City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 08/13/2014 Title: ATXN2 Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/13/2014 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/13/2014 Transcript Generated by SnapStream Enterprise TV Server ======================================================= DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, THE CAPTIONING BEGINS WHEN THE MEETING WAS ALREADY IN PROGRESS. [03:33:52] >> In terms of key dates and where we are in the process, second budget work session where we'll have our departments present as we have additional time and additional work sessions. We'll begin our department presentations if we don't finish today. Also to hear from setting the maximum tax rate I can tell you today that we heard from travis county appraisal district. The review board has certified the tax roll for travis county and the letters will be sent out today. So time lines are now. [Inaudible] the process will follow that [inaudible]. The tax rate will have continued council discussion at the september 3rd work session in advance of budget -- one of the things we wanted to do in the presentations we wanted our departments [inaudible]. The outcomes and major accomplishments. There are of course a number of what we call kind of citywide corporate cost drivers that certainly affect burnets, but instead of having -- affect our buckets, but instead of having each of the 20 departments cover the details over and over again, we wanted to cover them in aggregate. [Inaudible]. Employee pay and benefits, we're a service organization so always one of our major cost drivers and three and a half percent pay increase that we have loaded into our budget [inaudible]. [03:35:54] >> Market adjustments for austin energy. Classifications and i.T. Classifications is $5.8 million. Contribution to the employee health [indiscernible]. ... Are significant costs. I'm showing here how it would be a more sufficient use of time. [Inaudible] ... Our sworn employees, a similar story, labor contracts, longevity pay, are major cost drivers... [Inaudible]. Finally, another kind of major corporate cost driver is the cost of our internal support departments. And again, these departments -- [inaudible]. [03:37:55] >> Good morning, mayor and council. How are you? Thanks, I like when I get an answer. >> Councilmember martinez. >> I happen to know this because I follow her on twitter. She and I are the only ones who have been up since 3:30 this morning. I'm glad you made your flight. Sorry it got canceled. You were trying hard to get here this morning. I appreciate that. >> Thank you. And I'm just going to do a little caveat. Most of you know that tomorrow I will be sworn in as the first vice-president of the international association of fire chiefs and at first -- first woman in 140 years. [Applause]. And hi meetings in dallas in association with that. That means good news about my budget, right. [Laughter] six all right. >> All right. So just to start with I always want to talk about some of our major accomplishments and one of the things that I'm really excited about and I've been working on since my time here is reducing the number of fire fatalities. And one of the ways that I think we can do that is by early warning or early intervention and making sure that every residence in the city of austin has a working smoke alarm or working smoke alarms if necessary. In the past 12 months we have installed more than 2,000 smoke alarms in homes throughout the city. And that is more than what we had in our original performance measure and we've actually increased that number for the next fiscal year. And I think that somewhat is driving the number of unintentional fire deaths that you see down there. It went from five to two in '14 is our estimate. Obviously '14 isn't over so we don't know that for certain, but our goal is always to be at zero fire deaths. And we think that that's one of the things that is going to help douse that is the installation of working smoke alarms. I think another one that -- major one is our grant funded safety house that we're using for public education. We've had a fire safety house for a number of years. The one that we had was kind of on its last wheels, if you will say, because we tow it around all over the place, but it was about 140,000-dollar trailer that we just rolled out maybe about a month and a half ago. And it's really gotten a lot of great reviews. So again, public education, smoke alarms are all helping us reduce the number of fire fatalities and injuries. We implemented a program called pass the torch, and that is a mini fire academy for young men and women. 24 young men and women just graduated about two weeks ago, and it is about a seven-month program where they go and they do some book learning and they do some real live experience and they get to see what the fire service is all about and hopefully it's part of our recruitment program. Our wildfire division has presented over 60 fire wise training events all over the city. And that's a really pretty significant accomplishment. We have a really good ready, set, go program in fire wise communities so that's helping us. Again, it's people doing their part and being a part of their fire safety. Then finally we had a 24.2% increase in the number of inspections performed. And then one other thing that I do want to comment on under those key performance data would be the percent of structure fires that are confined to the room of origin. And you will see that the actual fy '13 was 82. We are estimating we'll be at about 84% and we're always proposing that we are actually about 85% of the time we can confine the fires to room of origin. I think in the first meeting that we had I explained why that's important, but if we confine the room of origin, then the fire doesn't spread. And let's talk about if it were in a strip mall and the fire started in the middle of the strip mall in a business. And we get in fast enough with enough people, and the right amount of people to put that out and contain it to the room or area of origin, then all the businesses that are either side of it are back in operation within a matter of hours. And that is why it's important. The didn't use of funds, there's a couple of changes there. The fire emergency response area that primarily has gone up due to the safer grant, we are in november, we will assume full responsibility for those 36 safer positions. And in the support services area, we added some temporary positions and they've been converted to full-time and then we also have added some additional support positions or civilian positions that will help us in the implementation of the consent decree. I do want to take some time to say first of all thank you to the mayor and council, the city manager and the budget office for all their support in the safer grant positions in getting us to four- person staffing years ahead of where we would have accomplished that goal. So it's really a big deal for us and it helps us be more successful. So I do want to say thank you to y'all for your support over these last few years in helping us get there. And so some of the other budget highlights, like I've already mentioned, the 36 safer grant positions. An overtime increase related to sworn vacancies. We currently have 90 vacancies and we accumulate new vacancies at about four per month. And so we need to backfill those with overtime and our firefighters cost us more because we no longer have the newer firefighters that are at a lower rate of pay. Then some of the things that we did accomplish in this budget that we're really pretty excited about, we've been trying to get some of these items for a number of years, but the boats, the equipment, any related training that was identified in our flood after action report, and then some of our refuse rescue items like the lifting bags and vehicle stabilization struts. It's hard to say that all at one time, vehicle stabilization struts. And then our staffing, I mentioned already that we converted some temporary positions to full-time. One of those was in plans review. That was cost neutral because there was an increase in the related fees to support that position. The five temporary support positions that is benefits only. The salary was already in our budget. We were using that already as temp positions. Then I mentioned the five civilian ftes on the consent decree. So capital highlights. We're going to make some really great strides this year that I'm really excited about, but some of these items that you see are bond project 2012, but we are entering into the design phase on the onion creek fire station. And then we're going to initiate construction on the driveway replacement project and we'll finish up on the design phase and initiate construction on the two training towers or drill fields that we have and all of those things were part of 2012 bond projects. Some of the new stuff sister ongoing projects as well. We are going to do a one touch renovation of six fire stations and that's giving us an additional five million dollars in the building services cip. We're going to do that in concert with finishing up phase five of the women's locker room project. The idea was to go in and touch a station once instead of going in, renovate or add the women's locker room project. I really hate to call it the women's locker room project. I just like to call it the locker room project. And we're going to go in and do the locker room project and instead of going back and then disrupting life at the fire station to do further renovations we're going to do it all at one time. And we're going to plan on doing six stations over the next year. And it's pretty aggressive schedule, but we are ready for it and well past due of renovating our fire stations. [03:47:47] >> A little bit of revenue change, I think that speaks for itself in regard to that. There was a grant and that grant has fired, so that's why you don't see much net increase on that. Finally some other budget topics and I really want to make sure that y'all understand that additional stations are totally separate from the funding for the renovation, that is for current fire stations. And based upon our standard of coverage we have determined that we need an additional five stations over the next five years in order to respond to the growth and development that has occurred. And our standard of coverage means that 90 percent of the time the first due unit needs to be on scene in eight minutes or less, and there are areas of the city and not only areas that are newly annexed and areas that have been annexed previously that are part of the city that we are not meeting that 90% of the time. And in some cases only 50% of the time. So we need those additional stations in order to start to meet our standard of coverage and respond to that growth and development. And like I said, some of that is not necessarily due to new annexation. Some of it is and some is not. And in some cases it's both and it covers both. So I don't want you to think that a new station only serves a very small area. It just both serves our ability to get to that 90% throughout the whole city. And that's our budget presentation. >> Very good. And I believe or stated at one of our previous meetings that contingency for the one percent pay raise similar bedded in this budget. [03:49:51] >> That is correct, it is. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: Thank you, mayor. Thank you, chief kerr for the presentation. I just have a couple of questions, follow-up questions. When you say that overtime is going up by 600,000, what is the total overtime budget for the year? >> I'm going to have ranelle look at that number for me real quickly. >> Martinez: You can do it through the budget q and a. Just give me the last three years of what the total overtime budget. Because one of the things that obviously I asked a budget question regarding this moving forward is we're going into this consent decree phase and I see that we're planning to implement the consent decree with five new ftes, but do we have any certainty as to when we'll start implementing it knowing that the local is going to challenge the consent decree? >> The only answer that I can give you, and I'm not the legal expert, is that october 29th is the scheduled date before the judge for the fairness hearing. And my understanding is that once the judge -- even if there's an intervention or the union -- the local intervenes, that he can give us the go ahead to begin hiring. The consent decree indicates that we can use the already established list. So our plan is that to use the 2013 process and start the first class probably in february. >> But the judge can also preclude hiring from happening as well after that hearing. >> I think that he can. >> There is a motion currently pending from the union to intervene. The judge has not ruled on that. As the chief says we are scheduled for that fairness hearing. We may get a ruling before or after, but there has been no ruling on their motion to intervene, but we're going forward with it on the fairness hearing on the 26th. >> Martinez: So for the sake of council and the public, just through the budget question that I asked, if you look at the response of what our overtime will be in the next -- in the next two years, if we don't get this hiring started, it is projected to be at $1.2 million per pay period. That's every two weeks. Not -- that's not an analyzed number. So -- annualized number. So the importance of starting the hiring process obviously going to be very expensive if we're not allowed to. We need to be prepared for that in the outgoing years. On the five ftes to implement consent decree, do you need to hire them right away to start -- what exactly are they doing? [03:52:28] >> All of those positions would be administrative. And we have sort of given some of the responsibility to get started on some of the parts of the consent decree right now, like compliance, some of those things, using our current employees, but as soon as we have the approval, then we want to start looking towards that and yeting people spicewood up and ready to start. We need them as soon as we can possibly get them in the door to start getting the work done. >> Martinez: Understood. What are the six fire stations slated for one touch renovation? >> I know one is in moore's crossing out by the circuit of the americas. Oh, the renovations. I'm sorry. Let me go back. Station five, seven, 22, 24, 26, 27. >> Martinez: I have nothing to do with station five getting that. Even though that was my own fire station. >> It's a long time coming. >> Martinez: That sedation was built in 1968 so I'm sure it was due for renovation. >> Spelman: Can you translate that into english for the rest of us? >> Martinez: What is that? >> Spelman: Where the hell are these fire stations. >> I can do that. Station five is 1202 webberville. Seven is on chicon and fifth, I think. And 22 is 5309 east riverside. 24 is 5811 nuckols crossing. >> Dove springs. 26 is 6600 wet worth and 57 is 2401 mccarthy lane. And just by the numbers you know that 22, 24, 26, 27 were all built pretty close to each other. It is. [03:54:33] >>> Chief, I wanted to ask something that has been an ongoing conversation for decades. But I really think we have to tackle this issue pretty quickly. And that is what are our plans moving forward for replacing central fire stations and getting those fire firefighters in a facility that is up to speed for their needs? These are some of the most highly trained firefighters that we have with special operations. It's a station that I dare say is -- it's had its useful life, but I believe there needs to be a conversation had about replacing that. And I look at san antonio over the last 10 years and they replaced their central fire station with a brand new station, turned it into a nice little fire museum. I just see that the conversation not going away if we don't start talking about what are we going to do about central fire station. Have you had those conversations and do you plan on -- >> we've had some initial conversations about the preplacement of that station and obviously with the whole waller creek project coming through. And I would love to turn that station into an interactive fire safety museum for children that would be an ideal place for it right there in museum row. We have not had very many conversations in-depth about that, but there's a manner of where do we put the new fire station and if we put it in the bottom of a brand new hi-rise project like they do in some other major cities or do we -- where do we locate it that it has to stay in that downtown corridor? >> So one of the things that is going to start up fairly quickly is the conversation about expansion of our convention center. And specifically to the west, meaning it's going to cross over the rail line if that passes and gets implemented and the rail line would cut right through the middle of the convention center. I think there's an opportunity to insert this into that conversation as well because that will be a city facility. And I'm not saying that's where it should be. I'm just saying we need to look at every option because you and I both know that is a station that is very, very old and potentially needs to be -- [03:56:51] >> there's hardly any room for -- it like stuffing sausage getting all those people and units in there. We'll take your recommendation and follow through with that. I really appreciate that. >> Martinez: Sure. Thank you. >> Martinez: Questions? -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: Questions? Councilmember spelman. You two have your name tags reversed there. [Laughter] you're trying to confuse me, I know. [Laughter] >> Spelman: The opportunities for fun here are amazing. >> They're endless. >> Spelman: They really are. >> You have to brighten up the colors a little bit, though. >> Spelman: It is much better than orange. I have a few technical questions. My apologies for asking you now, but they just came up in your presentation. You're talking about one of the things we'll be talking about I'm pretty sure in a few minutes, when we're talking about planning and development review, is their inability to get reviews of site plans and other documents done on time. And one of the issues of course is that they farm out the reviews to a lot of departments, including the fire department, and the final document can only be reviewed on time once they've received reviews from all of the departments that have to review something. You guys have done a wonderful job of improving your ability to review land use documents in the last couple of years. I think your numbers were around 30%. A few years ago. And 33% were on time reviewed in 11-12 and it went up to 44% and then went up to 60% this year as I understand it. That's a great record. I think it's terrific that you guys have been able to bring it up as quickly as you can. But for the entire document to be reviewed on time, that means that every department has got to get their stuff done on time. And that means that even though you guys are doing much better, if it's only 60% on time delivery from the fire department and it's also 60% on time delivery from public works and only 60% from some other agencies, it's almost certain that the document -- the final result is going to be delivered -- will not be delivered on time. So what is it -- what is it that you have done to increase on time delivery and what can you do in the future to do that? [03:59:17] >> Some of the things that have helped us increase it on time delivery was adding personnel over there. And it was both fire protection engineers, inspectors that could not only do the plans review, but when a plan is being reviewed you have to site inspections and then follow-up inspections. So it was adding some additional personnel. And I think there's still a need there. So -- and then it's coordinating. And I think that some of the things that we have done and that we should continue to do is a coordination between the various departments and the ability to share those plans sometimes electronically. And I think that's being done from other departments. And then what can we do to improve that in the future I think is continue to work at ways that we can improve the sharing of documents and the plans. And I'm not the expert so I can't explain to you how sometimes one person can't do their job until the other one has done the review because they are sort of like layers, if you will. But I think we will be looking to add a couple more personnel in that whole area of prevention and emergency preparedness as we move into the future. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] [04:01:45] >> I don't know that you would see any significant change until probably '16. >> Spelman: Gotcha. Okay. >> I would agree with you there. >> Spelman: You mentioned a moment ago that the structural fires confined to room of origin went from 82 to 84%. I know this is great. On the other hand, those numbers are going to go up and down just by chance, so how many structural fires is that? What's the denominator of that percentage? >> I don't know the answer to that, but we will get the answer for you. I see ranlle slipping by. If she doesn't have it, we'll get that answer for you. >> Councilmember, we average about one working structure fire a day. >> Spelman: So we're talking around 400 or so. >> Yes, sir. >> Spelman: We're talking numbers of about one structural fire a day or 400 fires, you expect just by have to have a [inaudible] of about 3% from one year to the next, so an 84 to 82 is the sort of thing which might happen by chance. It doesn't necessarily mean you are trending better. You might be trending better, but you need a bigger change to verify the fact you are getting better at this. On the other hand, I suspect you are because that is part of a long-term trend. You are proposing 85% for this year. What's the basis for the 85? >> I think it's always there's always room for improvement and sometimes it's the prevention side of it, the preparedness side of it that helps us get that number up. So early warning instead of a late warning, you know, we get -- you know, get a structure fire reported and the time it's reported there's no way we can confine it to the room of origin. So some public education, some technical things, fire sprinklers, for example. So codes, plans review, all these things can help us confine the fire to the room of origin. Not only a well trained, well staffed response force as well. [04:03:55] >> Spelman: That's one of the reasons why we have so many fewer structural fires at least per capita than a few years ago is because the building codes improved and we got sprinkler system and more fire resistant materials. >> Some of that is correct and there's also today's building construction and engineered wood challenges us. Years ago the way a room was fun issued, it would take about 25 minutes for that room to call what we call flashover. Today because of the petroleum products and the plastics and the things like that in furniture and wall coverings and all those things, a room will flash over in about three and a half minutes. >> Spelman: Wow. This is mostly furniture, not building materials? >> Combination of both. But engineering things with fire sprinklers, and that's why residential sprinklers become really important as well. >> Spelman: Semi suggest we may want to look more closely at our building codes. >> Well, there is a move across the country to make residential sprinklers mandatory. >> Spelman: Even in single-family houses. >> Even in single-family homes. >> Spelman: That will make us really popular. >> It's kind of not even allowed in the state of texas right now. >> Spelman: I couldn't put in a sprinkler system even if I wanted to. >> You can, but we can't adopt that part of the code. But I will tell you that my house is sprinklered. >> Spelman: Good for you. A couple more questions. They are small. We have a goal, it's on page 55, that 98% of -- maybe it's not there. Either way. We have a goal that 98% of all unit responses in the city will be handled by afd units. And we've said in a question just to figure out quite what that meant. Let me read back what I think I remember hearing you say and you can tell me whether I got it right. We get a fire call, 98% of the time response to the fire call will be about afd unit not by auto aid or mutual aid unit from throughout the city. [04:06:10] >> That's correct. >> Spelman: Why is that a goal? >> Well, because I think it becomes important for a couple of reasons. One that there's a state law that says areas that become annexed need to be provided the same level of service and it cannot be done through automatic aid. And the second is is that -- it's always important that the closest unit responds no matter what the emergency is and no matter where it is. But we want to be sure that 98% of the time or more that an emergency is being handled by an austin fire unit. >> Spelman: I understand we certainly want the closest unit to respond and we should try to engineer our fire station so the closest unit to the vast majority of the city is going to be one of ours. On the other hand, sometimes ours are already in use doing something else. And so long as seems to me there is a reasonable balance between ours going out and theirs coming in so that nobody is system mat systematically losing, I presume we have a way of trueing up the costs at the end of the year, why do we need a percentage? So long as we're maintaining a reasonable balance and we're always sending the closest unit, we're putting our fire stations in the right place, seems it would fall out by itself. >> And we do try to maintain that reasonable balance, but it's not, you know, over one side or the other that we're not subsidizing a particular department or entity. But I think that it's always good to have a goal so that we know that we're meeting that goal. You know, if we don't have a metric or number, we kind of go well, we think we're doing it. And I think it's important that community knows what they pay their tax dollars for they are getting the standing army of the austin fire department at least 98% of the time. >> Spelman: Are they getting that now, about 98% of the time? >> I think it is just about 98%. Okay. So I was just looking at some of our metrics here, and so unit-run totals, which is a little bit hard to understand, but that means the number of units, not the number of calls, so unit-run totals inside the city of austin were 106,788. The esd units, the times out of that 106,788, 1900 of those were not afd units. [04:08:48] >> Spelman: Okay, so about 2% were esd, the other 98% were ours more or less. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: Okay. How often did we run outside the city and provide auto aid or mutual aid to the ESDs? 3,119 times. >> Spelman: So we are providing -- well, 50% more service to them than they are to us. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: Seems to me that -- there may be a balancing point here between providing a reasonable balance on the one hand chit looks like we are running out of the city more than they are running inside the city. If there's money trading hands, we're getting more money from us than we're giving to them because we're doing more work outside the city. >> But there is no money that trades hands in regard to either automatic aid or mutual aid. >> Spelman: Okay. So we're providing more service outside the city than the outside cities are providing to us. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: And I think it's very reasonable thing to keep track of this. I think 98% seems like a reasonable measure, but it seems to me so long as we're providing a reasonable balance, we shouldn't worry if we drop to 97%, we are still providing more service TO THE ESDs WE'RE STILL Doing okay. >> And some of those numbers could change with the addition of fire stations. Some of that is just a matter of geography. >> Spelman: Sure. I imagine that's. If you have five fire stations are on long-term plan for construction to provide better construction to recently annexed areas, do we have a sense for where -- which ones you need most? >> Yes, we do. >> Spelman: Which ones you want to build first? >> Yes, we do. We have a plan on those -- I'm trying to get to the correct page. And I think I started on this one when councilmember martinez asked me the question and I misinterpreted the correct answer. So the first one would be morris crossing out on el roy road and the plan is to put a temporary facility there while we're building the next one and we would like to do that in f.Y.15. Then looking to buy property out in the loop 360 area would be the second. The third is shady hollow -- [04:11:19] >> Spelman: About where on loop 360? Long stretch. 360 and lost creek area. Does that help? >> Spelman: Yes, very much. >> And then the next is shady hollow, and there is a station there already that was built by the m.U.D. And then travis country, sunset valley area. And then the last is the good night ranch. The onion creek stations are already in process. >> Spelman: I caught that onion creek was part of the other [inaudible] something we're talking about. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: You mention a temporary facility at morris crossing in fiscal 15. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: I overlooked that one. >> It is not a budget request. >> Spelman: Oh, okay. >> But we are working towards that. We would like to start that process in f.Y.15 and then we would be asking for the staffing for f.Y.16. >> Spelman: Okay. Okay. So the construction would happen at least of the temporary facility this year. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: It's not on the budget right now. Your plan calls for it to happen but it's not on the budget. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: And do -- I don't need the results now but we'll send in a written question asking how much you can anticipate that are performance measures are likely to increase once each of these stations are actually built. >> Okay. We can provide that for you as well. >> Spelman: I was pretty sure you could. Thanks very much. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you. Thank you, chief. Just to follow up on that question, I was going to ask about that. The issue of the location of the new fire stations and you all presented or talked about a much larger plan than just five more, maybe a 30-year plan or a 20-year plan at audit and finance, I think it came up. And some questions arose because -- well, I guess -- well, the questions that arose were trying to figure out the logic of why some of the target placements were the way they were. And I just want to raise that because I think that -- and we talked about maybe having a larger discussion about that. I think that it might be interesting to toss that -- we now have a joint committee on public safety, if I'm correct, that's actually cross jurisdictional. Much longer range efforts, but I think it would be good to talk through it. When I looked at it, I didn't understand the logic. It looked like some of them were going to be very close to the others. Obviously if we're looking far into the future, the -- to be able to target the locations and start looking for land now rather than 20 years from now would be something that I'm sure [04:14:17] [inaudible]. >> And I couldn't agree with you more about how important it would be to try to do a collaborative approach to fire stations in that -- and it doesn't make sense to build a fire station in the city of austin that's maybe half a mile away from an esd station. It doesn't make sense. And I think that your suggestion is very appropriate and a great idea and I'm glad that we have that committee back together and I would love to have further discussion about that. >> Morrison: That's great. Well, I'll toss that to my colleagues on the committee and hope they will pick up that idea. Secondly I wanted to ask about, you are talking about the importance of smoke alarms and I really appreciate your push towards prevention as opposed to to only response and I think you mentioned 2,000 smoke alarms that were -- 2,000 houses that were -- >> no, I don't know the number of houses, but -- 2,000 smoke alarms, because most houses probably get more than one. The new recommendation is there's a smoke alarm inside every sleeping area. So -- but even if, say, we put three smoke alarms in every house, that's still a lot of touches. >> Morrison: And I guess the question for me is then just to get a sense of the context, do we have any sense of what percent of the people in austin live in places that have smoke alarms? >> I don't, and one of the things that we're trying to get better at is that metric and measuring where we put smoke alarms, being able to actually map it and look at when we have a structure fire if there was a working smoke alarm and the people evacuated, was it because we installed that smoke alarm. We're trying to work on gathering those metrics and do a better job measuring that. I don't know the percentage of homes that live in -- without working smoke alarms. [04:16:24] >> Morrison: I think that's an important number because if the percent is only 10%, which I'm sure it's higher than that, if it's only 10%, then we can look at this 2,000 per year and think that's really a drop in the bucket and we need to step it up. But I appreciate you are going to delve into that because that will allow you to target. I know you already do targeted outreach, but even better target outreach. >> And I would agree even by neighborhoods and zip codes and we've done some sort of grass roots kind of smoke alarm installation whenever there is a structure fire, the next shift, the same firefighters go out and knock on doors and say do you have a working smoke alarm. Can we install one for you. So it's just kind of a grass roots effort there as well. And then sort of neighborhood canvassing and involving communities in helping us get smoke alarms installed. >> Do you think it's feasible to get estimates of those numbers? Wondering where you are going to get that data. >> I don't know how you would be able to get that measure other than -- and I just don't know how you would be able to do that. You know, I mean especially in private residences. Once that are multi-family and are by code were built they have to have working smoke alarms, we don't know that they do or not, but by code they have to have a working smoke alarm. We could do it that way maybe. I don't know, but I think it would be hard measurement to find, but I think it would be a great measurement to have. >> Morrison: Well, and I assume there's some correlation between age of a building and whether the likelihood of it having a smoke alarm. >> That's correct, and that would be the fire code. >> Morrison: Right. Right. >> Even in new single-family residences, the code requires you have working smoke alarms. They have to be hard wired and batteried combined. >> Morrison: Right. I bet with some assumptions our demographer could help figure that out. [04:18:27] >> I'm going to touch base with him and get some help. >> Morrison: He's magical with data so I'm sure he will be able to help you. I do think that's important because that can help us understand how big of an effort is really needed. >> I think we need to be able to try to do better than what we're doing, but I'm pretty proud of the fact we see the fire fatalities coming down. >> Morrison: As well you should be. And then I wanted to mention, you know, we had -- you all went to the public safety commission and their two recommendations, it sounds like you were able to address one and that is vote. Their action was additional votes for the fire department, that's what you mentioned is one of the highlights. >> That was correct. >> Morrison: That's great. Then the ot is the ubiquitous that special events pay for themselves. The other thing I wanted to ask you about on page 61, one of the significant changes that was mentioned is that hazardous incident mitigation costs previously charge to do the water utility and watershed protection department are now included in your budget as opposed to charging them back to the department. And one of the reasons that jumped out at me is because we had a talk about this at audit and finance yesterday, and that is that a.P.D. Costs for -- for homeland security for our departments are now going to be covered by a.P.D. As opposed to being charged to the department. But sounds like it's sort of a reverse shift internally and that is no, departments are not paying for themselves in terms of the services that they need from the other departments and those servicing departments are absorbing the costs. And so I just wanted to point that out. It seems to be a policy shift. It may well be showing up in other places, but I wonder -- and I know part of that came from the fact that for one thing the water utility, we're looking for any way, shape or form to help shore up their budget. But I wonder if it's accurate to assume that we are sort of making that shift generally within our department. [04:21:17] >> Am I on here? We did have that discussion -- we had that discussion at audit and finance and I don't know that I would characterize it so much as a policy shift as it was a -- part of the process we did this year was to look at various cost sharing models and the hazardous incident mitigation which both the watershed and water department have historically contributed funds to help pay for fire costs incurred related to those areas. But as a mechanism to reduce some of the cost pressures on those utilities, we were looking for ways to accomplish that. And this is certainly one of those ways instead of back charging those departments for some of these costs, to have them become general fund costs. For the water utility was about $400,000 and for the watershed department it was about $300,000. In either case, there would be some decisions made. Policy decisions of undoing those things. For example, the water utility would need a slightly higher rate increase to incur those costs because of how debt calculations are done and in the watershed department they are right at the cusp of their one-third reserve policy to tapping into them would require additional rate pressures on watershed. So we're really looking at all that stuff this year and really trying to find ways to keep not only our general fund property tax rate down but also our utility rates down. I would say if we were to go back to looking to have some of the enterprise departments pay for functions like this, I think we probably -- we had this discussion yesterday about some of the audit findings with some of these cost allocations findings, do a better job of tracking the specific costs being incurred by the dents as part of that process. These numbers have been fixed and in place for a number of years and are just done as a transfer more so than an actual reimbursement for specific services that are provided. If council did want to explore restoring some of those types of charges, we would have to do a better job of staff of tracking and monitoring that costs and maybe at some point is the tracking and the monitoring required to do that worth the amount of time involved to get the reimbursement. Long winded answer, but a lot of stuff went into that decision. It wasn't just a knee jerk -- [04:23:58] >> Morrison: Right, and my knee-jerk reaction I'm not sure I can see it both ways. I would like to mention that it's not working both ways. Obviously our general fund departments are paying for austin energy services. So it doesn't work both ways. They are paying for the services, the enterprise funds are not paying for the services they are getting. And so I just wanted to throw that out there. I don't know what I think about it, but I certainly understand it's complicated and it's not something we could just change right off the bat because there is more that would need to be explored to get it right. So that's just something to share. And then last point I wanted to make is one of the things you have on your slide is you are shifting five temporary employees over to permanent employees and I understand that's sort of an overarching approach that's been taken citywide and I applaud that because to be able to acknowledge our temporary employees really are employees it's a fairness issue so I think that's a really good move to be making. >> And we really appreciate the fact we are able to convert part of those over because it's very difficult when they are temporary employees, they leave you to get a job full time somewhere else or permanent and then it takes time too train them back up and all those roles are critical. We appreciate that fact too. >> Morrison: Is reality is if they are doing a full-time job and not getting benefits, we're not really being fair. >> Then just a point, I got a note handed to me our total working fires for fiscal year 13 were 694. >> Spelman: Total fires or structural fires? >> Total working fires. So it could be just structural. Whispered in my ear. [04:26:05] >> Spelman:694. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mayor pro tem cole. >> Cole: I understand our overtime numbers are very, very high because we have a lot of vacancies and that has a lot to do with the consent dedecree and issues we face with the department of jus -- >> I don't know if I totally understand your question. >> Cole: I thought at the beginning of the session the mayor asked you if there was about a million dollars planned within the budget for I guess a central agreement with the firefighters? Is that -- I was trying to understand that. >> Oh, he was talking about the one percent for a pay increase for the firefighters. We are currently in negotiations. We do not have a executed agreement. So there's a little over a million dollars loaded into the budget assuming there is an agreement reached and that one percent is for increase, firefighters increase. Salary increase. >> Cole: Budgeted. >> That's correct. >> Cole: So as long as we still have not -- so we still have the problem with the vacancies and overtime and that's not going to be solved until we're able to actually go out and do the new hires. >> That's correct. We have to have the new position -- we have to have those 90 positions filled. And again, remember those positions are consistently four a month. >> Cole: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I also just have a couple quick questions. So last year, as I recall, there was money in the budget for probably what was a one percent increase as well. What happened to that funding? Did that go overtime? [04:28:11] >> We're going to look at ed. >> That's part of just our yearing balance that we did including and when we report back to council our projected savings for fiscal year 14, that's just part of that. >> Tovo: So that was a savings for the department, it didn't get allocated to another use? >> Last year we did not include [inaudible] did not include that in the department's budget. It was budgeted at the fund level as a place holder in the event that the funding was needed. So, you know, it's part of our year end savings, part of our year end surplus that we typically have and it becomes a source of funds that gets reallocated. It wasn't specifically in the fire budget. >> Tovo: I missed whether it's in fire budget or at the fund level. >> It's in their budget this year. The thinking was there is this issue of overtime so if for some arena we're not able to get you a contractual agreement or start hiring, there's funding that would be there for overtime purposes or if we are able to get to an agreement [inaudible] but we felt one way or the other there probably is a need in the fire department for some additional funding for -- for wages or overtime. >> Tovo: And as I understood the discussion a little earlier this morning, the fairness hearing on october 29th is -- offers the possibility one way or another of proceeding with hiring. The judge could allow the intervention, but still agree to allow the hiring process to go forward. >> That's correct. >> Tovo: The judge could disallow the intervention, in which case the settlement decree would be executed and the hiring would go forward. >> That's correct. >> Tovo: So one of the three scenarios would not allow the hiring to go forward, but you have two scenarios in which the hiring would proceed. [04:30:12] >> And we're hoping for either option 1 or 2 because we definitely want to get ready and get hired. >> Tovo: And that would allow the hiring to begin, I think you said the cadet class would start in february. >> Just about in february. If we get approval to go forward on the 29th of october, just all the time that it takes to finalize post-job offer, conditional job offer screenings. >> Tovo: And then I want to go back to one other point that councilmember morrison made. Can you point to where in this -- maybe this is a question for you. Where in the document does it talk about special events? I see special events fees, but I'm missing the line that talks about the financial pressure placed on the department. >> Morrison: I was quoting from the public safety commission recommendation and all the boards and commission recommendations are in the handy dandy report called the public engagement report. And maybe ed can tell us, that is online. >> Tovo: I've got a copy. I wasn't looking there. I was looking in the budget or highlights. We've been trying to get some clarity around this issue now for at least a year. Do you have -- have you put a number to what those costs are, unreimbursed costs? >> I'm looking to my right and I'm hearing the answer is no. >> Tovo: We had gotten initial estimates for all city costs and they looked like I believe 13 million for the five years studied, but I'm not sure how that -- >> separates into different department and I don't know. I imagine we could do some cost estimates on that. >> Tovo: And you may have as part of that bigger discussion. We just need the -- >> I'm told it's in progress. >> Tovo: Okay. Thanks. [04:32:14] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Questions. Just a quick comment on the point that councilmember morrison brought up about kind of the flow of funds in and out of our enterprise departments, didn't have that much to do with you, but I do think our long-range goal should be to make our enterprise departments independent businesses. And that they -- aside from a reasonable transfer, due to the fact people of austin own our utilities, that that money should be basically based on the job that the enterprise performs. They should be run like a business. And that should work both ways. >> We would agree with that, mayor and by definition that's what an enterprise is all about. I've always in this profession sort of the saying we had is that you don't give away the asset of the utility. And, you know, or for the enterprise. We internal agree with that perspective. >> Mayor Leffingwell: As you said, it's probably hard to figure some of those transfers and I know there are ways -- I mean we have interlocal agreements with travis county, for example, where we don't keep track of every single item, but we estimate an expense that would be transferred back and forth. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Just to chime in here, though, the question in my mind after our audit and finance discussion and it's the same one I think councilmember morrison was raising, all of our city departments pay when they use utilities service, parks and recreation pays their utility bills. We know austin energy and the -- are receiving services from the police and fire services, but sounds to me like what's proposed in front of us is going to be a zero balance. They are going the pay zero for those services next year, and we know that's not accurate. So I don't think I disagree with -- I don't think this is in conflict with what you said. If they are receiving police services, there should be a line item for that. For that charge. In the same way our other departments have a line item for their austin energy, austin water utility services, that does need to go both ways and we know it's not zero. They may not -- the estimate that was in there may not be accurate, but neither is zero and that's what we've got in front of us today. [04:34:44] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I don't think that, as you pointed out, I don't think there's really any agreement here, but we just need to try to find a better way to do that trueing up and, you know, if the fire department uses water utility services, they should pay for that just like anybody else. Just like the widget factory, for example. Councilmember -- I evidently opened a can of worms. Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: I do want to follow up because I guess the question on the table is are you suggesting that we shore that -- that we true that up this year to some degree? >> Mayor Leffingwell: I am not because I think it's really a long-term goal that you need to work towards. >> Morrison: And I totally agree with that and I think would be some sort of suggested suggestions for staff to be working toward that and I totally agree. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I would say that I think my guess is going to be that the utilities, utility enterprises are going to be better off as a result financially with that process when it's done. >> Morrison: Except for the fact we already have the general fund departments paying for the lion's share of services. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Well, I think the balance, the big picture, the balance is going to weigh heavily in the enterprise favor. I guess we can go on to the next department. >> Can I just say since this will probably be the last time that I present the budget to this group as a whole, that I would like to say thank you very much for your support of austin fire department over the years. And I just want to say thanks and I appreciated working with all of you. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Likewise, thank you, chief. The police department, I believe, is next. [04:36:56] >> Good morning, mayor and council. Thanks for having us. Alice hooter and bri manly. Who has the clicker? All righty, we're going to go ahead and start with department overview. One of the things we're proud of in the austin police department is the fact we're the second safest city in the country. This is something that as it relates to violent crime we're continuing to stay in the top three and it's something that we can all take a lot of pride in. If you look at our major accomplishments, resident satisfaction is a little higher than the rest of the nation. We launched arrive alive austin over central texas which [lapse in audio] fatalities are down significantly throughout the city and I think that's part of the partnership where everything is pointing up resources throughout the area. And the rate for the -- at which the department apprehend suspects in property crimes, clearance rate was higher in fiscal year 13 and 10% higher than this year's goal. One of the things I think is important to consider that I want you to be aware of is that our goals are based on a five-year rolling average to account for those anomalies. It seems like sometimes in statistics when you go from year to year there's anomalies and it throws things off. So it's based on a five-year rolling average. Having said that, our goal still no matter what the actual is achieved, we will always try to reduce crime at least one percent in both violent and property crime. Departmental use of funds this year is as always the biggest chunk is going to be for our neighborhood policing services and that's really where the boots are on the ground with our folks. That's 57% of our budget, which includes our patrol regions, community partnerships, patrol support, traffic enforcement, our parks and lakes I think are some of the safest in the nation. Very proud of. 60% goes to investigation which includes our centralized investigative units and other support units, specialized units. 60% is operation support which includes air operations, strategic support, bookings and I want to note that a couple days ago the b-3 aircraft that you all purchased for the department completed its first fire fighting mission. We are proud of that. They were able to drop five drops in a brush fire that was too heavy for ground crews to get in and put it out quickly. I want to say it's starting to have some really positive impacts. 6% of our budget is professional stands which includes recruiting, training, internal affairs and risk management. 6% is support services which is finance, technology, purchasing, equipment, things of that nature. As you can imagine, the majority of our budget goes to personnel. Some of the budget highlights, councimember spelman has a document prepared in response to the question talking about in a perfect world, we would like 126 positions. Include some of the issue with our caseload management for detectives. It's a pretty extensive caseload. Also with these 59 that we're asking for, we plan on doing is 46 will immediately once they get kicked off, we're going to put one of those officers each evening and night shift. We believe that by doing one per each evening and night shift, number one, you won't have to add more supervision because a sergeant can handle one additional person. It's not good to have five or ten more persons under one sergeant, but by putting one on each evening and night shift when a lot of things are going on in our city, we believe we're going to impact our uncommitted time, which now is about 15%, sometimes it runs from 10 to 15%, and we believe that will help us with that. Secondly, they will be able to hopefully do nor proactive policing. In other words, by having hopefully having more uncommitted time they will prevent crimes occurring in the first place. The other positions, because it takes about 18 to 20 months from the time you pass the budget since it's only mid-year funding for april, we didn't get them hired until after april. By the time they come on board, we're data driven so we'll look at exactly where we can get the most efficiency and effectiveness with the remaining bodies outside of the ones that go for patrol. You recall in 2014 you authorized 47 positions and this I true up for the remaining year. The travis county booking services contract, projecting about a $200,000 increase for 2015, and later on this month we may be able to bring a proposal to you that for you to consider that may lead to, I believe, some efficiency in terms of service delivery for the department, trying to free 'officer time, and some long-term budget savings that that might be coming to later this month for your consideration. Okay. My voice is carrying too much. Some of the equipment that we are going to be replace ing this year, hope to replace digital forensic equipment. Fiber scope. As you know 35 is a corridor here for drugs going north from the border and humans going north of the border and southbound a lot of guns and cash. We have a highway drug addiction team and these fiberscopes will be a tremendous asset for folks to conduct some of the searches. Replacing some of the motors for the forensics lab. Some additional laboratory equipment for forensics. Evidence lockers and night vision goggles. And a shallow bottom boat that we can use for -- as rescues and help with rescues such as when you have a flooding event with our colleagues at fire and e.M.S. Additional highlights, and this is something we're very excited about, includes the 38 positions for nonsworn. We really have not had an in careers in -- significant increase in nonsworn staffing in many years. These 38 positions break down as you can see two assistive seniors for managing open records. Open records in 2010 received by the austin police department were 5,644. 2013, that same item increased to 29,486. This is a huge, huge burden on our department and it's something that's greatly needed. We're going to take hopefully to get 911 call takers, six police dispatchers for our 911 center, two dispatcher aides, one training specialist and those and lists we believe will be critical in terms of ensuring our deployment at the com center is fluid and based on the specific needs for the call center. We're also looking at two d.N.A. Forensic analysts. D.N.A. Is something we continue to use to combat crime, not just violent crime but property crime. It's also a tool that's used and played a critical role in freeing people that were wrongfully convicted in our state and our country. This is the first time we add d.N.A. Analysts since the opening of the crime lab and as you can imagine their workload has gone way up. We also are finally moving towards business intelligence. The city has, ctm has identified business intelligence tool we've been seeking for many years and we believe with the support staff that's going to come up that we hope to get, we're going to be able to continue to really work on moving our resources around, being proactive and we believe with the business intelligence tool we may be able to move into a -- more of a predictive modeling in terms of based on data, based on crunching that data where we may be able to predict where would we foresee property crimes occurring or where is that pattern and by putting resources ahead of the wave that might be able to prevent them in the first place. So those are basically highlight of the 38 positions. Our capital highlights include the mounting patrol facility. We've got the land out there for the horses. We're this the preliminary design process and construction should start in late 2015. The park patrol, joint use facility with our friends at park and rec, they are starting the design phase, and the northwest substation, which would be towards 620 and 2222, which is a really hard place to get to for us, land only has been budgeted and real estate is actually looking at locations now for the future. That's just a real brief highlight on that, on our c.I.P. If you look at our revenue and fee -- fee slide here, the department revenues in terms of collecting money will increase by about $700,000. This is due primarily to the alarm system that -- management system that we purchased as a city where we're doing a much better job now of collecting the fees and the fines from folks and so we see a continued increase and a better job of actually collecting those fees, including that $200 charge when we discover that you have an unpermitted alarm in the city of austin. That's a real quick run down and I'm sure there will be a lot of questions from the council. [04:47:31] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Questions? >> Cole: Mayor, I have a quick question. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mayor pro tem cole. >> Cole: I want to focus on the earlier discussion about what we discussed in audit and finance about the allocation of service fees to other departments. I notice on page 13 that transfers and other requirements went up from 3.4 to 5.8. Can you explain that? >> I think ed has that explanation. >> This is a different issue than what we were talking about earlier. I can bring this slide up from our july 31 overview presentation, but this has to do with all of our internal support service functions and a lot of our things that we used to budget in the aggregate. So things like workers' compensation, accrued payroll. We used to budget that in the aggregate at the general fund, what we call the fund level. We also used to budget in aggregate the fair share cost, the allocated costs associated with the support services department, communication and technology management, wireless, all those functions, we just to just budget in the aggregate. What we're doing in this budget is pushing those costs into the departments where they actually belong and for the departments that those functions support. So across the board for these general fund departments you are going to see a big increase in this other requirements category and that's the reason. And we think, you know, it gives a better reflection of the true cost of running the department. It includes, you know, the cost that the police department incurs related to workers compensation, the support they get from corporate human resources, from corporate finance, communication and technology management, obviously they are a big part of the wireless function and ctec, a disproportionate -- all those are reflected in the departments in which they support. [04:49:37] >> Cole: Let me ask you something there, ed. So we're really taking these large costs, like you said workers compensation, and we're allocating them to particular departments. >> It's a rearranging of the deck chairs. There's not a true $45 million increase. I could bring that other slide up. What you saw was a $102 million reduction in the fund level costs and $102 million increase in the departmental costs. It's just a matter where we're reflecting the costs in the budget documents. >> Cole: And so if we're saying that handling it that way would reduce the impact on the general fund, northern arkansas? Is that correct? >> It doesn't change the bottom line general fund at all. These departments are all within the general fund. When we transfer general fund dollars to the support services fund to pay for all the support functions, it's a matter of does a transfer just come from the fund level in one big lump sum or come from the individual department. And we think it makes more sense for it to come from the individual department that provides a more accurate reflection of the true departmental cost and is consistent with how we do it in our enterprise departments. When you look at austin energy or research recovery budget, it includes their fair share costs of the support function. In the general fund, the general fund department costs historically versus not included that. We've always done it at the fund level. It's something that we've wanted to clean up for a while and we're just proposing to get it done in this budget. >> Cole: So it just helps us better with transparency and consistency but it's not necessarily any type of -- >> when you look at the police department budget and see that $42 million in transfers, it is transfers for the police department, but there's an equivalent decrease at the -- in the nondepartmental budget of the general fund. >> Cole: Okay. I have one other question. Chief, you talked about the change that was coming for business intelligence from ctm. The work they are doing, and we heard a little about that in audit and finance also. I just wanted to ask you to elaborate a little bit more on why that was an expense we're incurring or why it was necessary. [04:51:58] >> Because it helps us work smarter. It helps us take existing resources that we have and looking at realtime data, it helps us be a lot more thoughtful in terms of how we deploy. When I first became a cop, there was a beat tell you you are looking for this and you are done. Our folks are put where we believe they are going to be most effective. It helps our commanders where the commander can come in and push buttons and see that's happened the last 24 hours of my shift and that commander will have the authority to change the deployment strategy. So you are going to see with this business intelligence a much more fluid department that's going to be calling -- since football season is coming at u.T., that's going to be calling audibles on a regular basis and you are going to see a department already doing a good job of doing more with less, I think you will see even more efficiency that are much more effective. It's exciting. We've been wanting this -- by the way, I forgot to mention this, we're going to get a statistician, finally, hopefully, if you all pass our budget. We'll have a statistician that's going to help us explain issues and actually get to the meat of some of these numbers as well. Which is a long time coming. >> Cole: Okay. I just wanted to put the one point out there for discussion. I know that councilmember morrison deals with this and the technology subcommittee and some of the things we are learned yesterday that ctm is going to bring a lot more efficiency to our overall department. Especially when it comes to audit and the things we're asking for in terms of departments being cited for not being able to establish their procedures or protocols or methods or programmingen we're going to eventually we're on a path that has a lot of purchases done in ctm that's going to help us monitor that. [04:53:59] >> Once we have it up and running, we really welcome the mayor and council to come out and we can actually live demonstrate it for you to see in action how we are doing it on a daily basis, which is going to be huge. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: That you recall. Chief, first of all, I wanted to acknowledge the work in the budget especially as relates to the 21 new dispatchers which you found in existing vacancy savings. Then, of course, the 15 civilians for forensic lab. But I want to go back, I don't know if it was last year or the year before, didn't we add substantially to the forensic lab so we can reduce the backlog and seems like we're still having -- >> that was a midyear adjustment that the d.A.A., the county attorney raised concerns along with the defense department. We added three scientists chemists that work on the blood alcohol and testing. That's a different branch of the forensic lab. This is the first time since the inception and start of that crime lab we add a d.N.A. Scientist. When we first started that d.N.A. Lab we did not use d.N.A. For property crimes. With the issues that we have with property crime, we actually used d.N.A. Not just for violent crime but property crime and that's increased the workload tremendously. These will be the first two since the inception of the crime lab. >> Martinez: So is there a standard that I guess we measure ourselves upon as to whether or not we're, you know, the number of backlogs seems to have gone up in 2011 and 2012, 2300 next year projected 4200, almost double. Is there a standard we measure ourselves again and if so what is that? [04:56:02] >> I don't have a standard, but I can find out what the national standard is. I can say this, that the defense bar, the prosecutor and the victims, the sooner that we get that -- we know we have a backlog. The sooner we get those d.N.A. Profiles entered into the system, processed, the sooner we can identify a suspect and in an event somebody is wrongfully accused by a witness who is mistakenly identifying somebody, the sooner we can clear which so me is even more important to not get the wrong person. To me that's more important. We can look at the national standard but I don't have that off the top of my head. >> Martinez: On page 131, you have a graph that shows our estimated complaints per 100,000 population and then you have it amended and it's more than a 100% increase in what you projected. Is that attributed to any specific thing or did we just have a year where we had a ton of complaints? >> I have to find where you are at, councilmember. >> Martinez: It's the graph on page 131 that estimated 6.9 complaints per 100,000, but you amended this year's budget to predict it's going to about 15. >> I think this is they went back to rolling five-year average and I will double-check. Complaints have been trending downward for the last seven years. I'll double-check, but I believe that's based on the five-year average. >> Martinez: That just stood out we're projecting that to go down but we're now amending that to have it double. >> We'll double-check and shoot you a response on that. >> Martinez: Then the last question -- I appreciate that. Just any followup. The last question I have really isn't reflected in the budget. Specifically you have -- you know, you have measurements at -- [lapse in audio] what are we doing and how can we improve on incidents where -- I don't know the specifics, but obviously the dog owners have their perspective. Tell me what we're doing. [04:58:30] >> First of all I want to say that the police officers and police department employees are dog owners and have members of their families that are dogs and it's tragic for our folks. They get very upset when they have to shoot a dog. Fortunately we have changed our policies. We've changed our review standards in terms of when we use deadly force on a dog. We actually -- it gets reviewed now up to the chief's level, to the assistant chief's level which in the past hadn't occurred. We changed the policy in terms of the actual investigation and the biggest piece that is real exciting, we're putting on training, state-of-the-art training, you know how cops and firefighters, first responders sometimes training, this is just warm and fuzzy stuff, that we're getting really tremendous feedback from our officers about the quality of the training in terms of how to handle a dog encounter, animal encounter as a police officer, not only the quality but the lessons learned. And I'm happy to report that our incidents, the second you say it, it's one of the emergency rooms quiet, something is going to happen, but we have greatly reduced the number of instances where we have had to use deadly force on a dog. It is something that's near and dear to all of us and also an issue not just in austin but on the national level it's a phenomenon folks are asking did you really have to shoot that dog and that's something we're asking as well as a department. >> Martinez: Great. I appreciate that, chief. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] though that's the proposal, we're hoping that internally what we're hoping for is to see a one percent reduction in violent and property crime when compared to actual numbers once we get the actual numbers from the previous year. But the proposal is based on a five-year rolling average. [05:01:19] >> Okay. So we're not expecting any decline in real terms and the public safety the citizens will experience. It's really a matter of the way that -- >> yes, sir. This is basically for budgeting purposes and for statistical purposes. And for -- to make sure we're comparing a longer term and not just year to year because there are a lot of anomalies to some of our crime rates. So that's what it covers. But we want to achieve a one percent reduction. >> And I'm glad to see that we are proposing a decrease in the rate of traffic fatalities in the coming year and I want to thank you for all your efforts on traffic safety, especially forum that you held recently, pulling together a number of different jurisdictions and individuals from across the region to talk about -- have that symposium and talk about what we can do to improve traffic safety. I want to ask you, as you look back on that and all the other discussions around traffic safety, are you anticipating any new programs or do you have any thoughts about new measures that we could take, anything that might have come up at the forum that you see as an opportunity for the coming year that might have budget implications? >> Well, we get those 59 options, traffic enforcement is a key, key strategy not just to keep you safe frommer rant drivers and drunk drivers, but also for criminal under text. They go hand in hand. With these additional officers by putting them on patrol, especially at night when we know we have a high incident of drunk drivers and drug drivers, we believe that that will have a positive impact because we'll have hopefully more uncommitted time to engage in traffic enforcement. We are going to go back with those -- by the way, thanks for being at that symposium. It meant a lot to us. We're going to go back and meet here -- we're setting a meeting date up for tomorrow that bring back all of our partners, including transportation partners from cap metro. We have taxi industry and everyone to come back and talk about what are the take aways, what can we do better. We've got some ideas that I think may require legislation, but we want to solidify them a little bit more before we come back out and discuss them. [05:03:45] >> Riley: Okay. I appreciate all your efforts on that and I hope you will keep us posted. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember spelman. >> Spelman: Thank you, mayor. I want to start by congratulating you for having a really good year. Property crime rate is down by about seven percent as you mentioned a minute ago as your slide suggests. Violent crime rate, obviously it's going to go up with the change in definition. But if we're looking at apples to apples it looks like it's gone down by 2.6 percent and are we now second behind san diego? I think san jose was -- >> they're having problems. >> Spelman: I think what's happening is they're having problems, we're doing better than we were last year and san diego is the gold standard for violent crime rates, but we're hot on their heels. I think it's a good thing. So violent crime is down if you're looking at ap apples. I'm looking at the communications date and it looks like 911 calls are down by 15%. 911 calls dispatched I down by four percent. Fatalities down by 18 percent. D.W.I. Fatalities are down by even more than that. It sounds like you guys are having a great year. >> Yes, sir. >> Spelman: That's the good news. Here's the bad news from your point of view, not necessarily mine. That is if we need more officers to cover the increase in services necessary, if crime rates are down and calls for services down and traffic fatalities are down, why do we need 59 more officers? >> Well, first of all so we can keep /the city/constituent that continues to grow at the fastest rate in the country the safest city. It's not my accident, it's by design. We have made it seamless for folks not to have an officer dispatched. We're purposely trying to reduce those dispatched calls so our officers can be doing more proactive and increase on committed time. Folks are actually using the 311 system to file reports. They're using teleserve and what's happening on one end is that at the front end our calls for service are down, but on the back end we still have to investigate these crimes because they come in through these other methods of receipt, we still have to investigate them. If you look at our property crime, even though we track dawn ward, we're on the bottom. And I think austin, texas, we want to be on top of good lists and not on top of a bad list. The truth of the matter is as it relates to property crime, which is near and dear to our hearts as a community, we're still one of the worst. And one of the best ways to impact that is twofold. One of the things we talked about the 126 officers in response to your question is we have to do better in terms of property crime. The problem is we have a work load with our detectives in property crime are getting -- I don't remember the number, but they're just getting 37 new cases per month. That's 37 residents whose home home and the sanctity of their home has been violated and quite frankly with our current resources, a, we can't disrupt them or prevent them. And b, when they do happen we're having a great challenge trying to solve them. The biggest concern for us and as a resident and a police chief is that law of averages being what they are, every time somebody breaks into a home there's a potential for aggravated sexual assault or aggravated assault or homicide to occur. So that's the biggest piece. Violent crime is by design. We focus a lot on violent crime, but we still have a huge, huge challenge with property crime. The other piece is that our special events continue to grow as a city. The number of residents who live continues to grow every month and I remember last month whenever the airport was here, their levels grow every month and that equates to more work. The other piece is a lot of the work load that our folks handle, it may not be captured a lot because of it is self generated, flag downs, not necessarily come in through 911. And quite frankly that happens quite frontally where officers are on patrol or seeing something or flagged down. And that's something we need to start capturing is actual flag-downs as well. [05:08:10] >> Spelman: Does that show up in the system? >> That's something we'll work out. We're still working out this vi tool we're getting. I think we can do a lot better. The biggest cater of work load for me is also that uncommitted time. Our uncommitted time is still 10 to 15%, which is for any standard across the nation, that is critically low. And that uncommitted time is the time that we'll be spending in terms of being in those neighborhoods, looking for the people casing the neighborhood, showing -- flying the flag of the police department so people will go somewhere else, hopefully to some other city. Also the community policing aspect where our folks have time to get out of the car and actually get to meet who is on their beat, who belongs on their beat. So all of that flows into what we would like to do. >> We'll conduct most of this conversation, I suspect, offline or on paper. I don't want to get into the weeds too much right now because I know I'm going to annoy the mayor pro tem and probably frustrate everybody else on the council if I get too far into this. But I do feel the need to point out that -- >> [inaudible]. [Laughter] >> Spelman: The mayor seems to be in a really good mood. Maybe I should pursue this more than I expected. [Laughter] that might change. >> There are a lot of departments behind me. >> Spelman: That's true. I want to make sure they have plenty of time to respond to everybody else's questions. I feel a need to point out part of the conversation we'll be having is that of the define or 61 new officers, depending on what documents you're looking at and how you score it I suspect, only 25 of them are going into patrol. And the rest of them are going elsewhere. >> As we look at the data right now it's 46 of them. We want to put one additional officer on each evening shift, one additional officer on each night shift because by doing that, councilmember, the officer at the supervision ratio is still manageable and don't have to add more sergeants or corporals. We believe by adding 46 that's going to buy us more uncommitted time so hopefully we can do some more disruption and prevention and hopefully crime will go down even further. [05:10:17] >> That's 23 on evenings, 23 at night and we keep daylight the same as it is. >> Well, we're holding -- we don't want to commit the others until -- by the time this budget passes and you approve it and they're trained we're looking at 18 to 20 months out. We know sitting before you right now that we absolutely have to put a minimum of 46. It may end up being all 59, but we don't want 59 and find out we have another threat or challenge where they're more needed. We're trying to be as nimble as possible and withhold that final decision until we get data. >> Let me explain my confusion. My staff and I were looking at the budget document and adding up the number of officers and civilians assigned to centralized investigations, partnerships, patrol and so on. And we found 876 sworn officers assigned to patrol -- 856. 876. >> And what, council? >> This is for 14. >> Spelman: And 901 assigned to patrol for fiscal '15, and that's 25. That's adults of 25, not adult of 46. Now, I understand that even if we give you the authority to hire more police officers, it's going to take awhile to work them through the system before they're actually on the street. So maybe 25 is only the first installment and the 59 we're talking about hiring now that you have the authority to hire would over the course of a couple of years show up on patrol. There might be a bunch of other explanations too, which are probably too arcane for us to recount here, but I'm trying to get a sense of where these guys will go and what's actually going to change. >> The other piece that I think is really important for folks to understand is everybody looks at authorized strength, but we're never really truly at authorized strength because we lose on average five officers a year. One of the things we're going to be looking at really closely is that the department went through some great expansions way before I got here and those expansion years that were significant, you're living here, those folks are eligible for retirement and so we're trying to figure out if all those folks pulled the plug when they're ready to go, we're going to be in trouble. One of the things I've asked my staff to do is I tried to see if we pull our folks and try to get a good picture. In a perfect world what I would like to see is not just the authorized strength, but to figure out what the average on an annual basis, what's our average monthly vacated positions so we can actually go over the authorized strength to actually have the people that we have authorized to be on -- if that makes sense. So we don't have the holes. Right now we have a patrol vacancy rate that's exceeded -- what's the percentage? A patrol freeze, which means when an opening comes up in a specialized unit in terms of investigating crime, we can't -- we're not allowing people to transfer. So we've hit that patrol freeze again, which is not good for anybody, especially the people waiting for follow-up investigations on their crimes. [05:13:32] >> Yeah. I'm not sure whether you could go over authorized strength, but being able to hit it or come close to it is certainly better than having to wait six months and having to shore up every six months or every year, which we could be down as much as 10% at the end of the year. >> So if we average a 10% vacancy, for example, if we were -- if we authorized additional 10%, then you would probably have owe I don't know if it's making sense, but you would probably have real numbers at all times, which would be huge for us. >> I understand you need to shore this up more frequently and understand like it makes good stens to get a sense of how quickly and how many people will be retiring. In addition to the 59 -- I do need to chide you just a little bit. The last time we had a conversation you said you were going to send me the basic documents that made the business case for 59 and not some other number. And I still haven't received those yet. >> You didn't get any response? >> Spelman: Not yet. >> I thought we sent that out yesterday. >> Spelman: You may have sent it out late yesterday and I didn't get it. We sent it out at 1:26 yesterday. >> Spelman: Okay. >> We sent out the response that you got, which would have-- the response you got which would justify the 126. What we're trying explain today is when we end up with 59 what we would do with them. Ultimately we put 46 on patrol, one every evening and one every night. In addition to that, about a 20 month period in which officers are effective we would look at the needs we would identify within the 126 and identify which ones were still the majority from the remainder of the 59. >> Spelman: Okay. Would it be necessary then to -- since you've justified the 126 to back off as to why, as did the allocation for the 59, ought to be the allocation for 59. What is it we've been talking about at this point? [05:15:35] >> The 59 is what was in the proposed budget and that's why we're with that number. So if we live within that number then what we will do is we will assign the first 46 to patrol and we'll identify what the greatest need is for the remaining positions in about 20 months when we actually have them on the streets. >> Spelman: Okay. We'll have more conversations about this. You will be able to bring me along and I'll understand where we are. Let me ask you about -- not just the 59, but the 38. A I set I can speak for the council that we're happy to increase the number of civilian positions particularly in communications. This is one of the things that all of our offices get frequent complaints about is how long people had to wait for their 911 call to be answered. And it only takes two or three people a shift for that to blow up on you, as you know. I'm very happy that we're adding 21 dispatchers and cole takers. I'm a little confused as to how we're paying for it. You're saying that we're paying for this off of vacancy savings, and my understanding is vacancy savings is paying for something -- would work for something like that. Please correct me if I get it run. We have a number of civilian lines on the department. And a certain salary associated to all those lines, which adds up to a number. Some of those lines are vacant. And in this case we're repurposing those lines, transferring them from whenever it is that we would have been doing to dispatchers, call takers, other people that are doing communications and 15 people doing forensics and support and so on. So we're moving lines from one place to another in the department. And because those lines are vacant, we're taking the cash that's going along with they will and putting them into communications, forensic sciences sand on. Is that accurate? [05:17:44] >> I had a note on that. It's really what we did is that we know that we're always -- we're very responsible when it comes to burnet. I'm very proud of the fact we never go over. What our staff did along with the city staff is they took a look at the very in-depth analysis of the savings that naturally occur. Because of the nature of our business, the nature of the training cycle, the hiring cycle, we were able to identify over the last six years salary savings that we believe that for those six years that because of that natural salary savings, we can take that and actually fund these positions moving forward. Which means, and my staff knows this, I've been talking about commanders, if this goes through we'll have to be -- again, my number one priority without safety is coming in under budget. This came in through the natural course of a year in an organization with 2500 people, and people coming and go, what was the actual salary savings that was achieved, and we were able to identify that sustained salary savings that we're now going to take that chunk and so it's not a new cost for the city, it's just going to be funded to what we would be able to achieve naturally in the course of the last six years. >> The reason we have a salary savings however is because there was somebody on paper we were going to be hiring to do a job and we didn't hire them to do a job or somewhere in the course of the year they quit and we didn't replace them and that's why we have a vacancy. Is that right? >> Not necessarily. When somebody quits the sheriff's department, if somebody quits today or retires today, I can't start the process to hire that replacement until that person clears not just the body, but if think burn some vacation on the way out, until that body and that position clears, we can't replace them. We can't advertise the replacement. So you have those natural periods where between the person leaving and clearing by time you do the background is there are some of these salary savings. It's just the nature of the business. We have to do backgrounds and many of our positions, the testing process. So that's what it's from. It's not by design and don't want to hire somebody. >> [05:20:06] >> Spelman: There's a gap between people holding the same position. There is some cash that is not spent. How is it that -- so that would stay in the general fund and transfer next year to this year's general fund. How does it stay with the police department? >> Michael mcdonald, deputy city manager. Councilmember, it doesn't necessarily stay with the police department the next year. It tracks and goes to the bottom line. So at the end of the budget process it's the remaining balance that we would normally have. >> Spelman: What we're doing is fact that this happened last year isn't material for this year except it gives us a baseline for expectations. So if we saved $20 million in vacancy savings last year, just pick a round number, we can reasonably expect to save a $20 million in vacancy savings this year and that's where the $20 million is coming from to hire new civilians. >> And I'll let the chief respond. They went a little deeper than that, than just looking a the this last year. They went back about five or six years, tracking to see on average how long it was taking them, how much was returning to the ending balance at the end of the year, etcetera, etcetera. It went further than that. And then too, I think the other thing to keep in mind with the department this size, with 3500, even though you're talking about taking three months maybe to fill a vacancy, it compounds when you have 2500 -- in an organization this size, that's how you could justify being able to -- having the funding for 21 positions. >> Spelman: Okay. So the way I should think about vacancy savings, the question I was preparing to ask was what will we not be doing because we're funding all 36, 38 civilian positions off the current budget? What lines will remain vacant? And your answer is a lot of lines will remain vacant for a period 29 when somebody quits and when they're replaced and that's built into our personnel system. [05:22:20] >> That's the nature of the business. When somebody leaves you don't replace them -- date somebody walks out, they don't walk in and replace that individual. There's a natural lag time am and this is based on six or seven years of data that we went deep into it. And so at the end of the year that salary savings, if there's something left in the budget returns to the general fund and we are proposing to take that sustained salary savings that occurs through the normal course of business to fund the 38 positions at netzero cost moving forward. And we're confident that we will be able to continue to balance our budget and have those 30 positions funded and still come in within budget. >> I am a statistician and I'm not an accountant, but I will freely knowledge that given the choice between the two pick the accountant every time. [Laughter] it sounds to me like it's a tremendous innovation in a way and it sounds like it is probably very stable especially if you're looking at a five-year period particularly if you know how long the vacancy savings are going to be. I'm -- I congratulate you for having come up with it. I'm not sure I want this to graph datetate to all the rest of our departments because I'm not sure they will be as stable as a.P.D. Will be. >> If I may, because it is a strategy that we applied across the entire enterprise, quite flangely, it goes really back to the large conversation we had last year when it comes to vacant positions and vacancy savings. I think one of the points the chief was making is this hard look at vacancy savings and repurposing those dollars that would otherwise accrue to general fund fund balance, really it sort of tightens his financial latitude. Not as much prerogative there. That prerogative was not only enjoyed by the police department, but quite frankly by other departments as well. Let me ask ed to talk more generally about the strategy this a we deploy because it is not just about the vacancies. It is done in other areas to fund positions rather than new dollars. So ed, do you want to talk about that a minute? [05:24:43] >> Sure. And I guess let me say we agree with you, councilmember, that we don't want to necessarily apply this medication, overly judiciously. I like to say that we never want to balance budget on the back of vacancy savings because it's an easy thing to do, but not a smart thing to do. But at the same time we want to try to account for the fact that we are never going to be fully staffed at any given point in time. We're a service organization with 12,700 authorized positions, no matter how hard we try, our hr folks are, we will never be fully staffed up at one time. So at the same time we don't want to balance budget on the backs of a vacancy savings number, we do want to get it accurately. At the end of the day it's just a vacancy number. We budget for all the authorized positions in a department and then we include a negative number to try to capture just the regular turnover and attrition. Our intent is not for departments to have to specifically hold positions vacant in order to achieve that number. It's just a number to reflect the fact that no matter how hard we try we'll never be fully staffed up. Maybe put a few numbers in total overtime it it may help. I'm looking at as of july 26th the police department has 91 vacant positions, 66 of them are uniformed and 25 of them are non-uniformed positions. They need those positions. They intend to fill the positions. They're trying to fill those positions, but that number, while it's 91 positions, it's 3.7 percent of the uniformed position and 4.8% of their civilian positions are vacant. And that quite frankly maybe about as good as they can do at any given point in time because of attrition, retirement, a lot of times people internally get the job, so if the supervisor position vacates it might be vacant for two, three months before it gets filled. Around if it gets filled by an internal person you haven't really made any progress towards reducing the overall number of vacancies. Maybe a few more numbers in terms of what we budgeted for vacancy savings in current year for the police department. It was $8.3 million. And again, that's just the number on turnover and attrition. A negative number of $8.3 million. And when we were putting together this budget in light of all the discussion we had on last year's budget on vacancies, we want to look at that vacancy savings number and say is that $8.3 million a reasonable number given historical turnover rates and vacancies that we've seen. We went back and did some of that historical analysis from more of an aggregate level and worked with departments to revise their vacancy savings numbers. In the case of the police department and also in the case of the water utility they did a much more in-depth dive almost position by position to really look at their specific unique situation because every department is a little bit different. And the police department, alice sueder came to me and we spent a lot of time looking at her data and she felt confident she could increase her vacancy savings in order to fund the civilian positions without having to get additional general fund dollars. It's increasing that negative value of savings through the historical turnover rates and attrition rates and the amount it takes in the fill position. Trying that up to free up dollars to meet other critical priorities and that's exactly what we tasked the departments to do this year and they did a great job of it. [05:28:24] >> Spelman: So we do this systemwide. What is it that a.P.D. Has done here? >> Actually in some cases we had some departments come back and say we don't think we can achieve this number the department came up with. They lowered their savings because they had rationale and savings for why they thought their vacancy savings was budgeted was too high for their specific situation. In the case of the police department they felt they could accomplish more than what we projected. >> Spelman: Okay. So another way of thinking about this is when you have a line in budget, instead of 100% of the line, the real assumption is we're actually funding 97% of the line because it's three percent chance at any given time that line going to be vacant. >> We don't do it line by line like that. We budget it as a lump. But that's the right concept. >> Spelman: Gotcha. I now understand. Thank you very much. >> Morrison: So you want to recalibrate their vacancy savings and some went up and some went down? >> We did and the starting point was the budget office doing our own analysis and providing targets to the department. Most of them took our targets. Some said we can't meet that target and we sat down and talked about it. And other departments like the police department said we think we can exceed your target and take some of thelings savings we can realize and use the funds to meet other needs. >> Morrison: So generally any change in vacancy savings stayed within the departments. Where they arose. >> Yes, if I'm following you right. We would increase the vacancy savings for planning and development review just to pick a department and that vacancy savings was increased in their budget. >> Morrison: So that opened up other opportunities for their expenditures for that department's expenditures. >> It opened up in the case of the general fund at the end of the day it's all one big pot of money. It opened up additional opportunities for expenditures or to help us keep the tax rate low. [05:30:36] >> Morrison: For instance, we are doing apples to apples here and the police department the vacancy savings was used for 21 new positions or 30 new positions? Was that generally the case in other departments? >> It did occur in other departments. It didn't occur in every department. And I have to clarify that we did this additional analysis at the budget office and we established targets and the police department looked at the target and said we accept that target, but we think we can manage our department in such a way to even go beyond that number that the budget office asked for. >> If I may, another aspect of the savings we realized was simply by virtue of eliminating some positions. And we haven't spoken to that yet. >> That's true. That's another task we put to our department is take a long look at the vacant positions, particularly vacant positions that have been vacant for more than six months. And as a result of that review process we're recommending in this budget to eliminate 19 you vacant positions at a savings of $1.9 million. >> Morrison: That's great. The same with the issue of moving permanent temporary positions to permanent positions. I think those are all good true-ups for the budget overall. And I don't know if you will be able to answer this question, but do you know what the general fund impact for all the general fund vacancy savings changes were? We're talking half a million in the police department. >> I don't have it memorized, but we certainly have that data. >> I bet you do. If you wouldn't mind, I think it's -- both the general fund and overall citywide. We have the information department by department and enterprise fund by enterprise fund here in our budget. Because each one of them if it comes up shows in the expenditures. I'd be interested in the cumulative effect on the budget because I think it's an interesting number to have just in context. I appreciate that. I want to go back to the chief. You're talking about at the very beginning, talking about the business intelligence. Can you explain to us the difference between that and come stat. [05:33:03] >> Comp stat, based on the current methods or systems we have to collect data, we can collect data in two week cycles, but don't have a program that with analyze that data in a seamless, easy manner where you can change parameters, you can actually look at -- if I've got a problem, say a crime problem occurring from this time to this time with the business intelligence we can manipulate if we had this many officers based on historical data what would happen. And so it's from the police department's perspective, every department will have their own application. But it is a tool that will give us the ability to analyze data instantly to the extent that we're going to be able to center daily tactical briefings and an actual dashboard for the team where they can start going up on a screen and start getting information. I think that information is power and the more information that we can provide our folks, the quicker that we can analyze the data to get that actual intelligence, the better off we're going to be. >> You don't have to sell me on it. I'm on board with it. I want to make sure I understand. Comp stat used rolled up two week day-to-day and this will be realtime data, whatever is in the database right now. And I would understand that comp stat is a lot porridge in terms of what you can do, how to manipulate the data and we know that business intelligence systems are much more user friendly and much better in terms of customizing. >> It's an exciting time for the city with the silicon hills here. This is a step in the right direction. >> Second question is you mentioned the significant increase in open records request. Did I hear you say it went from 5,000 to 29,000? [05:35:06] >> It went from -- I had it written down. It went in 2010 from 5624 to 201,329,046. I think that's -- this speaks as to the nature of trusting government. It's not about the police department. I think if you looked at the city's open records, you looked at the states, we're at a I'm time in history where there's a lot of mistrust of government. So open records requests are rampant pretty much anywhere in the country. We always get more of a lion's share in the police department. >> Morrison: A popular department, I know. I wonder if you've discussed the idea that the more data that we make available in doing our open data on the website, the more data we make available, the feature open records requests we might get. And also tried to this I think I remember correctly that some of the business intelligence systems we have have a public facing interface so that some of the information and tools available through the business intelligence can be made available to the public. So have you all looked at how that might help you decrease not the open records requests are bad, but if the data is available elsewhere they won't have to ask. It's much more efficient. >> I think that's part of the overarching philosophy for the city managers to be a transparent, open government. I think that's also the mayor and council's position. So as we get vi tool you're absolutely right that it will open up opportunities for departments to actually have portals so folks want to get information and it's seamless. The challenge for the police department is a lot of our open data requests, a lot of it is actually protected information by statute or ongoing investigation. So for us, we put as much as we can. Like we're trying to put up more and more crime data, sex offender data, things of that nature so we do relieve the pressure on this, but a lot has to do with I want an email. Is there any email between the city manager and the mayor on this, those are the things that I think we want all emails -- because of the nature of our business we can't do that. [05:37:29] >> Morrison: You just can't do that because you can't make a blanket statement that all email is cleared for public. >> But we're absolutely committed along with the mayor and council, city manager, to open government. Transparency breeds trust and trust breeds cooperation, better outcomes. >> Morrison: I want to highlight that, the u.T.Tools, I think can also be integrated into some degree into our open data portal. And so part of setting up the database for the vi tools is to make sure that the data is managed in such a way that it's going to be easy to know what can be made publicly available and what cannot. So when you're working with your folks on the vi tool -- >> and we're going to split exploit that tool owe ex-exploit that tool to the best of our ability. That's the philosophy of the department is to be transparent because that's the city's philosophy. >> Morrison: Thank you. And then two other questions. You mentioned the booking facility. And I know that I think you all are coming back to us in the near future to talk about that. And I just wanted to highlight to my colleagues especially that we passed a resolution asking staff to look into what options we might have in booking facilities and you did provide some information in the council wish list information that staff provided to us and it's b-17 in there. And chief mcdonald, can you tell us a little bit? Or whoever. I thought you were the one working on this. Can you describe to us you are bringing back to us in terms of facility options? >> We're scheduling to come back on the 28th. >> Morrison: On the briefing. >> Briefing on the booking facility. It's something the police department has been working on for a number of years now. So the idea behind us is to explore options. It doesn't necessarily-- it will be council's decision whether we move forward and make any changes, but certainly the police department has been looking at it not just from costs, but from delivery of service. You know, if you go back to when we first entered into the agreement with the county, we were much smaller city than we are. Now being the 11th largest city and 340 square miles, the -- even the idea of an officer having to drive across town and book someone in, with the police department, what they will also present to you is not just an option there, but the idea behind how we might want to do things differently. And something they've been doing, they look for utilities to release more. Not make arrests. So it's really comprehensive across the board and that's what the chief will be presenting to you on the 28th. [05:40:29] >> Morrison: That's great. I look forward to it. And what's described in the materials that have been provided so far, interestingly, suggest a scenario that would save us a million dollars a year in operational costs over the six million dollars that we're spending now. >> I don't know the numbers, but I can tell you from the police department's perspective, we're trying to always squeeze out of that personnel hour that we have as much out of that hour as possible in terms of efficiency. To me you can't put a dollar amount on that, but I think from our perspective we're just looking at strategies of how do we better manage our administration in a city that's grown so much not just in terms of numbers of population, but in terms geography. We'll give you the option and whatever play you call we'll run to best of your ability. >> To use a sports metaphor. [Laughter] >> I'm in a football mood today. >> Morrison: But your point is well taken and that is there are the direct financial considerations and then there are the non-financial considerations of you being aige to provide better service and the efficiencies that it can bring to you that might be hard to actually put dollar figures on. >> That's correct. So what you will see in the presentation on the 28th is a combination. And that's why it's going to be good to have an in-depth discussion about it because although the police department's predicting some savings, as you know any time you enter into something like that there are upfront capital costs, etcetera. So you may not realize that early on and that's why it's going to be good for council to take a comprehensive look at it from the presentation. >> Morrison: Right. And how long -- you mentioned we're a much different city now than we were when we entered into the interlocal. Can you off the top of your head remind us when we entered into that? >> I believe it was prior to 1985 we performed our own magistration at the jail. And we continued to perform the magistration there, but we went into an agreement around '85 with the county because they were struggling with jail space. As many -- believe it or not, there was a shortage of jail space in texas back then. And so the county entered into an agreement to do our magistration for us. And then when they built their new facility we discontinued running our facility and we built the new facility in the mid '90's. [05:43:04] >> I know you have been looking at this working on alternatives. It popped up in a resolution that we passed that really resolved around the secure communities issue. That's great. And one last question, and that is I know when we get to the municipal court soon, they have a mention in there of having worked with you all to implement phase one of the e-citation program. Could you talk a little bit about what phase one is and what phase two is and the timing of that? >> This is my technology chief. We'll let him talk about the technology. >> Let me see if I can make the microphone work after that introduction. [Laughter] when we look at the e-citation program, these are the electronic ticket writers. It's a very large project for the police department and we wanted to roll it out in phases. Phase one was simply rolling it out to the highway enforcement command. Phase two was rolling it out to the south command. And we did a phased project because along with the ticket writers you also have to implement the download capabilities at each of the substations so when the officers pull in the devices actually download. So it really is the way in which we broke down the multi-year implementation of the project. >> So how many years do we expect this? >> We should wrap it up next year. >> Morrison: Great. Is it working well? Are you finding good efficiencies in that? >> Yes. We're actually finding very good efficiencies with this program. >> Morrison: Can you talk about practically what that means? >> So when an officer makes a traffic stop, one of the best time savers and things for devices is they have a scanner on it. You can take the device and run the magnetic strip in the device and it will preload all that information into the device and ultimately on to the citation that will be issued. So it saves time and as with many of us not having the best handwriting it makes it a lot easier. There's no duplication of effort of taking a ticket and then having to type that information into the system. It all seamlessly goes into the systems. So we are finding us it's providing great time savers. [05:45:22] >> If I may say something, it's green. You only print one thin piece of paper, hand it to a violator and the rest of the stuff is electronically submitted, which I think is huge. >> Morrison: Great. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Very quickly. I want to get back to the briefing that you're doing soon. Will you also be grassing the ongoing discussions about the psychiatric facility? And I think you are coming back either in august or september with a response to the resolution that we passed. >> Yes, ma'am. I'm glad you brought that up because the chair, andy brown and nancy [indiscernible], I always kill her name, great lady. They've asked for an extension, so they're-- I think just yesterday. So we have three things working right now. We have the magistration center we've been working on for several years. These are interrelated. You have the sobriety center and to me a sobriety center is as simple as giving somebody a place to sober up. But the third piece that's working that's in discussion is the treatment center because treatment is ultimately -- if you identify somebody in the sobriety center then you need the bed space. Those three things are in the works and kind of interrelated. The 28th will be primarily about the magistration center and there is -- there will be a space there for pi's. And then the sobriety center will probably be in october or november that they're going to come back. They've asked for an extension that the city manager is going to send to you all. >> Tovo: We won't be hearing an update in your briefing on the magistration center. >> No, ma'am. Just that there will be a space for publicly intoxicated subjects that are detained by the police department. [05:47:26] >> Tovo: Though I would -- we can talk about this at the briefing, but to be a sobriety center it would seem like it's the more appropriate place for the pi's. >> And that may be something -- >> Tovo: Rather than in the magistration center. >> That's part of the discussion with the work group involving the state, the county and the city and all the stakeholders, including the mental health professionals, seton, all of that is being discussed and it will be part of the sobriety center report back to council and the commissioners' court. >> Tovo: Okay. In past years I feel as if we've had some information in our budget about ongoing initiatives like the restore rundberg program and some other things. I'm not seeing it in here right now, but I wonder if you can point me to some information if you've got some on the -- the internet is the best way to get that through the q and a process. >> I know we have a restore rundberg update presentation that is -- we're putting together. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Next meeting. We're supposed to have it at our last meeting, but it got postponed. >> Tovo: So we'll have that information. Thank you. I'm going to submit some questions looking at some of the budget information on 120, but that category of funding deals with community partnerships, youth outreach, community events. I'm particularly interested in how those costs break down and what we're spending on each one. With regard to youth outreach, I think at every budget session and in meetings in between we've discussed an interest in seeing the police department work more closely with our departments that deal directly with youth. And I would say pard is the primary one. I'm very interested in any kind of formal discussions that are going on. We've expressed that as an interest, as a good direction to go in so that we're really making that connection between our youth programs and the activities of the police department and that you are helping pard where appropriate identify areas where teen programs would be particularly useful. I still don't get any sense that there was -- I don't have a good understanding of where that initiative has gone. [05:49:59] >> We are working pretty well with parks and rec department. Our police activities league, our explorer programs -- all those programs are actually working very well with them. In terms of the teenaged programs, I'm not aware of any a specifically that they have requested, but I'll circle back and respond to that. >> Tovo: I think I asked it last year and I got information about the boy scouts, the explorers program, all of which are great initiatives, but they are police department initiatives. What I'm really interested in doing is seeing how we're leveraging our resources across the city. How are we -- how is our parks department responding in terms of its programming to the needs that you as the police are identifying in the community? How are those youth programs supporting the work you're doing? I'm not really sure how as policymakers we can help forge those connections, but we do have this discussion every year and it sounds like there's an interest in having more communication back and forth. But I'd love to hear some examples. >> And that's just with pard, we also work closely with the 60, a lot of our programming for youth it actually at the schools in the summers, especially when kids are most vulnerable. Especially the kids who can't afford to go to camps away from home and do things that the have's have. So we're close to the school district as well. We'll circle back with pard. We do a lot of things with them. Our soccer program, boxing program, basketball program. They're redoing the zilker clubhouse I think it's called here and one of the things that when I went to that kickoff that when they have the summer camps that come back we made a commitment that we want police officers to be part of the program, to actually be in that program there. That's a great program as well. Are. >> Tovo: I'll try to frame a budget program that elise debts that information. I'm also really interested in -- I'll ask this question of pard later. A few careers ago through the budget process we allocated some additional funding for the roving leaders program, which is a program that existed in this community in past years and we were able to allocate some funding through budget process. And one of the things that had shown some success, past success in is it reducing crime among teens. So I'm really interested in seeing now that it's been up and running for a year or so whether there's been any data and again whether that's an analysis that's ongoing with the police department about the effectiveness of that program. I think that's it. Thank you very much. [05:52:40] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. So thank you. Without objection we'll go into recess for lunch and 30 minutes, 45 minutes? It will be after 12:30 before we break in session. -- We're break in session. [06:48:52] [Audio difficulties] [07:03:57] >> there's a software tool that we would like to get that is an analytics tool that would help us where moving our ambulances throughout the shift would be the best. Right now we do a move-up module and we have a map that changes colors and the goal is to keep it green because that's good. If we move an ambulance on a call a section may move to yellow and then it recommends where to move the next ambulance to make it green again. And we have some areas that stay red a lot and we have some areas that are yellow a lot. The tool that we're using wasn't designed to push it to the level now that we're needing. They're doing the best that we can. We also do demand analysis. We put in a business intelligence system several years ago and we're using that, but that is a manual analytics process. We need something that we can say if we add in an ambulance here from this time to this time, what difference will that make? And then also another feature of that tool is to say once we have that information that we can attach it to our cad system so it can tell us when to do what. It's one thing to have a predictive plan, which helps, but it's another thing to do it actually as human services. So it's a dual program, one is analytics and the other is a play by play live tool that attaches to our cad system that would help us do that. Now, it's a tool. It's like anything else. I say it's a pencil. You can do a lot of different things with the pencil. I know there's some sensitivity from our employee association that we would use that to convert our system to a very high volume, high intensity working model. That's not our intention. What we want to do is use it to make better management decisions with and that's all it is for us. [07:05:59] >> So are you aware of some response back from -- suggesting that maybe this is the wrong tool to do that. I'm not going to be an expert on to be able to delve into it, but I guess we heard from I think it was formerly someone from the union suggesting it was a different tool we needed. I wanted to be able to delve into both sides of that question. >> We can probably continue to explore that. I don't know of very many other tools that can do this. I know of two. The one we're using and this one. I don't know if there's another, but if there is I'm more than happy to look at it. >> Morrison: I think we all received an email about it yesterday and I haven't had a chance to study it so I'll lay it on the table that maybe we need to delve into that more and make sure everybody understands exactly what we're talking about. And I think that -- that's all my questions. Thank you. >> Riley: I believe the association is not on board with the cad recommendation, but they have strongly supported the other unmet needs identified by the advisory board. The demand unit and the 24 hours of continuing education. Both of those things would -- you mentioned the potential impacts on the frontline medics of not having an adequate support, especially in the north central area. That it does put real strains on the workforce. Have you seen any trends in terms of turnover of our personnel that would it be cause for concern? >> Yes. We're beginning to start seeing those early trends. One of the things that we're seeing is the higher turnover rate. There are a lot of factors that go into that. I don't want to say it's just that. But one of those early impacts that we often times see is you begin to see higher injury rates. We talked about that last year as you recall. And then the other is turnover begins to increase. And we've seen both of those. If we don't begin to adam bennett @staffing and begin to manage the work load for our personnel, they're going to leave. [07:08:16] >> And of course there are real costs associated with that. Not to mention that the immeasurable costs associated with the potential of care that's being provided. So I think it's -- when we see that number on the demand unit, some $853,000, the context is that not spending that money actually has some very significant costs as well. >> That's correct. >> Riley: And similarly in regard to the education that was supported by both the advisory board and the association, one concern raised there is that we're seeing a fairly low investment in education compared with the amounts that we're spending on discipline. There may be some relation between the two, that actually having a better educated workforce may help reduce the amount that we may be spending on discipline. Is that fair? >> Education is a good proactive tool. The more that the employed ins the expectations, the less likely they are to make mistakes. >> Riley: I also wanted to ask you about one thing you mentioned in regard to the community health paramedic program. You mentioned a pilot focusing on mental health that you sounded very successful. That we saw a reduction in transport rate. You talked about the expansion for the coming year in the community health paramedic program. Does that expansion build upon the success of this pilot? >> It does. Our community health paramedic are all going to be trained as screeners, but we want to expand that to many other personnel in our organization as well. And also and we anticipate growth in the m cot program so it's growing in both agencies. >> Riley: With a focus on mental health? Can you help me understand what we're differently with regards to this pilot in regards to mental health? [07:10:20] >> Absolutely. One of the biggest groups of calls that we respond to are the mental health patients. What we had been doing traditionally is you respond to them, do an assessment and take them to a facility that may or may not have a better answer for them. So that transport is expensive. You displace the patient from their comfort zone. They have to go through the therapy process, they end up back home again and we go through it again. What we're doing now is by training our medics to go in and better understand and be able to tell whether a person is having a crisis and if they're still in a safe zone then we active the m cot response. An m cot person will respond to their home and continue the assessment there. Many of the situations are being managed right in the home so the patient is not transported by e.M.S. They're not taken to another facility which drives increasing costs. And they're managed right there in the home where they're most comfortable. That's produced a good result for our patients. >> Riley: Great. The last thing I wanted to ask you about is the prevention programs. I understand there have been very successful prevention programs within e.M.S. Focused on things like child seat education and in fact the association is suggesting some strengthening of those programs for the coming year. Is that something that the department supports? >> Absolutely. In fact, it was this fiscal year we created a community relations and injury prevention work group that we've never had before. We now have a manager of that program and we have three instructors in there. Those are non-sworn personnel. We have one person that we take from our field who is a medic who is a primary mover and shaker, so to speak with the car seat program. And he's helping us continue to grow that program. What we would ultimately like to see is five uniformed personnel in the work group to continue to grow that program and provide education out there. Some of the examples we're talking about, among the group of children that we see injured, one of the highest number that occurs most frequently are injuries secondary to being involved in a motor vehicle accident without proper restraints and that's where the car seats and booster seats come into place. The other area where we see deaths in the infant area is poor sleeping safety. Where parents may not have the resources to provide a safe sleeping environment for an infant. So we go in and provide a collapsible device to use to keep the infant safe as they sleep. That's one group of safety. Another group that we work on is -- we want to institute this year is fall preventions. Among the ages of 65 and older one of the biggest changes that happens that is a change in quality of life is inability to recover from a fall injury. So anything that we can do to prevent falls is a positive thing for the age group population 65 and higher. That is something in our plan for this year to begin to develop. In 2016 we want to take both of those programs and do a regional approach so that not only are we providing that training, but we're also a hub, a resource hub for all of the providers in our region to be able to get information to be able to get training and materials from us to continue that program region-wide. And then in 2017 we would actually like to come with you guys to talk about creating safety city, which is a whole giant concept. Don't make me go there because it will be a long meeting if you do. But that's the plan. [07:14:29] >> So I know that the association -- when there has been discussion about the education program, the prevention program being an unmet need and there's been a request for $180,000 for additional funding on that, what does current budget provide for in terms of those prevention programs? >> I will have to ask carey to look at that. Carey lange is our new assistant director of finance and administration. >> Hi. Let me look and see if I can find that data right now. >> Riley: In broad terms, chief, is it your judgment that the recommended budget would allow those programs to continue or are we looking at just a cessation of those programs? >> We had asked for more positions that are instructor positions. We did not design them to be sworn positions. I believe the association would like for those to be sworn positions. That would increase the cost slightly. But there's a lot to be said when it's a paramedic who actually goes on out and saves your life that's telling you that this is what you need to do to be safe. So there's some validity to the argument. >> So the current budget for the community relations and injury prevention program is $523,000. And that is primarily the personnel that's in that program. The request, the unmet need that was included in our discussions earlier were for two instructors that will continue the cardiac arrest training. >> Riley: Okay. I know I said that was my last question, but I actually have one question that really will be the last and that relates to the 42 hour work week. There's been a lot of discussion about getting all the frontline personnel down to 42 hours a week and I know we've seen some numbers on that, some of which were very large. Where did we land in terms of the estimate for getting all the frontline personnel down to 42 hours? >> If we were to convert our field staff to a 42 hour work week, we estimate that it would cost $4.3 million. We would have to increase staffing levels to reach that. We've also been doing a lot of research in that area. I think many of our employees would prefer to work 24 hour shifts instead of the shorter 12 hour shifts. So we've been looking at that. We've been putting together a work group that will actually look at that in greater detail and we're also considering bringing back an organization, consulting group to help us look at that as well. We are looking for safe ways to provide longer shifts. One thing we have learned, just to give you some insight, is as we studied, my biggest concern was the 24 shifts are bad. And one of the things that I've learned is that maybe it's not the 24 hour shift that's bad. Maybe it's what happened during that 24 shift that's bad. So right now what I'm keeping an open mind about that. And I'm looking to see how -- the question is how can we make a 24 hour shift as safe as possible. So there's a variety of things that may come out from that review. One may be that we have to shift some critical parts of the organization to a shorter work week. Another may be that we need to put in safety measures to continue the 24 hour shifts the way they are. One thing I have heard loud and clear from the workforce is that if we continue the 24 shift they would like it with the 72 hour respite period in between. And that is supported by research. We do find that long shifts with sufficient rest periods in between can be done safely. So we still are in the process of learning in that area. We know that if we wanted to change everybody, that's that big number, 4.3 million, but there may be some intermediate solutions that we can put into place that may not cost us anymore and be just as good. [07:18:22] >> Chief, do you want to explain that? >> In one of our initial steps now is we -- all of the communications staff is on a 42 hour work week. We've had the command staff on 42 and we've just -- are implementing a pilot. I believe two units, 16 people on a 42 to kind of test out that theory and work some of those schedules and give us some feedback. So we're on course and continuing to -- continuing to investigate what that would look like and what the best application of a 42 hour work week or what our schedules should look like based on the work load that the crews are experiencing in our system. Keeping in mind we're really are two kinds of system. It's very, very busy in the core city so the work load is very different than it is out in the rural areas of travis county. So we're not looking at all of those things. >> Riley: I appreciate all your efforts on that. It's critically important in terms of the strain we're imposing on the frontline medics. I look forward to continued conversation on that with both you and the association. >> Thank you. >> Cole: Mayor? I have a couple of questions, chief. I want to follow up on councilmember riley's question about the difference in the proposal for the additional sworn positions between what you considered to be proper and what the association considers to be proper. I believe that was with the paramedics? >> Are you talking about the injury prevention program? We asked for two non-sworn personnel. Really my only reason for doing it that way is I wanted it to cost less. But when you do something and you save some money sometimes, you get what you pay for. I think that I'm okay with the idea of doing it with sworn personnel, but we all need to know it will cost more. >> And how much more does it cost? >> I don't have that right off the bat, but I could provide it for you. [07:20:24] >> Cole: But it's something that the, so the union was urging to do it with sworn personnel? >> Yes. >> Cole: And you also mentioned that you had decided that the optimum cad program was the way to go. >> Yes. >> Cole: Can you explain that more. >> The opt tim ma program is something we've been looking at. It has two capabilities. One is the planning capability and the other is the live capability. The planning capability will allow us to do what ifs. If we want to see what the response would be to add an ambulance in an area, it would tell us what the effect would be. That's hard to do manually. We could run multiple scenarios with that software as opposed to we might be able to do it once manually. That's the main thing we want from that tool. And once we actually place our units, the tool would also help us manage it on a live basis. And like I said, I don't know of very many other tools that do that. One of them that we're using right now you, what we're turnover and attrition doing right now is -- what we do right now is we do it by hand. We do a systems analysis where we look at every call that occurred each hour of each day and we map and plot that on maps and you have to literally flip through 168 maps trying to figure out where your ambulances should be every hour of the day, which is a long process. What we're wanting is an automated system that can help drive that, help us make better decisions. >> Cole: Okay. >> I just want to add one thing. I want to acknowledge the concern that the association has. It's a real concern. There are systems across the country that takes a tool like this and they get every drop of personnel resource out of a system where people are literally living on the street corner. If we wanted to do that we could do that with the tool that we have today. The most posh things we have are the medics. That is not our intent with the tool. Our intent is to better utilize the resources we have, get them placed in the best locations and you can build things in like if they ransom hours they could get a meal break. It automatically does things like that. So it is not our intent to put the work load on the use with this tool. [07:23:04] >> Tony, are you here? Didn't I see you? Let me ask you a couple of questions. First I just want to follow up on the discussions we were having about the cad system. Can you briefly explain what the association's concern is? >> The concern is essentially -- I'm president of the austin-travis county e.M.S. Association. Thank you for including me. The concern with any software technology is that in this particular case optima we haven't really defined what is specifically it's going to be used for. We know what it's designed for. That's for a system status type of system where you have the best possible work load out of your medic system. It does nothing for geographic coverage and to say that it would help us place stations is not relevant to the conversation politically or financially when you don't have that many options when it comes to building out stations. So the relevance of the program isn't the best idea given that we know we're short of resources and things like prevention and it costs about the same as adding a station. Those are the things that we know are directly related to community. >> Cole: So your concern is that it's not a crucial need at this time and you would rather see the resources go somewhere else. >> That's accurate. My concern is we haven't established a need for it. I know that it has some function that has been said that it could do. It's not what it's designed for. So what is our intent with it? And you know, what's its value relatively when we're talking about actual resources that serve the community. Like ambulances, paramedics, prevention programs, that type of thing. >> Let me go back to our other concerns -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mayor pro tem, if I could suggest, we're going to have a public hearing later on for public input. This session is really for the council and the presentation from the staff rather than diving into these issues. [07:25:08] >> Cole: I just have one follow-up question. I wanted to make sure that you guys wanted to have a sworn position for the new entry level program. Is that correct? >> The difference in the conservation between civilians, that is to teach civilians exception only cpr. My son's boy scott group does that. A.F.D. Is leading the way on it. I think it's important for adults to have that level of success. I'm talking about creating two uniformed positions that focus on specifically the pediatric positions that we've set from the field. We're still running that out of the ambulance without any full time ftes dedicated to it and I think it's time to recognize the importance of that program and the importance within our community. Take 10 cpr doesn't do anything for a pediatric drowning patient and I think we're in the best position with the education and knowledge of our informed staff to take that on specifically from e.M.S. And the cost difference I think is well worth it. >> Cole: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember spelman. I still keep looking at that name tag -- >> r. >> Spelman: I wouldn't want to introduce you, mayor. I've got a short question and a compliment. Let me ask you a question first. Be sure you answer the question because I want the compliment. [Laughter] the question is earlier in the conversation you were saying that your primary measure for what it is you need a new unit is by measuring the utilization of the units you've already got. It seems there are two ways that a unit can be highly utilized and have very little downtime. One way is you have a lot of calls to answer. Another one is it just takes a long time with the calls it does have to answer. How can we be sure that the units all over the city are taking about the same amount of time to answer always calls and that's about the right amount of time? [07:27:17] >> One thing we monitor is the total task time. We do monitor that. When we look at our demand analysis that I described, we also have to account for the amount of time a unit spends on scene. The reason is that traditionally organizations have assumed it's a one hour period. As it turns out it's a little bit more than that. It's like 1.25. And that's from the time they're dispatched to the time they care for the patient, transport the patient. Transfer them at the hospital, clean the unit, get back to the station. There's a lot of work in there. We do monitor unit hour utilization and also total task time. The balance has to be both of those things. If we assume an hour we would undercut ourselves every fourth call by one unit and that would defeat us. I've seen this use of business intelligence in the fire department and you're using the same purposes. If there's a unit able to do it less an hour you might want to ask them how they do it more quickly than others. You might want to train them either why they're take longer or what they could do to reduce the time. That sort of thing happens? >> I would encourage you to look at some of our measures because we look at those intervals. Some of the things our medical doctor eckhardter concentrates on is the scene time. How long is it taking us from the point that we make first contact with the patient with first time that we recognize something critical happening to how long it takes to get an eck monitor on them to the first key intervention and for them to leave the scene. So we do look at those measures. >> Spelman: This leads nicely into the compliment part because I just took a look at your performance measures. We've had this conversation probably every year for the last few years, is that the only outcome measure that was widely used in our industry and that you guys were using was the cardiac arrest number, the percentage of people with cardiac arrests who were actually resuscitated ultimately. But that's obviously very, very important measure, but it's in a very small percentage of urologist work load. And I am -- your total work load. And you have a wider variety of outcome measures, including your response to mi's and strokes and trauma and unstable angina, which is still a relatively small percentage of your work load, but by far the most important part of your work load, the most urgent part, and you seem to be covering the vast majority of that with the performance measures. Although they haven't quite made their way into the paper version of the budget, they have made their way online and I look forward to taking a look at them. [07:30:10] >> Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Other questions, councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: You mentioned a work group that you intend to pull together to talk about I believe it was about scheduling? >> Yes. >> And I wanted to get some information from you about who you anticipate being in that work group. >> The way that we do it per our contract we have what's called a taskforce. And the taskforce allows me to assign half of the group and for the association to assign the other half of the group. And to be honest, many times I put the same people that they would probably put on there anyway. It's not a management issue, an everybody issue. We're going to put that group together and there will be representatives of both sides. And our purpose is to learn as much as we can to create as safe an environment as possible. To reduce our fatigue that we're experiencing. We're also looking at -- we wanted to take a large department and make it small again. I don't know if that makes sense, but we're growing and growing and growing. We need to maintain a span of control for our supervisors to our employees. We want to stranger engage our commanders so that they can make decisions that impact employees right on the spot without having to come all the way up to me and ask me questions about how to do something. So those are some of the things that we hope to achieve with that group. >> Tovo: Those team like critical goals. What's the time frame for getting started? >> We're already beginning to assemble that. In fact, mr. Marc ott was taking a stab at the charter and we'll take a look at that. >> Tovo: What's the time frame for concluding that? >> I'm anticipating it will take us about six months just to study and learn and then we'll probably launch some pilots depending on what we learn. Ultimately our ace tent chief of operations, jasper ground, is going to be leading that group. So the idea is we need to study as much as we can, put it on paper, come up with ideas that we can try and test and begin to move the department. I would anticipate major progress this year. [07:32:30] >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Just a quick question. I want to make sure I understand the metric you use to determine how many e.M.S. Personnel you need. As I understood you said .35 to .5 -- 35 to 50% of their time actually spent on calls. Assuming that when it hits 50% then they don't have time to do the other things that they need to do. Did I understand that correctly? >> That's correct. The time we track is the time that they're usually on task with the patient. They also have to take their units and they have to take care of maintenance. They have inventory, they've got to clean, take care of their stations. And now we work out so we have a lot of things that -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: You work out. >> We work o. >> Mayor Leffingwell: The reason I brought it up is because I have no fault with using that particular metric and other departments use other metrics, but it may not be a straight apples to apples, but if a.P.D., For example, used that metric, they require almost double the officers they have right now because they're 85 to 90% involved in calls all the time. I just wanted to bring that out. Okay. Thank you. Next we have municipal court. >> [Inaudible]. >> I'm rebecca stark, the clerk of the municipal court, and with me are pete valdez on the end, the administrative of the downtown austin community court and our financial manager, dave cullman. The first slide that we have -- municipal court court and downtown austin community court constitute the municipal government. The department activities of the judiciary, which is over seen by the presiding judge, seven associate judges, excluding the dacc, and 11 substitute judges and three legal secretaries. The downtown austin municipal court is administered by pete valdez and associate judge coffee. Operations and support services form the bulk of the court and special [07:35:20] [indiscernible]. Court key indicators have reformed relatively steady for the last three years. There's really no large or small changes in there. Most of our work load comes from cases filed from a.P.D. Because state filings remain relative stable, so does revenue, special fund revenue includes fees authorized by the state and adopted by the city for specific purposes. The juvenile case manager fund is four dollars. And it's for our youth services program that we'll talk about later. Building security fee is three dollars. There's a four dollar court technology fee. The traffic safety fund includes the penalties incurred with red light camera cases. We also collect money for the child safety if fund. It's not shown on