City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 5/29/2014 Title: ATXN CCTV Channel: 13 - ATXN Recorded On: 5/29/2014 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/29/2014 Transcript Generated by SnapStream Enterprise TV Server ======================================================= THURSDAY, MAY 29th, BUDGET Session. 1:30 p.m. [07:34:57] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Good afternoon, I'm austin mayor lee leffingwell, a quorum is present to I'm going to call this council budget work session to order on THURSDAY, MAY 29th, 2014, 1:35 p.M., We are meeting in the board and commission room, austin city hall, 301 west second street, austin, texas. So we have a number of departments to go through today. And our -- as the plan is that as we have done in the previous two budget work sessions, it's to just take questions on these department by department. We -- we were scheduled for three hours, 1:30 to 4:30, I personally have to leave at 4:30 because I have to be across town at 5:00. If you don't have particular questions, we can skip the department. I'll just call them out one at a time. And see how far we get. And hopefully we won't have to have another budget work session. So I think ed you wanted to say a couple of words. >> I just wanted to clarify, you all should have a list of the departments we have -- we are planning on covering today and a one-page handout. This is just something that got left off the list of unmet service demands that we provided to council. That was something that council asked for back at our march 8th work session. We submitted it from the general fund and internal service departments, also the same for our enterprise departments. This was just an item that got left off. We have added this to the electronic version of the document on the city's website and we wanted you to have the information before you today. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Well, we'll start off austin resource recovery is in the dock right for you. Do we have any questions on austin resource recovery? Councilmember riley? >> Riley: Hi, bob, this may be a question for code compliance but since you are here I'm going to ask you first. I'm hearing some concerns about the extents of compliance with universal recycling ordinance and I [07:36:58] understand that some responsibilities for that lie with code compliance. Is that a matter from your perspective, as the director of austin resource recovery, is that a matter that we should be concerned with and as -- your department, do you have any input to provide on that? >> Yeah, a couple of answers. First introductions, bob [indiscernible] austin resource recovery and jessica edwards our finance manager, new face to you, the universal recycling ordinance has a face-in of one year from the time the property is affected where there's an education and outreach and that's a task on our staff and then after that one year, there's the task on code compliance to -- to basically enforce the ordinance. In that first year, we have staff on the ground visiting the -- the affected properties. We do notify the properties by mail and in person. And if there is a phase 1 and a phase 2 of the -- of the universal recycling ordinance so there's a number of properties that are affected every year. It is a strain on our resources, we have resource dedication. We are behind schedule in notifying and doing the direct site visits, but we have a plan of action to catch up by september. SO BY OCTOBER 1st, BY THE End of this fiscal year, we will have touched or visited every business that's affected by the universal recycling ordinance. We do have some critics that are saying that we are six months behind, that is true, we are six months behind. The task on code compliance is actually staffing up to do the enforcements and it's been largely unknown until recently -- the non- compliant properties on the phase 1 category is about 35 properties right now. On phase 2, it's still a little unknown. Still visiting and trying to find on it who non-client. >> Riley: Is that a matter [07:38:58] of concern to your department or something that we need to visit with karl about? >> I would say karl and I are meeting on a very regular basis trying to work it out, we're trying to share resources. I think that the financial burden is more of a headache to karl. We have the internal resources dedicated for the education and outreach. The tough part is at karl's end on the enforcement. >> Riley: Okay. I will take it from there with karl, thanks. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Can you help me understand those numbers a little bit better. Phase 1 and phase 2 and phase 1 we're supposed to kick in already. >> Yes. >> Morrison: Phase 2 we're not. I have something that says that there are over a thousand businesses. So how does that divide between phase 1 and phase 2. >> I'm not sure this if I have the numbers in front of me, here we go. I have phase 2 in front of me. Phase 1, just a reminder to council there was several steps with council over the last couple of years on the universal recycling ordinance, what we call phase 1 was enacted by council in 2011, I believe. The first phase in of businesses under phase 1 was OCTOBER 1st, 2012, AND THE Education and outreach was to be completed by october 1st, 2013, WE ARE SIX Months behind that and completed that task by march of 2014. So that's that six month delay right there. We are ready to hand off on phase 1 the non-compliance businesses to code. And we're working with code on resources for their enforcement provision. >> Morrison: You said you only think there are 35 non-compliant? >> Yeah. This -- this chart in front of me, I've got some numbers for the phase 2. But on phase 1 as you're speaking, I believe the list has been narrowed to 35. The list was in the hundreds back in march. And we've had a very progressive activity since then. [07:40:58] >> Because I know you provided some information. >> That's right. >> Morrison: To swak in maybe april and the numbers are significantly differentthan what you are saying. >> I have to double check myself on the number, I'm a little uncertain about the number, but it is well below 100 now. I will say that our staff has been very productive in the last two months on that. Now on phase 2, just to finish that conversation, that's more on the organic side. Those properties are not affected to 2016 but we have these same internal discussions about the resources for phase 2. But that hasn't hit the calendar yet. >> Okay. I'm just looking at -- you did list one -- am I right? That you listed one uro unmet need. >> Yes. >> Why am I not seeing that. I have that in front of me, 1,712 ftes. In -- 171,002 ftes. In an ideal world we would staff up two ftes. We are not asking for ftes for this next fiscal year. Our plan of action, as we -- we're in the forecast period, still working on the final numbers for our budget proposal, we're trying to see if we can hire temps in that role. For visiting the businesses for compliance for education and outreach. With can he do this task with two temps instead of two permanent. That's our task and there is an economic ballot and we do not that -- economic impact and we do not have that in the final forecast numbers. >> Is this the job that would make sense to do with a temporary employee? >> Yes and no. If the sole task is the implementation of the uro then it's a four-year task [07:42:58] and we could rotate their temp the staff, my staff's recommendation is permanent staff because they can also role in enforcement of the cnd ordinance that will be taken to council in six months as well as future ordinances. So if we have trained these folks as permanents, there will be future ordinance implementation strategies for them to work on. But we can manage with temps in the short term. >> Okay. Good. And so hopefully you'll be able to bring a budget that has the temps in it. >> It's my intent to change from the forecast numbers to the -- to the proposed budget to include this unmet need. Currently it's an unmet need. >> Okay. Great. Should it not be fulfilled, would we have to accept that 're going to fall behind probably on our compliance with the universal recycling? >> The temps? Okay, yeah. It's -- there are certain division activities that we are falling behind on. Diversion activities. Many budget and prioritizing, the uro is my highest priority on the diversion program. So I'm attempting to not fall behind. We are behind right now [laughter] we're trying to catch up, but in the priority of the dollars, that's a higher priority than some of our other diversion programs. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Exam. >> Martinez: I wanted to ask about the clean community fee. When was the last time we -- >> last year. I'm thinking from memory certain -- let me see. We might have that right here. >> Martinez: What was that increase? >> Okay. It's a 15-cent increase. It was 3:40, and now it's 3:55. Yeah, I -- I should clarify that in the past the clean community funded our transfer to code, when code fully became self reliant, we split the clean community fee. So our portion of the clean [07:44:59] community fee for last year was 340, for this year 355 and the proposed rate 475. >> And so what is the additional $1.20 going to be used for, is that just cost drivers or new services that are being provided? >> A little of both, actually. The universal recycling ordinance implementation comes out of that fee. We also have -- where's my list on -- where's the list on the clean community fee, the list of services. The general services is litter collection, street sweeping, boulevard sweeping. Hazardous household wastes. Those are general costs we've had over time, there are cost drivers in those categories. But new programs, the business outreach through the universal recycling ordinance are paid out of that, there's new cost drivers in there. >> Martinez: So we only applied this fee to residential customers? >> The difference between the base rate for the cart and the clean community fee is two different client bases. So the clean -- I got the list of services. The clean community fee is assessed to single family, multi-family and business communities. So it's about 370,000 customers. In the curb side services that's 100 and -- okay. There we go. Residential customers in the clean community 357,000 and commercial customers 24,000. >> But so no one is exempted from the clean community fee? >> Within the city limits of austin. Our service territory is different than otherutilities but within the city nobody is exempt. Everybody pays. On the curb side fees, that's just single family households. >> Martinez: Okay. Can you just provide us in a budget question that list of services that come under the clean community fee? You don't have to list them all right now? >> Yes. We've got that we can [07:47:00] address that, too. >> Martinez: Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Transportation department is next. Probably won't be any questions on transportation. But -- >> thank you, I will just go ahead and leave then. [Laughter]. >> Thank you, mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Number one concern, number two and number three. >> Mayor, I have a few questions. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mayor pro tem cole. >> I noticed you are asking for 14 positions that are going to be repumped by the public works department. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Cole: Where are those positions going to land and how is that going to help with traffic congestion. >> I'm robert spiller, director of public transportation, just for public identification. Those 14 positions that are being repumped, 8 are currently because of the departmental separation of transportation from from the public works department. 