All right. I'd like to call to order this meeting of the city council work session. Mayor Leffingwell is unfortunately out sick today so we're going to have to do this work session all on our own and I think we'll be okay. The first item that we have to discuss is our pre-selected agenda items and we have an item pulled by Council Member Spellman from the Office of Real Estate Services. Council Member Spellman. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. This is an item to waive lots and lots of fees for the Board of Regents of UT System, presumably to a system in realigning Red River Street and eventually in building medical school. Your staff sent me a breakdown of the fees, many of which are for use of right of way, which I reasonably think of as being rent. And if we waive rent, we're doing a professional courtesy for the University of Texas and for the state system in a way, and we're not incurring additional costs associated with that rent. Is that appropriate? Yes. Robert good assistant city manager. A couple of nuances there. It is rent of the right of way, but in this case, they're building a new road. So it's a little bit of a unique project as well. Normally we rent right away for overhang of a structure when they're building a private development. In this case, with a complete new Red River realignment, they're actually building an entire different road. So it's a little bit of a different animal than we've dealt with in the past with our right of way rental fees. I understand how it would make sense for us to waive fees associated with somebody building a road for us. What's harder for me to understand is how we're waiving fees for things for which we're going to have to incur costs, such as inspections. And just working off of this extremely long list of fees waived, I come up with, depending on how you score, it's somewhere between a million and a million four of things we're going to have to do for which we are usually reimbursed that we would be waiving fees. Does this mean we're going to be losing a million four on this transaction? And if not, how not? Depends on how you balance the books. In this case, we could have approached it differently in this partnership. We could have approached it that the city would be responsible for building some of the roadway. It's our own infrastructure that UT is building in this case. And so we could have split the costs that way, like a normal CIP project and in a CIP project, we don't charge our own departments for those sort of fees. So in lieu of sharing the costs that way, waiving the fees seem like the appropriate financial partnership step that we take. I'm not sure if I explained that right, but UT and the city could have come together and said for the $11 million that take to build this road, the city will spend five and a half and UT would spend five and a half, but we didn't approach it that way. They're incurring all the costs and then we're just waiving our fees as our part of our part of that partnership. Well, I understand that they'll be building us a new road. We're going to have a road at the end of all this. On the other hand, the city had no plans to move the road itself. Sure. This is not a road which is being moved because the city's asking for it because the city's going to be particularly at least directly benefited by it. The benefit for the city is the same as the benefit of the UT system, which is they're going to be able to build a medical school more easily on a straightened road rather than the Bendy Road. Certainly. It was initiated by UTU. You're right. Right. We're going to have to inspect, do traffic controls, put up streetlights, traffic signals, crosswalk signals, and that's going to cost us to incur cost. That's going to be about a million four is going to be our cost. So what you're saying is that's our participation in the UT Medical School Is 1.4 million plus however you score the other three and a half million of right of way fees waived. Correct. What do we get back for that? Well, for one, the partnership in the medical school, perhaps UT would answer all the benefits that we've been discussing as a community on the medical school. And so I think it's really the benefits of that medical school is what we give back. Plus we get a new facility, but it does replace an old facility. So that might be a washing, depends on how you look at that. So it really is more of a community benefit from the medical school creation of medical school. So the way I would be thinking about this is this is the city's contribution to the state's development of medical school. True. Exactly right. Council membersSpellman. Tim Taylor. I'm representing UT. I'd be glad to back up just a little bit and give a real brief overview of what all we're talking about that's involved with this. And I think there's two parts. One's the medical school, but also it's the overall partnership that we have with both UT Austin and UT system with Central Health and with Seton and with the replacement of Brackenridge because the start of this interlocal agreement and the partnership with the city, excuse me, was specifically related to the building of the new teaching hospital, which was supported with the passage of Prop one and with the 1115 waiver and with the partnership and the collaborative care partnership with that new process they have in place. So what this is going to allow all of us to do, and I say all of us, city, UT, the community itself is to replace the safety net hospital that's presently Brackenridge. And so that's the first piece of this is that we're going to replace and build a new safety net hospital for Travis County and Austin. The second part is the medical district itself, which will create an entire new area of campus. There'll be medical office buildings, the Dell Medical School itself, the Seton Teaching Hospital, which is being constructed in partnership with Central Health. And then eventually as y'all are all aware, the Medical Innovation District, which will develop south of there. And so a lot of the work being done that's contemplated here involves benefiting all of those projects. And so what we're really looking for from the city is what I view as a small participation in the partnership financially for, just to give you a small example, the commitment from UT system for the medical school is 30 million for the first eight years from the Board of Regents and then 25 million a year thereafter. So the commitment from the universities and the hundreds of millions that we're looking at and we're looking for a little less than $6 million in fee waivers participation from the city to help support that. You're talking about a hundred million dollar project and I understand waving the right of way fees is, it's not quite funny money, but it's a different situation than the usual case in which we exact a right away fee. But if you're asking us to incur another million dollars in expenses or waive the fees associated with those million dollars of expenses, on a hundred million dollar project, why not just make it $101 million project and then we can continue to spend the money on what we would usually spend it on on parks and libraries and public safety and all that. There's an opportunity cost from our point of view, isn't it? This is cash we're having to pay this. This isn't something we're bonding out, isn't it? No, there's no cash involved. There'll be staff involved, staff time involved. So I suppose the concept is they wouldn't be on another project inspecting, but we're not staffing up for this particular project. We'll just- Well, a million dollars in cost is a million dollars of cost. It's already budgeted cost for the staff time. There's Budgeted cost. Well, all right. So there's a million dollars worth of value that our staff would be doing that they're not able to do because they're working on this project for which they're not getting reimbursed. Is that Accurate? It adds up. I mean, you're right. It adds up over the entire department's budget for the year for what they're tasked to do. So this is work that they'll be doing that I suppose you could say they'd be doing some other project, but that's ... We anticipate work as we come on board. This is more planning development review staff, but we anticipate that work and that's what they're staffed up to do. I got one more issue, one more question about this. I've got the list in front of me. I don't know if you've seen it. On Trinity, there is the last item is a right of way use fee for state parking and I'm not sure ... That's coming out. Yeah, that's it. That's a mistake. We can't waive the state's fees. I was wondering- But you're welcome to try council member. Okay. Okay. Now we'll rescore this. It's not between a million and a million four, depending on how you score it. It's just a million dollars because that was the full one. That one comes out. Okay. Thanks very much. And just to clarify, the UT project estimate in this initial phase is around 330 million and the Seaton teaching hospital budget is roughly very around numbers 300 million. Do I add those numbers or is one subset of the other? No, those add those together. So we're really looking at over 600 million in the initial phase, stage one of the medical district. Sounds like a big project. I look forward to seeing it. Thank you. Mayor Tim. Council member. I appreciate your being here to answer all the questions and I fully support the partnership and I understand why it makes sense to waive fees in this case. I do have one question about the city's interest in the road upon the conclusion of all this