here. The revenue goes directly into public works for their child safety program, which are mostly school crossing guards and other safety programs. The 2 million for expense refunds, those are for three community service president tuition staff for the downtown austin community court, two ftes are funded by the code department and one is funded by aunt resource recovery. The youth of our -- the use of our fund increased by $4.07. The bulk of the increase is the chart on the end, the $4.1 million reflects the change in budgeting for transfers to our fund. This is beginning in 2015, the cost for wases is are being captured at the department level instead of accounting at the fund level. That 4.1 million is about 800,000 for ctm, $3.1 million for support services, $200,000 for worker's comp and $3,500 is the liability reserve. The remaining six hundred thousand dollar increase is almost entirely personnel cost for current employees. There are no additional costs for employees. There's also no additional new services or programs being requested for funding for the next fiscal year. Our manager accomplishments this year were to establish electronic recording of court proceedings in lieu of having actual court reporters. We worked to implement court side of phase one of a.P.D.'S east citation program, as specifically the interfaith. We developed and implement a program called the austin youth diversion and cooperation with the prosecutors. This program assesses juveniles and our parents and develops individual programs that if successful will keep the juvenile out of the criminal justice system. The citations written by a.P.D. Are reviewed by the prosecutors, the parents and children are given opportunities, most of them, to complete a program instead of our case actually being filed in that court. If they successfully complete that program the case is never filed. If they don't successfully complete it the case is filed in the court and then the judge becomes involved with getting the family to complete the programs that the case managers have developed. Also this year we did a large amount of work on the court's website. The standard format for the city didn't fit court very well. We had a lot of input on it not being customer friendly. So we've completely changed the website and it is much more user friendly now. We also spent significantly -- a significant amount of time preparing for a new case management system in the next couple of years. This project went through the i.T. Governance process last year and the major thrust of that new case management system is to be able to have interactive processes on the web so that people do not have to come to court. Pete will now brief you on the downtown austin community court's accomplishments. [07:39:52] >> Pete valdez, community court. Good afternoon. So historically we've used the substance abuse organization interlocal with travis county and austin-travis county integral care to to gate keep the funds that you all approved for us in terms of rehabilitation for the clients a that we serve. And this year, this current fiscal year we decided to do our own rfp process as a way of expanding the resource delivery to the clients that we serve by creating a more robust, more enhanced menu of services because we continuously found ourselves limited. This year we'll be able to add a couple of new services that we didn't have before. One of them is peer to peer support, which is going to be available to the people that we've housed. We find that a lot of those individuals have a difficult time transitioning from being chronically homeless to now housed, so they tend to violate a lot of policies in the first few months that they get housed. So we are going to assign a peer coach that will be available to them 24 hours a day. So they'll have a help line and that person can go on-site and assist them with whatever they need and whatever crisis their having. The other thing we added is life skills training. To begin with addressing the basics of living from cooking to cleaning to hygiene. All the way to shopping and budgeting. So we were able to add those things in this current fiscal year. And in relation to the rfp, because we were paying the substance abuse service organization a 12% administrative fee, we are going to repurpose that 12 percent and hire our own social service contract specialist and they will be monitoring the services that the rfp identifies and that you all approve in that process. [07:42:34] >> The only other major budget highlight is eliminating one fte from the traffic safety fund. Again, that's a camera red light fund. It was a hearing officer position. We've kept it in case the cases went up, but there's only about 80 hearings a year compared to about 3500 for parking. So we're using our parking hearing officer and just charging the minimal amount of time they do hearings to this fund. So we don't need the ftes. Other department topics, obviously with the new courthouse we understand from finance that they are almost ready to hire a development analyst that will help them develop some funding alternatives to proceed with this project. The next phase of e citation project we're working on with a.P.D. Obviously we'll be working with them in a magistration facility, if that comes about during the next year. And the dacc is going to be renewing their annual lease. And I believe that's the highlights of our budget. So we're available to answer any questions that you might have. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Any questions? Councilmember riley. >> Riley: I want to thank you for the presentation and for all the work that you do and I just want to confirm with respect to the downtown austin community court that the budget does include the 250,000-dollar transfer from health and human services to the community court as recommended by the advisory committee. Is that consistent with the advisory committee's recommendation in may? >> So it's not included in our budget at this time. So I would assume that if you all approve that for health and human services -- because it will be in their budget. >> Riley: Okay. I guess we'll get to that whenever we get to that department, but that -- that is -- but you do support that recommendation of an advisory committee? [07:44:41] >> Absolutely. And what we would do with that is buy back the beds that we lost when travis county criminal justice planning pulled out of the road to recovery contract this year. So we would add back 12 beds that we lost and then we would increase our transitional sober housing availability for the people leaving treatment. >> Riley: Great. Thanks. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember spelman. >> Spelman: Yes, that's me. >> Mayor Leffingwell: It's easier now. >> Spelman: I agree. I'm looking at your performance data, which are good measures of the report you're doing if you're doing a good job of measuring. People are coming in, what's happening to them, how satisfied they are with the experience of the court. But what we don't see any -- with one possible exception, any measures of how well the court is doing at making this a safer, more just society or just a better place. They're good output measures, good activity measures. I wonder if christmas something you have given much thought to, whether you've tried to work out how to measure the final results of the actions that we take in the municipal court. >> I will have to ask for input on that from someone else on exactly how to get that. There are performance measures that are recommended for courts. From the national center for state courts. There are a large number of them. There are a large number of them. There are some suggestions on there, I believe, but it's been a little while since I've studied them and that's actually where the assistant director is now. We'll check to see how we can do that. We've measured ourselves against other courts and come upstreamly high and our customer surveys that come in are extremely high, even higher than the city's survey. But as for justice in the community, I'll have to see what we can come up with. [07:46:57] >> Spelman: Part of the problem with the state court's measures it seems to me is state courts are very much an intermediary. The time punishment phase is handled by parole or probation or by the corrections kepts in the states -- correction departments in the states in the district level when you talk about felonies. One thing you do that is different from what the district court does is you guys are responsible for case workers with people who are frequent fliers to try to help to prevent them from coming back again. For example, the downtown court actually provides services to folks. Because you're actually providing services it seems to me that it makes sense to measure the 70's of providing those services, especially on the people you have come to know and love and see all the time. And are you seeing them a little less often because you're able to provide them with services to help them become self sufficient and less liable to be picked up by the cops? >> I'd like to speak to that. So currently the measures that we have in place imply for a number of individuals that there is a reduction in harm. They are repeating offenses at a lower rate or just stopping the offenses altogether. We also would say that the implication is if they're housed and stable, they're also successful. But I have been engaging with the center for court innovation who -- is the think tank for community courts across the nation about having them come down and do a research project, per se, to tell us what they think and how -- about what we're doing and how we're doing it. Because the only -- the only community court that has been looked at is the one in new york city. So all the other community courts in the nation also want that opportunity for them to come down and take a look and give some feedback about what improvements are that can be made. [07:49:09] >> And our youth program has recidivism in the various areas, the traffic versus data. This is kind of an overall one. And we have some other recidivism rates and it's kind of what we've used to come back within a certain period of time. We've kind of arbitrarily said not coming back in a year. So the we do have some people that could take us every five years. We can tell by our surveys this is better than last time. But we haven't done it more frequently than that. They're not in here, but we have looked at recidivism. So I'll look to see sometimes they have ideas that can be converted or performance measures are suggesting that we can figure out how to make work more for our community rather than recidivism. We'll look at that. And if he's having communicate come down we'll look at that too. >> Spelman: I'm not surprised a lot of courts haven't adopted performance measures because most courts are not providers of the final services that have an effect on your work load, but you guys are, at least in the youth diversion effort and the stuff that you guys do in the community court. So you really are in a position to measure outcomes in the way that most courts out and I think you ought to take advantage of it. When you get to that point it will help us at budget time to verify that in fact you've been doing the things that you've been talking about doing. I think it will help you to improve your services downstream when you realize there are anomalies or changes or things that you're not doing as well as you could you could fix those things in realtime and improve the measures overall. Thanks very much. >> Mayor? >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison, councilmember martinez. >> Point of clarification, mayor, that the $250,000 that was being discussed in relation to the treatment dollars for permanent supportive housing, that was a health department unmet service demand request that was not included in staff's proposed budget. And the downtown community commission recommended that that unmet service demand, if it were to be funded, be put directly into the community court's budget as opposed to the health department's budget. Currently that additional 2 fist thousand dollars was not in staff's recommendation. But it is listed as an unmet service demand in the report. [07:51:27] >> Mayor Leffingwell: So that would have to be a change made on the dais. Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you for bringing that up because I was trying to understand the information. But a question I have is we're currently undergoing the whole rfi -- request for proposals process for social service contracts. So I would think also that at $250,000 additional contract for permanent supportive housing support could be or perhaps even should be considered within the context of all the other proposals. So I guess I'd like to throw that out there. And our timing for that decision -- could somebody remind me, maybe our chair? >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mid september. Oh, you mean for the committees. >> For the contracts. >> I think they anticipate bringing it to the subcommittee in act and to the -- in october and to the council shortly thereafter. >> Morrison: So that's something to keep in mind that if it doesn't get on -- if it doesn't get in as a one-time, let's do 250,000 more in the budget, and personally I think we should consider that maybe it really needs to be considered within the context of all the other social service contracts. That would be my preference actually. I have two other questions. One, you mentioned the 12% administrative cost that you're going to keep in the department and hire annette to do that. I guess owe hire an fte to do that. Is an fte hired to manage solely one contract? >> It would be several contracts. Because again, we're trying to develop a robust menu of services. So one agency will provide one type of service and other agencies will provide other types of services, but I think it is common. This isn't the first time we've ever done it so we're very new to this process. But in our consultation with health and human services they have several contract specialists that work on several contracts. [07:53:56] >> Morrison: Right. I was sort of hearing you're going to have a contract specialist work on one contract, but you're saying it's not that, it's -- which seems overkill. >> Right. It's one pot of money, but several providers will be providing those services. >> Morrison: Okay. Are you working closely with health and human services. >> We are. >> Morrison: Because we've been through some revisions, refinements, enhancements in terms of contract monitoring and compliance, and I would hate for a separate department to have to figure it out for themselves. >> They have helped us immensely through this process. >> Morrison: Great. And then I want to also crowing you on the -- congratulate you on the youth diversion program. That's exciting. It seems to me that through our joint subcommittees, that the mayor and councilmember tovo and I sit on there was a long drawn out discussion in the -- about some judicial collaboration between the three agencies. We finally got somewhere and finally provided some funding, a small amount of case management funding to be able to do some of the collaborative work. Can you remind me specifically where we are on that? >> Judge statman is actually working on that and knows more about that than I do. I do know that they did hire the two case managers, the county did. In the last probably six months. So they haven't really gotten underway with a number of the projects they decided to work with. Judgment statman is also going to be talking to the judicial committee on the 20th about a juvenile judge that will work on this. As far as I know, most of the jp's and -- well, and we are working on our internal programs and then hoping that we can pull them together with the ideas that come up from that group. So that all of our courts are doing basically the same thing. Most of that, though, is dealing with cases after their filed. And this last legislative session was really big on doing things before cases get filed. So it's a little bit of a different twist on it. And I -- until that -- until that judge, I think, gets appointed and everything gets together again, I don't think there's any in- depth discussion about diversion as opposed to handling cases after they get to course. There were also numerous pieces of legislation about how schools can file cases. How they can move forward. So the number of cases coming from the schools are almost nothing. We haven't gotten any from the schools this year. Because of all of their programs. Aisd is implementing numerous programs to help kids not get into the justice system. So I think they're feeling their way this year also. That project is kind of feeling their way. We've tried to do the diversion program to not put them in the system. [07:57:16] >> Sure, I get that. That's good. I was just wondering where this program is and I just want to -- >> I think we're waiting for the judge. >> Okay. And I think it was unfortunately an extremely slow process to get to some conclusion on that. So from my perspective there were very specific programs that were decided upon, so I hope nobody thinks it's just the start of a conversation about what programs that we might do, although I do want to recognize that because it took so long we've probably been through multiple legislative sessions and the ground rules may have changed to some degree. So it's great that she'll be going to the judicial committee and maybe we could make -- maybe what I could ask assistant city manager lumbreras is our liaison to joint subcommittee, to make sure that he get involved in the conversation at the judicial committee so he can carry over and get the right people there and talk to you all about what was decided. I do want to make sure that we did commit some funding and I wanted to make sure that the funding that we've committed is going to continue. And I guess the question would be where is that funding? And if it's still in the budget. >> Mayor Leffingwell: The judicial committee has been addressing this item also and as you said, it has been a long, drawn out thing. I mean, measured in terms of years, not months. But it's very complicated because overlapping jurisdictions. And so I think you have a good idea there, it would be a good idea for the court to get together with -- excuse me. With herb. Where are you, lumbreras. [07:59:21] >> Burt. >> Lumbreras. [Laughter] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Because it does seem like these two sides of the equation ought to be communicating a little bit. >> Morrison: Thank you, mayor. I appreciate that. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I was drawing a blank on his name. >> Morrison: That was a little glitch. >> Spelman: Mayor, before councilmember morrison changes the subject. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] [08:02:03] >> but when we get that judge and when we get some experience from the diversion side of it, I think when we get together we'll be a lot more knowledgeable. >> Thank you for the preview and look forward to seeing more about it. [Low audio] >> Mayor Leffingwell: The whole idea was to make it simpler. >> Spelman: But the purpose of making it comprehensive. I heard you say -- -- >> Morrison: I didn't mean to say we decided each service, it was more of the service we wanted to be able to provide or to try to collapse them all into one place so that the example I got you might have a kid standing on the corner violating truancy and curfew. You've got the one act but two separate citations. >> Spelman: Extremely sensible. Sensible. >> Morrison: And not simple. Great. And I do believe that the judicial support committee that worked through the joint [inaudible] committee, hear a lot about it were sort of targeting starting at a school here, right, and so I think they targeted the last school year and missed so maybe they are working on this school year. [Inaudible] >> Mayor Leffingwell: All right. Thank you very much. We'll go on to animal services. I assure you it's not intentional. [08:04:25] >> Good afternoon, mayor and council. I'm greg guernsey. Director of planning and zoning, I'm joined by sue edwards and I'll share you the zoning today since it's just past 2:00 and go right to our budget highlights. I wanted to go through our departmental overview. The department, we continue to implement imagine austin. We were fortunate enough to receive a sustainability award this year from american planning association. In addition we did last year complete our first annual report on imagine austin and we'll be bringing another one to you shortly this year. On our key performance data, I just wanted to point out we do anticipate bringing you next week -- not next week, on the 28th council meeting, the south austin neighborhood planning area and we would like to bring you in the near future rosedale, allen dale and inaddition to [inaudible]. We've been very busy. Our inspections are way up from f.Y.12 to 13. We're up about 34,000 sections and that's kind of a nice indicator. It shows the increase. A couple things that we have started. Last year we told you and you gave us some direction to do some project improvements study and we're working with our consultant right now and started that. Also started a training division this year to assist with outgoing retirees. We're losing a lot of knowledge base of staff that's been here for many years training people to come on and also to deal with the upcoming code next. We anticipate with the help of ctm by the end of the year to institute online payment and also we anticipate by the end of the year to start and finish our phase 2 or pre-study to look at the subdivision related fees that we had not looked at on phase 1 a couple years ago. Our department funds, there's an additional 1.2 million which would be required for adjustments for employees' wages, insurance costs and miscellaneous costs. The largest department has about 260 employees out of the 362 that are proposed in this budget are devoted to our one stop shop. Some of our budget highlights, coming you 'next year, one of the critical things that we have is a million dollars that would be devoted to temporary personnel to assist with google. And that's not programs that our department will use per se, it's the actual review of plans to install the fiberoptic network in the city. 300,000 of that will be charged back by the austin -- to the austin transportation department. And [inaudible] or .7 million used by our department. There's five additional positions that are proposed for campo. I'll note those are fully reimburse I believe by the texas department of transportation. We would have two additional position, one is the city arborist position, a gis analyst that will be charged to the urban forestry fund so there's zero charge to the general fund and in addition with the changes that we had approved earlier this year for the lake austin ordinance, there's one additional physician that we off set by additional fees attributed to [inaudible]. Some of our capital highlights, in the capital budget for f.Y.15, there's some technology improvements like plan review and thank you last week you approved that contract. I'm very happy about that. Our upgrade, street grade improvements and ongoing code next improvements. There's an additional $500,000 to fund some changes to that scope of work and in addition 200,000 is proposed to finish the south shore central master plan. Our revenue and fee highlights. Given the amount of development that's occurring in our city we're actually increasing by 2.1 million the revenue that is anticipated in the next fiscal year. And finally, if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them at this time. [08:09:34] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Very good. Any questions? Councimember spelman. >> Spelman: A basic one. There is -- you will not be surprised to find we all share your pain with respect to [inaudible]. The percentage of the building plan reviews completed within 21 days is 25%. Percentage of on time [inaudible] 25%. I'm guessing you are not happy about that. >> No, I'm not happy, but I will tell you that I'm happy to report that we're actually looking at these times. These times have not changed for many, many, many years. Give you a for instance, in residential review, for, say, remodel or small addition to a single-family home, I'm expected to have that review completed within two calendar days. If I would receive the application friday afternoon, go through the intake, get to the reviewer, by the end of monday afternoon, theoretically I would have to have that done. Before when we had these put into the code, I didn't have [inaudible] I didn't have heritage trees, I didn't do a technical review for framing, root construction that I do right now what I'm doing with zoning review. There's additional things we're looking at, but the planning commission subcommittee has graciously allowed me to go forward to look at times they are more realistic to do the reviews and look at the surrounding communities so see what a more realistic time is. Hopefully when I report back my performance measures will more accurately reflect how long it should take me to get that done. >> Spelman: But one way of solving the problem is to give you more time [08:11:36] [inaudible] 100% of the time within six months or nine months. >> To be certainly on more realistic number. >> Spelman: I understand. At one point I remember 1990 our percentages were much higher and we had a lot of development going on then, but as I remember [inaudible]. >> That's correct. And we also have something called high volume builders. And that number was going to build into this -- the number that you've seen in the past. Where I have a subdivision come in and they have eight different models, that was thrown into the mix. I remember council asking why are my numbers are so high with the satisfaction you heard from the general public was so low. We've kind of backed that number out. These are more realistic numbers that I'm presenting to you now and it's not being off set by something that's coming in and only doing a two day review for brand new construction of a single- family home in a suburban subdivision. >> Spelman: So the high volume builders -- [inaudible]. >> I'm trying to get them out quicker because I've essentially done the review of the house in advance by looking at the [inaudible] >> Spelman: I understand that. I understand the project, the improvement study could probably surface ideas for how [inaudible] or somehow get these numbers up. Whether we're realistic or not, your customers are interested in [inaudible]. [08:13:55] >> Less people coming into my office, less people in my parking lot, better air quality. But if I could do a reinspection fee by someone just going out and making a few clicks on the computer rather than having to come in and talk to my cashier, paying the fee and going through that process and I can do that all automated, that's going to save me time. Plan review is the same thing. In the future as more of my applications are accepted online, I can process them, I'm not taking large rolls of plans and physically carrying up one floor or two floors to a different review or having them go from desk to desk. They can actually do that online on a computer screen. It will reduce workplace injuries because those plans are so thick, actually some of them are just -- are that heavy. The marriott hotel was two sets of plans that almost could qualify as a heritage tree in diameter. And we've had literally laid on the floor and people had to come in and review them because we couldn't carry them around. I'm hoping all of that will be taken care of by improvements. >> Spelman: Lose these properties didn't have any electronic backup [inaudible]. >> That's correct. And hopefully the public will be able to look at these plans online if they feel so inclined. >> Spelman: Do you have a sense for the effect of the changes on [inaudible]? >> Well, I think, leaky said, there will be improvements, there will be [inaudible] and I'll be able to work actually doing more efficient I guess that's probably the key word I can present to you. And so as the city still expands, because we're not slowing down, I would grow less in size with staff than I would, you know, without those same [inaudible]. [08:15:58] >> Spelman: Is there a reason to believe that we'll be able to solve the problem [inaudible] or are we going to have to return to this [inaudible] next budget cycle? >> Hopefully code next will go into place and it will add to consistency and efficiency as well as making some improvements. That plays a large role. As you've heard me say many times, it may be harder to add on, remodel a home in central austin that maybe to build a small convenience store somewhere in our city because of the depth of review. So as I've become more skilled, my staff becomes more skilled using technology, they will be able to access things more online because as plans are submitted, you'll be able to see the changes from one submittal to another, and hopefully that will result in less reviews by my staff and quicker turn around time. >> Spelman: Let me give you another one. It may be harder to add to a single-family home in austin than to build a shopping center [inaudible]. >> May be. >> Spelman: Probably an exaggeration, but that's the sort of thing I've been hearing [inaudible]. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Probably not that much of an exaggeration. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I have a few questions for you. I wanted to ask about the -- follow up with some of the questions councimember spelman is talking about. The percentage or the goals I guess in terms of percent of on time review, I wondered and I apologize if you've already addressed this, but I notice that residential zoning reviews are set for 25% on time review and commercial 35. I wonder if you can explain why -- why the goals for residential permits are viewed on time are lower. [08:18:11] >> And they go back to looking at the number of plans that are coming in. Receive more residential and the nuances, commercial as you go from one part of the city to another, those standards don't actually change as much. You might have some nuances, but when you get into -- not all of our city is McMansion and subject to issues that might deal with local historic. Not all of our city is subject to neighborhood conservation [inaudible] how much of the driveway occupies the front yard. Where you park with relationship to the front face of the building are all maybe unique, and those are things that might be looked at at the time of residential. With a commercial you are looking at some of those things as site plan, not as the time of a residential building permit. Also as I said, we added the technological -- the technical review. So in the past we weren't reviewing for building framing and roofing in order to make sure the hazard insurance is maintained low for austinites. We added that review just this past -- year and a half ago. So we are still working through that as well. So as I say, it's not as simple doing a zoning review for single-family home, in some cases it is for a commercial project because depending on where you are those things could change greatly, drastically. >> Tovo: What's the number of reviewers in each of those segments? >> Councilmember, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head, but I can get that to you quickly. [08:20:12] >> Tovo: Thank you. In this c.I.P. On page 41, you talk about the c.I.P. [Inaudible] plans. Can you give us more detail about the streetscape improvement, please? >> Councilmember, I don't have those numbers in front of me either, but I can get those to you. How many block faces and the amount that is spent for reimbursement. >> Tovo: And what kind of streetscape improvements are we talking about? >> Trees, benches, looking at those pedestrian features that make a sidewalk more walkable. Some time is spent certainly dealing with the conflicts of water utility, electric utilities where those lines are placed with relationship of making sure those are put in that great street downtown. >> Tovo: And where are those streets? Are they throughout the city or are they all downtown? >> They are downtown. Great streets is downtown. >> Tovo: So these are all great streets. >> That's correct. >> Tovo: They are not streetscape improvements -- >> they are not throughout the city of austin. >> Tovo: Okay. And then with regard to the [inaudible], the south shore master plan, as you mention there's 200,000 within this category for that. Can you help me -- I know that was before us last year, the budget amendment and has come up since. We did have a partnership I thought with the university to do some of that work. >> And I think that's already been presented to ctp. We're going through and finalizing what we can do under the current south shore plan improvements that we're able to do, but there's certainly implementation. Regulatory regulation change that [inaudible]. I don't have the resources at that time to go back and to be finalized. This would propose to continue and finish that with this additional [08:22:19] [inaudible] >> Tovo: And I remember attending a presentation that was done at the -- about the south central plan and several people asked questions about what grants are you pursuing and what other kind of funding opportunities are out there other than allocating additional city funding, and it sounded like there were some grant opportunities out there. Could you speak to those? >> I can check with my staff. I don't have the details on what grants they look at. I'm not aware that they actually successfully received any grant money regarding south shore, but I can get back to you. >> Okay, thanks, if you would consider that a budget consider, what grants have they pursued, what other funding options and what will this 200,000 do for us in terms of that plan and is it something that our staff with more time could accomplish. I didn't completely follow what you are saying about being able to take it -- I would need more details about being able to take it through regulation and implementation phase. What does that mean, most talking about planning is private land. When you talk about implementation, I assume you are not talking about purchasing of private land -- what does implementation look like. >> It could be talking about regulatory standards. >> Tovo: Zoning changes. >> Changes to code that might be -- >> Tovo: And do you contemplate this if this $200,000 is allocate for this purpose that we might receive a plan, that the council might receive a plan requesting zoning changes variance and other kinds of changes that would be done in advance of code next? >> It could be with or -- with code next. Depending I think if this goes forward and the timing, we would have to look at code next certainly. We would like to coordinate as many things as we could with code next, but there my be some unique things that are unique to the south shore area just like we looked at other corridors, but right now you give permission to go forward on the burnett corridor and there might be things unique to that area. Along airport we're looking at things in that area for the regulatory plans. We would have to look at those and locate code next and how they would coordinate together. [08:24:37] >> Tovo: But it sounds like you are suggesting that it would proceed in advance of. >> It would proceed in advance of but work with code next. >> Tovo: Okay. And then I wanted to talk about one of the positions that's contemplated. We had a discussion in our -- in an earlier budget session. Last year in the budget process there was a proposal for a division manager for development services of $138,000. In our budget session, in our earlier budget session, that came off because it appeared to be in the budget again. I did meet with the assistant city manager edwards to talk a little about the answer that was provided. I think it's project question 16. The answer to budget question 16 talks about a transfer. This appears to be an additional expenditure, not a transfer. So I guess I'm having a little difficulty jiving the answer and budget question 16 with what's before us in the budget. I wonder if we could start here. As I mentioned this is a position that we considered last year. We did not fund, it was back in the budget, the budget forecast and we discussed it and raised questions about it. It continues to be in the budgets and I understand it's currently staffed. If you could walk us through some of that. >> Sure. Councilmember, when we did the forecast earlier this year, there was a discussion about transferring one position code compliant and having reciprocal position that would come backment and what has been done is the assistant director position that I had already in my budget had been reclassified to chief assistive position, a lesser position, and so that transfer did not occur. The code department has requested [inaudible]. You recall when my department was created in the budget of 2010, there was a cost of that director position was actually funded by code compliance. And so that is no longer being funded by the code department and that is the reason I'm asking for funding of the position for my chief administrative officer. And that is a f.T.E. That is currently [inaudible] [08:27:19] >> Tovo: So this position we're voting on in the budget is currently filled. >> That's correct testify to have I guess I would like an explanation from the city manager about that. But I do want to point out while it sounds like -- I'm not sure of the words you used. It was a division manager position and then became a chief administrative officer position, the salary actually appears to have increased from what was proposed last year at 138,299 to 162,829. So while it appears to be is same position it's increased and it's still in advance of our budget. I appreciate the information that I've been provided and the questions and additional information from assistant city manager edwards, but I'm still having trouble understanding that. >> [Inaudible] better position to talk about the details. [Inaudible] repurpose a position and I think that's what people -- is what he did. [Inaudible] code is no longer doing that and using that position for its own purposes, which I think left you with the existing need [inaudible]. Is that correct? >> That's correct. >> Tovo: If it was repurposing an existing position, why would it be in our budget? >> The code compliance department, now the code department, was funding the assistant director position that I have had previously. I work with code compliance department to basically transfer fund to go the general fund for this year. And when I did my reorganization with my department, I [inaudible] went back to code department, I took the feat that I had already and then reclassified that position from an assistant director position to a chief administrative officer and consolidated the function that addressed administrative, h.R.,Cio, rule posting, technology, and placed them all under that chief administrative officer. So reclassification for my existing position as director with I guess you would say downgraded or reduced from assistant director to a chief administrative officer. The funding which is separate -- is no longer supported by the code department. The general fund support the funning of that [inaudible] [08:30:20] >> Tovo: Can you explain why the difference in salary from what was proposed last year which appears to be the same position up for consideration this year? Why it's an additional $30,000. I understand the position name has changed and I think I've heard you use the word down grade, yet the salary has increased. >> Councilmember, what I can do is I can try to find out the exact salary of the assistant director that I had last year. This is reclassification of the director position to a chief administrative officer position. So I can try to find out what the salary was that code was paying for this [inaudible]. >> Sue edwards, assistant city manager. Hopefully I can clarify. The position last year was a division manager position and that salary was at, I believe you said, 130,000. It is no longer a division manager position. It has been reclassified and it is now chief administrative officer, which is a different class. And has a different salary. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Are you finished, councilmember tovo? >> Tovo: I'm going to let me colleague jump in. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: Actually on the same topic. To me what it sounds like is because council didn't approve this position last year, you guys restructured your department to get it any way and now you are coming back this year for funding. >> No, sir, that is not the case. >> Martinez: So let me ask another question real quick. I'm sorry, sue. So greg, you said that your assistant director went back to code. Is that correct? >> The individual went back to code. >> Martinez: So code had to pick f.T.E. From somewhere. Was it the moneying coming from code to pay for that position? [08:32:30] >> The code department, the position -- the individual went back to code. I had an assistant director position -- >> Martinez: Within -- >> within my department and that got reclassified. >> Martinez: So now you are requesting the fund to go pay for that position, that is the reclassified -- >> that's correct. From the general fund. Previously when it was an assistant director position that was funded by the code -- >> Martinez: So I guess for me if you wind back 12 months when we went through this last year, why weren't we told that you were going to declassify an assistant -- when you are asking for division manager and what happened in the middle of the year that you decided you don't need a division manager either, you just need a chief administrative officer. >> Councilmember, we did not know at that time that we would be making a reorganization. Greg and I have been working together on the department in terms of its functions and one of the things we found was that normally in a department have you all of the administrative functions under one individual. Pio, administration, your finance, media, all of those come under one person because they support the entire department. What I found was that we had pio under one division manager, under one assistant director. We had an administrative function under another personnel, h.R., Under a another division manager under assistant -- assistant director. And so it went like that throughout the department. That is not the way that a department functions efficiently when you have the administrative functions parsed out amongst the different departments-"i mean different divisions. And so it was my suggestion, had nothing to do with any of the discussion that we had in the previous budget year, but it was my decision as greg as I worked together to put them all under one individual. And that's -- and that appropriate position for that was chief administrative officer. This came maybe four months ago. [08:34:48] >> Martinez: So the new chief administrative officer is that an internal or external hire? >> It's an internal transfer. >> Martinez: Where did that person come from? >> Code. >> Martinez: And so what happens to that person's salary at code and position at code? >> I'm not aware. You would have to ask code. >> Martinez: So there could be potentially $162,000 savings at code with this person in a chief administrative position at code? >> No, as I said, the position was reclassified from my department from assistant director position to chief administrative officer. >> Martinez: It sounds like you didn't need to ask for a division manager last year in the budget but shortly after you started reorganizing your department. >> The reorganization that I did that was this year is different from the discussion I think that we had last year [inaudible]. >> The position funded by code was [inaudible] in your department. >> That's correct. >> And subsequently there was a reorganization analysis that occurred in your department [inaudible]. And it was a result of that analysis that decided to consolidate certain functions under one individual, and in looking at the kind of classifications that would be suitable to -- [inaudible] it was determined that would be chief administrative officer position and you knew [inaudible] but you didn't have the funding. Reclassified that, it didn't get you the funding to cover that administrative position in your new organization and that is I can't [inaudible]. [08:36:53] >> That is correct. I think the key is, the position, the f.T.E. Still exists in planning and development review, but the money did not exist anymore. I hope that clarifies some of it. >> Martinez: It's certainly given me more information. Is that position -- so that position was created four months ago or so. Is that what you said? >> The reclassification within his department occurred several months ago, part of their overall reorganization. >> Martinez: So do you have a chief administrative officer right now? How is she being paid for? >> Up until the end -- I guess this fiscal year, it will be the code department. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. So the code department is coming up about seven or eight departments down the line. Go ahead. >> So the current funding for the position is [inaudible]. So they need the funding for f.Y.15 because code will not send you -- I'm sure that you all worked it out that way, will not [inaudible] in f.Y.15. Because they are going to use [inaudible]. >> That's correct. , City manager. >> Tovo: So to be very clear, there were two code compliance positions, code compliance is funding the division manager position, code compliance was paying the salary of the person who is now the chief administrator. >> That's correct. >> Tovo: The division manager went back to code so that's not in that [inaudible] for code. This position, if it's transferred to code, will be an increase in your budget and decrease in yours so we should see that 162,000 savings in code compliance. City manager, you are shaking your head no. I mean we had two employees, one went back to code so that's -- [08:39:11] >> I believe the savings would be, yes, to the code department. 138 -- >> Tovo:138. So somewhere -- so there should be $138,000 savings to code, but this is increase in salary. And the line is new for [inaudible]. And so if this is not, given that this is a position that is already filled and occupied, if the council does not -- does not vote to support it, what happens? That goes back to code? That position goes back to code as what a salary rate of 138? >> Mayor Leffingwell: We'll approve the entire budget at one time. Whatever changes are made by council. That's what will take [inaudible] >> Tovo: I remember [inaudible] but I'd like to know at the outcome what the change would be. >> Councilmember -- >> Tovo: Does it go back to code? >> There's a difference between the f.T.E. And the individual. The f.T.E. Is -- and the individual right now are in pard's budget, being paid for by code. The person who was the assistant director, not the f.T.E., But the person who was the assistant director went back to code. And so that position no longer has any funding. And that is the position, the assistant director position that was being funded by code that was then reclassified to the chief administrative officer. There is at this point a f.T.E., But october 1 there will be no funding for that f.T.E. >> Tovo: I followed all that. I'm just -- you know, we did make changes last year and I'm trying to figure out what the outcome of the change would be if this change -- if this f.T.E. Is not approved. Does that position go back -- is this a position that code would reabsorb? [08:41:21] >> The position stays in pard's department because it's a pard -- a planning position. Thank you, sir. The position belongs to planning and development review, so the position stays. >> Tovo: I see. It would be unfunded. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember riley. >> Riley: I wanted to start with some of the -- a couple of numbers the councilmember was referring to in the slide on -- slide 38. We talked about the percent of building inspections performed within 24 hours, the bottom two lines. Present of initial killing plan reviews completed within 2 is days and percent of on time residential reviews. Councimember spelman mentioned that the f.Y.14 estimate on both of those are 25%. When I look at the full budget document, I see on pages 405 and 409 charts setting on out a little more detail on those metrics. And including that 25% figure for the estimate on both. But I also see different numbers for the amended estimates for 2013-2014 on commercial building plan review, the number actually went to 80% of commercial building plan reviews completed within 21 days. And on residential zoning the amended number was actually 85 instead of 25. Why did we see that jump out in the amended numbers compared with the estimated numbers? >> Well, councilmember, first that is certainly our goal to get to a higher number and we did add ADDITIONAL FTEs TO Commercial plan review that would hopefully enable that. I think there's still -- even if I'm one day late versus maybe ten days late or longer, that goal is still missed. When we had a discussion maybe a year and a half ago about how far commercial plan review was behind, which is months, right now I'm down to roughly 33 days out of a 21 day review so I'm much closer than I am, although the measure does not reflect that. And I would still have a goal of trying to get to that 80% and hopefully would get to that by looking at realistic numbers that actually [inaudible] type of review. [08:44:01] >> Riley: I'm not following where the amended numbers come from. Why do we see those spikes on the amended numbers? The amended numbers that we're seeing for 2013-2014 jump up to 80 and 85 as compared with 25 for the estimate. >> And as I said, we were anticipating with the additional staffing that we would hit that number. I do have some vacancies certainly in that area, but that was our goal was to try to get to that 80% goal. >> Riley: The amend numbers [inaudible] compared with the estimate? >> The estimated column for 2013-2014 is to the left of that column I think you are looking at, that's 25. And I think the goal is -- >> Riley: I'm not talking about the goal. I'm talking about there's the column that says the estimated number at 25 and then to the right we see a blue column that has 2013-14 amended number and that jumps up to 80 for commercial and 85 for residential. >> Right. That is my goal. The amended that we're looking at is going to be [inaudible]. Is what we would anticipate the actual. >> Riley: So you are saying the amended number -- provide one estimated number and then you provide an amended number to represent a goal? I thought the whole point of providing an amended number was provide a reality check to tell us what the actual experience was as opposed to saying what the goal was. >> I think the -- 2014, 2013-2014 amended number is what's in last year's budget document. For better or worse, that is the amended budget number for 2014. When I'm looking at the data and what I'm seeing the department in 2015 is realizing that even though that 80% might be where they want to be, that there's no chance they are going to get there. You can see in the column just to the left of that they are estimating they are only going to get it 25%. When the 2014 budget was put together, their goal, target -- [08:46:32] >> Riley: Tipped have a number of proposed and we have that number. And you're saying that the amended column actually represented what was proposed? >> The 13-14 amended numbers, referring to the 2014 amended budget, basically what -- the budget council approved last year, had that 80% figure. I think in light of looking at 22, 25, 25, it's figured they are not going to be able to hit that 80% number without additional resources and that's why you are seeing the target for 2015 as being brought down to a more realistic number given their resources. They are not going to hit 80% so they are proposing 35%. >> Riley: Okay. So the amended numbers represented the proposed number or goal and did not represent any kind of indication of what -- of actual experience. >> That's right. If you went back you would see that 2014 -- in last year's budget that would have been what they were proposing for 14. It doesn't change. We don't change what was approved by council last year. 14 they did appropriate 80%, they are not coming anywhere near it so they are proposing to revise it downward for 2015. I'll apologize for that confusing. >> Riley: On the [inaudible] we approved in june, do we expect any better -- with regard to the implementation -- >> right now still gathering data from looking at our department, interviews with staff, I can't say what he's going to come up with. We have money -- certainly money budgeted this year for funding of that, but the study itself, but not necessarily what might result from that, we don't know what the results are. [08:48:32] >> Riley: We just don't know. Potentially have budgetary implications that would wait until next year. >> Yes, but we won't know what kind of recommendations the consultant makes. We have money in the budget this career for the consultant to do that work. Once the consultant has done the work and we take a look at their report we'll know what we need to do in order to move forward. We just don't have that knowledge right now. >> Riley: Okay. >> And all of those suggestions may not necessarily ones that have a financial implication. Some of those may be just processing certain things that are within my scope to change without cost -- >> Riley: Those are the best kind of recommendations. In regard to neighborhood plan efforts for the coming fiscal year, I know we don't expect to have any new neighborhood plans coming forward in f.Y.14 and 15. Help me understand what the 17 FTEs DEVOTED TO THAT Neighborhood planning will be doing [inaudible]. >> Well, right now we're finishing up the south austin one. We have the north shoal creek is on deck. And along with the burnet road corridor. But there are many other functions that that area does. Ryan robinson, our demographics, we have gis staff that work in that area and most importantly imagine austin. I've got staff that work with other departments in making sure we implement imagine austin. Some of those are working on plan amendments, neighborhood planning areas, some of those staff are also working on the airport boulevard study that's going on. Some of those folks are also -- it's a larger group and they are always doing other things. They are never short on things to do. We also support all the neighborhood planning contacting making sure that they are up to date and providing training for them. [08:50:34] >> Riley: No doubt there's plenty of work to do. Even though -- [inaudible]. The last question relates to the metrics on the rezonings. On page 403 of the budget document, there is a page about zoning case management. The chart that we see is for neighborhood plan rezonings, which, of course, we don't expect any in the coming year. Are there any other metrics -- seems like there could be a more useful metric to look at in regard to that zoning -- [inaudible] since at least for the coming year will not represent [inaudible]. >> And councilmember, as you may have noticed on a given thursday, the number of zoning cases is up. I know just from beginning of this fiscal year to this point in time, new zoning cases are up 15% above what they were for the last fiscal year from the beginning of the year to this time. They also work with annexation. You know, part of that for the planning group. Just zoning cases unto themselves, we're up 15% of where we were last year. >> Riley: Right, and I have noticed that and that's why I was raising a question about why the metric we have before us the neighborhood plan rezoning which is really not the bulk -- >> it would be helpful if there are any metrics that show any other trend, it would be helpful to know that if that had implications in terms of [inaudible]. >> Councilmember, we can certainly look at that. >> Riley: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you. Yesterday at audit and finance we had a review of the resolution that the council had adopted regarding [inaudible] and one of the issues that came up was talking about helping local business through the development process. And I understand we had told there were folks in your permitting department that are [inaudible]. I wonder if you could tell me how that's working. [08:52:52] >> Councilmember, I'm not quite sure what specific you are talking about. We have changed our quick turn-around where there's not necessarily a change to uses that are ones that address food or beverage or health related like medical office. But we have improved our quick turn-around for those type of functions. Whether you are doing a minor remodel and we used to only do those two days a week, now we do those four days a week. That's one improvement that certainly helps small business people that are devoted to that activity. So I know there are some other improvements that certainly have done this the permit center just in the past year dealing with the -- to allow issue of permits on line but councilmember, I'll have to get back to you to those specific two positions that are devoted -- >> well, I was left with the impression, and maybe my colleague councilmember tovo and looked like we lost the other two committee members, I was left with the impression that there were two people designated small business ombudsman to work with people through the development of the center and I heard the word ombudsman in the frame of your department. Because there were -- then there was a discussion about -- there had been a request for a citywide small business ombudsman for local business and we sort of delved into what exactly is that request about and it was about an example was, you know, something might be permitted, the inspector comes out and doesn't think it was done right, wasn't permitted right or interpreted the permit wrong or a second inspector comes out and disagrees with what the first inspector wanted and so the conversation was sounds like your two people that are already there are already there maybe working on that. So it sounds like we need some clarification and worked [inaudible]. I could have misunderstood. [08:55:21] >> Councilmember, I -- if I'm thinking correctly, those were not planning and development review individuals who responded to that so let us get back with you on that. If, and we'll clarify it. >> Morrison: I think that would be real important because that -- that was -- it was significant to the discussion because there was a request for, you know, sort of a higher level bar and my take-away was it really needs to be just better use of the people we have in development review. I also wanted to talk about the answer to question number 17 and that's the question about the additional code next [inaudible] that we were talking about potentially for next year that we had talked about to include-it's question number 17. Let's see. To add the -- more modeling software to bring the -- have the consultant in town more often. I'm sure I'm for getting things. And you had also add understand there including some funding for what we've adopted now is proactively taking the code next alternative that we adopt in october to the new council to say please adopt -- readopt -- so that all comes to $500,000, and I wanted to ask is any of that in the proposed budget at this point? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Morrison: All of it? [08:57:21] >> All of it. >> Morrison: That was easy. Great. And then -- I appreciate that because I think that it's important that we make wise investments and really trying to take code next and if we have to readjust where we are [inaudible] talk about it and keep it on trc track I think these would be helpful. I do want to go back to the issue councilmember tovo brought up on the south shore master plan because it was -- it was surprising to me to see it in here because the council had sort of, I thought, indicated that collectively it wasn't a priority by rejecting it explicitly last time. >> Mayor Leffingwell: It was -- [inaudible] >> Morrison: But it was up for amendment and it did not to get -- I'm particularly concerned. I know that some of it might be regulatory changes and as was discussed it could be done in light of code next. So I guess my question is going back to that one item in question number 17 that you did include, and that was to coordinate or integrate other planning or code amendment initiatives with code next. In subdivision, watershed protection, airport boulevard. So I -- I could envision and could foresee adding some in that $500,000, but I guess my -- I would question about really going forward with the implementation and spending $500,000 -- excuse me, $200,000 at this point when we have a lot of other needs. I don't know if you want to comment on it. I assume you think that [08:59:25] [inaudible] to do it now. >> My staff has already got even to through this point and we'll be happy to provide you a breakdown of what we think that money would be spent on in order to complete the south shore project. This is new money. We'll get that information to you. >> Morrison: Right. And it comes out of c.I.P. Money. And I guess we have tons of c.I.P. Money set aside for planning efforts? >> This would be new money that would be put into c.I.P. That would be funding. >> Morrison: So is that one-time money out of the general fund? >> That's one time. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] >> Riley: And then I just want to say on the south shore proposal I'm very glad to see that funding in there. That tremendous amount of time has been invested in planning efforts. That time on the part of the community and staff and it's been excellent work with experts all over the country and it would be a real shame if we lost all that work and the momentum that we have right now. Everything that's been invested in finally making some progress on the south shore infulfillment of visions that have been there for decades. We're now finally poised to continue making progress and it would be a real shame if we were to lose that momentum by failing to provide the small amount of funding necessary to bring that plan to fruition. [09:01:48] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Just a couple of very quick comments. First of all, I agree with councilmember riley, economic development is where small business assistance program is located. And they should definitely at least be a part of it, if not leading to that effort. But I encourage the collaboration between the different departments to try to achieve those goals. On the south shore I too agree that that planning process should go forward. I'm a little bit concerned about the process that got us to where we are now, but I do -- because the council did address it and decide to put it off and then it reappeared suddenly and I'm a little bit confused with that part, but I want to make clear I think it's something that needs to be done. Councilmember tovo. >> I wanted to clarify something that I think I heard in the answer back to councilmember morrison about the funding so the cip funding is being supplemented by $200,000 from the general fund so that can be added as a cip fund expenditure? And is that typical. Do we typically do that with cip funds? >> This is the credit debt one time fund. I don't know if I would categorize it as typical, but it's not appropriate for us to use that fund for a study like this. >> But this was an item of consideration in our council discussion at the midyear as -- I just think we need to be clear about how we're funding this because it was a budget amendment last year and it was not successful. It certainly is fine to reintroduce it again as councilmember riley did we were having our discussion about the use of the surplus funds, but this council had a very lively discussion about whether or not surplus funds should be used. So if this is being funded out of the surplus funds, let's at least be honest with ourselves and the public about how it's being funded and let it -- we can have a discussion about whether that's a high priority, but I'm very uncomfortable with it being classified as cip funds if really it's coming out of our surplus from this year. [09:04:02] >> If I may, ed, this is -- out of the sustainability it's part of the one-third. If I recollect right, certainly respecting and recognizing all of the previous conversations and where council ended up, that was certainly the case back then. This is an opportunity to readdress that in the context of a new budget and a new fiscal year. As ed already -- as greg already indicated, and I think that councilmember riley spoke to, work in regards to the shores project has been underway for some time anyway. Staffwise, staff had been trying to move forward on this initiative within the context of the resources that they had because they in their own right had concluded that it was important and demanded a high priority within the range of things that they address all the time. So it seemed like the budget for '15, the proposed budget, the next budget, the next fiscal cycle, seems an appropriate place at least for the staff to indicate that it is important by way of asking for this funding. As with anything in this budget, council is in a position, you're going to make the ultimate decision here and you certainly can choose not to fund it, but it's part of the recommendation because we believe it's important. We believed it before and that's why when the previous conversations occurred, that's why staff had been working on it anyway because again they concluded that it was important. The decisions in the past not to fund it out of surplus funds, I think surplus funds is applicable in regard to those previous conversations, but the source of funding this time is that one-third from which we make funding decisions on an annual basis every year with the proposed budget. [09:06:07] >> Is that not correct, ed? >> Mayor Leffingwell: Funding recommendations. >> Funding recommendations, that's correct, funding recommendations. It's one of any number of things that are being recommended to be funded from that source of funds, the one-third, the sustainability. >> That's correct. And we had a very substantial surplus this year so the one-third draw down that policy allows for is I believe somewhere around $32 million and staff is recommending $29 million of expenditures out of that critical one-time fund for a variety of things from police vehicles to ambulances to fire trucks and engines to all sorts of equipment. And I did verify while y'all were talking that the $200,000 for this plan and the $500 for code next are both proposed as transfers from the credit debt one-time fund that pdr's capital program for these plans. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Councilmember tovo? >> Tovo: Thanks for that additional information. Just to be clear, that was coming from the surplus fund, but typically during the budget cycle we draw some of that down and feed it into the budget. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that additional explanation, and to be very clear I appreciate what you were saying, city manager. It's certainly appropriate for it to come back as a priority and staff to continue to regard it as such, I just want to be really clear about where the funding -- because we have had some interesting discussions this year about funding sources. But certainly it's worthy of considering this year, there's a lot of support for it, but I want to be very clear about the funding. >> A different distinction between a new fiscal year plan versus the midyear conversations that we're having in regards to this and other matters previously. >> Tovo: But in the end it's coming from same pocket of fund, the surplus funds. The same funds that existed at the midyear are the ones we're using now to fund it. >> One-third from sustainability fund, yes. [09:08:13] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Next. Animal services. >> Afternoon, mayor and council. [Indiscernible]. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council. Abigail smith, chief animal services officer. So for animal services our mission is to take care of pets and people, to keep them safe, keep them healthy and to keep pets in the shelter alive. We have been able to sustain our accomplishment of becoming a no kill city for actually three and a half years now. We just completed in july our 42nd month in a row of better than 90% live outcome. And that keeps us the largest no kill city in the country still today. As part of our program, we're also doing a lot to serve the people in the community and the pets they take care of by providing a lot of prevention services, including spay-neuter, pet id, micro chips and access to low cost veterinary care. In terms of our performance measures we've been basically on track. No real surprises here at all. We're trying to increase the number of spay-newters that we are doing in the community to get ahead of what we think will be an increased intake as the population continues to grow. So far we're holding steady, which we're happy about. We are also exceeding our 90% live outcome goal. Last year we did 92.6 and this year third quarter to date we actually have increased that by a percentage point and right now we're sitting at 93.6. We're going forward measuring our intake on a per capita basis to keep an eye on how our services are keeping up with population growth. In terms of our department's use of funds, pretty much across the board is the usual increases. Most of our funds are spent on our shelter services, which include obviously taking care of the animals in the shelter, customer service and our veterinary services program. This is a little bit misleading. So I want to take a second to talk about the shelter services fy amended versus fy '15 proposed. The actual fy 14 was 5.5. You're seeing it as 6.7 because that reflects the 1.2-million-dollar award that we got from maddie's fund that amended the fy 14 budget so that got placed in this area. Otherwise we would be seeing fy 14 to 15 a proposed increase of about $600,000, which would be the usual increases, utilities, etcetera, but also a few of our programmatic supplies. Some of those increases would include additional funds for medical supplies. Also to help with some equipment. Both our veterinary program, also for our field services and animal care programs. We were able to come up with a way to fund one of our critical priorities and we'll be converting -- we're proposed to convert one of our temporary employees to a full-time equivalent. We'll be funding that by an offset from a reduction in some contractual expenses that we previously had. Revenue, I don't know if I've call it a highlight. Revenue if our department in 2015, the projected revenue is 1.4 million. That does represent a 2.74 increase over this year, which 80's in our little -- equates in our budget to about $40,000, which is mostly an increase in adoption fees. Other budget topics, of course our favorite thing to talk about is capacity. Hear from animal services on a regular basis about our need for additional kennel space. Today, for example, we're down 117 spaces for dogs. If the day came that we would lose our overflow space at town lake, that would translate into a deficit of 180 kennels today. It's just not sustainable. So in order to address that we have put forth a cip proposal. We appreciate council support in asking the city to look at that and we're hopeful that we'll be able to phase in two additional kennels at the bettie dunkerley campus at evander loop. Also, we have ongoing issues with personnel. We still have an average of 20 temperature employees to keep -- temporary employees to keep the operations going. We basically operate a hotel and hospital for animals. And so it's 24/7. We're now three and a half years in, almost three years at the center and what it takes to run the business and keep it at a level of service that's required. So we still are looking to add some full time equivalents to transfer some of our temp employees to permanent. I will draw your attention to the dog in the lower right there. He's very sad. He's sitting in a rolling cage on the loading dock at the shelter and he would sure like a permanent kennel. [09:14:09] [Laughter] the other thing that I would like to talk about is that we're working with the county -- >> [inaudible]. >> We're working with the county to address the cost model that we're using if we were successful in negotiating a new interlocal agreement, we will have new resources we think to have two animal protection officers and vehicles to support them to do the work that's required out in the county. So we're hopeful that we'll be successful there. With that I'll answer any questions that you have. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I guess this is the first time I've seen your new logo. >> Do you like it? >> Mayor Leffingwell: I like it, yeah. >> We're friendly. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Colorful too. Any questions for animal services? >> Martinez: Abigail, thank you for putting together the budget proposal. I know you have some unmet needs. In the response from staff on the additional kennel space, and I believe it was an additional adoption -- there are two different projects at about two and a half million dollars each for a total of five. It said in the response that due on the urgency of this need the issuance of co's is appropriate. Do you anticipate, does staff anticipate bringing the co's to us any time soon, or is that something that you're saying it would be appropriate to use co's should the council choose. And if that's our choice do we need to do another item directing staff to do that? >> No, sir. I think we would be prepared on september eighth if as part of adopting the budget the city council were to choose to build the additional kennel and to -- the quarantined facilities, the five million dollars that they choose to do that, staff would recommend issuance of co's to fund those facilities and we would then adjust our reimbursement resolution. It would be part of council's action that day anyhow to include the additional funds and then the actual debt issuance would come somewhere further down the line this subsequent august. So we would be prepared to accommodate that on september 8th if council wants to move in this direction. [09:16:28] >> Martinez: How do we give you that direction? You say if council wants to. We clearly adopted these two items on a vote of seven-0 to look at how to fund it. 'S the next step? >> Everything in this book that we're looking at, roughly 23, 24 items from council directing staff to find funding options for a variety of things, we would anticipate the same as we've done the previous two years we would go through that list of options and council would vote up or down whether or not they want to add these items, these council priorities to our budget and we provide you funding options to achieve those goals. For this particular one, yes, our recommendation would be certificates of obligation. >> It wouldn't be issued until august of the subsequent year and then the debt service would start in fiscal year 16. There's no change in the tax rate initially. I believe in that response we talked about a tax rate inplanning capability indication down the road, but very manor. >> So if we drop off debt there is an impact on the tax rate. >> That is true, but not only that, but our assumptions about assessed valuations we need to be conservative on that. So all the numbers we run rely on assumptions about assessed valuation growth and other debt issuances that may occur. >> Martinez: I certainly would be supportive of that and I hope that my colleagues will chime in. I think our animal service staff have really taken our direction, our policy direction, and worked very hard to achieve and maintain the services that we provide at the highest level of any animal shelter in the country. And I just think this request is something that we should all consider supporting and something I would certainly support so that you can continue your efforts, you and your staff. I want to thank you for the hard work that you've done. With the moving on to the animal health tech to assist with behavior program, what exactly is the role of that animal health tech in the behavioral program. What are we seeing in the program that you need to add an animal health tech? [09:18:48] >> This position actually already exists as a temporary. We've only been able to do the lowest accessible standard of assessment of animals in the shelter by having two full time equivalents. One is funded, part of the implementation plan. The other one we hired on as a temp over a year ago because we operate seven days a week and we need to keep the animals flowing through. And any animal that gets brought to our attention in term of a behavioral concern gets an assessment by one of the techs that specializes in behavior. >> Martinez: So subsequent to -- this has nothing to do with budget, but it has to do with this topic. We have some things that we want to start working with you on the short-term in our behavior program. We have some questions that have been raised that we'd like to talk to you about through the health and human services subcommittee meeting. And there was one -- an issue that was brought to us that I will also bring up through the subcommittee is our volunteer pool. So it's my understanding that if I wanted to volunteer at austin animal center I couldn't show up this center and walk dogs and let them out because of this process that we have in place? And you have to get a background check? Is that a statutory policy or a city policy or animal shelter policy? >> That's a city policy. We have looked for ways to fast track it because it is a long process and we constantlily get people. In the short-term what we have found are ways to accommodate people who want to show up on saturday and walk dogs, but to be an official volunteer of the city you have to go through the process of the background check and fingerprints. That's city policy that we've been unable to work around. >> Martinez: I would also be happy to entertain amendments to that so if a good faith effort is interesting made to get the background checks you have x amount of time to get it in, but you can start being an official volunteer. What I found is the folks that we've talked to said we want to volunteer, but after waiting eight weeks for the background check I go and volunteer somewhere else. I go to austin pets alive, I go to these other agencies. And we really need those volunteers as well. I want to help however we can streamline that process to let folks be volunteers. [09:21:06] >> We would appreciate that. >> I would agree with that. It seems like a lot of overkill to require a week's long background check process to get somebody to come out and walk dogs, frankly. If they want a dog they can take one home anyway, right? You would probably like that. The other thing is this five-million-dollar kennel expansion, just to confirm, that's at the town lake center, the current center? >> At the austin animal center levander loop. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. So there's no money in here for town lake. >> Correct. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Thank you. I guess I'll just briefly say that the idea of you using co's, I think the idea of using co's I think is a good one that I hope we can all take seriously as a possibility. You know, the bottom line is we set a lot of goals in this town and maybe the other ones are more complicated or more complex, but rarely do we get to a situation where we're like yes, we set that goal. And I think that it really makes sense to continue to invest to be able to maintain that. That really terrific eye chief. And on that note I should share with you and -- I was a tap dance teacher for the pe tap dance class, she stopped everything. She's a foster through the the animal shelter. Stopped everything and talked to all these different employees and said, I just need to know how to contact the council because our animal center is so fabulous and I just want to let them know what a great job they're doing. So I don't think she e-mailed us, but I thought this would be a nice opportunity to make sure you got to hear that too. Let's see, regarding -- two other things. On the volunteer background checks, what is our overall policy for background checks for volunteers for the city? We have background check requirements for some employees and I just wonder do we have an overarching policy in the city? Do you know, abigail? I imagine you know. [09:23:29] >> I think hrd can certainly speak to that very specifically, but in my experience in trying to fast track our program and make it easier for folks to volunteer with us, my understanding is that if you are working on behalf of the city in a public place interacting with the public, especially where children are present, you have to go through this process and be checked out and vetted. So that's where it sits today, what opportunities there are going forward. I'm sure we'll explore. >> Morrison: I would imagine -- I totally get that and for potential employees working for youth and vulnerable populations, we do that. I guess if it was talking about walking the dog, maybe we could have different categories of when the volunteers need it. So that will be an interesting conversation. And then I did want to ask just one other thing. In the text in the beginning of the budget in your letter you say you continue to explore opportunities to partner with travis county and other municipalities within the county to address geographical and capacity issues. And I wonder how that's going because I don't know if that's going to end up being beneficial to us, but it seems like maybe it could be if we take a larger look at our animal shelter issues. I wonder where we are on that. >> We are certainly continuing to have the conversation, as with most things municipal it's moving along slowly. [Laughter] we are still actively talking with our neighbors in lakeway and with the county it is a a well supported idea for collaboration, even across county lines and in light of what I'm understanding that our friends to the north are having trouble building a new shelter, maybe there's even a greater opportunity for collaboration with folks. And I think that if you got us in the same room you would agree we have to take a regional approach to this growing problem. I talked with our friends at williamson county all the time and they're in the same shape we are and looking to expand already. I do think that as the time passes and uponlation grows there's more and more opportunity. The conversation is moving forward slowly. [09:25:46] >> Are we talking to other municipalities besides lakeway? I heard you mention lakeway. What about the other? >> Yes. I have heard from folks in the smaller communities like bee cave and volente that all sort of need to come together. Some of the smaller areas even further west. It's difficult for us to support them when we're so far away and we all agree that we need a shelter out west and then again we need to look north. So all of the smaller municipalities have been at the table in the conversation. Where they are in their budget discussion or development, we're employ guy for a check-in. >> Do you have any ideas about how to move this along? Is there some action that the council could take or some outreach or some more formal calling of a summit or something like that? It zooms r. Seems like it could be one of those things that just rolls along forever. >> I think the support from council would be welcome and perhaps calling a summit would be a great idea. >> Morrison: Great. All right. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Do you have any estimates on what your intake is on animals from outside of austin? >> We ran the numbers last time. It was about 1100 animals total. And that's out of about 20,000. So it's not a lot we have a fee in place and we also have a challenge that we're never going to really know. We don't really know who is a stray and who is your animal that you found somewhere. And we don't know if you found this animal here or you found it across the street, which happens to be a different municipality or a different county even. So I hesitate to say with any certainty exactly because we're -- people want to bring their animals to the austin animal center. It's a beautiful place and it's safe. It's hard to say. [09:27:54] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I appreciate that. I can see where it would be really difficult to really know where they came from. Incidentally you hear that people from outside of austin and travis county bring their animals here because they will are treated better as opposed to somewhere outside. Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: Thanks, mayor. Sorry, one question that I forgot to ask, abigail. This subject continues to come up and I wanted to get your official response on the record. Because you've never come to us and asked for -- I see the numbers of sterilizations at the center and sterilizations out in the community. Very pleased to see that those numbers begin to go up as they should. But why is it that you haven't recommended to us a mandatory spay-neuter ordinance as some are suggesting? It would help if you mandated it as a law in austin that every animal has to be spayed or neutered unless you're a registered breeder. >> I believe that that concept was stopped at the animal advisory commission level. If there is community interest in that, which staff would certainly look at it and walk through and support, the animal advisory commission I think will need to take a look at it again. That's where it stops. Mayor mar I think it stopped there because I think the concerns are do we start citing folks and fining them and does that hurt our ability for folks to take animals and adopt pets in our community if they think they're going to get fined because it's a non-spayed or neutered animal. That to me is one of the concerns that was raised. So again, these are conversations we can have subsequent to today, but I want to revisit that with you as well. >> I think there are also opportunities to look at what the -- what's on the books in terms of ordinances. For example, animals that are impounded at the shelter on second impound, you're going to leave altered. Is there an opportunity on first impound you leave altered that would have the same net effect and also maybe encourage folks to keep their pets contained and maybe result in feature stray animals. I do think there are multiple opportunities to look at spay-neuter. [09:30:20] >> Mayor Leffingwell: I can see some dog civil rights issues involved there. All right. Anything else? Thank you. Health and human services. >> Good afternoon mayor and city council. I want to start off by saying I've adopted two of abigail's dogs and great pets. And she does a great job, she truly does. I want to thank you for this opportunity to come before you and present the health and human services 2015 proposed budget. Sitting next to me is chief maddox my chief administrative officer and dr. Phil wong, medical director and health authority. So the department's mission is to promote and protect the health of our community through use of best practices and community collaborations. I want to just pause for a second and just make the distinction between public health and clinical health. Medical health is an interaction between a practitioner, usually a doctor, and one patient where public health is population-based health where we try to prevent disease. Our major accomplishments and we've had quite a number of this year I'm proud to say and I would like to thank the staff for the wonderful work they've done on these issues. We've been very successful on the 1115 medicaid waiver. We have 16 projects and four more are slated to begin. Those projects range from helping moms to get proper prenatal care to encourage a good birth outcome to helping teens make good developmental choices in their life. We've also been hard at work around public health accreditation. We have submitted our application. Our site visit should occur next year. Accreditation is a process that I will have to thank the staff and all our partners throughout the city for. It involves the chip, community health assessment, community assessment plan, community health daters and we are proud to say we will be issuing the 2014 critical health indicators later on this month or early next month. And also involves strategic planning, which dr. Wong led the department through. With hhsd's technical support, tobacco free policies were implemented in locations throughout austin, protecting nearly 1.8 million people from the effects of secondhand smoke. That is truly a tremendous accomplishment for us. And the office of vital records was named by the texas vital statistics unit as a five-star winner. I believe that's the fifth year that we've done that in a row. Congratulations. Kudos to where we are. We're generally pleased with our key performance data. Our shots for tots going in the right direction. We've decided to challenge ourselves and add foodborne illnesses into our second performance measure percent of all infectious diseases reported, so we predict that it will drop the numbers a little bit. I'll skip down to the percent of women enrolled in w.I.C. During pregnancy who subsequently breast feed their children. This is a tremendously important statistic as one of the most important things a mother can do for their child, especially when it's an infant, is to breast feed is. Department use of funds. Generally not much has changed with the exception of the transfer of the requirements line, which has been explained by other -- by some of my peers and their presentations. Environmental health services, though will see a jump of $1.1 million in funding due to the addition or hopeful addition of some sanitarians. Funding transfer, there was a 1.6-million-dollar funding transfer from the sustainability fund to the general fund for workforce development and child and youth contracts. And our critical priorities at a zero net cost is through the repurposing of three vacancies, we were able to generate four positions, thus being able to fill the public health program specialist to assist with std, hiv and intervention program at $66,000. As I mentioned before, we hope to add eight sanitarians and support staff to assist with restaurant inspections. We've been a little bit behind in restaurant inspections because there's been a 12 percent increase in fixed food establishments since 2009. We hope to make some significant improvements going from 1.6 inspections per fixed food establishments to 2.0, which is the state and the national standard. Also in temporary events, these temporary events are temporary events in our city due to the city's economic vibrancy is up 116% in five years. And in fiscal year 14 we're only able to inspect 35% of the booths. But we're hoping that we'll be able to get to 50% of the temporary booths through the addition of staff. I'm going to ask kim maddox to take this next slide as she is my expert on this area. [09:36:16] >> Good afternoon, councilmembers. So for capital highlights, we have several bond projects that come out of the 2012 bond. Our bettie dunkerley campus infrastructure improvements is currently at our 90% design so we are very far along in that process. Our expanded parking lots at two of our neighborhood and w.I.C. Facilities is quite far along. That construction will be begin in early fy 15. Our women and children's shelter renovation is moving along well s we are into the design phase of that and current current estimates have construction completion in early summer of 2017 and we're hoping as we move through to possibly cut some more time off of that as we move forward. And then we also have our austin resource center for the homeless renovations, which is slated for completion in fy '15. >> So in revenue and fee highlights, the department will add $1.6 million in revenue. That represents a 20.5% change, with $1.1 million coming from fee changes in the environmental health services area specific to food inspections. And the remainder of that also pretty much coming from environmental health services. And the new fee structure was based on a cost of service study that was done by the city and our staff. I'm going to -- in other budget topics, we do have some things that concern us. Right now we lost one of our major grants, the community transformation grant, otherwise known as ctg. Which is going to create a reduction of core public health capacity I am around the issue of chronic disease management and prevention. I'm going to ask dr. Wong to comment on that a little moore. >> Sure. Just the data for travis county, cancer, heart disease, stroke, chronic lung disease and diabetics are five of the seven killers in travis county. It's estimated just in 2012 in hospitalization costs alone it cost in travis county $571 million in costs. And you also add asthma to those five causes and it's estimated that every travis county resident pays an extra $751 each year through taxes and insurance premiums just to cover the healthcare costs related to that. We'll pay the downstream cost for treatment of these issues, but there's very little investment in the prevention. That's what it's been great at doing and it's addressed a lot of the behavioral risk factors. We know that two-thirds of adults, one-fifth of youth are overweight or aboas in travis county. Tobacco use kills about 11 people a week here. The principles of it or to make the healthy choice, the easy choice. So we've worked with a lot of the other departments that you've heard from or will be hearing from, the planning development and review department will use some of the funding to support staff in them that have worked on even the pedestrian advisory council. Supporting the imagine austin program and making sure that health is built into the concepts of the built in environment and making the -- so people can get physical activity in these environments and get access to healthy foods and prevention and protection from exposure to secondhand smoke. So also we've worked with pard in many areas to try to help them promote community gardens and some of the areas where they can be promoted development of a gis database that shows where those gardens are available and things like that. So there's -- also the clinical partnerships we know that to be -- for the clinical interventions that you're working with, the district, the 1115 waiver projects, to be most effective that the environment has to help promote these changes, and so if the clinician, if the doctor tells the patient they need to eat more healthy or get more activity, environment that has the people, the patients really implement those and build it into their day-to-day for what makes a long- term impact. We do know that these invert venges have a he will impact on the costly interventions. [09:40:39] >> So while we have definitely lost the ctg funding we're not mourning the loss of that money. We're actually doing-- making every effort to replace it through additional grant applications especially with the cdc, which has come out with a new package of prevention funding. We're also working with the center to see if they're interested in purchasing some of our capacity, some of our ability to provide chronic disease prevention and management services. We hope to have some success in those areas. >> They are very competitive. >> To dr. Wong's point, the cdc grants are very competitive, but austin-travis has a tremendous history of doing exceptional work around lowering those chronic disease risk factors. One of those -- an example of that would be taking the smoking rate from 17 to 13 percent for the whole county. Now, certainly that's not something we say question on our own, but we did it through a series of partnerships. The proposed -- the 2014-2015 travis county interlocal agreement has proposed additions, and they will be providing further support to public health accreditation, which of course impacts them also: And that is my presentation. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you. Questions? Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you. I want to talk first about the loss of the grant. I understand that you're working on hopefully finding some replacement funds. I wanted to call owe call my colleagues' attention to a letter we got from the st. David's foundation urging us to replace some of that funding and talking about how important the programs have been. Because I guess they've been a partner in some of those programs with us. To you mentioned briefly the smoking cessation effectiveness. Do you have some measures of how effective our other programs have been that would be able to continue if we were able to get some funding? [09:42:51] >> Sure. And tobacco is an area where we have the most data in terms of what's effective. So a lot of those same principles are being applied to physical activity and nutrition. For instance, again, we know that making the environment healthier and if people can build it into their day-to-day lives, that is the impact of things. With is it -- we've been working with the st. David's healthy dining program to make healthy options available at some of the restaurants in the community and specifically in some of the underserved communities. And some of the -- yeah, the lower income areas so those restaurants make the healthy options just as an option to be available. >> And also in partnerships with children's optimal health we've been able to see especially in the dove springs area some changes around childhood obesity. Not that to the extent we like to see it, but some progress. Certainly once again that's not something that we should take credit for, credit for ourselves. You through community gardens we are making fresh produce available to more folks across the area. I just want to add that the department has not lost its ability to do chronic disease management and chronic disease prevention, just some of its capacity. >> Morrison: So would this be a matter of creating some -- funding some grant funded ftes? Are the ftes going to go away or are there program costs that I gather it was one million dollars that we lost. >> It was $1.1 million a year. I think we still had two years left on the contract. And right now we have four staff members with us. Or is it three? >> I think it was -- >> Morrison: Why do we lose that if two years were left? [09:44:55] >> It was a decision by congress. >> Budget negotiations at the congressional level. >> Morrison: Darn them. Okay. So that's helpful. Let me ask you this: Obviously one of the things you were talking about was building the environment and code next and the work on that. Has there been any discussion about having pdr fund a position for you all to work through some of the priority program in the comprehensive plan called creating a healthy austin and working with code next to be able to highlight that? >> I believe we provided some funding, but we haven't -- >> Morrison: You provided funding -- [overlapping speakers] >> we haven't had a discussion about that particular point at all. >> Morrison: Because it seems to me that -- you can't make money out of nothing, but it does seem to me that we need to think about how -- city manager, you and I had a talk about how important it was to keep in mind that imagine austin is a lot of priority programs, not just about compact and connected, but it's in fact watershed protection and health and human services and all of that, and how important it is. I notice you've instituted priority program team to really try to promote all of the priority programs, but I think we need to think carefully about making sure we're really funding all of those teams if we want to make sure they all get integrated appropriately so maybe we can have an offline conversation about that to see how we can really make sure we're making a start on that this year. One question that had come up during the year was the need for social workers to serve the folks that were affected by the floods. And I know that there were -- there was some temporary funding, some temporary positions, some difficulty in finding people to fill them, some backlog, and there wasn't a backlog. Could you give us a status on how that's going? [09:47:07] >> First of all, I want to thank stephanie hayden, the assistant director over community services for exceptional work in that area. And also thank acm, lumbreras and the city marc ott, for their support in making sure we had temporary staff members to assist the population. We started off with 120 something cases of folks that need a case management. We still have two additional social workers that are working in the dove springs area to place the rest of the individuals. >> Morrison: Great. So they haven't been forgotten. Then with regard to the 1115 waiver funding, the revenues that are going to come from the feds for that, is that expected this year? And where is that being funneled? >> Complex questions. I'm going to have kim answer it. >> The -- there is a -- the draw downs are based on meeting metrics. There are two times a year we have an opportunity to report up to the federal government our achievement in each of the projects. But we report in october -- >> Morrison: That will be the first time. >> You report in october for a draw of money in january and then you report in april for a draw of money in july. So we just received back our july draw. But that's only what we have actually achieved. And what they have approved and said yeah, okay, you said you achieved it and we agree you achieved it so we will pay down this money. So it comes in pieces throughout the life of the five-year program. >> Morrison: Did you put it in your bank account or did you give it to ed? >> We gave it to ed t -- [laughter]. It's in its own fund, which ed is fully aware of. >> Morrison: And what will that fund be used to fund? [09:49:09] >> It's being used to fund the 1115 medicaid waiver programs. It depends upon achieving the milestones, how much we actually get reimbursed, but if we meet all the milestones, kimberly, I think we're projecting at the end of the 1115 program there would be three to four million dollars left in that fund that the health department would have access to to either continue these programs or to fund other programs. So it's all coming from the federal government. >> Morrison: And that's after paying back the general fund -- >> yes, ma'am. That is after refunding the igt money or the intergovernmental transfer money. We have to send money up to get money back. So yes, that's net gain. >> Morrison: Net after five years. >> After five years. If we pull every cent we're eligible for, if we meet every single milestone. >> Morrison: Okay. And so as the funding comes back do we have a pay back schedule that you're working to? For the seed money that was used? Are we paying it back first and then we'll use the rest of it? What's the plan there? >> Well, I think the plan is to pay back the igt's as they're incurred. So we send to igtf and we get the money back. We reimburse the general fund and again at the end of the five years, though, we would expect the money that comes from the federal government to be three to four million dollars more than what we have to send up to get that reimbursement. That's after we make all of our program costs. The only exception to that would be the initial $250,000 that council approved to get this program running. We're not refunding that or paying that back. That was a council appropriation to get the program started. >> Morrison: I guess I'm trying to get a feel for that three to four million dollars that we expect to net over five years. What -- when can we look at investing that in new programs? Like do we have to wait until five years is up. >> Yes. >> The cash flow is a challenge right now. To continue to fund the ongoing activities of the program and keep all of that moving forward so that we continue to meet the metrics and milestones. That's the balancing that we're doing now. So it would be at the end of the program once we've already funded the initial five years of these programs. [09:51:26] >> Morrison: Okay. One thing to think about is that potentially that whole program will be, you know, extended and repeated after the five years so possibly we could think about that three million, three to four million to invest in -- sort of sounds like a pyramid scheme. [Laughter] to invest in more programs that will broaden and new programs that will allow us to expand. But it sounds like we'll have to do it in chunks and it can't be done smoothly. >> It councilmember morrison, burt lumber as, assistant city manager. I think that staff would recommend that we wait until the tail end of it because as kim said you really achieve that higher amount if you meet all of the specific metrics. And they've got to be fully met. So we really don't know whether you would achieve that until you go through each year and then possibly obviously when you get to the tail end. So we would be a little bit uncomfortable doing anything other than waiting until the very end of the program to look at what we've actually received in a net amount that we could recommend for expenditure. >> Morrison: Okay. I appreciate that we were able to do it at all because it's really helped us expand. Us. >> I would add that the funding stream has been bumpy so we haven't been able to fund the programs at 100% yet. That's going to effect our ability to hit our performance measures also. But overall we're doing excellent work. And again, thank bob, my chief of staff, for his excellent leadership in that area. >> Morrison: Right. So the funding, like being able to do the transfer and to get the program started has run into bumps? >> Just the program costs in the beginning because you get paid after the fact. So most -- the programs were -- [lapse in audio] for the last pay down, that will fund the programs for the next year pretty much. So we're getting there. Now that we're a year and a half in, it's getting easier. [09:53:40] >> Morrison: Good. It's worth the effort, I'm sure. And let's see. Two more things. I think there was some questions on sanitarians that I think some other folks were going to search those out a little bit. My question is we're going to beef up our program quite a bit to be able to do more inspections. Is that a standard that we're working toward and if you could talk a little bit about that standard? >> Yeah. The national -- the national organization is called nehi environmental health -- I don't know. Administration or something. And the standard is 2.0689 it's knots a legal standard. >> Morrison:2.0 what? >> Two inspections per fixed food establishment. >> Morrison: Per year? >> Per year. We like to move to eventually we're gradually moving towards a risk based system where restaurants that sell packaged foods would be subject to less inspections than restaurants that were cooking and holding hot foods. It or cold foods. >> Morrison: And do we have statistics on how many food poisoning or things like -- how many people have gotten sick because of eating in restaurants. >> Itselfy because not all foodborne illnesses reported. People might think they have a bug or they just ate something bad, but it is not a really big deal. It's big groups, when we have a clutter of individuals like -- cluster of individuals like nursing homes we have a fair amount of business with them. So the amount of foodborne illnesses are underreported. >> Morrison: Okay. This is sort of a broad question. But on page 54 of your slide where you have your mission statement and you stopped to explain the difference between public health and clinical health, which I appreciate, the mission statement is to promote and protect the health of our community. I'm -- the name of the department is health and human services and I'm wondering where the health and human services comes in in that mission statement? [09:56:03] >> Well, we -- anything that we fund is based on best practices. So the people that we fund through the rfa, the social services contractors that we have, whether it's caritas or anyone else, they're using proven methods for addressing the needs of their population. >> Morrison: The needs. But when you say here it's just the health and I'm afraid that that -- you might think health means all quality of life, but I feel like that doesn't capture really what we do. >> And again, that's an age long conversation that we've had. When we say health we mean public health as opposed to the clinical health of the individual. So that would include the social determinants of health, which include the air we breathe, the water we drink, the roof over our heads, the transportation system, access to employment, access to day care, that's really what we're talking about. >> Morrison: Okay. I hope that's what we're talking about because that is what this department is supposed to be doing. I guess I get that broader thing, but I just feel like that -- that feels a little like it could easily be misrepresented at the social service side of our work. It could be forgotten. >> Yeah. Definitely. We could certainly take a look at our mission again. I'm not against that. But the majority of our funds go to social services providers. >> Morrison: I know that and -- actually, it's not quite the majority of 27 million out of -- >> out of 36. And our grant funds. >> Morrison: Right. And almost half the funding for the whole department is social service funding. Anyways, I would really ask -- I think we need to take a look at it because I read that and I think oh, we're talking about restaurant inspections. And I wanted to lay on the table I know I was visited and they told me they were visiting all the councilmembers, one voice central texas, which is of course a coalition of I think 90 social service agencies, has put forth a proposal -- well, talking about the fact that we have a widening gap. We are in no way keeping up with the demand in this community with social services, the growing demand. So they have asked for us to consider a 50-million-dollar increase in what we put to social service contracting. And I think I may have heard that there's actually -- I think they told me that they're going to come to public health and human services and talk in a little more detail about that. So that -- I'll certainly want to be able to consider as much of that as we can and I look forward to -- [09:59:01] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Thank you say 15? 