8 of those ftes are positions that are already doing the same job that they are now. Just moving into the department. So that's sort of an accounting issue, if you will, in terms of those ftes. Eight are just moving over to do what they are doing now as part of the public works department. For transportation they will now be part of the transportation, so that's like the finance, the purchasing, the accounting and so forth and so eight of those are coming over. Part of that also is the bike ped program as we sent a notice to council the bicycle and pedestrian program is moving to transportation to become [07:49:00] part of the more holistic approach to transportation. Our goal to drive towards multi-modal, so about half of those eight in addition to the accounting are also the bike and ped program. Then the other six positions that we've asked for are to reinforce our traffic engineering positions. We have held just about the same number of traffic engineering staff that's both the tech staff as well as the professional staff constant for the last six years. We really need to reinforce that. I've been -- we stretched that organization as far as we can stretch it and so we need to add some resources there. So those engineers will be deployed in any area engineer program so that they are responding directly to citizens. Our 311 calls continue to go up as we advertise, you know, that citizens can get in touch with a traffic engineer to resolve problems via the 311 system and we just stretched that group of engineers too far. And so what I would like to do with this new group of engineers and technicians going into that area is to spend more time looking at the pedestrian issues within our community, looking at specific traffic issues around schools and so forth to address some of the -- I would say one-off studies that need to be done city-wide to reinforce our traffic safety program. >> Well, rob, you know the number one issue that we hear about is transportation. >> Absolutely. >> Cole: And so I would like to back up a little bit and let you talk about what you are involved with in mobility 35 and the major congestion issues and how THAT IMPACTS THE BUDGE>> Cole: Well, thank you. You know, every years part of the -- >> well, you know every year as part of the city survey where we compare ourselves to our cities, we ask our citizens how they feel about [07:51:01] traffic flow and [indiscernible]. They always continuously tell us about how concerned they are about the lack of mobility, the lack of congestion within our community. We've done some subsequent discussions with the community and understand that it's on our major roadways, roadways like i-35, mopac, as well as some of our major arterials, lamar and south congress and it's about getting to and from work and vice versa, getting back to your home in terms of establishing reliable travel times. So one of the things that we've been doing over the last six years with city manager marc ott's direction and richard good's direction is reaching out to our partners and working very diligently with our partners such as the texas department of transportation, capital metro with the help of the board members there, really approaching transportation from a regional direction talking about projects of regional significance. For instance on i-35 the city, with the help of council, went to the voters and brought bond money to begin a discussion on i-35 and I believe we are coming back in a work session on the 10th of june on to have that discussion about projects of regional significance with you. But the city made an initial investment of about $3 million over two bond cycles, if you will, the 2010 and 2012 and that has come back in a 17 to 1 return on investment, if you will. Meaning that the state and other organizations have brought 17 times what our initial investment was back to the project and I believe -- >> Cole: Anticipate that? >> Well, we had a hope. I don't know if I could say that we anticipated it, but we knew we had a problem that we needed to get going on. >> Cole: I ask you that because we are looking at this for planning purposes and a budget. We are trying to figure out what is that one-on-one [07:53:01] match. We talk about it a lot in connection with rail. But we don't talk about it much in terms of roads. So is there a formula? >> You know, there is not a formula or a -- or an equation. What I do hear from our partners at the state and ctrma is that there is state funding for roadways coming. And that the state will be looking to those metropolitan areas that are willing to invest locally in themselves. And so it's -- it's no longer I would say this way, you know, i-35 is everybody's problem. It's not just the state's problem anymore. And if we are to attract funding through the moneys that the state has put forward, the potential for the voters will be voting on a constitutional amendment to release moneys from the rainy day fund, what the state has said is that they will be looking to municipalities that have invested or are willing to meet them part way. And so I would say there's not a mathematical formula to what we could expect for pay back, but I know that it requires us to stay in the game. >> Cole: So there was actually a resolution that I brought together with mayor leffingwell asking for you to bring forth projects of regional significance and I'm sure that i-35 will be interstate 35 will be one of them. But for budget purposes, as soon as we could get that information it would be appreciated to be able to know those numbers. >> Yes, ma'am, I believe we are on the june 10th work session schedule. >> Cole: Okay, thank you, mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I will say there are a lot of efforts going along with regard to i-35 and other main regional roads, senator watson has convened a committee, meet on a regular basis to discuss ways to improve i-35 and general webber, the new director of [07:55:03] the department of transportation held a meeting last week where we discussed that very same thing only on a more regional level from hays to williamson county. And obviously part of austin. So there are a lot of eyes on this and we're looking at potential projects that the city could partner on with txdot and perhaps with the ctrma in the future. Anybody else that wants to join in actually. But I don't anticipate that the projects that we'll be talking about on june 10th will have a budget impact. These will be proposals for potential debt service. Councilmember riley. >> Riley: Obviously, i-35 is a huge priority take we need to deal with, but we also need to think about transportation issues in other settings like austin's neighborhoods. >> Absolutely. >> Riley: In that regard, one program that's been very popular in austin for some time now, used to be called traffic calming, now we call it the local area traffic management program. Always very popular, we get a lot of requests for it. We are routinely sending people your way as they seek out ways to address issues of speeding through neighborhoods and so on. Can you tell me what you anticipate for the coming fiscal year in terms of funding for that program? In particular I wanted t ask about the one element which I believe is part of the program or related to it and that is a pedestrian hybrid [indiscernible] which has been another very population innovation that we've been getting out on austin streets in recent years. >> Well, councilme riley, also to answer that question a couple of ways. The latm program which was funded near the 2010 bond. We are near the end of that funding. We just had a call, I believe, we are getting ready to do a call in which we will very likely assign the rest of those monies from the 2010 bond and so [07:57:03] those will take us a couple of years to get built, obviously. We are looking for other revenue sources to do latm on a regular basis. Which includes, you know, if we're rebuilding a street already, some of those devices can be built as the new street design regardless of whether it's part of the latm program or whether it's part of a community discussion that is funded through a normal street reconstruction, so we're doing that. With regard to the pedestrian hybrid beacons thank you for mentioning that. They are very successful, we've been using them as much as possible. That program, also, is part of our signal program so we fund that out, you know, it's a signal, it's a different type of signal albeit but still a signal so we fund that out of our signal delivery program. That program, too, is -- we have taken a different tact instead of taking the amount that's been approved for the bond and trying to meter it out over the number of years, we've been assigning that money to need -- on a need basis, a prioritized need basis, so every year we prioritize this -- the intersections and in this case the pedestrian intersections based on severity and risk and we try to address all of the top risk locations based on how many our crews can build in a year. So there's a physical amount of how we can get built as well. We have been going through those moneys very quickly. Again there as well we are also looking for other resources to do that and we have been successful partnering with other agencies and developers to secure additional ones as well. This next year I believe that we will have continued program as you've seen thus far with latm. It will be more of a buildout scenario as opposed to attracting new applications, but we are looking for other ways to [07:59:05] fund those. That may include looking to council for recommendation on how to fun those from other -- fund those from other capital resources as well. So -- >> so if I understand you correctly, right now if someone requests say a pedestrian hybrid beacon at a particular location, we are not able to accommodate that request with current funding. >> Well, what we do is we evaluate it and see if it's a higher risk than one we currently have tagged with funding. If it is at higher risk we displace the one that is a lower risk to address the higher risk one. At some point, yes, we will run out of money this year. For pedestrian hybrid beacons. >> Is that something that we need to be considering in the course of this budget cycle that if we want -- to the extent that we want to keep that program alive and well, we're going to need to figure out alternative funding sources? >> It has traditional been a c.I.P. Or capital budget discussion. I'm happy to work with the budget office to contemplate that, but it's not currently contemplated in this operation's budget. >> With respect to both pedestrian hybrid beak consequence and the local area traffic -- beaconsnd the latm, I am interested in exploring those funding sources. I think that is a matter of new concern and I expect with the new council there is a significant likelihood that the demand for both of those may well increase as we have more attention -- conceivably more attention to specific problems all across the city. And expectations within each of the 10 districts. And so I think it's important that -- to make sure that we have explored all of the available funding sources, that both programs are, have been very successful and I think it's important for us to figure out how those could continue. [08:01:05] >> Yes, sir. You know, one other thing that I would mention to you is council will be holding a hearing, I believe at this next council meeting on a complete streets policy, which will allow us to begin to not make some of the design decisions that have led to higher speeds in neighborhoods and so forth. Without getting to a more narrower street concept, complete street with sidewalks and so forth, that will start to address at least on our new facilities that we build in the future a design that does not necessarily encourage those higher speeds. And so those are on our neighborhood streets. Make sure. So that's the other part of that program that's coming on board. >> Great. Then lastly I wanted to touch on one subject that I was glad to hear you mentioned the bike program is now moving under transportation, for the first time in this coming year we'll have a whole year of the bike program being under transportation. There's one particular project within the bike program that I wanted to ask about. There has been discussion about a pilot for detecting cyclists at signalized intersections. Can you provide us an update on where that stands? >> Well, council recently approved funding as part of our latm, no, our advanced transportation management system, our signal system. The idea is to develop a cell phone app with the proprietor of the signal management system. So that bicyclists that want to participate will turn on the app, application on their cell phone, and as they are riding that cell phone will serve just like a pedestrian push button and indicate to the signal, hey, I'm a bicycle rider and I'm here and then that signal will be treated just as if somebody walked up and hit a push button. It's very exciting. We just got the funding and [08:03:05] so we're in scoping with the folks to do that. What's interesting is that same technology it's actually come out of or grown out of the signal preemption we did for transit. The device is simply indicating that you are there. One of the challenges that we have with the bicycle is there's not enough metal on the bicycle or rider him or herself to be picked up by the signal. So