work. There are roads that go through UT that UT has control over and the city does not have control over. What can you tell us about the future of Red River Street in terms of who will have control over future improvements to that road? Council Member Roberts Filler, Austin Transportation Department. The agreement that we have worked out with UT is that the city will maintain the road authorization to manage that road through the university or through that piece of the new university because it connects to Red River on either side, which is an important corridor. We've also made sure that there is pedestrian bicycle access through there as well as the auto. The street will change character as it becomes integrated within that piece of the campus and we've worked through that with the university and believe that we can manage it appropriately. In what respect will it change character? Well, it will still provide a through capacity for through streets, but already that piece of Red River is really a local access and as the campus surrounds it, it'll be more local access. It'll feel more like a local street, but we're very aware that we need to maintain the ability to have a through capacity there. So it's a balancing of that street. The actual design of the street is still being worked out. The final design will make it feel like you want to go slower through that piece of the campus. So we're trying to slow the street down, not make it a runway from one end to the other and give it the appropriate pedestrian environment because there'll be lots of pedestrians crossing there. Right. And so the authority for making those decisions about the character of the street will remain with the city now and going forward. Yes. And even though UT will be building it, we've already worked out the concepts for how that design will be done, but then the management of the street, the pedestrian crossings and so forth, the signalization will remain the city's responsibility. Great. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Council Member Tubba? Just a quick question. Thank you all very much. That was good information to have. Would you mind making available the information that you provided Council Member Spellman in our Q&A process? Thanks. Any other questions? I want to thank the university for being here to answer our questions and I'm glad that we are only waiving fees essentially and there's no cash involved. Well, I just want to thank everybody on behalf of the university. Everyone knows how important this is for our city. If you've been at any of the luncheons that they've hosted, we talk about the next big thing and everybody repeats this is the biggest thing that'll happen in our lifetimes. And I think that continues to be true as I work on this project and I'm amazed at what an impact it's going to have on our city and in particular on our ability to care for the less fortunate with what we'll be doing at the med school. So thank y'all for y'all's participation and support in that. Thank you. The next item we have is also pulled by Council Member Spelman item number 37. This is a resolution to ensure that we are taking adequate care of housing and if I can read between the lines, make sure that our train does not create opportunities for gentrification and displace people who are living along the train road. Is that accurate, Council Member Morrison? Council Member Morrison, do you want to address any lease sponsor and I helped you with it a little bit. Yes, that is certainly one of the issues is to make sure that we're taking care to not inordinately displace people, but also it's within the framework of the New Starts program and the evaluation criteria that came out in last August. And I know we have staff here, both Rob and Betsy might want to speak to it, but the New Starts criteria for evaluating proposals, which we are definitely thinking will be part of our funding stream, hopefully as you know. The New Starts criteria is very clear about wanting to ensure that there are programs and policies in place and funding streams to make sure that what we end up with is a diverse set of people that have access to rail. So gentrification is one part of it, but even to be more proactive than that. Okay. I understand that's one piece of the New Starts program. There's a lot of other criteria and I just saw Rob here a moment ago and wondered if he or somebody else on his staff could sort of walk through what we are doing as a staff to ensure that we are hitting all the marks on the New Starts program, including this piece of it. Gordon Durr, Assistant Director of Transportation Department. The Project Connect Central Corridor team has been talking with housing, economic development, planning, development review and starting to discuss the factors involved. Half of the criteria, the waiting criteria for projects is related to plans and policies that implement density, affordability, connectivity, all of those issues. So the discussions have begun with this resolution. I think that we'll be making the report back to council shortly on where we're at and identify potential programs that could enhance because there's two components. One is what are we currently doing, what policies we have in place, what impact those policies have had and the other is what are we putting in place in funding for future to move toward the future? So both of those are important in the criteria. Can you give us a sense, Gordon, about what kind of things we're going to have to put in place that we don't currently have in order to support this? Well, I don't know, and that may be where some of our expert folks here could talk about, but I think the main thing is that roughly 30% of the criteria is related to stationary population density, about 30% of this total employment served, 30% of proportion of legally binding affordable housing and 10% pedestrian accessibility, special trip generators and availability of parking. And the cost of parking is involved with that also. Right. And this is Robert Spiller, director. If I could add a couple of things. When this region opened up the red line, of course, we looked at the major stations along the red line and did TOD plans for those stations. And so I would suspect that that would be very appropriate as the alignment firms up and we're going to be having a briefing here at this council meeting where we'll be talking directly about the potential alignment and then having other chances for council, of course, to weigh in all based on recommendations coming from the CCAG and mayor's subcommittee on that. And so that will be coming towards council. But the current alignment that was presented to Capital Metro yesterday certainly gives a head nod towards some significant opportunities for some densification and transorient development where affordability as well as access to transit likely needs to be discussed, whether that be at Highland, East Riverside area, or various places along the alignment within the central corridor. The particular alignment that is being looked at, I think has some interesting things because a lot of what it does is give access to employment. And as it reaches out to other elements of the transit system or the transit network, then it gives access to residential locations. And so I think as we move into this next phase, not only looking at the density policies and the policies along the alignment, but also those similar policies along some of the high capacity transit elements that it connects to, whether it be Metro Rapid or Metro Rail, can we strengthen the connectivity through those corridors? I think it's important in the current item from council that it talks about transit in general, not just bus routes, but bus routes are important as well. And so as we work with Cap Metro to not just think of folks within a half mile of the investment, but also within half mile or quarter mile of those major bus lines that will help feed the system. So that's important as well. Balancing that with speed and reliability, of course, that's been a concern council member through the transit working group and the CKI process, making sure that we have a reliable system as well. So if I understand it, what you guys are doing, you're hitting all the marks on the New Start stuff now. You're doing the meetings, you're trying to figure out what kind of stuff we're going to have to put in place, partly for New Starts and partly because New Starts is headed in the right direction. If we want the train to be successful, we need density around the train stations of both employment and of people. We need affordable housing so everybody has access to it and pedestrians have people to walk there. Sure. Okay. So we're doing all that stuff. It seems to me that we've been focusing in CCAG and to a lesser extent this council as a whole on where the train goes and how the train operates or whether it's even a train or BRT and so on. And we've been focusing on the aspects of the transportation. You guys have been doing what you need to do, which is focusing on everything else, but in addition to fulfilling the new starts criteria and getting a good rating from the FTA so that we can qualify for as high a match as we can get, we also need to get through that other group first, which is a public vote. And it seems to me that the public's vote is going to be determined less by the aspects of the transit alternative we choose and more by the effects it's going to have on their quality of life, which is exactly what you're talking about. And the sooner we can bring forward the results of the investigations you're