City Council Work Session Transcript – 08/26/2014 Title: ATXN2 Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/26/2014 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/26/2014 Transcript Generated by SnapStream Enterprise TV Server ======================================================= [03:04:40] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Good morning. I'm austin mayor lee leffingwell. A quorum is present so I'll call this austin city council work session to order on tuesday, august 26th, 2014. The time is 9:05 a.M. We're meeting in the boards and commissions room, austin city hall, 301 west second street, austin, texas. The first item on the agenda is preselected agenda items, and I have to say we will not be able to discuss any of the items that were posted on the agenda, the eight items that came out obviously because 72 hours have not elapsed since the posting of those items. The first preselected item is item number 10, pulled by councilmember spelman. >> Spelman: Can you give me just a moment, mayor? Morning. This is one of a wide variety of things that you've done to try to reduce costs in the utility, as I understand it, by requiring that people who are subdividing property and need additional lateral to pay for the lateral themselves rather than having us to pay for their lateral will save the utility somewhere between two and four million dollars a year is what it says in the rca. Is that accurate? Do I understand it correctly? >> Yes. Particularly this is focus understand the urban watershed area where we've had long-standing practices that go back about 15 years where the utility bears the cost of providing service to a first lot that's developed or if a developer is taking that lot and going to a duplex or triplex or a quad, we do all of the work for the service, including the [03:06:41] restoration work for the street involving the utility. This change is configured to push development costs into the development side just like we've done with area connection fees, depending on the amount of development I think our estimate can be up to two to four million dollars of cost the utility would bear on this. We'll take these resources that we would normally do for this kind of work and have them do other work for the utility. For example, we've been trying to reduce the amount of contracted work as a part of our budget reductions and our staff would be doing work that we would normally contract out, they would be doing it internally by liberating their time with this change. Our expert is alex flora and she could go into more detail on that. >> Spelman: This is consistent with something this council said a few times before that growth should pay for itself and this should be another example. How many of those lateral do we put in on an average year? >> Per lot we have numbers for this fiscal year and it's about 46 connections. A connection could be water and/or sewer. The low range is about $6,000 per connection and the high range can be 7,500. The reason for the variances has also to do with where the property is. If it's in an area where there's high traffic or protected streets, often that work has to be done on overtime outside of normal utility work week. >> Spelman: So that's a very mayor roadway range between six and 7.5. We don't have races where the lateral costs more or less than that then? >> I don't have that information with me. We will keep developing -- coupling this late and send it to you this afternoon. Accumulating this data. >> Spelman: Do we keep it on a case-by-case basis or a fund by fund basis? >> We've been keeping track on a case-by-case basis. >> So we have data for 2014. [03:08:43] What we're compiling is data for 2013, but our expectation would be that range isn't probably going to change that much. >> Spelman: Okay. Do you have information in your database on how many of these are subdivided into two's, three's, four's? >> We do not have that. >> Spelman: It was a subdivision you put in a lateral as to how much it cost you. My I'll save my concern, I don't want to make it too strong. I think I'll vote for it, but I want to make sure that we've identified what consequences there might be of doing this. If there are ways of providing service to an additional structure without subdivision, then it seems to me what this would do is help developers decide not to subdivide because the subdivision is what used to trigger the building of the lateral. If they could build another structure, they would have to buy the lateral anyway. It is a subdivision, which is the trigger, is that right? >> Not always. That's part of our concern is often times the owner of the property will ask us to put in these services and no one knows what they're going to be for. Then they sell the land and decide to put on a business and often times we have to go back out and change the services. That's part of our problem is they don't always know what they're going to use it for. The developers know we could get this done cheaper and so they come to us and do that work and then they decide what they'll do with the land. >> Spelman: How often does that happen? Is it two percent of the time, 10 percent of the time? >> My staff has told me it happens the majority of the time. >> Spelman: Okay. So most of the time when we're building a private lateral on to land it's not guided. We don't know what the lateral is for. [03:10:43] The owner may or may not know what the lateral is for. It just happens. Often it seems to be just on speculation to increase the price of the land and we're helping to increase the price of the land for them. >> Yes, we are. >> Spelman: That tells me all I need to know. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: I'm ready to move on. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Item 40. >> Morrison: Item 40 is a police department item that says to authorize negotiation and execution of an interlocal agreement between the city through its police department and the texas workforce commission to provide access to texas workforce commission information for criminal investigative purposes. And wife been trying to be very careful about sharing data and making sure that we're using folks' information appropriately, so I wondered if we could just get a fuller explanation about the circumstances and what this is all about. >> Certainly, good morning, mayor, council. Bryan manly, assistant chief of the austin police department. This is is something our investigators use. It is very beneficial for us in locating individuals. Often times those that are wanted for having committed a crime. They may have a warrant for their arrest or we may want to locate them to question them regarding their involvement in an offense and this database allows us to basically find out where they're collecting their paychecks because normally you will find someone wherever their paychecks are going to. This is an ability for our investigators to go and find out where a person is employed and much more on likely to locate them to be able to investigate them. Interview, whatever is is may take. This is an database that we used, back when I was a detective 20 years ago. This is coming up as a renewal as something we use as an investigative tool. >> Morrison: Okay. I didn't get any of that from the backup. >> Sorry about that. This is something we're using as a means to locate [03:12:49] individuals. It's not something that we're using for reasons really beyond that. >> Morrison: Maybe I don't understand something about the workforce commission so this is is about the individual, where their paycheck is going. >> Correct. We can get information from them that they're collecting data from employers, so the employers are providing the data and that allows us to find out where individuals are employed. >> Morrison: I see. I was concerned about the folks that use the workforce commission as a means to help them find a job. And I wanted to make sure we weren't putting up a barrier to people wanting to do that. So how long has this been going on? >> I notifies using it 20 years ago and so we've been using it for quite some time. >> Morrison: Great. And is that a database that you just access and it goes away or do you pull the data and store the data? >> We don't store the data, we access it. And so we basically log in, get the information that we need. And then we're back out. >> Morrison: Great. All right. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Any other questions on that item? Item 41 by councilmembers morrison and spelman. >> Morrison: I had a couple of questions. We had some recommendations that came out and I know you did a lot of work with the community to try and put something together that was going to work well and strengthen our ordinance. And I appreciate that work. And then we did a resolution that said please go forward and bring us an ordinance that implements the recommendations. And so I had a couple of questions about the ordinance and how it lines up with the recommendation. Maybe there was just [03:14:49] something that I was reading incorrectly and I could use some help understanding it. It says to move the vehicle off the active traffic plains lanes. When I look at the ordinance it said you can't do it on a public roadway. That seems like two different things. >> I would agree with that and I think we're taking the safer course of action by having individuals pull into a parking lot and out of the roadway. As the ordinance is written, the proposed ordinance would actually require that you leave the roadway and enter a parking lot. >> Morrison: And the recommendation-- okay. So we need to be clear that that's a difference. The recommendation say it shouldn't apply in a parking lot and then the ordinance itself says it applies in a parking lot for public usage. So can you help us understand? >> The recommendations actually should have stated that it was to apply in a parking lot. That was one of the significant concerns of the work group is that there's obviously a lot of pedestrian traffic in parking lots, more so than on the traveled roadways. And a driver that's more focused on their phone than the parking lot you can still cause significant injuries hitting a pedestrian even at lower speeds. So the intent of the work group was to include parking lots. >> Morrison: I'm looking at page five of the recommendations. It says the provisions of this ordinance should not apply to a person who has pulled their vehicle off the active traffic lane, is stopped or is in a parking lot. >> That should be who is parked in a parking lot. That was the intent of the work group. So that is -- a very important word was left out of that. >> Morrison: That's a significant difference. >> Yes. >> Morrison: And so looking at the ordinance, it says you can't do it while you're operating a car. So being parked in a parking [03:16:49] lot is not operating a car. >> Correct. >> Morrison: Okay. Great. And is there an issue about parking garages? I notice there's just a mention of parking lots. Was that discussed? >> There's no intent to differentiate between a parking lot and a parking garage and seek advice from the law department on whether we would have to spell that out specifically in the proposed ordinance, but the intent of the work group was to include both. >> Morrison: Okay. And is there any issue -- we're talking about private property now, parking lots, as long as they're accessible for public use. Is there any issue about enforcing this on private property? >> I would refer back to law, but they were comfortable including it in the proposed ordinance. >> Morrison: Okay. Actually, back to law, do we have the law didn't here? Could we -- could I ask about the parking lot versus parking garage? Is that going to be an issue? >> Thank you. I don't see that to be an issue in terms of it's a verbiage really. It can be cleared up by adding garage with lot and/or garage, but I don't see that to be an issue with the way it's drafted now. >> Morrison: Okay. I guess I might question like in our land development code if there's a difference between a garage and parking lot we might want to make it consistent. >> I can look into that. >> Morrison: So there's no question about that. And then if you could help us understand -- I know this is the question that folks brought up to me. Some of these things say it's okay. There's an exception for some things, but really it's crafted in terms of being an affirmative defense to prosecution. Can you explain the difference and why we don't just say it's an exception? >> Certainly. Why this drafting an affirmative defense means [03:18:49] it's something that the driver or defendant would need to raise. So first the state would prove the elements that you were basically illegally using your electronic device while operating a vehicle. Don't have to prove what's list in an affirmative defense. It's up to the defense to bring that up. If something is listed as an exception, the state has to prove at the git-go in their case in chief all of those exceptions. So in drafting it's better to have it as an affirmative defense as opposed to an exception. >> Morrison: I guess the concern is that are these going to be things that people can actually prove. As a defense. I'm just thinking about workability for folks. >> Yes. In most of these types of traffic cases it's word against word anyway. There's not a whole lot of documents per se in terms of proof, but they certainly have a right to testify and say no, I was actually using it this way and it's one of the affirmative defenses. So just as mostly when the police officer is testifying they're just talking about their experience with the traffic stop. So that's how these traffic offenses go down anyway. They can prove it through their own testimony. Sometimes they might have admissible documents, but they will have that opportunity. >> Morrison: Okay. And another question on being in an -- out of an active traffic lane, often active traffic lane, I guess that's something we need to ponder since it wasn't part of the recommendation. Would that be difficult to add in here if we wanted to actually limit it to just allowing them to be off of an active traffic lane as opposed to any public roadway. >> That could be easily taken care of in the drafting. >> Morrison: Good. And someone suggested to me, and I guess I just would like my colleagues' input on this, is there had been a suggestion that there would be a public hearing about this beyond just posting it and taking testimony. [03:20:52] I don't know if anyone was familiar with that discussion or not. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I hadn't heard the suggestion, but I think something as far reach as this would merit a public hearing. I wanted to follow up on one of the questions that wasn't answered because the lawyer wasn't here yet and that was enforcement on private property. >> And so your question is would we be able to extend this to private property? >> Mayor Leffingwell: My understanding has always been that the police department does not engage in enforcement in parking lots or other private property. >> So I see there's a piece I can answer and then perhaps the chief can answer whether or not a.P.D. Would enforce it. >> Mayor Leffingwell: He referred that question to the lawyer. >> I can answer the legal piece of this because this is a city ordinance and not a state law, we can't extend it to the parking lots that are technically private property under the law. Now, whether or not a.P.D. Would pursue on a private property -- >> if the ordinance goes through in its current fashion and its law as advised, we will do enforce it as we do violations of handicapped parking and things of sort. We would be more than happy to enforce it if it's included in the ordinance. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I'm not advocating for that. I just think if it is, it would be very confusing to a lot of people who say I'm in so and so's parking lot here, I can pick up my phone and make a call. >> Understood. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Expect? >> Spelman: [Inaudible]. The parking lot, there would be no harm in saying I guess a parking lot or garage available for public usage. So although it is private property, the h.E.B. Parking lot is owned by h.E.B., A lot of people are on it. You have spaces which are reserved for people who are disabled and who can enforce that stuff now. And very occasionally I see a police officer in that parking lot. [03:22:54] So that's -- from a legal point of view you can't enforce and from a practical point of view at least some of the time you're out there. >> Yes. >> Spelman: What does it mean to operate a motor vehicle? >> That's a great question because again there's definitions that occur under state law, but not necessarily under the city ordinance. When something doesn't exist in the city ordinance a subject is left with the standard dictionary definition. Or their own application of that word. And I've seen judges taking anything from the vehicle needs to be moving to key in the ignition and the vehicle is on and maybe parked. So we've got a range there of how this might be applied. >> Spelman: I've got my key on accessory and I'm running my air conditioning but the car isn't moving or started, I can't move the car, it would be operating technically. >> What most judges or lawyers in this field use is the -- the analogy to d.W.I., Where you can be convicted of d.W.I. Without your vehicle even moving as long as it's on. >> Spelman: Okay. So I'm drunk as a skunk, I sit in my car, I turn on the key, I realize I'm too drunk to actually move this car, but I'm still d.W.I. >> Yes. >> Spelman: I've never done this, by the way, but I could. >> It's a hypothetical, I understand. It's called actual physical control of your vehicle. That you have demonstrated an intent to drive your vehicle. This is how it's used in d.W.I. So for example, in d.W.I. If someone wants to make sure they're not, in quote, in actual physical control, they need to turn off the car and take the keys out of the ignition. >> Spelman: That would be probably the way the average judge would interpret operating. >> Yes. Most of the legal articles or other treatises that talk about this go back to, well, let's look at d.W.I., How is operating applied in that world? >> Spelman: Okay. Is there a value in restating that in this ordinance so we know what we're dealing with and we don't have to have interpretation issues? >> Yes. There's always value in having clear definitions that help the public know what is required of them under the law. So that is something that [03:24:54] could be added to be clear. We would just need to know what definition of operating the council is wanting into this. >> Spelman: Right now what we've got is no definition of operating other than whatever is in the statute for d.W.I. It seems to me that I didn't know what that was. I'm probably -- those of us who are lawyers, that would be brother riley would know what it was, rest of us probably wouldn't. It seems to me that the average person wouldn't understand it either. We probably ought to restate it. What does it mean to operate a bicycle? >> That gets a little more -- because it's not an engine involved, because it's a piece of the engine that differentiate the definition of operating a vehicle. >> I carry my engine with me on my bicycle. >> True. Again, it would be difficult, unless we want to define it, a judge would probably define it as the bicycle is in molestation. >> Spelman: Okay. So I straddle my bicycle, I'm not moving, I can talk on the phone. But as soon as I put my foot on the pedal and start moving I have to hang up. >> Yes, because there's not an engine involved. >> Spelman: I can't think of how to operate a bicycle other than to move it, but it seems to me that some clever defense lawyer would find some way around this. So we probably ought to specify that one too, it seems to me. And I'm comfortable with the moving bicycle versus stationary bicycle as being the trigger here. But we ought to so state. There is two ways of having hands-free operation, one of which I think is probably what the taskforce and the police department had in mind and that's using bluetooth or some other means of having you speak into a microphone attached to your car and the speakers of your car are conveying the messages. The other way to do it is to attach headphones to your [03:26:55] phone and put them on your ears. It seems to me that there's at least an argument could be made that the headphones would be isolating and then that might have an effect on your ability to drive. Is that something which anybody has been talking about? >> In the work group we focused on your initial statement and that was using anything that is hands-free, wireless with the bluetooth being one of the providers. We are not excluding the ability, however, to go hands-free with the headset on, although that definitely impairs someone's ability to pay attention to what's going on in the roadway. That was not the intent of the group to restrict that, and that is currently allowable. We did discuss it, albeit briefly, but the intent was not to direct what type of wireless, hand-held operation. >> So there's some discussion -- for example, you may not hear sirens or horns as readily if you had headphones on as otherwise. But that wasn't judged to be a big enough impairment that we needed to restrict it. >> Correct. What we discussed more so was the need of being hands free. That was what the group focused on. To be sure I understand, parking lot the car is not moving, therefore at least by some definitions it is not operating. Maybe the car is turned on and it is technically operating, but nobody sees me. I dial my number. I've got bluetooth so it's now dials. I pull out into traffic and I'm driving. >> That would be fine if you're saying the speaker on your phone, that would be fine. So it does not have to be hands free from start to finish. It will have to be hands free for the duration of the period when the car is operating. >> That's correct. I think from a compliance [03:28:55] perspective if you give the person the ability to stop their vehicle, make the call and then go back in motion you're much more likely to get compliance than if you try and restrict it altogether. >> Spelman: I think this was the most controversial issue and I want to raise it here because we need to have a discussion about it. Some people maintain that having your hand on the phone and talking on the phone while driving with one hand or sometimes zero hands if you've got a shift is obviously going to be an impairment. I'm on with that for sure, but if you are stopped at a stoplight, not being able to dial your phone because you haven't got a bluetooth dial strikes some people and initially struck me as being not particularly an impairment as long as you're just dialing the phone while you're stopped at a stoplight. I know this is something that there was some controversy about. What's your position on that? >> I think the work group, the predominant belief was that it should be restricted across the board. But it was not consensus. It was also not a consensus among the public safety commission, the ones who brought this forward and have been involved in this as well. Fringe a compliance perspective, if you have motorists that know that ultimately they're going to stop at a stoplight at some point in austin traffic and they may be able to make that phone call at that point, they may hold off and be more compliant with the law than if they know that they're going to be restricted for the next 35 minutes until they get to their destination. So that's part of the discussion that needs to