this is an electronic way to give indication that you're there. There's certainly other technologies out there. This will not be a solve everybody's issue, but it will certainly improve travel for the general public both cyclists and auto drivers because it will be more data into the system. So again this is one of the benefits we get from investing in the signal system over the last four or five years with the help of council. >> Riley: It is a real issue. Because nobody likes bicyclists running traffic lights but part of the problem is that when a bicyclist comes up to a traffic light, if there's nobody else at the intersection, you don't even know whether you have triggered the light or not. For all you know you may be sitting there all day before the light ever turns. In that case it's -- you can kind of understand why someone might feel the need to proceed through the intersection when they don't even know. I wonder if the app that you mentioned is it it provide a means of notifying the user that the signal has detected the bicyclist? >> I can't speak to that directly, but that's a very good idea and we'll make sure that our engineering contractor has, you know, maybe it -- buzzes or something about. >> Riley: As you know we did a very interesting pilot within the last year or two with the blue light. For instance if you are southbound on rio grande at mlk and you are on a bike, a [08:05:06] little blue light comes on across the street saying the vehicle has been detected. That way you know it knows you are there. Then you will see bicyclists waiting patiently because they know that they are detected. Without some positive reinforcement like that, even if they have been detected they don't know so they may well go ahead. So something like that would be very useful. >> I want to stress this is a benefit to both auto drivers as well as the bicyclists because again as you said, when the signal doesn't work for the cyclist they are tempted to run it. That creates a safety issue for the auto driver. So it is all integrated. The only thing that I will say about that, this is cutting edge, no one else in the country is doing this, it should be pretty exciting. >> Riley: It would be great to be able to take the lead on that. >> Morrison: I want to follow up on this because I saw as one of the unmet needs a reference to this system. And what you mentioned in the unmet need is two things together. One is ongoing maintenance of the existing system which is our whole information -- integrated transportation system, so that's all of the cool stuff that we have going on to get the buses to go through, to do the displays of warnings and all of that. So you have combined maintenance of the existing system with -- with an initial project enhancement for the bicycle detension. The total ist listed at 2.6 million. So that's a lot of money and I have two thoughts about that. One is how can we make maintenance of an existing its amendment need? I mean, obviously we have to maintain that system otherwise all of the -- all of the great advancements and improvements we've made in getting our lights synchronized and keeping our [08:07:09] buses flowing would go away. How can we call that an unmet need and then secondly how do we separate out the bicycle detection so that we have an option of going with that or not? Because 2.6 million sounds like a lot of money. So I just want to understand what our choices are going to be. >> I'll try to clarify that. In the writing for you. I will tell you this is one of the -- it has to do with the atms, automated transportation management system, which is the signal system. We have -- with council rection and council help have bought something that I think really is cutting edge and as we add to it we see opportunities to even get more out of it and so that's what part of this unmet need is, is coming to council and saying, you know, we can get more out of it. I agree, we need to help you understand what is maintaining what we already have versus what is getting a little bit more out of it. So we will work on that, councilmember. I can't answer that right now. >> Morrison: Okay. That's great. Because obviously I think you all probably can agree we don't want to go backwards, we're going to maintain our system. So then I am interested in the cost for the bicycle detection system because we are going to have to be making some choices and 2.5 million is a big chunk of money. And I do want to understand the difference. For a bicyclist, the difference between a bicyclist and a pedestrian they are on the sidewalk and they push a button, right? >> Hopefully, yes. >> Push the button. >> Have buttons now that are responsive, yes. >> Okay. So the bicyclists do have an option to go on the sidewalk and push the button, right? >> Well, most cyclists that are on the street often have [08:09:09] their feet locked into their pedals, so -- >> that doesn't happen. >> Yeah. It's better to stay in the saddle, as you will, and be detected. That is actually the bicycle piece of it is a rather small piece of the overall management system. The freight, if you will, has already been carried by prioritizing transit through the system. So what the app does is simply allow the bicyclist to raise his or her hand and say I'm here. It is a useful app. It also has other benefits by joining that concept and participating in it, you're getting a benefit, but then you are also sending data to the system saying here's where cycling is in high demand or this is what, you know, we don't have a good way toation cyclists through our -- to trace cyclists through our network very well. So I think it's a good way to help define investments as council wants to consider as we go forward. >> Morrison: Got it. Basically the app allows the bicyclist to be a mini me from one of our buses right. >> Exactly. >> Morrison: That's nice. I hope that's not $2 million. >> Actually a small piece of it [multiple voices] >> Morrison: You will lay that out and let us know what all of the pieces are. >> >> >> >> Morrison: What really are options versus no we need to go forwardith it. >> We will try to do a better job with going forward with that. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I would like to second that request. We are going to be faced with making choices here, hard choices. As everybody knows the city of austin has spent a ton of money in the past few years on improving bicycle infrastructure and I agree also with councilmember morrison when I'm a pedestrian and I press that button, I don't get any feedback. Sometimes I press it several times and I still don't get any feedback. So I think this is kind of a luxury that we would want to take a closer look at. >> Okay. [08:11:12] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: About that feedback then, let me just ask while you're here, because the new buttons that are there, you don't really feel them push? >> Thank you very much. [Multiple voices] >> Morrison: Can you talk about that, because I know a little red light comes on sometime. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Old buttons in my neighborhood. >> We are systematically moving through our system to replace the buttons. There's new technology out there. We are trying to replace those on our major arterials first where we have high risk of pedestrian and auto conflict, obviously. And the new buttons actually tell you when you push button to wait and when to cross in a friendly texas accent. We try to find folks that are friendly sounding and they tell you because people that have trouble seeing or detecting when to cross or not to cross are now getting verbal cues. In some places we've also tried the buzzing button, but we believe that it's higher and better technology to use the verbal communication, especially if somebody is hard of seeing. That's what we're doing. And also for persons with disabilities we're also trying to make sure that our ramps line up at 90 degrees to the crossing direction as opposed to on the corner to give cues as to where to go. So we are systematically moving through our system. We think that's an important piece of meeting ada requirements and the higher and better use for those facilities. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: I just want to make a comment about the bicycle conversation. >> Yes. >> Martinez: I don't view it as a luxury. If it's something that is going to improve mobility and transportation for vehicles and for cyclists and for pedestrians at intersections, I don't know of any bicyclist that stays clipped at a red light unless they are wearing a big strong helmet because [08:13:13] they're going to fall over. It's not that it's -- that it's easy to pull your bike off to the sidewalk. It's just not a mode of transit. You are in that bicycle lane for a reason because we built it and we want you to stay in that lane and we want you to obey traffic signals. I don't want to look at this as just a benefit for cyclists. It's a benefit to transit and quite frankly to safety among vehicles and cyclists. So I like forward to the conversation. Know we have tons of tough decisions to make, but I just don't want to couch this as some luxury for cyclists. I think it could have a good overall impact -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: I guess that we will have to disagree about that. But I would like to have the opportunity to exercise choices when we come to those specific items on the budget. Before we go to the next department, I wanted to ask you, since we have so many departments to cover, and all -- this bottom list under internal services, that was not on the original schedule. That was requested last budget meeting by councilmembers. If you would look over for the nextew minutes this list and -- and see if you have questions, otherwise if there's nobody that has questions, we could go ahead and cancel out those departments or maybe it would be appropriate to -- to ask a question electronically instead of in this forum. So it's just a an opportunity to see if we can get through this a little bit faster and not have to call another meeting. But if you have absolutely have a question, I will ask you that. Next is aviation. [08:15:21] We've heard from your department so obviously all of those questions have been answered. Thank you. Code compliance. Code compliance not here, we will go on to convention center. >> If you could ask them to please be readily available, that would help us out. >> Absolutely. >> Code compliance. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Any questions? Councilmember riley? >> Riley: First of all, I will start off with a question that I asked of austin resource recovery when they were at the table, that relates to enforcement of [indiscernible] compliance under the universal recycling ordinance. There had been some concerns about the degree of compliance and in particular whether we have enough staffing to do an adequate job of [indiscernible] compliance with that ordinance. Comment on that? >> Yes, sir, karl smart, director of code compliance department. We were not geared up to do enforcement of the universal recycling ordinance this year. After talking with bob we -- [08:17:23] there was a discussion made to push up the enforcement and not continue education through the refers of this fiscal year. What we are doing is we're going to put in place a program to go ahead with enforcement starting now. We're in the process of doing that now. We'll use a temporary employee and/or existing staff to help out with that enforcement so the idea that he passes on cases that are non-compliant, we will take those cases, make the visits and issue notices or citations, municipal court citations as necessary to get compliance. My hope still is that by making the visit having officers, code officers, uniform, badges, et cetera to make those visits that will get that compliance that we need. But if we need to go forward to municipal court with citations, et cetera, we will do that. We have listed it as as an unmet need anticipating that we will probably need to add additional staff going into next year for universal recycling. >> Riley: What is the amount of that? >> It's three ftes, probably -- let me get you a number here. >> [Indiscernible]. >>> The universal recycling, that would be three ftes for a total of 401,138. Let me also mention that we are in light of the need for advancing that enforcement, we are starting a pilot program for the rest of this fiscal year right on through the end of the fiscal year. That will give us a chance to get a better idea of the scope of the enforcement [08:19:24] activity. How