I don't expect you to read this on the slide but you do have the handout in front of you. The first part of pha as you recall is to figure out what is the subcorridor. I do want to highlight a couple of quick things. We are at this point in time about halfway through that process. We will go through some -- a little bit more information that I will share with you in the coming slides, but we are -- we have identified the subcorridors that I will share with you. We have defined those subcorridors and we are collecting data in each of those subcorridors and we are now starting the analysis. I will give you a peek under the hood about some of the results we are seeing but we have essentially a big unloading of information to the advisory group as well as to the public coming in the first part of november, so we are working very diligently to work through this process to provide that information for the public's review and input as we move forward. Phase 2, I do want to frame for you -- and actually I should back that up. Phase 1, as robert said, we will be back with you in november for a briefing, which will focus on our results and then we will have additional community input and discussion. We will come back in december, is our current plan, to come back in december for possible action and at least consideration by you as well as capital metro board and the lone star district board. Once we have made that decision and we move into phase 2 and the schedule that I am showing up here is this is when we start to evaluate alternative alignments and mode considerations at that time. We highlighted -- the red asterisk here is in june of next year, a little less than a year from now, we have to be able to pull that information together. A lot of comparative information. A lot of evaluation to occur between january and june of next year but we will anticipate having several briefings with you along the way with a possible consideration for your action on an alignment and a mode that will be teed up for a possible referendum I november of next year. So that's our work plan moving forward. And all of that sounds really good but one of the things I like to say is there are a lot of great projects sitting on shelves gathering dust because they haven't been able to adequately address the public involvement requirements. All of these efforts are for not if we don't have support of the public and support of you and the pct team understands that. So apart of the story I told you at the beginning, of taking a little bit of step back, is centered around this issue, of public outreach and public opportunity to provide input to the direction we are going to go. We have four main elements that we are -- that is guiding our public involvement efforts. It is an informed consent approach. It is one that is intended to build and maintain trust. It is also intended to be meaningful. It can't just be checking the box. We want to make sure our opportunities for input has value to the project team and we circulate that through our efforts moving forward. It is also one that is highly integrated with our work plan, and if you look back at your -- the work plan slides that I shared with you. We have the blue indicates when we are doing the work and the green boxes indicate the months we roll out the work for public input and review. Our work is ongoing. We have meetings brackettedly every week, multiple meetings every week and you will see every week and you will see that as we go forward in our presentation. In fact, a quick glimpse of some of the meetings we have had with neighborhood associations and other groups that are out there, I do want to bring your attention to the series of public open houses that we had in late september and early october. We had a good number of outreach efforts at that point in time which is our first opportunity to go out to the public for this study to review the work plan, to review some of our efforts. We have gotten a lot of good feedback from them. It is informed and allowed us to refine our focus at this point in time. We also have -- will have a next round of public meetings which will be the first full week in november, so we will be going out to the public again with all of the information that we are pulling together at this time. So let me move into briefly just a little bit of our study area definition that gets into the definition of the central corridor as well as the definition of our subcorridor boundaries. You can identify -- this is how our waterfall in our thinking was identified. We identify a preliminary -- a preliminary limits of our study area. We also did a problem statement exercise, which was -- we have to understand what the problems are so that we can understand how we can come up with solutions to address them, and then we also had goals and objectives that derive from that. Importantly we are also in the process as you can see the evaluation criteria and this all flows from the problems. You can see the evaluation criteria that we are going to be presenting to you as well as the information supporting that is going to flow from the problem statements. I showed you previously the project connect corridors. This is where the 9 project corridors are identified. There are 8 radial corridors and then the central corridor which you can see in the orange box here is representative of where all of those 8 radial corridors converge. Central corridor is absolutely critical to the other corridor studies moving forward and we need to take that into account as we do our planning. The purpose of our defining that study area was to help focus our analysis and to assist with our analysis. It's loosely bound. The boundaries of it are loosely up at 2222 on the north, springdale grove on the east, oltorf on the south and mopac on the west. A couple of little nuances. We started with the definition of the central corridor in project connect which was at 10,000 feet but as we are zooming down to the 2,000-foot level, we refined the definition of the boundary, especially on the north. It originally had been about 51st and we extended that up to 2222. We did take it out to the public. Got a lot of input and suggestions and it did help us in defining this effort. Helping