15 million, yes. >> Mayor Leffingwell: 50% increase. >> Morrison: Yes. So I'll look forward to learning more about that and hopefully -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: Makes my eyes bug out. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] -- before we go on we're coming to the end of our scheduled time here today and I would scug suggest that we try to get library and pard in here, try to finish them today by 4:30. Or soon thereafter as possible and then bring the rest back, go ahead and let everybody else head on out. We're not going to get to austin energy or anybody after that. For sure. Any more questions for this group? Councilmember tovo. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] [10:01:18] >> can you remind me where we are on the family resource funding? We had sponsored a resolution in june. I sponsored along with councilmember morrison and the mayor. I believe we had asked the city manager to identify up to $55,000 by august but that that funding would be available for the start of the school year and work toward identifying the [inaudible] which I guess is another 45,000 through the budget process. >> Yes, the actual brack down was 57 and 43. 257 we've gone ahead and authorized administratively so that's already in place. The 43, I think if you look at the notebook that's before you with various items that council will have to consider in terms of funding for next year is included in one of those items and I think ed can point to where it is in that book. The reason is 57 was the most immediate short-term mean that they needed to continue the program going from august on and then the 43 would be able to sustain it on an annual basis beyond this current immediate need. So we've addressed the 57. We're working with aisd to get them the money that's in place and I've personally talked to mel and the program is not going to skip a beat, they are going to keep going. The 43 would be something that the council would have to consider separately. >> Tovo: I appreciate that. So that resource center will be up and functioning for the school year? >> That's my understanding from the recent discussion with mel. >> Tovo: I'm pleased to hear that. Do you have a sense of how much into the school year that funding lasts? >> I don't have that answer, but I'll be happy to get it for you. I don't know that off the top of my head. >> Tovo: It's critical weigh address that 43 as part of the budget -- >> my discussion with them the money aisd had and what the city was going to provide and what the county will provide, the county wasn't going to provide it until the start of the fiscal year, aisd was able to make up that to make that you are there's no gap. They are prepared to keep it going until the county's funding comes in sometime after the start of the fiscal year. [10:03:40] >> Tovo: Has the county made a final decision about the 150,000? >> My understanding there is but the problem is the money doesn't come in until october. >> Tovo: Thank you. I really appreciate the work the staff has done on the womens and children's shelter. We had discussions about time line, but I have toed a mitt I was staggered by the 27 days. If you talk a little about why -- why that will take so long? Why construction is going to take two and a half years? Are there certain pieces done ahead of time? We have such a critical need for bed for women and children in this community and I hate to think it's going to be another three years. >> Part of the time line is not reducing the capacity of the current shelter during construction. So right now the proposal would be to construct the new portion, have that move-in ready, transfer operations to that new portion of the facility and then go into the existing building to do the renovations and the reworking on the existing building. So part of this is [inaudible] in order to not diminish their current capacity during construction. The other piece is just the general time line of rsp time line which which start fall. We're hoping tore permitted march, april, may 2015 so that's where we're hoping to maybe gain some more time. If possible. But a lot of the construction time is that logistical so we don't shut them down or significantly reduce their capacity while we're constructing. >> Tovo: That makes sense. Are there opportunities to expedite any of the r.F.P. Permitting process? We've certainly adopted council resolutions to expedite permitting process for ramps for accessibility. This would seem to be -- [10:05:42] >> exactly. We are going to be doing that, councilmember tovo. As a matter of fact, once we've completed design and we've prepared the -- we're ready for the review, we're going to assemble a team to do as quick of a review as possible and get it all from review into out on the street as soon as we can. The time line we're going you is probably the furthest out. I think we can do it sooner but we're hard pressed to give you a shorter time period. Right now they are still in the design and it will be completed and we still have to get through all of those steps before we can get to construction. >> Tovo: Do you know when the design is going to be completed? You can get it to me after. Sounds like you are going to be ready for an r.F.P. This fall. >> This called year, I can get you an exact answer off the schedule. >> Tovo: That's okay. I appreciate it. Thanks. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I think that's it. I think I'll have to say just in response to the suggestion about adding $15 million, I think we need to really keep in mind that we already have baked into this cake substantial property tax increase, the substantial water utilities, substantial increases in austin energy, and I think we have to keep the taxpayers -- the need is great, I'm fully aware of that, but I think we have to keep the taxpayers and ratepayers' interests in mind as well. So with that, thank you and we'll go to public library. [10:07:50] >> Good afternoon, mayor leffingwell, city council. I'm brenda branch, director of the austin public library and we me is the assistant director for support services and victoria rigger our financial manager. You will find the austin public library's budget information in volume 1, pages 171 through 188. Of the city of austin proposed budget documents. The austin public library is committed to providing easy access to books and information for all ages through responsive professionals, engaging programs and state-of-the-art technology in a safe and friendly environment. I'm proud to share with you some of the staff's accomplishments. On friday, may 9, 2014, over 10,400 cubic yards of concrete were placed continuously over a 24-hour period to create the foundation for the new central library for austin. The placement of the slab is a significant milestone in the construction of the new central library and heralds the beginning of the building's vertical frame erection. We're scheduled to open to the public in november of 2016, and I hope that each and every one of you will be able to attend that grand celebration. In 2008, the austin public library began to install security cameras at the john henry fox center, the history center and all branch library facilities. The project ran for six years and was completed in may of 2014. Each facility has between 8 to 16 cameras that are networked to allow remote monitoring. Recording takes place 24 hours a day, seven days a week and the library security staff now monitors 264 cameras across all library locations. With the help of a grant, we recently initiated the keep the library campaign. I hope you will go on our website and take a look. Some of you are included. The campaign highlighting -- [10:10:18] >> Mayor Leffingwell: What did you say? >> The campaign highlighting -- highlights photos of hundreds of austin citizens with statements about what they are passionate about and how the library has impacted their life and the life of the community. Library staff has created and distributed the 2014 read poster. The slogan is read, feed your mind. Featuring [inaudible] chef and proprietor of key restaurant, founder of east side king and top chef season 9 winner. And staff has partnered with the mayor and with the austin public library friends foundation to sponsor the 13th annual mayor's book club feature author elizabeth crook novel monday, monday. A fictionalized telling of the sniper shooting from the u.T. Tower and the impact that the event had on the lives of the victims. And finally, the austin public library culture and diversity committee works tirelessly to continual bring awareness about celebrating the diversity of the library staff and the community. And there are two events that they feature each year. The first one was in april 25th and that was the third annual poetry and many voices where citizens and staff members read original and favorite poems. And the second was the third annual diverse approach to healthy lifestyle in partnership with the austin public library healthy connections committee, and this is a wonderful event featuring multicultural food with a healthy focus. The library has over 50 performance measures, but I'll discuss six of the key measures today. Estimates and projections for outcomes of our key performance measures remain relatively stable, as you can tell by looking at the table. Circulation per capita continues to see significant growth. We expect citizen satisfaction with materials and quality of libraries to continue to increase and as population increases, we expect material expenditures, visits and per capita to increase just slightly. The library's proposed budget is 36.8 million. The main source of funding comes from the city's general fund. We use the general fund appropriation to support the day to day operations of the library and the categories are public services, which is the largest expenditure, materials management, court services, and transfers and other requirements. The latter showing the biggest change because of the accounting changes this year that have been explained to you already. As I mentioned earlier, local celebrity chef paul key is featured on our annual literacy awareness campaign poster. This specific campaign slogan reads feed your mind makes the connection between reading and a healthy lifestyle. This poster feet yourself the chef looking through one of his favorite recipe books and in the background you will see his collection of renowned recipe books. The austin public library likely has many of those recipe books because of the city's investment in supporting our material selection. Our new central library, as you recall, will have a special collection in a special area dedicated to celebrating local okay seat cuisineand chefs. This year we're proposing an increase of $120,000 from the general fund. In addition over the past three fiscal years the library received a total of $3 million in capital funds to purchase materials for the new central library. In 2014-15, a final $1 million in capital funds will be allocated bringing total capital funding or all materials for the new central library to $4 million. The fiscal year 2014-15 proposed capital budget answer a total appropriation of 13.5 million for the new central library including selection, technology and furniture. And as I mentioned previously this includes a million dollar transfer from the general fund for the purchase of materials. By the way, we should be done with construction spring of 2016, moved in may of 2016 with our grand opening november of 2016. The austin public library also proposes to receive 1.2 million for improvements available from the voter approved 2012 bond program including the installation of a new fire suppression sprinkler system at the zaragosa warehouse. The austin history center and renovation design for the will hampton branch library at oak hill. Additional funding in the amount of 430,000 is proposed for repairs to southeast austin branch library foundation. This project will replace the failed pre cast containers at the perimeter of the pier and beam foundation. The sidewalks will also be replaced and site regrading to correct drainage problems. The library's spending plan also includes ongoing capital projects totaling 44.8 million including 41.3 million for the new central library. Finally, I'd like to mention that proposed funding for library technology projects is included in the ctm fiscal year 2014-15 proposed capital budget. These projects I'm sure you probably remember me speaking of them include the radio frequency identification system, rfid, for all remaining library locations. Over the next two years, the city proposes to convert all remaining branch libraries' rfid technology. This will ensure all libraries use the most current inventory and materials handling system that will be used in the new central library. The equipment provides tangible improvement to service, delivery and access and will increase the operational efficiency of the library. The library's pc registration digital services project will replace the failed computer sign-up software and failed system for printing, scanning and copying. We expect to implement a single integrated solution to produce three stand alone i.T. Solutions. We also expect to improve the quality of service and address the community's need for mobile access to printing. In addition, hardware costs for the installation of the fiber community connections program are proposed to be implemented over a two-year period. For the library this project will replace existing outdated network infrastructure that limits the amount of band width we can supply to our patron network. As well as the need for that infrastructure to be in place to take full advantage of the google fiber connectistivity. The improvements address many of the principles of the city's digital inclusion strategic plan by making uninterrupted broadband technology available across all areas of austin through our strategically located branch libraries. Mayor and council, this concludes our proposed budget presentation for 2014-15 and I'm happy to answer any questions. [10:18:35] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Any questions? Thank you very much. You've got a question? Councimember spelman. >> Spelman: Of course I do. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I gave you a full two number of seconds. >> Spelman: I would have responded in two and a half seconds at 9:00 this morning but it's too late to go that quickly. It is almost a caricature of city government that some things increase size [inaudible] and it is perceived no matter how accurate it is or not, although I think it's rather accurate now, that during the recession some services [inaudible]. Usually chris riley asking the when are we going to bring the hours back. [Inaudible] help me understand why you are thinking about -- why is increasing hours [inaudible]? >> We have always talked about the year before -- the year that the new central library opens up, we would restore the hours at the central library and at the same time restore hours to the branches. I didn't feel that this year was an appropriate year to ask to add -- let's see, I think it's about $703,000 since there really -- I know there was a focus on keeping the tax increase as low as possible and not a lot of funding available. And so I thought that keeping with that plan made sense. It's not that I object to adding the hours, it's just that I just thought this was probably not the year to ask for that. [10:20:57] >> Spelman: So this is on your long-term plan to restore hours to more or less where we were a few years ago. >> Yes. >> Spelman: But it's not the right time to do that if [inaudible]. >> That was my feeling. That was my thinking. >> Spelman: Okay. Let me ask you this. [Inaudible]. Increase the clerical staff to reduce the line at checkout, books returned get back on shelves. And one of the requirements, the primary requirement for [inaudible] for clerical staff. >> That's exactly what it is, all staff. >> Spelman: It's not more librarians. >> No, it's all front line clerks. >> Spelman: Is there any overlap? Is there any ways if we extended the hours a little bit, maybe not the full [inaudible] a way of extending the hours a little bit [inaudible]. >> Yes. We have over the last few years come up with a variety of alternatives because we're asked, would you like to increase hours, yes, we would. 703,000 is a lot of money. So wee looked at different alternatives. One would be about half -- actually less than half that amount which would be open the library on thursdays and fridays whichever days they are closed half what day or part of a day, say 1:00 to 6:00, and it would be less money and less staff. >> Spelman: So six days a week down the half days. >> Yes. >> Spelman: [Inaudible]. >> Right. >> Spelman: Roughly one-third of the cost [inaudible]. >> That's correct. >> Spelman: Would [10:23:22] [inaudible]. >> I think it will just bring people more days and more circulation and more visits, but I don't think we're going to decrease the lines that much. >> Spelman: Let me reask an alternative view. We've got a certain number of hours people want to spend in the library so more people have to cram in in the time the library [inaudible]. >> Right. >> Spelman: More people in line, fewer hours to put books back on shelf. If we back off slightly on the time constraints, five and a half days [inaudible] then you might not have quite so many people in the library. >> That's possible, yeah. >> Spelman: Did this logic work in reverse when we actually reduced the library hours over the last few years? Did we get longer lines, for example, once we had more people crammed in in a shorter period of time and get longer lines as a result? >> I would say yes, probably. >> Spelman: Okay. So it's possible that if we increase the library hours, we might make the experience a little easier for these people [inaudible] wait so long [inaudible]. And the cost of five and a half days is less than half the cost of six days. >> Right. >> Spelman: Gotcha. Okay. With respect to the [inaudible] very generous move to persuade three of my colleagues to help me out [inaudible] from your point of view is there a relative weighting of these three, one you would really like to have? And if so what? >> Okay, I would probably opt for the security guards. Just because that's always the most important thing to me is safety and security. I know dana who is sitting next to me, tory would probably ask me to do the contract compliance because that's under their purview and obviously a vulnerability for us, but I think I would ask for the security guards. [10:25:48] >> Spelman: [Inaudible]. Is there evidence that the number of incidents in libraries has gone up or relatively -- >> they are increasing. >> Spelman: They are increasing. >> Uh-huh. >> Spelman: Do we have a performance measure [inaudible]. >> I can get that for you. >> Spelman: [Inaudible]. >> Okay. >> Spelman: Thanks. >> Sure. If,. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember tovo. Testify thanks. I wonder if councimember spelman's question about opening the hours could be in the form of a question. If you don't mind. >> Spelman: Actually a formal answer a six days per week and also five and a half days per week. >> I'm sorry? >> Spelman: The answer you gave -- >> but it hasn't been submitted as a budget question. >> Spelman: I'll ask it as a formal question. >> Tovo: I think it does make sense. It really is -- and I hear less about lines and book shelving than I do about the hours. I think that's really what I hear about most. You know, people go on a friday to a library and they expect it to be open and we do have some that are closed on friday. And for the half day solution I think would make real good sense if we could find it. Find the funding to do that. But I wanted to talk a little about the [inaudible]. To what extent is that really an issue? I've got to a the look of branch libraries and very rarely wait on a line. The central library -- >> which branch and which location and what time of day. We have very busy branches and locations such as the central library, millwood, oak hill, spicewood springs. Almost any time of the day you are going to wait in line. Others it depends what time of day. After school it may be very busy, in the mornings during story time, during a program or after a program it may be very busy. It depends where you are and at what time of the day you are there. [10:27:58] >> Tovo: So some of the branches the lines are an issue, others it may be the staffing to replace books. >> Right. >> Tovo: That's interesting. Last year I know that we added money to the budget to fund some additional youth library [inaudible]. I wonder if you can give us a sense, and also the carver job center I believe is about to lose its position. Can you give some sense whether there are those kinds of gaps that may not be readily apparent to us? >> Currently this year? >> Tovo: And I can submit that as a budget question. We found out about this sort of by accident, anecdote some of the others were listed. >> Right. And you are right, last year we received two librarians, youth librarians, and now every facility has a dedicated use librarian whereas there were two that did not have that. And we had 2.75 outreach specialists who have been attending hundreds of programs and community events in schools and so on to reach out to the community and provide bilingual story times and to make children aware of the library and what it has to offer them. >> Tovo: Great. And I guess and hopefully I'll remember to submit that as a budget question. I think it would be interesting to hear a little about the outreach session since those are new positions for future councils I think it would be useful to know what -- how those positions are functioning within the system and the kind of value they've provided to the library system generally. >> I'll be happy to provide that. >> Tovo: And I think that's it. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember riley. Doctors. [10:30:02] [One moment, please, for change in captioners] >> Riley: I guess one threshold question is to what extent does the library consider that a priority, especially as compared to the other items that we've discussed. And secondly, what would be -- is there a smaller increment that would represent progress on -- in advancing that cause? >> The reason you're not seeing a lot of adult programming or -- you're seeing more and more adult programming, but there was not a lot previously, was because we didn't feel of all of our priorities in the limited staffing that was not one of the top priorities. But we're getting a lot of pressure from the community who would like to see more and more adult programming. And I can tell you that whenever we offer it we have overwhelming attendance. So it's clear that it's something that the community is asking for. And yes, we can -- with every staff member that we add we can add a certain amount of programming and I can give you those figures. [10:32:05] >> Riley: It would be helpful if we had some options that some smaller amounts, so we could see -- would one fte accomplish anything? And if so, how much would that cost? What would be some realistic options to move forward on this given the level of interest that we're seeing. That would be great. Thanks. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Yeah. They visited me too. I think they visited most everybody. I don't know if that means we're all nerds. They were speaking of trying to capture the -- I don't know if they're young adults, but the young folks moving to town now and I think that it's interesting. And in fact a lot of what -- have you had a chance to talk with them? You've heard that. One of the things I thought would be interesting would be maybe through our ett meeting we could invite you to come talk about sort of innovation programs and entrepreneurs and technology programs and compare and get their ideas on that too. >> Obviously we've done a lot of research because of the new central library and that will be a huge civic center where we will do a lot of maker, bearer kinds of opportunities. So we have the information and obviously we would also like to expand that out into the branches, but again, it's equipment and staff. >> Morrison: So I think that sounds like it would be a good vehicle to talk about that and sounds like there's some overlap for sure. I was looking at on page 181, this might tie to it. I want to find out if it does. On 181 one of the performance measures is the number of adult library cards issued. And it's essentially flat. And so I wanted to talk about that. Is that -- does that include renewals every year? [10:34:07] >> No. It's each individual card holder. And I should tell you that we purge -- not everyone library does this consistently or as regularly as others, but we purge our database of library holders regularly so that anyone who hasn't used their card in, I don't know, three years, is purged from our system. So when you compare -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: You got me in that. >> Morrison: You need to go to the library more often. >> When you compare us to other libraries -- [laughter] >> Morrison: It's getting out of control. I'm sorry, brenda. >> That's okay. I was just looking at the numbers when you compare us to other libraries we might not look as high, but they may not purge their database as often as we do. >> Morrison: Given the fact that we're having -- how many people move here a year? 40,000 -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: 1 tenet a day. >> Morrison: About 40,000. I'm juice curious that we haven't had that number increasing. And really so there could be some complications in terms of the way we manage the data. But I wonder if it means we're not capturing the new people that are moving into town to some degree. So I think this is a good conversation for us to be having, particularly if we have a big influx of young tech people, which is a lot of what we're seeing. I also wanted to comment on the hours issue. I like the idea of us going ahead if we can and trying to restore some, if not all of the hours this year, because it seems like if we -- when we opened the central library, everybody is going to be real excited to go to the central library and maybe there won't be such a demand for the branch libraries possibly. To me it makes a lot of sense, especially with the newness of it all. It makes a lot of sense to try and get some of those restored. Then I wanted to mention the virtual library circulation grew up 127 percent, grew by over 270,000. That's really cool. [10:36:17] >> We have 50,000 circulations of e material every month. >> Morrison: That's amazing. And there are a lot of wonderful programs and I want to mention one that I thought jumped out, facilitating conversation. Facilitated conversation sessions for new english learners to practice speaking english in a comfortable, safe environment. Do we have that in a lot of our different languages? >> We have that in several locations called talk time. It's volunteers assist us with that program. And I get so many letters from people participating telling me how much it means to them to be able to have that opportunity. >> Morrison: Do you have any sense for what languages people come with as a first language? >> I'm thinking it's spanish primarily. >> Morrison: I'm just wondering about, for instance, for our asian-american, immigrant population, do we offer that? >> I don't think we do. I think right now it's limited to spanish. >> Morrison: That would be interesting to consider maybe branching out with that. And one question on, there's a note in here about the willie may kirk program library pilot program, transforming the library into a computer and job center. Could you talk a little bit about that? And is it really transforming the whole library or just that one side of it? >> We have had so much success with the carver center and thank you for the position because it just keeps growing. And people -- that's another place where I get letters all the time from people saying thank you so much for having this. That one on one assistance made all the difference in me getting a job. We piloted it at the willie may kirk and instantaneously it was successful. The whole library isn't changing. Just like carver we still have the library but there's a center in the middle of the library with a computer bank. It's the staffing that makes it work because there's somebody there for one on one assistance. And as you know a lot of people going into the workplace don't have computer skills. So they help them with their resume. They help them figure out how to enter in an application because they don't know how to do it online. That's the important piece. [10:38:42] >> Morrison: That's one of the fundamental premises of working on a digital inclusion plan, and that is you can't expect to be able to engage in our society without having computer skills now. >> Right. >> Morrison: Great. That sounds great. Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: The number I gave you was for the region. For the city itself it's a little less than half of that. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I was going to suggest when the conversation happens about adult programming that our parks, it might be useful to talk with our at least have some sense of what services are offered for adults in terms of adult programming through our parks and recreation department because certainly our rec centers do offer adult programming as well and we want to be sure to leverage all of our resources and not duplicate them. >> We do by the way work with parks and recreation and collaborate with them on programs and try to work together. >> Tovo: That would be great to try to bring into the conversation what adult programs are already happening or what are some additional opportunities to meet this growing need for adult programs that it sounds like the community is asking for. I think that's it. Can I get clarification, were you suggesting, councilmember morrison, that that discussion happen at the next emerging technology? >> Morrison: I was thinking that might be a nice -- especially because -- yes, especially because we have google feedback and community connections coming to all our library. Next wednesday at 3:00. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I'll be there. >> Morrison: Good, mayor. Looking forward to having you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: We all have our meetings. Anything else on libraries? Thank you very much. I had hoped to get to the parks department, but if we started, we could not get through by 5:00, I'm sure. So I would suggest that we go ahead and adjourn this meeting and we'll take up beginning with parks and recreation on the 19th at our work session. And there's a possibility -- we need to try to get this in and we'll -- we need to think about if we need to, how many could stay for an extension of the meeting on the 19th or the other possibility r. Possibility is just to get another new day. [10:41:12] >> And mayor, I guess from staff's perspective, we had 20 departments in this book of presentations that we gave to you today. I believe we got through eight of them. Is. >> Mayor Leffingwell: But they're not all equal. >> No, they're not all equal. My question would pertain that we also have roughly 20 support functions fanned planning purposes for the 19th, do we need to have all those departments come as well since it's taken us this long to get through eight. I could see us using most of the day on the 19th for the remaining 12 but we do need to be able to provide direction to a lot of areas. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I would suggest if we can to try to plan for the entire day. I know I looked in my case, there's probably some times when I'm going to have to step out and come back in and that may be the way we do it. But to the extent that you can, I know several of the councilmembers have the extra burden this time of year, but to the extent that you can, let's try to plan for all day on the 19th. >> Morrison: Mayor, I notice on my calendar that we have a health and human services committee meeting scheduled on the 19th. So -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: Is that in the afternoon? >> At 3:00. I don't know if we need to plan rescheduling it. I don't know if there are some critical things in terms of the process of social service contracting. So we'll just have to look at that. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Yeah. If we go until 3:00 that would be helpful, I think. We might be able to do it until then. Okay. So without objection, we're adjourned at 4:44 p.M.