having and the kind of things we're going to have to do in order to support, I'll call it a train, because I'm pretty sure it's going to be trained that we can bring that forward and make the public and give the public some time that you want it and get used to it, think about it. The more likely it is that when we go to November, the public will not be surprised, we'll understand exactly what we're trying to do and we'll have a much better sense that this is actually going to improve the quality of their lives. Absolutely. So the sooner we can get this stuff out in the open, I think the better off we're all going to be. Yes, Councilmember, thank you for that advice. You're absolutely right. One of the things we learned as we were picking subcorridors, at least from the consultant teams that we're working on is almost Austin is ripe for high capacity transit in terms of all the necessary criteria, if you will. The preceding criteria, have the density because of how we've grown. We have the major institutions, multiple destinations. We have a lot of pluses. Now as we sort of focus in on an alignment and particular stations, hopefully you'll start hearing us talk about the destination locations in terms of communities and neighborhoods and major destinations. So you'll hear us talk about ACC Highland connected to UT, connected to the med school, connected to the various retail grocery shopping opportunities along the corridors and the major districts like South River or Riverside or the Pleasant Valley area because that will help people, I think, focus in on what the benefits, the quality of life, as you said. And then now that we have alignments starting to crystallize, we're going to be able to start talking about very specifics about benefits of, well, look, this connects to a lot of affordable housing opportunities, not just for the working folks here in Austin, but also for future students at UT. And so that's exactly where I think we'll be going. Okay. What kind of timetable do we have for that, Rob? As soon as we can get started on it. As soon as possible is not a number. Yeah, I know. I understand. I believe the item from council describes an end date or when we need to come to council by mid-June. I will tell you that that brings sweat to my brow thinking about how fast we need to get moving. And so we'll start talking this week about forming those groups and getting going. I think we've already been talking and we already have some of that infrastructure in place. And so it's just a matter of focusing and bringing that to the public. Okay. So June 15th is doable from your point of view, Scott? I believe Scott has some input. Yeah. Actually, we've already been working internally ... Sorry, Scott Gross, Austin Transportation Department and Project Connect. Christine Freundle with Planning and Development Review has been leading a TOD brainstorming group and that's been an opportunity for us to present New Starts criteria with a focus on affordability and specifically with the effectiveness of the plans and policies that are already in place for TODs. So we're really starting to take a critical look at those. So a lot of this work is already underway. So it's nice to have kind of a formal kick in the pants to get it out there, but we are headed in that direction and we really appreciate that you all recognize that it's more than just this service. There's a lot of other elements that need to be put in place. Right. When is the TOD policy likely to become something we can talk about? I might have to defer to Christine. I mean, right now, we're looking at it, we're looking at recommendations that we can make to the CodeNext team and whether or not there might be amendments to the land development code in advance of that. We don't have a timeline at this point. As I understand the resolution of the item from council though, it's to come back in mid-June with basically a work plan. So I don't see any problem at all with us meeting that. I think we've got the foundation of that working group already in place. We've been talking with directors as well related to utilities and other, the whole host of issues concerning high capacity transit. So I think we're already heading that direction and we have a couple of years before we'll be going to FTA for a rating As well. I understand that too, but we do not have a couple years before we're going to the public for a rating and we may have a second chance with the FTA, but we're not likely to have a second chance with the public, at least not for a few years. So we want to have a good rating if we can. And that means having at least a rough cut sense for what our TOD policy is going to look like, what we're going to do to ensure that affordable housing is available close by and so on. Right. Sure. And council member, I think again, going back to the red line, we have some examples here on TOD policies. We know where those policies have proven themselves out and done really well. We also know where the struggles are with some of those policies and so we'll make sure that we bring that back as part of our recommendation. Look forward to seeing it. Thanks very Much. Another piece of this is part of the criteria is evaluating how effective the current policies are. I think that's something that we proceed forward with, make recommendations of the council for not only the red line, but the BRT, we've seen a lot of density go up on North Lamar and South Lamar probably related to the transit connectivity, but I think there's a real story we can tell. And I even go back to the shuttle bus routes over the last 50 years have done a lot to shape parts of our community and that's part of the- For better or for worse. Yeah. For better or worse. But that's also to me a part of the high capacity transit system that historically has worked here and we can certainly see how that tells the story of what Austin does to support transit. That's really helpful. We've had at least three bites of the apple as you're talking about to try and get this working and we've already got policies in place to assist stuff. I have that kind of a mood today. I can't help but mention that we actually do have a de facto TOD at the end of the intramural fields bus line, which is sometimes referred to as a bunch of stealth dorms. And this is one of those cases which we did nothing to try and create it, but the market decided that we needed a TOD and so they started building a TOD despite us. Well, and I think that that is reflected in when the consultants came back looking at the various corridors, and oh my goodness, we've got a lot of great corridors. They're all good cortores. I think that's really reflective of the strong dependence of this community on transit and it's been driven by the university, the student shuttles. We really are dependent in terms of high capacity transit in this region. Well, and in addition to having a public sector that gets it and understands the need for density along transit quarters, we also have a private sector of developers of multifamily dwellings who understand how this is a valuable thing, that they can make money off of and provide a good service. Absolutely. Thanks very much. Councilman Morrison. Thank you. I appreciate the comments and I couldn't agree with you more that we do want to be able to go to the public in a successful, hopefully successful ballot. And this will be key part of the discussion to be able to say we do have plans in place that are going to ensure that this transit and this new step for the city of Austin is going to serve a broad diverse range of people in the city of Austin. That's absolutely critical. And I guess I just want to stress that I think that the really good news is that the FTA criteria and Imagine Austin and where we all think we're headed all really fold together and weave together nicely. And that's part of why this is more like a tome rather than a resolution. It's pretty long, but we wanted to make it clear that we didn't just want to pass the test. We wanted to make it clear that this is really in our vision and so it works well together. Just a couple of other things on the timing. Relax, Rob. We understand that, don't sweat. Scott has it absolutely right. We wanted to just make sure that we could get by the middle of June some kind of work plan, but absolutely the discussion will need to be what can we get on the table in time for it to be part of the public discussion. And then another thing is we also understand the need to have a diverse set of jobs in the job centers and some of that's already developing. We looked for the criteria in the FDA New Starts, which by the way, for anyone that's interested, you can go online and just ... I always find it by just Googling New Starts, FTA, final policy guidance is what it is. And it's got some interesting reading. I didn't see specific criteria with regard to jobs that were quite as easy to capture, but we fully understand and I know that economic development has been part of it. And then lastly, obviously NHTB is an important part of this as well as stakeholders. And we did include wanting to ensure that we have Housing Works and other folks that have done a lot of work, but I see Betsy and Erica here and I wonder if I could just invite them to come make a few comments and while you're sitting down, I have to make a comment about how great it is that Erica Lee Take, who was part of developing all the TODs and regulatory plans and PDR is now going to be working on implementing them as a staff member in NHCD. Yes, we are thrilled that we stole her. Yes. Congratulations on that. Sure. Betsy Spencer, director of neighborhood housing. For us, this is incredibly exceptional timing. As we've said several times, the consolidated plan, we're in the process with the needs assessment as well as the housing market study and the analysis of impediments. So this is an opportune time for us to be able to take this information and we'll have data that will help support the application. I'm not a new starts expert, but what little I've seen, obviously to get a high criteria, we want to have very solid policies in place that actually perform. So this will be very important for us to be able to incorporate what we can into the consolidated plan, which is our five-year roadmap with the federal funds as well as our capital investment from the general obligation bond. So this is perfect timing for us to incorporate this type of partnership into those documents and into our plan. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. And basically the resolution from Mayor Protem and myself, as was mentioned, puts a formal structure on work that has already been in the works and it allows us to raise the visibility so we as a council and the public can be talking about it. Thank You. I would just like to add that I'm very pleased to be a co-sponsor of this and one of the most exciting parts of it is the interdepartmental collaboration to get us to focus not only on the density, because I think we spend a lot of time talking about that because we're wanting to make sure that transit is successful from that view, but also the affordable housing and the job centers. And so I'm glad that economic development is also going to be a part of this discussion and I'm glad, Betsy, that you are going to participate in making sure that we are planning affordable housing along our stops. Council Member Riley. Yeah. I understand and fully support the idea behind the resolution, which I gather is to give a nudge to the TOD planning process along the proposed rail line with particular attention to housing and jobs issues. I did pause over some of the language in the resolution. It is quite a tomb, as Council Member Morrison indicated. And one line in particular caught my attention that at the bottom of the first page, the resolution reads, "Whereas compact and connected development, if not managed properly, can have unintended negative consequences." I just wondered if we really want to call out compacted and connected development as being especially pernicious and threatening as compared with other types of development. Was that really the intent? Protem, if I may? Well, you should have seen the initial drafting. No, we've worked on that and if you'll look above, the whereas above talks about how sprawl development, some specifics about how it can have negative consequences. Compact and connected, the thing that we're talking about here specifically is we want to make sure that we avoid gentrification and things like that. So in fairness to making sure that we find a balanced solution, the idea was to just generally say we want to avoid what might be negative consequences. I stopped reading it, call me Ishmael. You did get to the bottom of the first page. Council members. I would just wonder if we could either suggest that any development, if not managed properly, can have unintended negative consequences or perhaps say that compact and connected development if managed properly can offer very significant community benefits. I'm a little hesitant about singling out compact and connected development as being especially threatening. Well, I'll tell you what, we could work on some language. If you'd like to say something like any development could have negative, that means I'd like to take out the two whereases because we were trying to sort of say that we need to do both of them right. On the other hand, if you could want to suggest some language for the last one about compact and connected that more delicately or more specifically addresses pluses and minuses, a lot of this is all about the benefits of compact and connected. I think it's important to highlight. Imagine Austin does too, that it addresses the fact that we need to do it right. So if you can find a way to say that more positively without the word negative, I'm certainly open to that, but we could take them both out. We could merge them into one. We could try and recraft It the last one. And any of those options would work for me. It seems peculiar to me to single out compact and connected development as being especially threatening. It's not saying it's especially threatening. It's just saying we need to be realistic About It just says- It does say Compact and connected development can have unintended negative consequences. Well, it can. Do you disagree? Sure. Well, I suppose any sort of development can have negative consequences because anything can have negative consequences. Sure. But as compared with other types of development, I don't see how it is especially threatening. But we're talking about sprawl just above. And so we're just trying to be realistic about we want to avoid sprawl. It's got negative consequences. We want to make sure we're clear that we want to avoid negative consequences of compact and connected and that's why we're doing this in part. Okay. All right. Well, I'll talk with my co-sponsor and we'll see if we can find something. Sure. I think we can find some language. All right. Good. Council Member Riley's concern. Any other comments? Questions? Okay. The next item is item number 40, which was pulled by Council Member Morrison and the lead sponsor is Council Member Riley. Oh, good. So this is great to follow this previous discussion with us. So this is about micro units and looking at a code change to waive minimum site area requirements, which are actually putting limits on this size, minimum limits on the size of apartments or multifamily dwellings and to address also parking requirements that are also seen as a barrier to being able to achieve that. And as I understand it, the resolution says to look at doing those things on core transit corridors, future core transit corridors and TODs. And I wanted to talk particularly about and understand the intent and I want to express my concern about the intent for doing this because on transit corridors and core transit corridors, we have vertical mixed use, which does among other things, provide a program for waiving the minimum site area requirements and reducing the parking. And of course that VMU overlay, Councilmember Riley, you and I were a part of the brainstorming of that and it resulted in the whole, I hate to mention it, opt-in, opt-out process that involved thousands of hours of discussion and evaluation from hundreds and hundreds of citizens to determine where exactly that VMU should be recommended or not. A lot of people put a lot of thought and analysis into that and that eventually went to the council and then the council, I guess I was part of some of the last ones and Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Martinez and the mayor world, part of the councils that adopted those. So what I don't understand is how this resolution is meant to play with that. And I guess it's either to override the VMU process that we have in place or if it's to only be done on if the intent is only to do it on non- VMU properties that don't have a waiver at this point mechanism for minimum site area. Council Member Riley? And I would say the intent was simply to take a fresh look at development opportunities in those locations that could offer potential as places for developments like micro units. And as you know, the vertical mix use provisions do not allow, for instance, for an elimination of parking requirements, there still are significant parking requirements associated with VMU. There are other constraints on VMU that have resulted in a fairly limited application of those provisions. We haven't seen as much VMU development as some people had expected. And so this is simply an effort to take another look at those development regulations and see if we can allow something that is a little more innovative. And yes, that could well be at places that are VMU sites and we would have a fresh new conversation about how we would approach those in light of the progress that has been made in a number of other cities on things like micro units and in light of the continuing interest in parking issues. We've seen, as I mentioned the other day, we have seen significant interest in units that actually don't have any parking with the efficiencies in one bedrooms at the Whitley. I mentioned the other day, a full 20% of new tenants in that building have been choosing to forego parking altogether. Under the current VMU provisions, you really don't have that option. If you live in a VMU project, typically you're going to be paying for parking whether you want to have a car or not. And I think that's worth taking another look at and asking whether we want to go a little further to address affordability in terms that go beyond what we have allowed before, because of course parking can have a very significant impact on affordability and there are very significant benefits to be offered by environments that enable people to reduce their dependence on cars. Since it is a significant part of household living costs, then to be able to offer the potential for someone to not only have lower ongoing costs in terms of their transportation, but actually to avoid the upfront cost of paying for parking. And in most cases, this would typically be structured parking, the most expensive sort of parking. The idea is we can get significant