us guide those decisions, though, is preparation of a lot of our data. One thing I want you to make sure you are aware of, we have produced a series of maps and a map book. We continue to update this information. This is critical information that allows us to evaluate and compare and contrast amongst each one of these subcorridors moving forward, so it's basic demographics. It is going to be population, employment. There is natural features. Affordability factors, a lot of that is being compiled. I think we've got 50-60 sets of maps at this point in time that the project team is using. It is also available to the public. We have had a tremendous amount of interest from the public about the information that we are gathering and they want to be apart of that, so we have made sure that that is produced and available online. Not only as pdf files but actual data source files so gif files are provided if someone has the software to run. Based upon the definition of the central corridor, we identified draft problem statements. These are built on the five regional challenges that were identified in project connect. We call them the four cs and a g, congestion, centers, constraints, core, and growth. You will see that has some importance as we look forward to our evaluation criteria but one of the things that we looked at as it relates to the central corridors -- I mentioned most of the radial paths come to the central corridor. We have added s to that equation, that is the function of system. All of these things have to be woven together and that is an important challenge for this area, but it is also going to be criteria that we have to take into account. So in your packet you see the five problem statements that wee taken out, that we have actually -- you are seeing the result of taking this out to the public. We have refined those statements. The biggest challenge we had was one regarding the core, which is in your lower right circle which is the economic health of the region's core is at risk and that access to the core is critical to the region's continued success. That's in the area we are sitting in right now. We have seen a lot of success. We felt again the core statement is an important one. We did get a lot of good feedback and we sharpened our focus on that. I won't go through the other five right now unless there is a specific question. [05:33:14] >> Spelman: Oh, you should know that this slide is not available. Sorry, mayor. >> That's right. >> Spelman: This slide is not available to us. >> That's because it was animated. We will get that. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Kyle, quickly, on the boundaries of the corridor, I actually went ahead a few slides. >> Right. >> Martinez: And looked at projected density population, projected employment population in 2030. Why did we stop the southern boundary of the corridor at oltorf and not extend it to ben white because we see major population growths in the next 20 years in those areas? >> The -- that is an excellent question and, in fact, I am going t back it up and see if I can do that. >> Mayor Leffingwell: You were there. >> Was i? My apologies. Let me see if I can get this. Come on. I am not pointing at the right place. My apologies. To answer your question -- there we go. We had a number of -- when we threw out the central corridor and the subcorridor boundaries, we had a lot of interesting comments and input. One of the areas was in the area of the core we had originally had u.T. Out of the core of the central corridor based on the input we had received and our reevaluation of that, we did include it in the core. So the core represents the downtown area of the capital complex and the u.T. Campus so that will be common to all of the subcorridors and it will not be a differentiator which is what our thinking was but the other suggestion we had was, can we extend on the north to 183, can we extend on the south down to ben white. We -- as well as to the east out to the airport. What we felt though, as you look at this graphic is some of tho may seem rather inconsequential but it starts to really change the dynamic of the corridor that we are looking at. Two comments that I would offer in that regard. The first one is the first decision in phase one is to be able to do a geographic area analysis of what are the characteristics in each one of the subcorridors that would support a transit -- high capacity transit investment. Our feeling was we had appropriately defined the limits or the extents of that for that decision. The second part I would respond to, mr. Martinez, is once we have selected a priority subcorridor and let's just say for the sake of an example, it is southeast riverside, we aren't going to let that boundary limit us to thinking about how long how far it should go so we will look at it as the logical termini, how far does this need to go to get to a logical endpoint. So it would be that we extend it to the airport if that were the case. The same thing with ben white, the same thing with 183 but we didn't feel like we should be wrapped on the axle to where we started and stopped to know what the data is. We felt we had an appropriate net to figure out at this time. [05:36:28] >> Mayor Leffingwell: But that's a very important clarification because that's what the subcorridor study, which we are going through right now, is all about and the subcorridor will definitely -- pretty definitely extend outside the central core. >> Right. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Whatever it is. >> Spelman: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member spelman. >> Spelman: If I can give you a few -- some other words to use to explain this. We could have done this from the outside in, identifying a terminis and figuring out what line would string us to that terminis and that would probably get us a good terminis. The problem is there might not be riders along the way. Alternative we can go from inside out and figure out which routes will provide us with a lot of ridership along the way and figure out proper terminis along the route. From doing it from insidious is getting us aligned which will have us the larger ridership but essentially have the sensible terminis at the end. >> Yes, that's a great way to talk about that. That is a good suggestion -- again. >> Mayor Leffingwell: We need to get through this but that is a good point. It's not just ridership but logical terminis but it is also economic growth potential and a lot of other factors that have to be balanced in there, in the selection of both the subcorridor and the final alignment. >> Right. Well, moving beyond the problem statements, I did want to take a minute to be able to share with you the evaluation criteria that we are developing -- addressing at this point in time. Again, restating on your left here that those criteria flow from the problem statements that we just identified, the goals and objectives that have been developed and ultimately the criteria. We have grouped the criteria around the four cs and a g and an s, as I mentioned earlier, about the regional challenges. I am not going to walk you through these -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: One more letter and that's going to get too hard. >> We are already pushing it. [Laughter] for example, the topic of -- under the regional challenge of congestion, there are a number of factors we are looking at. There is congested lane miles and percent of congested lane miles along each subcorridor and you see the other factors. That's in 2010, 2030. We will also do average daily trips on those major roadways for 2010 and 2030. The take away I want you to have with this is this is about a comparative evaluation, so as we look at the ten subcorridors around the compass, we will be compiling this information for each of the ten corridors and I will show you a couple of slides that actually shows what that starts to look as we go forward. You can certainly -- it -- at your leisure or at any follow up meetings you would like to have with us, we can walk through the criteria and the data we are collecting. I mainly wanted to be able to highlight for you that this is the criteria that we are starting to get the data together to do the comparative analysis. We do have, again, additional factors on constraints and growth and then focusing on system elements, of what other investments are out there, in terms of high capacity transit, and other issues. Again, I am walking through these really fast but I wanted to make sure you were aware of that. What I want to go back to, hit on, is the subcorridors. I will show you a map of all ten. We started our thinking building the high capacity transit layer of project connect. Remember the project connect vision map had multiple modes on its, lone star rail district, intracity rail and intercity rail, like red line and bus real and urban rail and six subcorridors started to frame -- six corridors framed our thinking and then we end up with six corridors but it wasn't actually six but it was ten. And the reason for that is we looked at the map book we talked about and looked at information and we ended up with some gaps. For example, we didn't have high capacity transit on the east side so that created a big void on the east side, we said we need to have the mlk and the southern street east austin corridor represented in our comparison of data so we aren't leaving anything out. The one thing we didn't want to be criticized was about not addressing an area so we felt like we needed to have a full comparison that covered all of the central corridor itself, hence we have ten subcorridors that are identified. As I said earlier, the core of that includes the u.T. Campus, the capitol complex and also the downtown area. The one thing I want to make sure you all are aware of is we will be evaluating each of the ten subcorridors to see how they compare and contrast amongst all of the data that we are going to be pulling together but when we start to put the project together, the core will be served by whatever direction we go, whether that -- whether we go north, south, east or west, the three areas in the core, u.T., capitol and downtown will be served by our project alignment. Evaluation criteria, to restate again, our focus is on prioritizing and phasing of these subcorridors. I mentioned phasing because picking one of the ten is going to be a real challenge. It's going to be real hard, especially given our consent approach but we may be able to find that three or four float to the top and three or four don't float to the top so we have already heard in conversations with you and with the public that there is a desire to see a system developed, not just a single development, so I wanted to make sure there is an understanding that we will be looking at more than just one corridor, although there will be one that is first and that's always a challenge, but we want to make sure we understand which of the ten subcorridors are really ripe for high capacity transit investment. So to wrap up -- I have got just a couple of more things I want to share with you -- we are in the process of completing ourour data compilelation at that point and it is real ugly because it is matrix because it is all of the information for each of the ten subcorridors so ours is how can we graphically illustrate that and we will show you population density, employment density and congestion in a minute. Then we are going through an evaluation process. We will be sorting through this information and presenting it to the public in november, coming back to you for a work session and the key thing, as the mayor said in his opening comments is, at that point in time there are no conclusions that the team is prepared to make at all, but we will be moving in that direction in the november/december time frame. So let me show you kind of again that peek under the hood, three examples of what we shared with the advisory group last friday. This is on the topic of population density for 2010 and 2030, and so what you see in front of you right now is some of the graphic illustration of information that we have compiled for those two data sets. What you see on the first part of this is that in 2010 -- so pretty much today -- we are seeing lamar, highland and east riverside have the greatest population densities today. But as we look forward to the year 2030, based upon regional projections, we are seeing a little bit of a different