much is needed out there to make sure that we have got this ordinance under control. >> Riley: I'm glad to hear that. Do you expect that pilot would yield any information that would be available to us in time to make decisions about next year's budget? >> Yes, sir. That's what we're anticipating that we will pull together that information into a report and bring it to council so that you will have that information to make a decision on how we go forward. >> Riley: Great. We are hearing concerns about that issue from the community. Any additional information that you could provide would be very helpful, I avpreciate your initiating the pilot on it. Shifting gears a little bit. I want to thank you for the progress that you have made in regard to problem properties. There's been a lot of discussion about that over the past year or two. I know that your department has stepped up its efforts and proceeded with the rental registration program for repeat offenders, has seen real success with that. I want to congratulate you on that and convey our thanks for the progress that you made. And I also see that you are forecasting the addition of four new inspectors in the coming year, the coming several years to handle the anticipated increase -- increased in the [indiscernible] investigation program. And for the increased focus on multi- family and neighborhood code enforcement. And appreciate all of that. I did want to ask about additional steps. As you know, we have -- council passed a resolution calling for consideration of best practices and dealing with problem properties and we expected that there might well be some additional progress to be made in that regard. Can you give us an update on where that stands now and whether we need to be considering those additional measures as we go through this budget cycle? >> Yes, sir. I'm seeing -- we are seeing substantial progress in [08:21:25] dealing with problem properties. With additional inspectors that you added to our budget last year, we've got all of those positions filled and we're still in the process of training some of those inspectors so we can make sure that we get them out and into the neighborhoods on the street and so as we do that, we're seeing even more progress in dealing with problem properties out there. Additionally, the repeat offenders program, it is getting off the ground. A little slow, but it is getting there and we think that it's going to be effective in dealing with the -- particularly the worst of the worst, multi-family properties, particularly, but not limited to multi-family properties. And the multi-family inspection program is really taking off and we're seeing a lot of good results from that. A lot of -- a number of inspections are being done and we're getting compliance in most of our cases, some of our cases we're having to, we're already seeing an increase in the number of cases going to the building and standards commission and the increase in the number of cases that are going to municipal court. We're not at the level that we want to be at yet, but we are certainly making progress in that regard. So I think those programs are certainly helping. We've put together a public information team to focus more on education and getting the information out as to the code requirements and what do you need to do in order to comply and hopefully we can help prevent a lot of the -- help folks to comply prior to having to go to court or go to the building and standards commission. So all of that is working in conjunction. I think we're seeing progress. Again, we're not where we want to be, but I think we're certainly making progress in that regard. >> One themes of that whole discussion was the need to interdepartmental coordination and [08:23:26] collaboration. We saw examples of that in other cities like dallas. I wanted to see if you could get us any information about whether we're seeing any progress here in austin with that kind of collaboration and whether you foresee any budgetary impacts that we ought to consider for the coming year. >> We're not seeing a budgetary impact for fy '15 and as you will notice we're not asking for any additional ftes in fy '15. I think the city of austin has been fairly -- has been really at the top of the standard as it relates to collaboration within the departments, but not necessarily a formalized interdepartmental process. It's just come together when you need to come together. And particularly emergencies, particularly in really tough cases like some of the cases we've had recently with the apartment complexes and all. But at the city manager's direction we have also put toget formalized interdepartmental team looking at how to collaborate and being more effective in dealing with a lot of the big problem properties out there. We pull that team together. My assistant and director keith leech is the lead on that team and the idea, what they are working on now is being able to identify the hot spots around the city. Where are the hot spots? Where are the problems? Doing that by each department looking at their databases, looking at the data, then overlaying that data to find out where the worst hot spots are in the city. Where should we concentrate our efforts if we are going to take a project on, would it be north, south, central, what part of austin. And I think that's going to be very effective. We've got really super cooperation from all of the departments. It includes apd and fire department, law department, public works, transportation, parks, a [08:25:27] number of departments working, health and human services, a number of departments working together and pulling the information from their databases and sharing that information so we can see where there needs to be a concentrated effort in order to help neighborhoods. >> Riley: And I think that's exactly the sort of effort that the council had in mind when we directed, provided direction about that sort of collaboration. It does strike me that to the extent that we see -- identify additional opportunities to -- to advance community goals in regard to the properties we're talking about, that there might well be some budgetary impact. It's not obvious which department that would fall on. And I just wanted to ask at this point do we have any sense, I assume that will mean somebody is going to winds up doing some additional work. I assume that there is a budgetary impact to that. On the other hand maybe we're just talking about improved efficiency and it's not an additional cost impact. And I just wanted to know if you could shed any light on that? >> Michael McDonald, deputy city manager. Certainly what we try to encourage when we put something like this together for us to first be as efficient as possible. And try to work within the budgets that we have. And in the event that there a shortfall somewhere, look for other places that we can try to absorb it. So although we don't have a specific number for you right now, what I can tell you is, just kind of reiterating what karl has said is that we've really put a hard focus on that collaboration. One of the things that the city manager wanted us to make sure of is that this is not just some type of adjunct group. It's got to be some consistency. So the part of the direction that we were giving in this. Once we solidify all of this, you are going to be a part of that team for a couple of years, even if you get rotated within your department, we're going to have consistency in making sure that we maintain that focus. Because as you know, some of these problems are not going [08:27:27] to be solved overnight. We're going to have to be consistent on it. So -- but certainly we will probably run into some circumstances where maybe a department may struggle, but that's part of the reason of putting that team together to see if we could look somewhere else within the organization to try to find that gap before we bring a number to you. >> Riley: Okay. I appreciate all of your efforts on that and look forward to any updates that you want to provide. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Yeah, thanks. I appreciate this line of questioning because I think it's really critical, but I want to just get back to the interdepartmental team. One of the things that safe her housing resolution did was to talk about the interdepartmental team but really to ask staff to look at models that have been used in other cities and dallas is one and we in fact convened a meeting with some of the dallas officials and the city manager and department directors to really look at -- I mean, it really is a paradigm shift. So I guess my first question is: When is the report back about that interdepartmental team? Teams like it's coming up? >> It is coming up soon. We were trying to pull the team together and get some direction as how do we identify target areas that the team will focus on. We do have some information from best practices, including dallas, the city of dallas and some other major cities. And we're just trying to make sure that we have got enough information that we can bring back to council and make that report. We are certainly in the formative stage and looks like it's going to be a great program, really going to be an asset. Just want to get enough information that it would be beneficial to come back to council and make that presentation. We can certainly do that soon, like early summer. >> Seems like the resolution report back date was june. I'm not certain about that, but it was timed to coincide with the budget process as councilmember riley said. There may be budgetary [08:29:29] implication. But I for one would really want to have a very careful discussion about that. As we consider the budget for 2015 I see the inspectors and certainly inspectors there's a request for inspectors for next year, is that right, four inspectors? >> No, not in fy '15 councilmember. You see '16 out years, '16 through -- >> Tovo: Well the text itself said ccd is forecasting the addition of four new inspector positions for each fiscal year from fiscal year 2015 to 16. I see one year, not 2014-15 but following. >> Right. >> Tovo: So we don't have any budget implications this year, but one at least at this points, one of the things that -- that it sounded like dallas and other cities do is focus more on the enforcement piece and that requires dedicated legal staff. >> Yes. >> Tovo: And so I hope that your presentation in -- in june or as soon as you can get it to us will really talk about what role our legal staff is going to play in that because that -- it's -- seems to me as we looked at the research and talked with the officials and I've had some other meetings with people who have been involved with that program, the piece that really distinguishes it from here are those dedicated legal staff who are going out to the properties and really taking people to court and that kind of very assertive legal action is what started to make a difference in terms of compliance. [One moment please for change in captioners] [08:31:41] >> ... We will need that kind of assistance. >> Tovo: And what was compelling to me about the experiences of the people that had been involved with them is it didn't just ensure compliance with those particular property owners, it had an effect in terms of the number of cases going forward. People saw how seriously the city was taking it and they maintained their properties as a result, so it had a much broader impact than just those property owners taken to court, so I look forward to that. I hope it will be a priority to get that report back to the council in time for us to digest it and if need be consider the budget, so thanks again for all of the work on this issue. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mr. Martinez. >> Martinez: Thank you. I want to go back to the -- you have in your -- it is the five-year financial forecast and economic outlook from 2015-2019, and you state that you will -- you are forecasting an addition of four new inspector positions for new each fiscal year from fy '15-'16 to '18-'19 >> yes, sir, that's correct. >> Martinez: And I see the number of meeting to 172 by fy '19, and in the unmet needs memo, you state this year in the unmet needs, there are 6 f.T.E.S that would be in the unneed met request. Help me reconcile, will that be a reduction to the additional four next year or in addition to? >> It's in addition to. Those four in the outyears are meant to cover the growth, the growth in the number of cases and the growth of the eopulation and the growth of the workload for the code inspectors and also to help to reduce the overall caseload. One of the problems we have experienced is having a high cose load, such that each -- caseload such that each inspector is having to [08:33:41] manage that caseload and at the same time, process those individually, for each case process those cases for municipal court of billing and standards commission. The unmet needs represent new programs that -- that -- that would be added to code compliance, the uro enforcement is a new program, and so that would be an additional f.T.E. That would be required to do that. We have the same thing with the rest break ordinance, that's really expanding -- we are getting a real demand for assistance in making sure we are having compliance for the rest break ordinance so I thought it was needed to dedicate resources to it. We also found that in code compliance, we -- historically we haven't had a dispatcher, and I think that's -- we've identified that as a -- an unmet need, an additional program we need to add, so we have a dispatcher to help keep track of the inspectors out there. Right now we hired a temporary to do dispatching and we set up a console and so they are able to keep track of where the inspectors are and it's really a safety issue because if they need assistance, some backup, some help, the dispatchers in contact with them can make the quick call, as is the case of the public safety departments, and so I think these are new pro in addition to the inspectors that are identified for an addition to the department in outlying years. >> Martinez: So we are currently doing the rest broken forcement with existing staff? And we are just seeing a higher demand request for on site inspections? >> Yes, we actually hired a temporary employee. We first started with existing staff and it wasn't working. It was taking away from regular workload. We hired a temporary employee doing it as kind of a pilot, if you will. It's working better. We are getting better compliance just by having [08:35:42] the temporary employee spend more time dealing with that ordinance, so we think a full-time would be appropriate in that case. >> Martinez: I would certainly consider that a high priority. >> Sure. >> Martinez: But that brings us to 5. So where is the 6th f.T.E.? You said three for uro, two forest breaks and one for dispatch units. That's five. You listed six. >> Dispatch would be number 6. It is three for uro, two forest break and then -- for rest break and then dispatcher, that would be number 6. >> Thank you, sir. >> You are welcome. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, sir. >> Mayor Leffingwell: We are going to the convention center. >> Y [laughter] >> Mayor Leffingwell: And economic development is on deck, so to speak. Questions on convention center? Questions for the convention center and visitor bureau folks? >> Martinez: Mayor? >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Mark, I just want to throw this out there because we were talking about this at the acvb luncheon about some capital improvements that are going to be necessary because, you know, believe it or not, and you surprise me with this, the convention center is already 20 years old, and so I wanted you to walk us through what you have in this proposed budget that is specific to those capital improvements that you believe are really necessary just to -- to handle the existing traffic, if you will, not necessarily increasing capacity. >> Thank you, mayor and council, I am mark tester, director of the austin convention center department and one of the developments we have in the projects now is our occupancy is so high it's really hard to get time [08:37:42] to really do it without disrupting business so we really try to target windows, right around the december, mid- december time is a time we obviously target. This year we have an aggressive plan in $3 million is budgeted for escalators and elevators, and, again, 20-year old escalators on the south side of the building, elevators. We have 2.6 million in a variety of bu projects, acoustics, recording, and repairs to our garages. We have a plan to look at revitalizing the castman bull house and get that occupible which is right blind the convention center. We are doing a million dollars, $1.2 million in sidewalk in other repairs to our cesar chavez side of the building. One of the things we are going to be doing, if you recall that circle drive area, where many people park when they come to meetings, we are actually going to be reengineering that area and actually making it, not only be able to utilize parking but also to utilize events for that and we are trying to utilize every part of the facility to maximize occupancy. We are spending 700,000 to build a walkway that will connect to the fourth street escalator bank to allow people to get to level three without going through our big escalators in the corner, and that totals right around 8.5 million that we've got scheduled for this -- for this next year. >> Martinez: Which tracks in line -- the 8.5 million tracks directly to the [08:39:42] increase to the hotel/motel occupancy tax. Is that what you are using as capital revenue in terms of what revenue to cover those costs? >> Our revenue -- certainly the hotel occupancy cast has seen increases and ours has seen modest increases as well and we both blend them together but both have seen increases this past year. >> Martinez: And I didn't see anything in the unmet needs list from your department, so I assume you are good to go? >> We got our hands full this next year on getting the projects down. As you might recall, council approved us to get along -- to provide our 20-year master plan that we will hopefully come back with big recommendations on our future that we will be looking at but that wouldn't be included in this budget year. >> Martinez: Great. Thank you, mark. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member riley. >> Riley: To follow up on one aspect of the capital improvements. You mentioned the improvements on the cesar chavez side and the certain area in the circle drive and it is described in the financial forecast as exterior said improvements to create a new outdoor event space. An issue on that side has been the space along that sidewalk, especially for people in wheelchairs, there is a very constrained space down there closer to waller creek. Will we be addressing that? >> From the bridge on, yes, absolutely. That is -- that is going to happen, as well as the sidewalk where right main along cesar chavez, you have to now go along and get up and down, so, yes, that will all be improved upon. >> Riley: Thanks. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: Within of the facilities you are responsible for maintaining and operating is the african-american heritage and cultural facility and I am not sure who to ask this question of but we recently heard from the facility in that they needed infusion of [08:41:43] funds to keep operating and that came out of economic development, so can -- I am not sure who can help me understand the difference between funding fromeconomic development for the center -- for the facility and funding from the convention center. And it was an interesting conversation, because we had a lot of demands -- am I wrong about that? >> Council member -- >> Morrison: Yes, so we had a lot of demands for that money. >> Are you referring to the greater black chamber of commerce? Because they are housed in that, and we are specifically talking about the -- >> Morrison: It was 237,000. Can you help me inc f understand the difference? >> Yes, yes. There is a difference there. The item that we were discuss that -- the item that you approved last week that was the african-american district. The district. >> Morrison: Not the facility. >> Not the facility itself. >> Morrison: I apologize. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Leffingwell: All right. Thank you very much. We will go on to economic development. After economic development will be neighborhood housing. Questions for the economic development department? I guess we asked all of the questions for you last week. >> Morrison: I do have a question. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: The -- one of the differences in your budget this coming year is that it's taking out the one-time funding for the interlocal agreement with the facilities commission. Can you just give us an update on where we are with that? Did we sign an interlocal with them? >> The $400,000 that was in the budget for the texas [08:43:50] facility commission. >> Morrison: Was that in the facility we approved? >> It's not in the forecast for next year. >> Morrison: D use it last year? >> Sue edwards, assistant city manager and planning development and review can probably articulate that better than I but the staff was when they made a decision to consult on master planning, we know that they -- the legislatures will said that they are only going to look at public facilities, not the retail that we thought that they were going to do, and so they no longer really needed our services at that time, so we have not signed an agreement with them. >> Morrison: I see. So what happens to that 400,000? Where does it get -- it rolls over into -- >> I am going to ask ed. >> And then ending balance for economic development. >> What we have been doing is letting it fall to the ending balance and then we reappropriate the remaining balance and if it still remainings, we bring it to the remaining budget and the council can approve and reappropriate the funds. >> Morrison: They can be reappropriated for something else but they are captured in economic development at this point? >> If I can just add, too, council member, kevin johns, director of economic development. So in our forecast, our budget for next year is a reduction of 2% as a result of those dollars going away. Our overall budget goes down 2%. >> Morrison: Right. It guess down 2% but that money is still there. It was somewhere, right? Help me understanding. It is in the ending balance. It's surplus. >> Remember, we do a cost allocation now, and so the costs that are transferred from austin energy, austin [08:45:50] water and the general fund to support economic development will be set at the program requirements, and so that $400,000 isn't in their budget, then they are going to be contributing less to economic development. >> Morrison: I get that for this year -- I mean, for next year, for '14-'15, but I am just trying to understand, we've got $400,000 that was set aside for this interlocal last year. We are aren't doing the interlocal. Forget what is happening this year. Where is that 400,000 going? >> It's in economic developments budget. >> Morrison: Right. >> And it's basically a 400,000-dollar head start for funding them for 2015. >> Morrison: Okay. So that means that the transfer from general fund is going to be $400,000 less than we would have otherwise if we had spent it or -- >> well, we will do it by that formula. It will be somewhat less but then the transfer for energy and water will also be less. >> Morrison: Okay. >> Martinez: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: I think I can help. If you look at the financial forecast that was provided to us -- I don't know what day it was -- it is the five-year financial forecast, it does -- it says that the proposed budget ending balance is .3, $300,000 this year and then you've corrected it to end at .7 which is the additional 400,000. Where you see the shift in dollars is from 2014 total available funds at 13.5 starting 2015, it's 12.3, so the available funds that is reduced starting next year, and that kind of reflects that $400,000 that was the ending balance for this year. Is that correct? >> That is correct and regarding the fund summary you are talking, there is a desire to have the $400,000 back in the budget for fy15 and the expenditures would [08:47:51] have to come from 15.3 and the transfer from water and energy would have to increase because otherwise it would be negative. >> Morrison: Where did the 400,000 come in the first place? Does anybody remember? Does I remember there is a resolution to find that money and to put it in the economic development fund. >> It would have come from the same three sources. >> Morrison: Okay. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Not to belabor the point, but the beginning balance for 2015 is going to be 700,000? >> Projected. >> Tovo: Is that typical? I thought those funds got swept into the surplus. >> The start -- we are projecting that the ending balance for the fund would be $700,000. Economic development is not a fund that typically is going to carry an ending balance, and that's why, as part of developing the '15 budget, we will draw it down. So for projecting a 700,000- dollar surplus at the end of this year, we will draw that ending balance down as part of crafting the fy '15 budget, and the end result of that is that charges to austin energy, water, and general fund are lower than they otherwise would be. >> Tovo: I understand that. I am trying to figure out which -- which departments end up with -- if they end up with funds, they get swept into the surplus and which don't. Clearly this is one that doesn't need to get swept back into the general fund. Is that because it's its own fund? >> We are the -- it is its own fund. >> Tovo: So because its own fund and sort of along the lines the last time you were here I think at the work session, because it's its own fund, it stays here rather than the cost of the next year. >> Right. >> Tovo: Rather than say the parks is 700,000, it gets swept into the surplus? >> Yes. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: I don't think it would make sense to sweep this in other reserves because it is paid by other departments that if they have ending balance, they create the balance fund for the budget stabilization. I wanted to go -- now, we [08:49:52] received another document, I believe ed sent this to us yesterday, the financial report quarter 2, ed? >> That's right. >> Martinez: So there is one line in the economic development fund on page 66, sorry, that says third party agreements, $3.4 million. What is that third party agreement, and what is the 3.4 million going to? >> Kevin johns, director of economic development again. Those are our contracts with the chambers of commerce, the five chambers of commerce with the workforce alliance which is skillpoint and there is a million dollars in it for the university's incubator, so it's all of the money that council has directed us to contract with organizations. And so it's about a third of our budget. >> Martinez: Great. I was confused. I thought it had something to do with third party agreements as it relates to certain developments in town. If we can do a q and a from the budget process and explicitly list what falls under that, because it -- the title of that line item doesn't -- doesn't reflect that information at all. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Thank you very much. Neighborhood housing community development and next will be public works. Any questions? Maybe I should ask if there are any questions before you get all seated and comfortable. Any questions for neighborhood housing? Council member morrison. [08:51:53] >> Morrison: Welcome. I am glad you have funds to be working with for the bond. You mentioned in the forecast that we are getting 9.7 million in grant appropriations from the feds, I guess. How does that compare to this year? >> It's a alex correct me if I am wrong, betty sensor, director of neighborhood housing, cgbd went down a little bit and the overall impact was a little bit and I realizedd went down because our unmet needs was $30,000 for public services which comes out of our community development block grant, where there is a cap of the grant for cgbd allocation for public service so we had a small decrease in cgbd. >> Morrison: Okay, I am not sure we got unmet service needs from you. >> I believe it was in the packet. >> Morrison: Okay. Okay. >> We isolated the conversation to ourselves. 23, 24, 25. >> Morrison: Okay. I will find those later, then. >> There is -- there was two list of unmet service needs that was submitted, one in general fund and internal service departments. It was a refresh of the list that was published last year. Neighborhood housing was on that list because, really, any of the requests they have ultimately become a general fund impact is the way we are looking at it. They aren't like a true enterprise that has their own source of revenue they can generate. >> Morrison: Okay. So the good is that, speaking sort of generally, the federal funds haven't been cut? >> Correct. Yes, ma'am. Very small. >> Morrison: In too severe of a way. [08:53:55] >> About 200,000 in cgbd overall. >> Morrison: Great. And those funds fund our f.T.E.S, is that right and then we look at our other funds. >> About half of our f.T.E.S are federally funded. About half of them are locally funded. >> Morrison: Okay. Great. And there is a lot of pressure on you all to do a lot of work these days. One thing I know you are working on is a market study and our action plan and all of that, and certainly hoping to -- and this will affect funding obviously. One of the things we are working on through that market plan and the consolidated plan and action plan is to try to get some real preservation programs going. Do you see some head way coming forward in that regard? And is that -- are we going to be able to use some of our funds to be able to fund such a program? >> We actually have a meeting tomorrow with the housing market study folks to get a first blush with what they've come up with. But, yes, that is the expectation and then through that, we will be able to project, I expect, on ourcapital investments, regarding creating new units, preserving units and revitalizing. >> Morrison: That's great, because I think obviously housing affordability and lack thereof is one of the huge issues on the table these days, and so the more we can broaden the programs that we have and the tools, the more -- the more successful we will be. >> Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Thank you, mayor. Betsy, I wanted to ask you on the five-year financial forecast on page 50. >> Yes, sir. >> Martinez: Under "other funding sources," the housing trust fund which we developed on housing that occurred on 40% of the property go into the trust fund but in the last sentence you said the department anticipates 1.2 million in expenses. Is that a typo or are we anticipating 1.2 million in revenue? Because it seems like that should be a funding source. [08:55:57] >> That is a fund that carries an ending balance sothey would be drawing down ending balance, 800,000 of new revenues is expected to flow into the properties that have been developed on city-owned properties. If they haven't spent previous year's amount they can be appropriated. So they can spend more on the fund than they bring in the single year because of the ending balance they may carry. >> We had carry forward dollars last year. We actually were looking at our expected expenditure for this year, and we have everything committed. We have less than $50,000 left, but I will expect we will carry forward for next year. >> Martinez: How much -- what developments are we generating revenue from at this point that are on city property? >> To give you a complete list, block 21 and the w is the largest single source. Am way is another one -- amway is another one and a list of a dozen properties but we can give it to you in a budget question. >> Martinez: In these third party entities do we have anything in the agreement that would include them protesting their property tax value? >> I don't believe we do. >> I don't know. >> Martinez: Is there a mechanism to create that? Because what we are hearing is that commercial properties are undervalued, at least it's thought to be undervalued, and if we are doing these agreements that we have established a housing trust fund to generate revenue for affordable housing, shouldn't we at least be asking our partners to not protest their taxes which would have a negative impact on that fund? >> I think it's a good idea, council member. I think we would want to consult to legal on it. State law does speak to property owner's rights to appeal. So I think it's a good idea. I think we should pursue it. >> Martinez: I think we should, explore it. I think we could run into problems in individual dwelling units such as condos but the hotel side, the commercial aspect, the csc properties, I think those may be the ones where [08:57:57] we might have the ability to enter into an agreement where they can't protest the property taxes because it has an negative impact on the agreement that we've made with them. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: What if there is a mistake in the appraisal? Some k clerical error, a mistake? And then you couldn't appeal? That's far out there. Okay. Any questions? Okay. We will go to public works. And on deck will be watershed protection. >> Tovo: I just want to -- [laughter] -- I want to note mr. Lazarus' tie is very, very appropriate. [Laughter]. >> Leffingwell: Is that what we call engineer humor? We had a taste of that yesterday from mr. Goode, so I see you are following in his footsteps. >> I can only aspire to that level of humor. Or the lack thereof. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Questions for public works? >> (Indiscernible). >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. >> Martinez: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: I do have questions on the child safety fund. You are adding -- hold on. What is the justification for adding the -- is it $700,000? Yes. >> Howard lazarus, public works director. We have requested increased funding for the child safety program, and I can go down a [09:00:00] couple of things that lead up to that amount. For the past couple of years we have experienced revenue growth that has allowed us to staff additional positions that have been requested both by the school district and by neighborhoods. This past year, for some reason, we didn't see a big growth in revenue that we thought in the past we would get. So part of $200,000 of that amount provides us with some buffer to protect against not achieving the revenue and goes to the fund balance. There is $30,000 in there to provide a 3 and a half percent raise for the full-time employees that are currently in the program. We also have $74,000 to request conversion of some seasonal part-time to 30 hour full-time positions. Those are long time city employees who basically work all year round at 30 hours a week so the fair and right thing to do would be to provide them with benefits and with full- time status. We've also increased the wage rat get it closer to the 11-dollar per hour living wage that council asked us to work towards, and the remaining fund -- the remaining funds which are about $300,000, that large amount of excess is really -- we put this request in when we were doing the financial forecast as we worked through the budget, that unmet need has gone down a little bit, but what we are looking for, also, is to put money aside for program growth. There is a lot of enfield development, multifamily mixed use, and as those neighborhoods and those developments are completed and come online, we do get additional requests for more staffing. The last 4-5 years, the number of guards we provide has gone up by about 15%. So we've added crossing guards in response to concerns as we've achieved the concept of a compact and connected city, and we have more residents in the core. >> Martinez: You state in [09:02:00] there from your mem mope from the financial forecast that -- in your memo from the financial forecast that the amount of revenue from city traffic violations has not increased the last to 20 years but services provided by the fund have over doubled in the same time frame? >> There has been a small amount of increase due to growth. The funding mechanisms for the child safety fund really are two primary places. One is in violations and one is in vehicle registrations. Vehicle registrations have gone up a little bit as a mirror of more cars being put on the roadways. But violations have gone down. Part of that is we have an alternative program to allow people to work off their fines by serving as crossing guards, and part of it, I think is due to good enforcement. There was also, as you see in there, there was a new find put in for -- a new fine put in for texting while in school zones and we haven't seen any of that revenue and we are asking for part of that as well. >> Martinez: Have we looked on whether or not citations are being issued under the new statute? In so, what is happening to the revenue? >> The funds go -- the fines collected go in the general fund and they get transferred back to public works for the child safety fund, so when I say we haven't seen any of those fines, we haven't seen an increase in the amount of fine revenue we would see that would be reflective of what's being collected. >> Martinez: So what are some of the -- and I know you are working on this because you state such, that, you know, the child safety fund is going to go into a negative balance and continue do increase that negative balance in out going years if something doesn't