affordability benefits by taking that cost out of the equation and that was not really on the table at the time we put VMU place in place and I think it's worth considering whether it should be. I understand that I get that. I guess my main concern here is that if we're going to relook at VMU, we need to acknowledge the fact something very important, especially in later our previous conversation, that the increased entitlements with BMU come with responsibilities and benefits and that is affordable housing And also consideration of adjacent neighborhoods and what decreasing the parking requirements, what impact that might have on the adjacent neighborhoods. And I don't see any of that acknowledged. I didn't understand that any of that was going to be taken into consideration through this effort. And so if what you're suggesting is that we relook at VMU in particular, I guess I'd like to have that acknowledged and I would like to have it acknowledged that that was a carefully crafted compromise and that affordability is also an extremely important consideration. I get that we can acknowledge that parking is part of affordability, but when I read this, I sort of got that people were just going to ... What my takeaway was that it was being suggested that people were just going to have another option and that is potentially wave minimum side area requirements and parking and not have the other side of it. There was analysis that was done that was actually looking at the different numbers and we looked at potential proformas to ensure that that affordability could work into it. And I'm very concerned about the potential of giving up that community benefit that comes with VMU. I would like to say that I think we approved the commercial design standards or the council approved commercial design standards in 2007, which was right at the beginning of the crash and anybody that is looking up and down Vernet or Lamar and many other places see a lot of BMU structures going up and we need to remember with that we get some affordable housing. The other side of it is that there was concern about impacts on adjacent neighborhoods and so that's why the expedited RPP was part of it. So I guess the third question is why would we not integrate this discussion into the broader discussion of CodeNext? Since there is a mechanism now for achieving some of this anyways, why wouldn't we look at it in the broader context? First, to address your first points, I certainly anticipated that neighborhood concerns would be among those addressed in the course of the code amendment process. Obviously, this does not put a code amendment in place. This initiates a code amendment process that will allow for a thorough discussion about all of the concerns you're raising about how this would relate to VMU, how we should deal with potential neighborhood issues involving spillover parking and other consequences, I'd fully expect that to be part of any code amendment process touching these subjects and it certainly wasn't intended to bypass that. But then to your other question about how this relates to CodeNext, as I mentioned the other night, I do not believe that we should think of CodeNext as some black box that will just take care of itself in a few years, that there will be some wonderful solution to all of our problems handed down from above at some point a few years from now because I think that is putting too much expectation on the process and that's based in part on conversations with the consultant team involved in that process who have not been suggesting that we put a stop to any code amendments. They actually think it would be a good idea to continue a conversation, a thorough conversation about ways that we can address affordability. And I think we have very significant and pressing concerns about how we accommodate a growing population in the central city and I think we need to be doing everything we can to address that now and not just put it off for a couple years and figure it'll all be worked out in the course of CodeNext. This is consistent with the spirit of CodeNext, certainly, because it is aimed at achieving the goals of our comprehensive plan as is the whole code rewrite process. But I fully expect that we would continue all our efforts to do whatever we can to move in the direction of supporting Imagine Austin on our own even while the CodeNet process is underway. Well, I guess my main concern is that this not overwrite the hard work and carefully grafted compromises that came forward with BMU. And I didn't get your intent of building it within that and taking BMU into account by reading this. So maybe what I'll do is draft some additional warehouses and language to propose as an amendment on the DIS. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Spelman. I understand the need for acknowledging the VMU discussion. I think it's an important part of this, which is missing and I think it should be included. Did want to mention though that we're really talking about a different animal in a way. In VMU, the way you provide affordable housing is you raise the rents on 90% of the units so that you can lower the rents on 10% of the units. So you're providing some affordable units, but there's a cost to it. This is a different way of providing affordable housing. The idea here is that people will pay a little bit more per square foot for a smaller number of square feet. And we're talking, instead of 800 square foot apartments, we're talking about three or 400 square foot apartments. Is there a market for that? In some cities it looks like there has been. And this is another way of simply reducing the cost. The whole thing was really all about affordable housing. And part of the argument for micro units has been in other cities that VMU-like units, because they require people to buy parking spaces, are more difficult to afford if people don't need them. I taught my sprawl class yesterday, a whole bunch of incoming entering students were showing up just to see what was going to be like to be at the LBJ school, about 15 of them in the background. I asked them how many of them had cars, because we were talking about sprawl anyway. Anti them had cars, but five of them didn't. And these are not current students in Austin. These are people who are working for a living in Washington and Wichita and all places around the country who have been able to find a way of getting by without a car. But if they were living in VMU, they'd have to buy the parking space whether they needed it or not. This is at least an opportunity for them to have another housing project, a product which is smaller but more efficient and doesn't require a parking space, at least not of all the people who are living there. This is also not passing the code, this is entering the discussion and I look forward to having that discussion and seeing whether or not this is a deal we can actually Make. Great. And I think that to be able to look at analyses, you're not suggesting rent caps, are you? Oh, not at all. Okay. Good heavens, no. All Right. Well, the assumption is then that you're making is that these will be affordable because the market will be able to bear them at a more affordable level as opposed to the market bearing whatever rent it can get. The market price of a 300 square foot apartment is going to be even an extremely well designed, very efficient 300 square foot apartment has got to be less than the market rent for an 800 square foot apartment. People are going to pay to some extent at least by the square foot, but some people don't need that many square feet and are willing to pay less, get less square feet and do just fine. Well, and I'll look forward to some analysis that helps us understand how the market's going to respond to that and what impact that really will have on affordability. We hear a lot of, well, we just need to build as much density as we can to increase the supply. And that'll be the answer to our affordability problem that has clearly not demonstrated itself at this point in the city of Austin, but that's, I guess, another discussion. I'm certainly open to discussing, I just want to make sure we put it in the proper framework and understand impacts that it could have on the current construct that we have and the baseline understanding that people went into and that we don't toss that out with the app water. It's not an ordinance, it's just a proposal. Exactly. And I'm very willing to just talk about it. I do feel the need to mention to respond to your argument about supply. However, when you've got demand increasing at two or 3% per year and increase in supply is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the price to go down. Does that make sense? I understand that piece of the argument. So it could very well be that we just need to ... If we hadn't done what we've done to increase density and increase the supply of housing, the price will have gone up even further than it already has. Right. And then the other question would be what would the curve for increasing supply have to look like and is that practical to even impact affordability On Its own? Well, What are the unintended consequences if we don't? We could have this discussion for ours, but we need not have it now. I certainly appreciate the discussion between Council Members Feldman and Council Member Morrison on this issue. And I look forward to your amendment addressing this issue because I think of decoupling as helping with affordability and I'd like to receive more information about your concerns about VMU going in that opposite direction and not helping with that. I