be had. At the end of the day it's really up to the will of the council based on what I think the citizens' input would be on that. But again, I think that there's merit to the ability that enhanced compliance if people know they'll have that opportunity. We discuss the frequency [03:30:55] that we get crashes on on our major thoroughfares, i-35, mopac, when traffic comes to a stand still, the need for individuals maybe to send a quick text or make a call to someone to tell them to pick up a family member or something along those lines. I think these are the areas that have to be discussed. >> Spelman: My friend kim's argument was that we should legislate against things which are unsafe or unhealthy, we should not legislate among things that may have the potential to be merely annoying. The potential is I'm dialing the phone and I might miss a couple of beats when there's space in front of me when the traffic light turns green, that's annoying, but not unsafe. >> There is a state law already that covers what you're talking about, it's called impeding traffic. If somebody is holding up vehicles when they're dialing their phone they could be cited for impeding traffic. There is a law for that. >> Spelman: From a practical point of view, if we chose not to make it illegal not to dial your phone while stopped at the stoplight, would that be a practical problem from an enforcement point of view? >> From the enforcement side, no, officer trujillo would be able to determine that the -- the officer would be able to determine that the officer has stopped their vehicle and could have the device in their hand and it would be very noticeable if they started moving that vehicle with the device still in hand. >> Spelman: You can see what's going on in the vehicle, they're dialing, that's object. They're starting to move and they've still got the phone in their hand, that's not okay. You could tell. >> Under the proposal yes, if you were to amend what's proposed right now and make that allowable, then yes, that would from an enforcement perspective, we can work with that. >> Spelman: Thank you, sir. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I have a follow-up on councilmember spelman's line of questioning. First of all I wanted to pose this situation, you're in a private parking lot in your car so the engine is running and you have the air conditioner, but you're not in the driver's seat. And that's kind of, as strange as these arguments can get. It seems to me echoing [03:32:56] councilmember spelman, the purpose of the law is to provide for safety, to increase safety. And safety is not going to be impeded if the vehicle is not moving. So why don't we just simplify the thing and say if your car or other vehicle is moving in traffic-- you're not bound by this restriction to not use a hand-held device. Otherwise you can. To me that makes common sense. It achieves the objective without getting into all these strange arguments and definitions of what it is and what it isn't. It's kind of overreach to me. >> That's one way that it can be drafted to address that concern, yes. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I would like to hear what the rationale was for the public safety committee to recommend that you couldn't use a device even if you're at a dead stop. >> Mr. Mayor, maybe I misspoke as I left the word stopped out of that document. My intent to convoy to you from our group was when you are in a parking lot if you are stopped you can use that device. That's exactly -- what we were trying to handle with the proposal was that if your vehicle was moving in the parking lot, then we don't want you on a device because there's a lot of pedestrian traffic. >> Mayor Leffingwell: How about if you're stopped at a traffic light and some of them can be quite long. There's nothing unsafe about doing that if your car is stopped. >> And as I was just saying, mr. Mayor, that was the point of contention in the group, the recommendation that went to you all from the work group was the predominant belief on the group, but not unanimous nor unanimous amongst the public safety commission. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: I want to chime in that I think if somebody is in a parking lot, in a parking space with the key in the ignition so that the air conditioning can be on, making a phone call that that needs to not be against the law in this town. [03:34:58] >> And that was the intent of the work group. If we need to word it as such that was the exact intent that you can sit in the parking lot with your vehicle on. I guess the key phrase, and mr. Mayor you've hit on it as well as moving, if the vehicle is not moving then we're not concerned. Maybe the easiest way to capture is if the vehicle is in park. That's what we're looking for is the exact that the vehicle not be in motion when you're using the device. >> Morrison: Until it's not in park if it's stopped at a traffic light. >> Mayor Leffingwell: You can put it in park. >> Morrison: You can. I'm not sure that would be visible. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Might have to put some video recorders in the cars to ascertain that. [Laughter] >> Morrison: I do think we need to be real clear on this because the reason we're here looking at this again is because there were concerns about clarity of the previous one and what was really intended. So we really should probably conceptually decide where we want to head and get the language to study. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Should it be in park or parking brake set, either one? >> I do have some more questions. Councilmember martinez. >> Martinez: Is there a definition in the law for the term stop or stopped? >> Under the state law yes. So we could use those definitions. >> Martinez: So add clarification to the proposed ordinance you would simply insert the word stopped or stop, and that would contemplate red lights, that would contemplate parking lots, that would contemplate anywhere, as well as the vehicle was at a stop. Apparently there is state statute that defines stop. >> Spelman: But you can't stop in the middle of traffic because you're impeding traffic and you've got another violation. >> Spelman: But that's the red light scenario is what I'm referring to. >> Spelman: What I'm saying is we don't need to legislate against the announce of somebody stopped for too long because we've already got something else. So stopped could just mean stopped, I agree with you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: We want to be careful here. We don't want to damage our reputation by using common sense. [Laughter] >> Morrison: Speaking of [03:36:59] common sense, I did want to go back to the definition of operating a bicycle because I heard two things. One, you're either standing there with the bike or two, you're in motion riding the bike. What about walking the bike. Is that operating a bicycle? We should decide. >> I'll look at that and tell you that I think you all realize that during the discussions pedestrians got involved in the discussion at one point, it came up as a question to the taskforce. We were looking at distracted driving, not distracted walking. That's an issue solely of itself. The intent of this work group was bicyclists riding their bicycle and texting. I think if we go along the lines we're talking here we simply put it that a bicycle in motion is what we're trying to prohibit an individual using a device with. That's where the danger exists. If you are stopped along the curb, stopped at a stop sign, then we don't see the safety concern there as we would if you were moving. >> Morrison: You said bicycle in motion. Motion, peddling it, not walking it. >> We might need to get a little more specific. >> Morrison: I think we do. >> Not walking a bicycle, correct. >> Because printly in the world of municipal court, the defenses are divided into two, moving violations and