shift here, and that is where we've got highland and east austin starts to emerge and east riverside stays the same. So what you are seeing is, again, some differences, and we are going to be looking at this as just one of many factors that has -- will influence the project team's information and our evaluation but also influences the public, informs the public as we move forward. Similarly, we have done something, same for employment density. I do want to highlight on this slide, for example, we have pulled the core out of all of these efforts. The core is on the top left. You see the power of the core especially as it relates to the employment density. So what we looked at in 2010 using 2010 data is beyond the core, the three that have the top employment density is mopac, lamar and highland, but then as we look forward to 2030 in the projections, mopac f off. We have lamar, highland and south congress starts to emerge. Now, I will tell you that there is -- on each one of these, it's -- I just picked the top three. If you go back, you will see that some of the others -- there is four and five is right blind some of these, so just more to illustrate some of the changes that we are seeing. The third one that I will share with you is the percent of congestion. These are percent congestion in lane miles in major roadways in each corridor. This looks like a lot of gobbley gook but I want to bring a council of things to your attention. [05:45:56] -- A couple of things to your attention. If we look at percent congest club in 2010, we are seeing west austin, south congress and south lamar as being those that are most congested today. But if we look at 2030, we have a little bit of a shift. West austin doesn't fair -- isn't as high but I want to come back to that. You have highland, east riverside and south congress but here is where I want to make sure that everyone understood and mr. Spelman was very good at highlighting this for us. I want to compare what is happening in west austin -- if you look at that, you see there is very little change between 2010 and 2030. It is still significant in 2030 and I think it is number four but take a look at what is happening at mlk. Take a look at what is happening at east riverside. You are seeing significant increases in congestion in those future years so there will be a significant change in what is out there so we want to make sure we look at both the real numbers and the percentage growth of those -- those numbers as well. So that will be a factor that we move forward in tour analysis. Our analysis. The next steps for this project team and the next steps moving forward is for us to continue compiling all of the information. We are almost there with pulling that together but to move forward with the graphic illustrations and evaluation of the ten subcorridors. Then, as I mentioned, we move into that phase of selecting the priority subcorridor which involves you and the public. We will have our next round of public meetings in the first full week of november. We will be back to meet with you in the middle of november prior to thanksgiving and then we will be able to come back to you in the middle of december before christmas. I don't want to just forget -- I mean, that's an important milestone for us and that's where our focus is today, but once we get past that, we start working on phase 2, on the alignments as we move forward. So that's real quick walk through, mr. Mayor, but I did want to make sure we covered a lot of ground with the group. The team is available for any kind of follow-up discussions with you. I know we have several opportunities to visit with some of the council meetings as well as the ccag advisory members but if anybody wants additional background, we are more than happy to meet with you. [05:48:32] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you. That is really some good information, those of us on the central core advisory group saw last friday, as you pointed out, but I want to emphasize that all of this is a result of about a year and a half of work by the transit working group which is sort of the parent of the whole thing, the central corridor advisory group is subto that, but -- is sub to that but it all just didn't happen. This is a result already of a lot of vetting with a lot of different people. Council member riley. >> Riley: Kyle, I want to thank you for your presentation and all of the work that you and your staff are doing into this effort. A question about the evaluation of the subcorridors -- looking particularly at slide 32. As you know, there has been a lot of interest in prospects nor the lamar corridor, sometimes also referred to as the guadalupe corridor, and it's interesting to see in this map that while it is -- the lamar area is one of the densest places as of 2010, we expect it to be outpaced in its -- in the growth of density by 2030 and in particular east austin overtakes it. East austin is shown as being somewhat less dense today but more dense in 2030. Is there a basic factor that you could point to that that would explain why east austin would be expected to see more growth in population in the next 20 years than the lamar corridor? >> Well, I think a loj of that goes back to the demographic work that's been done locally. Not only -- a lot of this flows directly from the campo projections that are out there and the city provides that information up to them as well. You've highlighted for us one of the focal points of our investigations, is better understanding why some of these trends are emerging like that. We have -- the project team is working to develop an appropriate response to that and similar questions, because we are seeing, as I pointed out a couple of times, some very dramatic shifts. Even as you look at south congress emerging on the employment density as well. That's -- that's not something that we are generating on our own. We are going to those locally accepted population employment projections that are out there. [05:51:16] >> Riley: Okay. And then a similar question with respect to congestion over on slide 34, in -- as of 2010, the highland area is not shown as being one of the most congested but I is, by 2035, as is the east riverside corridor. Is there something