Do have a question about this. Councilman Otebo. I think it's a very worthwhile discussion to have and I look forward to addressing it more as it moves through the process. But I do want to just point out one thing in the memo that we received from staff and I don't know if Mr. Gernsey would like to speak to it, but there is an assumption here that anyone living in a micro unit is not going to have a car and we received information in the memo that suggests, for example, in Portland that wasn't the case, people were instead parking on adjacent neighborhood streets. So they still had cars. They just didn't have the capacity to park them in their own unit. I have seen that with my very own eyes. I lived around the corner from a workplace that had an incentive for parking, for not using a parking spot in the parking garage. I witnessed people parking on my street so that they could walk to their workplace, which I assume for which they had received an incentive not to drive their car. So we know that happens and that there will be people living in these micro units who then have no place to park. And if we're looking at areas of town throughout our city, there are a lot of areas that rely on street parking because the housing was built at a time where there weren't driveways. So Mr. Gernsey, I wonder if you can tell me what kind of work the staff has done to really assess how well this concept has worked, not just in Portland, but in other places. And if it's really a valid assumption, if the evidence people living in micro units don't have cars for the most part. Well, first Gregory Planning Development Review Department, I think we'll probably do some additional research in order to do this memo. We did a little bit to make sure that we actually inform the council of some of the issues that might arise. Density was one, parking was another. We already have experience in the UNO area where parking is paid for in addition to the unit. So this isn't something that's entirely unknown to the city. And yes, there are instances I actually have experienced through my daughter who lived in West Campus and rented a parking space for a short period of time and that there are people that have cars that find other places to put them. But I think it is one that is of concern and that's not to say that whatever we go through and do our research, if we come back with a proposal, there might be a reduced amount of parking that might be available on some of these sites because they might be a mixture of units. They might not all be micro units. You might have a mister micro and non micro units. Also, if a case, if you have micro only units, there still might be a few places, at least for the people that might work on the site, that might not actually live on the property, the maintenance people. And I think the market will probably actually drive the biggest demand on number of spaces that might be provided. So I'm hesitant to tell you definitively that there's going to be an impact on neighborhoods or not, because I think a lot has to do with the location of the site. Uncore transit quarters where you have the ability to have access to other forms of transit, or if they're downtown where we've already basically got rid of the parking requirement downtown, I can see where that might be an instance where those units might thrive, that you might actually have a lot more units, a lot more available housing where you get along some of the core transit corridors where you are buttressed on both sides of that core transit quarter by solid, single family, there might be some issues that pop up. And so I think we just have to take a look at those. We'll probably talk to ATD staff as far as the neighbor parking program and see where those instances are. I think that would be Very helpful. I think that the market might drive. Thanks. I said that I thought I heard Mr. Grinsey say that the market might drive the need for a parking spot even if that's not a requirement. And so then in effect, we may not have achieved anything with regard to affordability in certain areas. I think it's going to depend on the mix. You still may have people that might visit people at a micro unit, even though the person at the micro unit have a car, maybe their parents show up or a friend shows up. So I think there are going to be instances where there'd probably be some parking. It might not be totally void of that, but I'm hesitant to give you a definitive one way or another at this point. That's great. But I'm pleased to hear that the staff are going to do some more research on that in terms of what other cities have done and what their occupants end up doing in terms of the reliance on public transit versus having cars they just park elsewhere. I mean, we know that even in cities like New York where many, many, many, most people don't have cars, there still are people who own cars and listen to the radio for the alternate side of parking, street parking to figure out where they need to move their car to or they move it outside the city. So there are a certain number of people who whether or not they're provided with a slot or not will continue to have a car. They're just going to park it potentially on somebody else's street. And we do have other options. We have car sharing cars to go has been immensely successful. I think that might help also to basically remove some of the stigma by not having any parking available for some of these micro. Thank You. Councilmember Riley? I Want to emphasize that there is no assumption that people in micro units don't have cars. That obviously that's not factually correct anymore than it would be factually correct to say all New Yorkers do or don't have cars. There are going to be exceptions to every rule. We do know that there are studies suggesting that when you separate parking from housing costs that many people will avail themselves of that option. Not all, but many. You will be opening the door to that location for many people who otherwise could not afford to live there and you'll be building in an incentive for them to reduce their reliance on cars, which I think is consistent with the goals of Imagine Austin. And so that is the idea is to simply provide an opportunity for those who choose to not have a car to be able to avoid the expense of having to pay for the parking for that car. And obviously, yes, there are potential negative consequences. You may have people parking on nearby streets, but there are ways to address those consequences. There are places outside downtown now where we are actually managing parking on the street and that is one way of controlling it, either through parking benefit districts or residential permit parking or some combination of those things. Austin actually has a fairly healthy supply of surface parking on many of its corridors and there may well be places where if you simply leave it to the individual who owns the car, leave it to those who are using the parking space to bear the cost of storing that vehicle, then they may be able to find other options, including making use of nearby surface parking lots. The point is simply to get away from the practice of imposing on all potential residents the cost of paying for parking because we want to leave open And the possibility that there may be those who do not need the parking and would benefit from the opportunity to avoid the cost of paying for parking. It has worked very well in those places where we have afforded that opportunity. And so this is an effort to continue that. I would say that the resolution currently does not include express language addressing that issue of decoupling. And so I expect to offer some language on Thursday that makes clear that that is the intent, that we want to ensure that in these housing developments that parking is offered separately from the residential unit. Well, mayor. I think Councilman Ochoa wasn't. I just have a quick point. I appreciate your comments, but with regard to the assumption that I asked for more evidence to, you do have a line in here, council member that talks about microunit development offers a potential of placing more affordable dwelling units within reach of those who want to live an urban lifestyle often accompanied by reduced car ownership. So that was the assumption I was talking about. And I'm appreciative that staff intend to look into whether that is actually the case, that those who are individuals who are interested in micro units are more often that tends to be accompanied by reduced car ownership because I am concerned that the last paragraph of their memo to us suggests that that hasn't been the case in Portland. And so I do think we need to more fully evaluate whether the evidence Bears that out. I'd be happy to take another look at that. And I don't believe that the staff memo says that people living in micro units are more likely to have cars. I think that when you offer these things, you do see reduced rates of car ownership. That doesn't mean you see everyone giving up their cars, but you do see reduced rates. The references you saw in Porkland, yes, they did confirm that not everyone gives up their car, but they didn't say people are more likely to have cars. They just said, I would suggest there is a wealth of information out there both locally and from places like Victoria Transportation Policy Institute as well as the writings of Dr. Shupe where there has been extensive study of parking policies and those have indicated have confirmed that yes, when you separate the cost of parking from housing, that you will see reduced rates of car ownership. No, you will not find evidence saying everybody gives up their car. And I've never meant to suggest that with any language in the resolution, and I'm happy to tweak any language if it's necessary to make that clear. But the simple fact is that you do see reduced rates of car ownership when you impose on the actual owners the cost of storing those vehicles rather than spreading them among all residents of the project. Councilman Morrison. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that you're going to expand the language to add acknowledgement about really your intent is about separating to some degree, separating parking costs. And I guess this might be a question for you, Greg. Can you tell me, in UNO, for instance, do we have code that actually says you have to separate? Are there ways to say that you have to separate? Okay. So That's good. And then another question I have is it would be interesting to me, I don't know if we have any way to gather this information. It would be interesting to know what sizes of apartments are being built in some of the newer projects along core transit corridors. Is that something that we might be able to get a feel for? Council member, yes. I think we can get some of that information from those types of site plans that we have because we break them out for efficiencies in one bedrooms. Currently, efficiencies are units are 500 square feet larger and they already have a reduced parking requirement for those type of units of only one instead of being a one bedroom, which has a slightly higher parking requirement. Great. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Otobo. So just to clarify my request in case there's any confusion in addition to having information about the extent to which car ownership has tended to accompany occupants of micro units, because I completely agree and was not making the point that ... Anyway, I'm not going to address that again, but what I would like to know is in the cities that have implemented it, are there others that have experienced what Portland has in terms of impacts on other residents where really you're just shifting some of the cars at least from one place to another? Councilman Martinez. Yeah. I wanted to ask the proposals of this resolution. One of the things that we're looking at in our office as it relates to micro housing is taking advantage of areas that are underdeveloped because they're zoned limited industrial. And so we have large tracks of land that are out there where we can actually create an MU of limited industrial where you have makers or artists or musicians combining micro housing with that LI zoning so that they can still do their work in a community environment, still sell their work in that same environment, but also live right there where they're making their products in a micro housing style component. And I was wondering if that was at all contemplated in this resolution Councilmember Riley.That actually was not contemplated in this resolution, but I think it's a great idea and something we should look at either in this resolution or in a separate resolution. Okay. Thank you, Councilman. Any further questions, comments? Okay. We will go to a council discussion on potential appointments to the Austin Generation Resource Planning Task Force. These appointments will be made this Thursday and the purpose of this discussion today is to try to create a balanced approach to our appointees between the emphasis on clean energy and affordability. Let me ask staff, I know that the resolution called for an appointment by council of someone from the EUC and also someone from the REMC. Is there anyone that can answer the question of whether there's been an appointment from the EUC? I'm Mayor Pro Tem Mark Dryfis for Austin Energy. The Electric Utility Commission has not made an appointment, but they are scheduling a special meeting I believe this Thursday to discuss their appointment. There has been no activity on that issue from the Resource Management Commission As far as I know. Also, it's my understanding that the Resource Management Commission, I agree with you, has not made an appointment. If the EUC is planning to make a recommendation, I guess that begs the question of whether we want to postpone our appointments until they make those recommendations or not, because neither the EUC or the RMC has made a recommendation yet. I was going to offer Leo Dillum, who I've heard from, who's the current chair of the RMC to sit in the position of the RMC representative, but let's just have a discussion about that issue. Councilman Morrison, I thought you ... Okay. Council Member Tobo? I would just say it's my understanding, and I was looking for the email to confirm this, that the Electric Utility Commission, and apologies if you just said this, has scheduled a special call meeting to vote on their membership- That's correct. ... on their recommendation. And I sort of assumed that the RMC would do so as well. And I do have an applicant I'm considering and it's an individual who served on the previous generation planning task force. Okay. Well, the EUC and RMC appointee according to the resolution was a all council appointee. So we all have to agree on that and we have to discuss that in a work session or a council meeting. So it's sounding to me like we're not ready to make this decision because we don't have the EUC recommendation and we don't have the RMC recommendation. Is that correct or can I get some feedback on that, Councilman Ratov? Yeah. Again, it's my understanding that EUC is meeting and I think maybe even before Thursday, but I would say we move forward and we don't always have every single appointee done at the same meeting, but I would think it would be of some value to- To just move Forward. But I do think it should be a goal to have those bodies recommend among themselves and forward that recommendation to us for consideration. Well, I guess we could think ... Mark, I thought I heard you say that the EUC was actually meeting on Thursday. On Thursday. Okay. So we won't have that recommendation. Perhaps we could move forward with our particular appointees and then wait on the EUC and RMC to make a recommendation. Okay. Councilmember Martinez? Yeah. I'll just say that I was leaning in a direction of putting someone on the commission and still am for that matter, someone that is a very strong climate protection proponent, but some of the big users and the building owners and managers association have also made a compelling persuasion, if you will, to consider one of their stakeholders as an appointee as we did during the rate case. And I think it proved to be very, very helpful having that other perspective. They were certainly extremely reasonable in the rate case and worked well with all of the others. So we are considering that as well. We're taking both of those kind of sides of the equation and we'll land on a decision. I don't know if we'll make that decision by Thursday, but that's what we're contemplating is we think we're shifting towards a big user stakeholder or a BOMA representative. Okay. Councilmember Morrison? Yeah, I guess I'd like to go ahead and throw out who I was considering. And just to be clear, it was sort of my impression we were asking each of the commissions to pick somebody to represent them. And while I guess maybe we need to rubber stamp that or not, I hear two different thoughts on this. One, that's my thought is we would just take whoever they recommended or maybe what I was hearing from you, Mayor Brotem, is a different approach of maybe we would have more involvement in deciding who from the commission. I wasn't sure that they would actually make just one recommendation. Okay. All right. Well, I'm working under the assumption that each of the commissions is going to put forward one of their members to be on it. So I see some runs ahead. So maybe several of us are working under that recommendation and clearly we need to have a broad spectrum of perspectives and the resolution lists out residential, commercial, industrial, low income, renewable energy, environmental compliance. I believe I saw last week that we already had made one appointment. Can you, Mr. Dreyfus, tell us who that person represents? Is it a- Mayor Leffingwell appointed Barry Dreyling representing expansion. Okay. So we have large customers covered with that for sure. So I'll just let you know that I have been talking with Smitty about appointing him. Certainly he's got a long history and a lot of expertise in consumer protection as well as renewables and all that. So that's who I'm thinking about. Council Member Riley, and I believe you were one of the lead sponsor or one of the sponsors on the resolution. Will you say exactly what your intentions were in terms of the council relationship to the appointees for EUC and RMC? Was it just for us to rubber stamp what? I had the same understanding that Council Member Morrison described, that we were asking that the EUC and RMC to appoint their own representatives to the task force. And so I don't really see a strong case for putting off our appointments until we hear from them. I will say since we're putting out there those who we've been talking with, I have been talking with our own or formerly our own Michael Osborne about ways to fill up his time and his retirement and making sure he doesn't stray too far because I think we have all benefited from his advice in the past and I hope to have benefits of the future. So that's who I had in mind. There are many very qualified people who have expressed an interest in serving and I'm deeply grateful for that. And so there are others