drastically change. What are some options that we can possibly help you with, to not have that occur? >> Well, I think we need to look at the -- at the amount of fines that are collected in school zones that come back to -- to the fund. Last legislative session -- the other problem is the amount of fines themselves haven't increased. [09:04:01] The level has been constant for probably, since the '90s, they haven't increased, so one of the things we work with our government relations office is to try in the next legislative session to adjust the dollar value of the fines, and that would help tremendously, and we will do that again with the upcoming session. So, that's, I think the primary source of funding. If that doesn't occur, we will have to look for other sources, whether it's from the general fund or somewhere else. >> Martinez: So as we ask transportation -- your 27-cents o the 45-cent increase in the transportation user fee, you state that half a million is going to population growth so where is the 1.1 million in addition to that half a million that -- that will create that revenue increase? Where is that going to be applied? >> The increase that we've asked for in the transportation user fee primarily keeps pace with the costs that we pay for support services, and we have no new programs that require additional funding this year. Because of some of the investments we have made, though, in technology and some of the training programs, we are much more efficient than we were a couple of years ago, so we are going to continue to meet our requirements, but we do feel some pressure just because of the -- some of the costs in transfers, and let me say, the service we get as a result of the transfer is exceptional, so I am not disputing the need to do that, to support the agency that is support us. But from a funding standpoint it does eat into the funding we have available for programs so really all we are trying to do is keep up. Because last year we did not increase the fee to cover those increases, so this year, we are just trying to keep even with the level of service we have had in the past. >> Martinez: Lastly, your unmet needs response is -- is somewhat confusing, or at least it seems expensive, because it's 8 f.T.E.S for [09:06:02] $4.4 million? >> I don't believe we are asking for any additional f.T.E.S. >> You aren't asking for it, but in response to the unmet service demands, is the amp title of the document, you ask for 18 f.T.E.S, but you stated it's as a cost of $4.4 million. >> I don't think that's correct, council member. >> You might be looking at the austin transportation department? >> Yes. >> Public works. >> So sorry. [Multiple voices] >> Martinez: We went through that and council member morrison asked that question. My glasses are playing tricks on me. >> Yes, you are correct. >> You have no unmet needs, thank you. >> We have no additional f.T.E.S that we've requested. >> Martinez: But you have unmet needs. I understand. >> Mayor, I have a couple of quick questions. You note -- I want to deal with the increase of 60-cents from the 920 to the 980 in the drainage utility. >> Drainage utility fee is watershed. >> Cole: Sorry. I am sorry, go ahead. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So I do have one question that just occurred to me. You talked about traffic fines and receiving the city's portion, I guess the state takes a part of that as a service fee of some kind. They do most traffic citations, take a certain percentage. Is that correct or -- >> I am not aware that the state takes the fees -- the fines for violations in school zones. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Well, generally, speeding, running a stop sign, whatever. I would just like to ask that question, since there is a little bit of unfamiliar -- this came up actually on a judicial committee meeting way back in the distant past, that there was some feeling that that reimbursement for the service of the state administering that fee was [09:08:02] not proportional to the service rendered, the fact -- the fee has to be no more than the value of the service rendered, so I think that's a question -- >> mayor, just generally, those fees are set by state law, and what the states take is set by statute. So we will check and get that information to you, as to what the exact share is that the city can take or does take according to that state law. >> Mayor Leffingwell: That would be interesting to follow up on that. >> Okay. >> Tovo: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: We were talking -- were you talking about the violations in the school safety zone? >> Mayor Leffingwell: I was talking about violations in general, not school safety zones. >> Tovo: Maybes this part of the answer. I didn't follow what happens to the rest of the money. I think you were saying it seems like not all of it is coming back to the department. Where is it going? >> Well, part of it goes to pay for the costs of the muni court to administer the system as well. >> Tovo: I see. >> Fines and penalties generally come in the general fund. There are this portion of the fines that occur in school zones that they will go to the child safety fund but the bulk of fines and penalties for any kind of driving violations, parking finings, if you don't pay your parking meters, those revenues come to the general fund, for example. The money generated from the fees for parking go to the parking management fund but all of the fines come into the general fund. >> Tovo: Right. But the idea was that they are going -- at least a portion of them are going to flow back to the child safety but I thought I heard -- >> they do, but I think I was hearing the portion needs to increase for the funds to be whole. That's a discussion we need to have. >> Tovo: Is that a discussion we could have before budget approval? >> Certainly. >> It would be something we would have to work with ed [09:10:05] on because we have to balance it on. So we have to have that conversation. >> Tovo: It seems like it would be a good priority. I need to ask for clarification. I see in the unmet needs for 700,000 to convert, which seems to match the conversion of the temps to permanent, or are those two different sets of people? >> It's part of the total. The $700,000 was the assessment we had for -- it was during the fund balance for providing the raisin crease -- the increase for the current and full-time and for converting positions part-time to full-time and also restoring the fund balance, but as we have gone towards the budget and worked towards the final budget, that number probably isn't quite as high so we will find that and work it down and as we work with the budget office we will come with the right number. >> Tovo: This is the right number for the unmet service demands? >> As of now. >> Tovo: Because some of those have been incorporated into your budget request? >> They are. >> Tovo: Great. Very good. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Thank you. Is there going to be any questions for watershed, for the next department? >> Cole: I have a quick question. >> Mayor Leffingwell: All right. >> Cole: I would just like to ask you of the increase in the drainage utility fee, you point to the fact that it primarily is due to about 1.7 million, that includes 400 billion for the waller creek annual waller creek operating expenses. I just ask that that expense be broken-down, as just as part of the a budget question. >> Okay. Sure, we can provide that information. [09:12:05] >> Cole: And help me understand this sentence about the debt service for waller service improvements in the onion creek flood buyout increasing from 2.3 million to 3.6 million. >> What page are you looking at? >> Cole: On page 56, the second paragraph. Talking about debt service and I am assuming that's on bonds that we took out before -- are those -- do you know if those are go bonds or not, and that's the debt service on those? >> The waller creekface improvement was council approved last year, cos for, to start doing some of the drainage improvements along waller creek. The onion creek flood buyouts still needs to come forward to council. We are targeting june 26, I believe, to bring a proposal forward to council to issue additional cos to start -- you know, to accomplish some of the highest priority onion creek area buyouts and so what we are forecasting here is the debt service we expect to see from that. >> Cole: Okay. Can you provide me with the information on exactly how much those seals were? >> Yes. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Any other question council member martinez. >> Martinez: I just want to remind council that, while the -- this -- when this document was created, we were contemplating that 60-cent increase for waller creek, but the council did adopt an item that asked them to come back with options for additional increase in the drainage utility fee up to 75-cents more for the remaining 25 and 100 year flood plain buyout along onion creek, so [09:14:06] if it were to be incorporated, it wouldn't just be a 66 increase. It would be an additional 75-cents on top of that as well. >> Correct. >> Actually, the debt service would start in '16, so it would be on top of the fy '16 fee increase. But you would appropriate now. >> Martinez: This year? >> Yes. >> Martinez: But it wouldn't kick in until fiscal year '16? >> Yes. >> Martinez: Great. Good to know. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member morrison. rison: THAS. Victoria, you sent us this memo on the 12th of may with a status of resolution -- recommendations on lake austin management, and I appreciate you doing that. It talked about the idea of putting together a team to manage it and all of that, and it's a lot of detail, but basically I guess the overall question is: Do you feel we are going to be able to accommodate any of these recommendations without appropriating something beyond what's going to probably come forward in your barebones budget? >> Yes, we are going to need some extra budget for the extra f.T.E. That we are going to request. >> Morrison: Can you remind me because I haven't read this recently, what the number of -- what the breakdown is of f.T.E.S that you are recommending for the lake austin management? >> One f.T.E. For the watershed protection department. One f.T.E. For the pdr, the planning and development department -- planning and development department. >> Okay. >> These should be in your items to council. >> Morrison: Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Anything else? Okay. Thanks a lot. Before we go into the next section, let me see -- do [09:16:06] you anticipate any questions on communications and technology management? Does anyone? If you change your mind, let me know. Fleet services? Communications and public information? >> I have one. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Let's call up communications and public information. How about respect management? And financial services? Government relations? Human resources? Law? Management services? Office of real estate -- martinez? >> Martinez: I don't really have a question for management services but we asked some questions to be responded through the budget process and as long as that's in progress, then that is the questions that still remain. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So you feel like that would be adequate to ask the questions in writing? >> Martinez: Yes. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Office of real estate services? Office of the auditor? Office of the city clerk? Okay. And small and minority business resources? >> Mayor, (indiscernible). >> Mayor Leffingwell: What? >> Building services. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Building services. Any questions on building services? So I have communications and public information, management services, and office of the city clerk. All right. Communications and public information. [09:18:07] >> Morrison: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: So I wanted to ask about -- you sent us -- you did a survey to find out which of the commissions were interested in being televised that weren't televised, and there is -- there will be an expense to that. On the other hand, if we are able to accome -- if we are able to accommodate that. On the other hand, we might end up with fewer commissions, overall, and some might be merged and all of that. Have you -- so I am hoping we are going to be able to accommodate all of the commissions that want to be able to be televised. Have you been in touch with any of the potential changes that are happening with the commissions to be able to do sort of a revised -- and it may be too early -- to do a revised look at whether it's going to really cost us anymore to be able to televise? >> I am the deputy director, I am dave (indiscernible). I am dave the deputy director and joined by keith reeves who is our atx and station manager and he, I think, can fill you in on that answer? >> Morrison: Award winning atx. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> We received direction from the audit and finance committee to explore televising more meetings that are taking place in city hall rooms where we already have our cameras, what you are available for. So we surveyed 14 additional commissions. 11 of them came back and identified that, yes, we would like to be televised, so just as soon as we were -- doug was running out the memo, we saw the recommendation from the, you know, for going forward about combining some of those, so I think the idea is, you know, one way or another, we anticipate there will be more meetings that would need to be covered, and that this item would allow us the flexibility to cover all of those potential [09:20:10] meetings. We have not been in contact with -- I am not sure where it is, about, you know, what all is going to end up combining. I know there is a lot of discussion in council on some of those commissions about those recommendations. So, you know, we don't know how that's going to look like, but we do anticipate that there will be more -- more meetings. >> Morrison: And where does the assumption of more meetings? Because actually it seemed like there would be fewer meetings? Fewer commissions? >> From the report? >> Morrison: Uh-huh. >> I - - I don't think it's clear what -- you know, what the next step is on -- >> Morrison: Okay. >> -- On that. I know that on the building and standards commission -- >> Morrison: They are going to double. >> So that's one that we historically have not covered and that's one that there is a lot of need for. There is a quite a few that have requests that, even if they are combined, are not getting televised coverage as it stands. So it might not be the same number, but, you know, I anticipate that there would be some more, and part of that cost, also, includes, you know, increasing our webstreaming and video on demand services for that many more commissions. >> Morrison: Right. So maybe you can make sure you stay in touch, not only for keeping track of which ones are going away or combined, but also for a new schedule so we can do -- I mean, maybe we are maxed out already on facilities that have the ability to actually televise a commission meeting, but to make sure that as much as possible, the ones that want to be televised can actually be put into a room so they can be televised. >> So, you know, in preparation for the council chambers being shut down for the renovations this summer, we have -- one of the things we were briefed on finance last year on was we were working on town lake center, [09:22:12] one texas center having the ability to televise meetings from there as well. >> Morrison: Right. >> Town lake center is completed, so, you know, to prepare for some meetings there, you are going to go there during the summer and that will launch the next couple of weeks and then will have one texas center so we will have more facilities we can televise meetings as well, but I think it's a great idea that we need to figure out what meetings are going to -- >> Morrison: To be clear, the estimate of being able to satisfy all of the requests for commissions to be televised, we are talking about an increase on something of the order of like, is it 30,000? >> I think for -- I think it's a total of $32,000. >> Morrison:32,000. >> We identified temp staff that we would use for those meetings, which is, you know, what we use for about half of our meetings now, so ... >> Morrison: Great. That's a lot of bang for the buck, 32,000, to be able to increase that, so I hope we can find a way to do that. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: While talking about the subject, I have been wanting to ask how and when those decisions are going to be made about televising different commissions? I know at least one board came back and asked they not be televised any longer and it happens to be a board that I think there is real community interest in continuing to see televised, so how is that -- how are those -- >> which one? >> Mayor Leffingwell: That was the council meeting she is talking about. [Laughter]. >> Tovo: That's the mayor's suggestion. >> Mayor, we wouldn't have any programming if it weren't for this meeting. [Laughter]. >> Tovo: So how are those decisions? Are you moving forward with the commission's recommendations for themselves? Do you expect council direction on those? What is the process from here? >> That's a good question. I think that we were -- you know, we were already to send that -- all ready to [09:24:12] send the memo, here is the 11 additional, and when we saw the report come out, doug matthews and I said we need to step back and see what the next step is. I don't know the direction that would come from but we -- with these additional funds, we would have the flexibility to cover additional meetings that I know, you know, we have had five or so meetings in the past six months, six to nine months that have requested television coverage and we don't have the bandwidth to increase that, unless it's a council on task force, like the water task force or that sort of thing. >> Tovo: Yes, I appreciate that but I hope the same thought will be if you have collisions that step forward and say they no longer want to be televised, but, again, there is a lot of public interest in that particular subject. So I think it needs to be a balance between what the commission wants and really what the community needs in terms of information. So we can talk more about that. >> Yes. That's great. >> Tovo: The specifics. Thank you. >> Leffingwell: Anything else? Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: And I may have misunderstood, management services, were there any questions other than writtenstions? I think not. Office of the city clerk. >> Morrison: Mayor, that was my question. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: So I notice the paper that was left for us and read it real briefly, and there are two things you are talking about having a need for, and one is to -- two additional staff, I guess it is, to manage the support of city council, that expand and city council and the districts. Can you talk a little bit [09:26:13] about that? The subject of that? >> One of them is -- we currently have a vacant part time administrative position that, if approved, we would like to make it full time. Currently we do some of -- the clerk's office handles petty cash, ordering supplies, duties like that. The budget office does some additional financial duties for the mayor and council and so the thought was, if we can combine those into one position and one department, it would be more effective and with the increase in payroll, et cetera, we thought we could justify a person to do that as well as provide additional support and backups for the reception area. The second one is, we have another vacant part- time position that we haven't filled because we currently don't have office space, but we are going to fix that problem in the next couple of weeks, and we are getting a lot of requests for ideas and plans on providing additional information out there that is broken-down by district. We are also working with ctm to figure out who would house and manage and keep up to date the gis data for the couple districts and provide -- for the council districts in providing that information, which in the early discussions, ctm would prefer the clerk's office do that but I don't have anyone on staff that is trained on gis, and so our thought was if we had a research analyst that was a more generic position, we could expand some of the services we provide that -- to provide [09:28:13] the information out on the web broken-down by council districts, in addition to what we currently do. >> Tovo: Okay. >> So that's the -- the first request is we are asking for one full-time position, but actually two part times that we could merge together with our existing part-time position. >> Morrison: Okay. Got it. Because I think it would be important for us to look at this in terms of what is it going to take to serve the citizens of austin with a district system, and, you know, I know that we just automatically put funding in our budget to say adjust the city council chambers, and I think that we need to be real careful and look at serving the larger council, -- the clerk serving the larger council and serving the citizens of the council district system, that it's not necessarily nice to have. We need to be careful as possible but it's not just going to be a nice to have, so I just wanted to highlight that and throw that out there, to make sure that we do right by this, and think through it carefully. It sounds like you are working with the other departments to figure out where best to put these new services. >> Right. And I know there is lots of really neat things that we could do out there to provide additional resources and increase transparency by pulling together data from different departments but some departments have to be responsible for keeping it updated and out there and available on the web, and so we are willing to do that, provided we have the expertise to do it, and right now, I don't have it when it comes to gis data, et cetera, for short. >> Morrison: And you said it's being discussed between you and ctm. Because it seems the obvious thing to put it in ctm? >> It is, but because the clerk is officially responsible for the elections and the election data, et cetera, the thought [09:30:14] between -- in our early discussions where we are trying to figure out how we do this, and since we would work more closely with the independent citizen redistricting commission, which will determine annexations and where they go in to a district, the -- it would be more appropriate for the clerk's office to kind of be the custodian of that information. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] >> Morrison:... TO Work on the 10-step program for achieving compliance with the state law of records management. >> Right. >> Morrison: And this, if I recall, we did a resolution asking you and the city manager to come up with a plan to achieve what we need to in compliance with records management. Was this part of your plan? >> It was. It was kind of a phase two of that plan, was to propose three additional staff that we would hire, but we would permanently loan out into the department so they could work with the departments specifically. We did a survey at the end of the year and 76% of those that responded of the departments said [09:32:18] dedicated staff for helping them with their records management issues was their top records management priority. So when burt and I took this to the executive team for city manager, they agreed that this was a top priority. And probably every department could have a dedicated staff person and say well, I agree, but I figured they would probably throw me out the door if I came in and asked for 20 people. So we picked three to get it started. >> Morrison: And I guess I want to highlight that this is sort of a phased in approach and this is the plan that has been sort of arrived at between the city clerk and city management to help -- to put us on a path to compliance with state law. And to me we need to follow that path. We are not in compliance with our records management laws. And we need to -- the clerk has put together a plan of 10 steps for each department and you do a report and there's varying degrees of having worked through that 10-step program for each of the departments. And it's not a very -- for a lot of people this is not a very exciting topic, but it's something that we just -- look at all the smiles I'm getting. [Laughter] >> we understand. >> Morrison: But let's face it, it's a state law and I don't know how we can sit back and say we're not going to put the resources there that we have identified as a path to put us where we need to be. I don't know how we can consider that an unmet need. It needs to be something that's a requirement in budget. That's my soapbox on that. I think we need to stick with that plan and make sure that we do what needs to be done. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Any other comments? Okay. That completes our list of departments. So without objection, we're adjourned at 3:35 p.M.