in particular -- now, I can understand with east riverside, I suppose, there may be consideration of traffic cg in from, say, the bastrop area that would come in along 71 and up east riverside but that may be contributing to the congestion in there so I can kind of understand that. >> Right. >> Riley: Is there anything you can point to that would explain why we expect the highland corridor to see particularly significant growth and congestion the next 25 years? >> That's a a good question. You can't see that right here but i-35 runs through this corridor, so unfortunately the story of i-35 continuing to add to our whoas is true. But we do have to understand that a little bit more. I will offer this. This is one question we have gotten from a couple of members of the advisory group is taking a look at this topic itself, congestion, can't just be so myopic that we are wondering what is going on in the central corridor that there are other contributing factors that are joining this, including north in this case so we are being asked to look at more of the regional contribution to traffic congestion in this area as opposed to just -- this isn't just trips in the central corridor. This is trips that continue to come into the central corridor so we will look at that closer to explain that kind of trend that you see. >> Riley: If that corridor is getting more congested because of i-35, that's important to know because it may be that a line extending, say, to the highland station may not necessarily relieve congestion on i-35 so it wouldn't necessarily be a response to that particular growth. Is there -- I assume as this process goes forward, you will look at separating that out and look at congestion hon particular roadways along each corridor? [05:53:34] >> Yes, sir. And we will need to have a clear understanding, and that's what we are analyzing now, understanding what are the contributing factors to that type of growth. >> Riley: Great. Thanks a lot. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Some things we know right now that don't specifically have to do with current congestion but there are other master plans that are floats around out there. There is a u.T. Master plan for the future of their campus. There is going to be a waller creek master plan, et cetera, and this -- this whole discussion is going to have to take that into account. Surprising to a lot of different people, but the center of the u.T. Campus in the future goes down san jacinto. That's the center -- if you look at it, the campus has been entirely centered right around san jacinto so they have very, very strong preference for that san jacinto alignment within the central core itself not necessarily the subcorridor and a strong aversion to any alignment along the west side of the campus and that's going to be a very strong determining factor in this, too. Council member morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you. A general question about these projections. Do they -- the question is, do they assume a build of rail in the corridor or not? Because obviously density could be impacted by that. So is it the potential for density? We've had the discussions about what kind of impact would this public investment have on affordability and income levels and demographics so what are the assumptions and the projections we are looking at? >> Good question. No assumption at this time about transit being there, other than what has been there today. We have not factored any future high capacity transit into that discussion. We belt that that would be a little misleading, so this is really more of a -- taking a look at the 2010 versus 2030 geographic and demographic analysis. When we get into phase 2, then we can start to apply that from more of a project definition perspective. We can apply any kind of other policies that are important. There is an opportunity that we can apply a rail bias that is allowed by the fta for a rail investment. It is taking into account that a rail investment is more attractive to patrons than a nonrail investment. But that's a minimal effort. But we wouldn't be doing that until phase 2 when we start to derive a specific project. [05:56:15] >> Morrison: Was there another comment? >> I am the city's program rail manager for urban. The prompt ships are based on the imagine austin comprehensive plan. We use the goldensties identified there and basically allocated those according to the control totals we have for population and employment that come down from the state all the way through the region and into the county and the city so this is really the same effort we are doing to support the campo 2040 plan. We are just a little bit ahead of them in terms of schedule and we have been able to add a little more resolution as to how we allocate population and employment through the city but as kyle mentioned, this is not predicated on a central corridor high capacity transit investment. It does account for existing and otherwise committed, like funded projects like metro rapid in our assumptions. >> Morrison: Okay. So -- so basically it's imagine austin for some refinements -- it's a tough issue to deal with, right, because it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy or not but at some point the potential for development obviously is very important, but presumably imagine austin has already integrated that thinking into the results somewhat. So I get that it makes sense not to cut it too finely at this point until we get a better approach. But I would imagine that's going to be a question that comes up a lot. >> Mayor Leffingwell: It is, and population and employment density are on that balance bar with economic growth potential. That's the thing we have to try to figure out. So maybe -- it may turn out that the actual route is not the most dense as far as employment and population density, but it has a much higher potential for economic growth. [05:58:17] >> Morrison: Right. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Economic incentives. So more to come, I guess. >> Lots more. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Lots more. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I guess that completes our agenda so we stand adjourned at 12:00 p.M.