non-moving vices and presently all cycling offenses come from the non-moving violation. This is the first time that we've tried to make it more in line with what we're expecting the driver of a vehicle to do. So there would be -- yes, so there could be some confusion if that's not definitely spelled out. >> Morrison: Okay. And I don't think we intend to capture bicyclists that are walking their bikes. >> That's not the intent. In all fairness I want to make sure that I point out and I believe you have it in your backup documents that we did get feedback from one of the city's other commissions that deals with the pedestrian issues and the bicycle issues and they were not in favor of including bicycles at this [03:38:59] time. I believe you have the backup documentation on that. What it really boiled down to is it has not been proven to be a greater threat. Just want to point that out. Our recommendation on the work group is still to include them. >> Morrison: I have another question. Councilmember riley, did you have one? And just to be really nitty-gritty, when I'm making a phone call with my hands-free mode I actually have to operate a little button on my steering well that says I want to do a speed dial. And when I want to hang up I'll have to click that with my thumb. Now, I don't think anybody is going to see me do that, but based on what I just talked about, we don't intend to catch that, do we? >> In the definition section in this draft here it's manipulating your portable electronic device. You would have to actually be touching the device and not necessarily the bluetooth button that's installed in your vehicle. >> Morrison: It's technically hands-free, it's just thumb usage. And speaking of looking at pedestrians and using their hands-free, -- their personal devices, we might want to make a law against walking through city hall and texting because that can be dangerous. That's been proven. [Laughter] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Are you referring to a specific incident there? >> Morrison: Yes. [Laughter] >> Morrison: I can say I've seen almost collisions, near collisions in city hall, people walking into each other. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. Thank you. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Two quick ones. Just to clarify, and I think you've gone over this a couple of times. There was some concern about operating a gps -- systems that are built into the dashboard and those are not covered by this. This is strictly talking about portable. >> Correct. >> Tovo: My second question is can you help me understand why two-way [03:41:01] radios were excluded? It would seem to me the same kind of mechanism as holding a portable phone. >> There was a concern that we may severely inhibit some of the businesses and their ability to conduct business with their drivers that may be delivering and all that and the need to communicate back and forth via the two-way radio systems. So that's where that recommendation came from is that we're obviously trying to improve the safety to the best of our abilities without impeding those individuals' abilities to conduct their business. So that's where it came from. >> Tovo: I think I need some help understanding which which businesses -- are we talking about drivers? >> It could be delivery drivers to the downtown bar and restaurants with delivery trucks out front, ice trucks. A lot of different types of deliveries. An ability for them to communicate. Cab drivers with radios in their vehicles, things like that is what we're trying to not interfere with. >> Tovo: It seems with the technology changing more and more people are using phones and ed and I think some would argue that they're using them to communicate for their business and that we're impeding it with this ordinance. I understand and support the safety reasons for doing it, but again I'm really not understanding why a two-way radio should be an exception if what we're trying to do is keep people from holding things. What are the businesses that you feel that you were hearing from? >> It's not that a specific business reached out to us. >> Tovo: A kind of business. >> Deliveries. Whether it be, again, beverage companies, food service companies that are delivering to the restaurants, cab companies, any of those businesses. So obviously this is the [03:43:01] division of the council if you choose not to go this route, but what came out of the actual work group is we afford them afford them opportunity to use those to conduct their business. >> Tovo: Are their hands free options for some of those businesses? >> I would imagine if they switched over to cellular service and provided all their drivers with cellular devices, hands-free cellular devices that they could accomplish the same. Yes. >> Tovo: Thanks. No, I'm sorry, I have one more question. Can you help me understand the amateur radio, services activities that might be going on when someone is driving. >> Part of that came from our own ctec and homeland security division. That during natural emergencies, disasters, you get a lot of ham radio operators and amateur radio operators that are very helpful in getting information out and communicating. And they actually go through some pretty significant training in how to operate those devices. So they were very concerned if we included them in proposed ordinance that that would impact their ability to operate to their fullest potential during emergency services. >> Tovo: Because they're operating them while they're driving? >> Correct. >> Tovo: Okay. Thanks. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. We'll go to next item pulled by councilmember morrison, item 51. >> Morrison: Thank you. This is a purchasing item. And I really pulled it just because I wanted to highlight the facebook -- do we have someone from -- highlight the fact that -- do we have someone from machining here? Purchasing here? Okay. Oh, right, this is an ae item too. I really wanted to highlight the fact that this is the first use of a policy that we adopted last time. As you know when we're doing purchasing there are certain circumstances when we have [03:45:03] the ability to go with a higher cost or a little bit higher if it's a local entity. And previously when we wanted to do that, we've always had to pull it as a council and ask to explicitly make that change. We adopted a policy on the seventh, asking the city manager to please use his discretion and consider actually going straightforward with a recommendation, the local one. So -- that's what's happening here, as I understand it. The language is a little different to capture that. So I wanted to check in with staff, make sure that this is a smooth operation and comfortable for the recommendation that came in. >> Elaine hart, cfo. I think this is our first timeout and we're trying it out, but it looks like it's going to work. And we may refine it as we go on if we find any issues with it, but we're still working on the process, but this is our first one. >> Morrison: As posting notes, we really have an obligation to evaluate it's the best combination of price plus additional economic development opportunities for the city created by the contract award, including the employment of residents of the city and increased tax revenue for the city so that's what you look at. And I guess one question is will purchasing be changing their standard operating procedures or rules that they work by to actually capture this to make sure that it gets institutionalized. >> We currently have a local preference policy. There's a section in our policy manual for that and certainly we will update it to reflect the policy change that the council made. It hasn't been done yet, but we will do that to make sure that the instructions to the city departments and staff [03:47:03] are accurate in the new process we have. We just haven't done that yet. >> Morrison: I appreciate that and I think that we all sort of -- I think everybody strives to find ways that we can help promote local businesses and so it's great to find one small step to be able to take it. I appreciate your work on that. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Anything else? That brings us to item 64. Councilmember spelman. >> Spelman: You're asking for a consultant who will be providing assistance in getting the information office moving. And in getting people to innovate presumably and also providing software to help keep track of what's going on in different places. How much of this is software and how much of this is consulting? >> Good morning. I'm carry o'connor, the city's chief innovation officer. And the open innovations software comes with a package of professional services. The full suite of professional services is about half of the cost. There is a lot of methodology around the use of this software to open up and track ideas. Some people call them contests, campaigns, competitions, can challenges. And it's all around how you frame and then incentivize the call for ideas. So that you can bring those ideas fully through to the implementation. The consulting is how we have that frame and the ideas. Sometimes you don't need money. Sometimes you might need some award or it depends upon what subject matter you're dealing with. Once you have determined that design, then how do you [03:49:04] configure the software to appropriately facilitate the discipline process by which you bring the ideas through to implementation. >> Spelman: So this is more complicated than the suggestion box of old. >> Correct. >> Spelman: Effectively that's what it is. People have ideas, give us your ideas. We're providing incentives, we're framing this in a more complicated way than just put your idea in the box and maybe you will get a check at the end of the month or something like that. What evidence do we have that this approach or this consultant, bright idea, is going to be more effective than stuff we could find ourselves. >> This company has existed for between 10 and 15 years. We use them in a previous -- in my previous job in order to engage employees on particular campaigns around particular topics. So the difference between an open suggestion box and, say, we're looking for ideas, you know, around how can we better implement our green, you know, infrastructure, for example. You would pick a frame that you're trying to solve for and solicit ideas on that frame because what happens is you have all of the implementation resources prepared to amateur the ideas, take them through to implementation. The company offers this to probably about 250 private sector clients. They have also done this for the city of san francisco. They've done it for the country of ireland. They've done it also at the federal level where I used to work. >> Spelman: The department of state? >> The department of state. >> Spelman: Is there a way of demonstrating that before, after comparison or some other means of showing that there are more or better ideas that come out [03:51:05] of this technology than otherwise. >> What you are able to track are the met treks of the health of the community. You can measure the number of votes, comments. You can measure the outcomes because you can take these ideas, the highest votes. You bring them over to the proposal drafting phase. You can vet those. You can capture met treks on these interactions and measure them over time. The first time you do this you get a baseline and over time you can measure both quantitatively and qualitatively how the ideas are shaping up over time. Approximately there are other benefits of the software by opening up ideas for a larger group to see. You're enabling a virtual space for collaboration where sometimes it's hard to get the people in the same place at the same time. You're solving for sometime and space, which are some of the innovation and ideas. One of the ways I'm looking at implementing this out of the box is giving the consulting services and the software to 311. They've recently implemented a new app and they're going to have to be sifting through which features they might enhance next or where they might take that capability next. They're going to be receiving a lot of ideas from the public and from within their own employee group. So if we can help them shape that campaign, make a season for sifting through the appropriate enhancements to that software, it will enable them to better triage where to go next and what to solve for next. And then bring those ideas all the way through to implementation. >> Spelman: Okay. Help me with that case because it will make the whole thing more tangible to me. 311, the public wants to get involved because they'll be using the app. The 311 operators, who else [03:53:05] is going to have to be involved in this? >> Well, initially I'm hoping to grow the capability because framing the challenge is difficult and configuring the software and using the software. So the first thing I want to do is just enable 311 to use this on their own. If you have a bunch of telephone operators sitting in a room, they don't have the ability to get together and brainstorm. So having this asynchronous collaboration, put your idea here, have others play with it and then come back to it, when that is successful, we have our lessons learned, then we may say let's open it up to 311 plus other departments in which they can collaborate together. When they've been successful in a three or four week campaign, now we open it up to, say, 311 plus a group like open austin. Open austin helped vet the app before launch. They helped prototype it. And so to be able to collaborate in one space, one virtual space between a central texan group and 311 would be really useful. I want foe grow that capability in a maturity model to know what we're doing. I don't want to be clumsy or sloppy handling people's ideas because we're protective of our ideas and I want to treat them properly. >> We get more of them when people believe they'll be hand downstream. >> And we want to learn how to handle themselves. >> In a minimum you're talking about 311 operators first talking to one another and accessing a website or where are it's going to be. See what other people are -- put forth these ideas and being able to comment on them. Other managers that are affected by 311 that have to deal with 311 calls would be able to see the same thing. We can get a lot of people involved in this. [03:55:07] >> When you think about helping the innovation office expand its reach, in the past five months I've spent spoken to somewhere between 500 and a thousand people between all my meetings. If I were to try to access those people and arc straight their ideas it would take me more than another five months. But if I can open up this software to a maximum of 5,000 within the first year I can make sure that I have the right expertise focusing on an issue of importance to a project champion and we don't all have to be in the same place at the same time. So we'll start with 311 but we can grow other pockets up to a limit of 5,000 people in the first year. Once we grow the capability, the company does offer an unlimited license that we could add on if we feel that it merits. >> Spelman: My first reaction in looking at this item was to focus on the software. And $160,000 for software strikes me as a very large amount of money, particularly since what it looked like at least on its face was just a database. We've got lots of access to databases in this city, which are much, much cheaper than the $80,000 that you're paying for here. The combination of the consulting and the dressed up database, which would presumably be a little bit easier to use than access or something like that, I can see a value in that. But I think what I need more information on and we should probably take this offline is your general approach to how we'll