that there's certainly no shortage of qualified applicants in the event that anyone doesn't work out. Okay. Councilman Ochoba? I Just wanted to clarify that a sponsor on this and we actually did work on that language to try to make that clearer, but I'm sorry that it wasn't, but it was the intent that it would be handled kind of like the Lake Austin Task Force or some of the others where the Parks Board and the environmental board each made an appointee recommendation to us and then we affirmed it as a council. And I believe in the case of the Lake Austin Task Force, the council actually had its appointees ready to go and in fact, the group may have met a couple times before those appointees came forward from those two bodies. It's not ideal. I mean, we hope they can all meet together at the same point, but because we have such a timeframe, we have such a short timeframe for the Generation Plan Task Force update team to really do its work. I think it's great if we can move forward. It's my understanding that the mayor may have made an appointment or- Yes, Mark Said thank you. Yeah, I'm sorry. We were having a side conversation, I apologize for missing that point. And who- Mayor Lefingwell appointed Barry Dryling representing expansion. Thank you very much. Council Member Spellman I'm mostly interested in making sure all the animals get in the arc and so I was going to go last, but under the assumption, none of us have been talking to each other, but we all have an idea after having worked together for several years where y'all are going. So I got some guesses and so far my guesses have been absolutely accurate. Although we have a guess for you, Kathy, and I don't know whether you're going to confirm whether I'm going to still be batting 100% or not after you make an appointment. It seems to me that if EUC is meeting on Thursday, they're going to be in a position to identify who they're going to recommend to us. Now we're going to have to wave our hands over it by the resolution, but it seems to help me understand this. If we'd had meetings after the UC had made an appointment, but before we had confirmed that appointment, could they start going to meetings? Is there any reason they couldn't do that? I don't know of any reason, Mark, you want to comment on That? I think I'm going To defer to council on that. Well, let me make the statement that I think it would be a fine idea because we do have a very short timeframe. I'm very cognizant of the fact that we want to get this done and the sooner we can get started, the easier it's going to be. If UC's going to have an appointment on Thursday, but after we actually pass the item where we usually affirm appointments, I think we shouldn't have to wait two weeks before we have our first meeting. I also think we ought to have this conversation if not today, then on Thursday as to who we're going to appoint, just so we can appoint people. Mayor Patient. Councilman Martinez. Mark, what time is the EUC meeting on Thursday? I can find out and get back to you in just a couple of minutes. Do you know if it's evening or day? I think it's afternoon. There's potential for us to do a time certain for 40 or 50 PM. I mean, we have a short agenda this week. It looks like we might be able to get out of here so that Mayor Patim can go watch scandal, but ... That is the ultimate priority. That's what she asked me last week. I was like, "Am I going to get out of here in time to watch scandal or not? " I'm between the two of them every Thursday. They're looking at their watches. It was a great episode, by the Way. Staff is apparently listening to our conversation and it's 3:30 on Thursday. Maybe they can take that agenda item first and get that over to us so that we can get this done on Thursday. I mean, we're going to be here till 5:30 for sure for live music and proclamation. It is their Only agenda item. Okay, great. Then it will come up first. Councilman Morrison, I'm looking at the language in the resolution and I guess this might be a question for our legal staff. It's not clear to me that the council is even in a position to appoint them to have to weigh their hands and ... Yeah, the resolution says the Austin Generation Resource Planning Task Force is created consisting of nine members in total, including one representative each from the EUC and the RMC and one member appointed by each council member. So that's different than we're not even ... So first of all, the council members are not even nominating. We're appointing. Pardon me? Oh, this is a previous one. Yeah, you didn't bring all of them. This is resolution 2014, 03, 06, 024, which is sitting in front of you right now and magically appeared. And I'm looking at number one in the be it resolved. So the language to me suggests that the EUC and the RMC just get to identify their representative. It's not clear to me, those even need to come back to the council. That's the way it looks like it's written. In fact, it's not even clear to me on the example. But I don't know if when you voted on this item, maybe we need to go back and see if there was any discussion on what your intent was. I don't think so. There was no discussion On this. Actually my intent, I think I was a co- sponsor on this and my intent might differ from Council Member Tobo's intent because I thought that when we did the Lake Austin Task Force, those board appointees didn't come through council. I think they were just the appointees. Councilman. I thought that we had affirmed them, but I will say I don't have a strong feeling one way or another, except to say that I do think it should be a vote of the body, a vote of the EEC and a vote of the RMC That gives rise to their appointee. But I don't have a strong feeling and I hesitate to say this, but I don't think we had a full ... I know that we didn't have a full discussion at council about the intent of that and probably as sponsors didn't really talk about what we meant by that line. We borrowed it to some extent from the earlier generation task force creating resolution. I know that we tinkered with it a little bit from that to be clearer, but it's really ... I don't have a strong feeling one way or another whether we affirm those appointments or not. It was my understanding we typically did. But again, I do have a strong feeling that the body should have a vote to identify their appointee, whether it comes to us for affirmation or not. May I protein? I think the city attorney had a follow-up to council member children's comment. Did You? Well, I would just think that as a general rule, you created the task force, you created it, and then it gives each one of you the opportunity to appoint someone to the task force. But if it's on your agenda and it's the council doing it, you act as a body. So on Thursday, I would think that you would get a representative from one of these two people and then the body would then vote on whoever, I guess, Council Member Spellman had or whoever you as a body to say, "This is who's going to make up our committee or task force." Councilman. Absolutely. When I was using the word body, I was talking about the bodies of the EUC and the RMC and whether or not we would affirm those. Councilmember Spellman, I ThouhMaybe we've already resolved the conflict and I'm making it worse, but how did we do it for the first generation task force? If we borrow the language from the resolution, which created the first generation task force, however we did it the first time, ought to be the way we do it second time, right? Correct. You were there. Tell us how we did it. Mr. Riley, assistant city attorney, I think some of this ambiguity arises from the fact that in the previous task force, it was the chair of each commission that was appointed automatically and this was sort of a last minute change just to give each body the flexibility to appoint a member that wasn't necessarily the chair of each commission, but I agree that there's some ambiguity there. I think the intent when I was assisting Council Member Tova's office was, and my understanding was that each commission would be able to appoint its own without council then acting to then, as y'all have sort of framed it, rubber stamp that recommendation, but rather each of the other seven appointees would come along during the normal boards and commissions appointments at a council meeting. That seems to me the most expeditious way of getting it done and they could start meeting just as soon as they can ... They could join the meeting as soon as they got appointed. I think it's the best way for us to handle it. So Mayor Pro Tem, are we going to actually make appointments then on Thursday or are we going to make- The plan is to make appointments on Thursday. And then from my understanding that this discussion, the RMC and EUC will make their recommendations and they will sit on the task force, but that will be an individual item and we will complete our appointments on Thursday. I don't feel a particular need to wait for the EUC to make its appointment before I make my appointment or before I hear everybody else's appointments either. So we could probably take this up on our morning. From my point of view, we could take this up first thing in the morning. Don't have to wait until 3:30 in the afternoon. I'm fine with that. Does anybody else have any opposition to that? Okay, then I will let the mayor know that. Okay. We don't have any other pre-selected items from council. Do we have any other items that council would like to address on the agenda? Hearing none without objection, this meeting of the Austin City Council work session is hereby adjourned.