get ideas from people, how we'll help people sift through these ideas and see whether or not they're working. I know there are a lot of ways of going about that, but in choosing this vendor and choosing this approach we're actually choosing or you're choosing and we're helping you choose a way of going about innovation in this city. And it's a lot more important than just the $160,000 for this particular item. >> And there is an entire toolkit and infrastructure that I'm putting in place. This is but one piece. [03:57:08] It is the most important piece because it enables that widespread collaboration and it helps solve for the space and time issue. We are also investing in facilitation methods, we're investing in business modeling and project design and we can talk about those at some other point, but this is part of a larger vision. It's only one slice. It just happens to be the most powerful tool to expand the reach of the office. And when -- in my previous job we expanded it to 25,000 users every month, which enabled people to highlight what projects were important. It helped us engage them and get insights and perspectives that we didn't have that fed into what would make something viable. It enabled a project owner to think about what would incentivize the right talent to be involved and that design work is part of what opens up possibility. >> Spelman: Most of the good ideas are the people who actually have to implement those ideas anyway. They don't come from managers because they're too far away from what actually has to happen. >> They come from all of us. There's a viability piece in making the ideas resonate that managers can help us solve for because they know how strategic business decisions are made and what resonates. What I had like to say is we have aspirations and then reality on the ground and the distance between them can be filled with a lot of things that can trip us up in order to implement successful innovation projects. And so I'm teeing up the innovation office as an internal consultancy in order to help solve for those things that can trip us up. It's about solving for implementation and make sure you have a descend innovation process, that you have the right talent, skills and technique at the table. That you've considered all method for exploring what we're solving for and what [03:59:09] they are ideas are and then figuring out what's available. And the software, there aren't very many software providers that hit all of those angles. Anybody can create an open suggestion box, but enabling that discipline process from the whole exploration phase through to implementation phase, there's probably only three major software providers, and this one was the most nimble and adaptable and has the longest experience on the market. >> Spelman: We ought to have a conversation later on about viability because it seems to me -- we're probably on the same page, but it seems to me that you don't know what other idea -- whether an idea is viable or not sometimes until you try it. We ought to err on the side of experimentation at least within practical limits. Sounds like you're at least nodding your head and agreeing with me. >> Absolutely. And if you imagine somebody coming up with a prototype, just a sketch on paper, they can put that in this idea. One thing is that it enables you, there's a mobile app where you can draw or sketch your idea and submit that as an idea. So what this enables you to prototype and fail fast on ideas before you've spent a lot of money in the experimentation phase. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] [04:02:06] a lot of misunderstanding of what it is and what it is not. It is very direct language but I think some of the intent and purpose that this has needs to be laid out. First of all, I think it applies to the ordinance city wide. The entire city, public and private. Is that correct? >> I believe so, yes, sir. >> That is the intent in what we assume, so that would mean bars, large and small, restaurants, offices. How about offices that are open to the public versus offices that are not open to the public? They just have rest rooms for employees. Would that apply there? >> I don't have that information. Hopefully there is somebody else here. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I think there are a lot of unanswered questions and I know the resolution contemplates a process in engaging stakeholders and then it says including and not limited to and it points out groups but the groups that will most be affected are not spelled out in this list and I suspect these business people, people who operate offices, people who operate bars and restaurants, a lot of them are small and mainly the small as soon ass are going to be affected. Nows drugstore is going to be affected by this, for example, where I often have lunch. All of these -- I think it would be much more comforting -- first of all, I think it's kind of such a dramatic change in the way we do business that we would be better served, as we detective on an earlier item, [04:04:08] to have a city wide discussion about it and giving people an opportunity to provide input. But I definitely think, at the very least, we ought to spell out some of the commercial groups who are going to be affected by this, and there is not as soon as -- for example, it points out the austin gay and lesbian chamber of commerce, but it doesn't point out the greater austin chamber of commerce, the hispanic chamber of commerce, black chamber of commerce, et cetera, asian-american chamber of commerce, so, definitely all of these commercial enterprises should be included in the discussion as well as the public at large around frankly I would like to see a much more -- a much larger process take place before we go ahead and start engaging stakeholders in process amendments and that's what we hear back. >> Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: City manager. >> Ott: I am assuming your questions are directed towards the sponsors of this item? >> Mayor Leffingwell: I know who the sponsors are but I have directed the questions to staff but they are free to answer or comment on this. >> Spelman: I appreciate your questions. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member spelman. >> Spelman: And recognizes that the be it resolved part of this resolution represents people who are already in favor of it. We are not talking about the people who are in favor in the first place. We need to talk to people who are affected by it. You've given us a list and I can think of a couple of other people on the list and I believe that can change the resolution without changing the basic idea at all. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member riley. >> Riley: Let me say I wholeheartedly agree that we have a value in having a broad, civic conversation about this and I will be happy to modify the resolution with the stakeholders that you see here. What we are talking about here is not subjecting anyone [04:06:08] to additional expense in terms of adding any kind of equipment to any kind of facilities. What we are talking about is existing single occupancy rest rooms -- it is really a matter of changing signage. On our own floor where we have single occupancy restaurants in the own hall. It would be a matter, instead of designating as soon as for men and as soon as for women, it would be a matter of identifying them as rest rooms. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I understand there is a lot of details to work out, but would you contemplate some kind of standard signage, or would any gender neutral signage be okay? >> Riley: I don't expect that we -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: That it say "rest room" or somebody else could say "lavatory," or "loo," or whatever. >> Toy lets or -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: You don't contemplate it being that specific, all though it could come out of the process. >> Riley: I am sure everybody is free to raise recommendations they like through the process but I do foot expect to be dictating terminology instead of simply making clear that we don't generally want to see gender specific sign only on single occupancy rest rooms. >> Mayor Leffingwell: How about offices that are not open to the public? >> Riley: That would be certainly as soon as of the things that could be discussed in the course of this process. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So scope is as soon as of the things? >> Riley: Sure, absolutely. >> Mayor Leffingwell: That's kind of wide open at this point, would you say? >> Riley: Well, I think the intent is fairly straightforward, but, sure, it's wide open in being able to offer anything in this process that they'd like. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I think there should be a lot of public discussion about this because what I am hearing now in the media is a lot of stuff that potentially, as I [04:08:10] understand it, is inaccurate. That's a lack of understanding, and I think a lot of public education is going to be necessary on something like this. So any other comments? >> Riley: And, mayor, I understand that change is hard and that we are talking about something that we see in many different businesses and I can understand disorienting if some haven't come across it. In other ways, this is very basic and straightforward. Many of us have single occupancy rest rooms in our own homes and my guess is most don't take the trouble to specify they are limited to as soon as gender or the other and we are really talking about changing the same concept to the public places. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I understand. I don't have any signage at all in my rest room at all, by the way. >> Riley: That is progressive of you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I just have to know where it is. Down the hall and to the right. [Laughter] okay. Those are my comments. Any others? Go next to item 95, pulled by council member spelman. >> Spelman: I understand there is a more recent version of the resolution than the as soon as which was first posted which no longer says the standard for air conditioning will be 75-degrees. I appreciate that. And the only question I've got for the sponsors is whether or not you anticipate that the final standard will be 1 degree standard which will apply to all city buildings, or whether it might depend on the building, or even on the time of day of that building? >> Morrison: Mayor, if I may. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: So it's the standard that we are citing here, the texas facilities commissions standard is taken as a default and then it's foreseen to work through the [04:10:11] different buildings, the different times of day, depending -- and that there could be and would be expected to be differences based on their operational characteristics. For instance, if there are folks that work at night in the building, you don't want to be hiking up the building to 85-degrees or something. >> Spelman: And there are some that are inefficient to cool that if you move it to 85-degrees, it will take a couple of hours to make it to a working temperature in the morning. >> Morrison: Yes, and I think that would certainly be considered in an operational aspect that needs to be taken into account. >> Spelman: Thank you. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So -- and I have another question. There are hundreds of thermostats in all of these buildings. How do you -- what is the plan? Some kind of remote control? Are we going to have the thermostat police, or what? >> Morrison: I would certainly refer to the visibility of how that is all controlled by our building services experts. I know we have worked with them before and they managed that in all of the buildings now. >> Mayor Leffingwell: City manager. >> Ott: I am sure there is a way that we can figure that out that will probably be -- we will probably have to do it in the context of a, an administrative policy for those that are responsible for the guidance of the specific various city facilities. We do appreciate the modified language, though. I was listening to council member morrison before, that allows us some prerogative and latitude in terms of practical circumstances, from time to time, may not allow us to stay within that standard and I appreciate that. >> Morrison: Absolutely. For me, this is us adopting a [04:12:11] policy that says we can do better. It's going to stave the taxpayers money because it's not going to cost as much to cool our buildings and it's -- it's good for energy conservation all around, so as a policy matter, it's -- it's something that I think we can do better. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I would say there are other costs to consider, such as loss of productivity. I think council member spelman mentioned, what if someone -- you leave on friday afternoon, leave your office on friday afternoon and then you have to set to a nonoccupied setting, and then you decide you need to come in and do some work on saturday or sunday, you basically are not going to be able to do that because it's going to take hours for it to cool back to operating temperature. So I think it seems like most of this is going to be up to the discretion of individual offices. Council member tovo. >> Tovo: I want to say I appreciate council member morrison bringing this forward. I was happy to be a cosponsor. When I served on the aisd facility task force and we did research on this and there are municipalities and school districts around the country that have adopted policies. The as soon ass I recall were 5-degrees up or down depending on the season and they did it as an energy savings measure and as a financial strategy,and so I have failed to find some of those articles to make it, but I will continue to look for them and make them available to my colleagues if they are interested. Some of the estimates on what -- what different municipalities or school districts were able to save were really compelling in terms of the percentage off of their utility budget, so it is good for all kinds of reasons. >> Mayor Leffingwell: I will just say, it's unfortunate this has probably come about as a result of some personal disagreements and I would say [04:14:15] that thank goodness, in another couple of days summer be over and we don't have to bother with this until next summer where basically none of us are going to be here, or at least not more than as soon as two. Certainly I won't have to worry about it, so ... Council member morrison. >> Morrison: A couple of things, first, a small piece of information I discovered recently that my thermostat in my office doesn't control the phenomenology in my office. It is controlled somewhere up in the big blue sky so there is central control of certain rooms, anyways here at city hall. And really I do think that this is a fundamental policy issue of trying to, you know, extend our reach in saving money in energy conservation and that's precisely how I see it. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Thank goodness the summer is over. We will go to the next item. [Laughter] >> Mayor Leffingwell: Huh? >> Tovo: I say it stays pretty cool here year round. >> Mayor Leffingwell: So maybe we will have another standard for winter months, who knows. Item 95 pulled by council member -- no, that's it. Item 149, pulled by council member morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you, mayor. Do we have someone from the parks department here? Just to tease this up while we are waiting. I saw parks people here before so they are perhaps scurrying in. [04:16:16] This is a hearing that we considered approving before, before holly shores for festival beach and fiesta garden which covers approximately 99-acres. We had this in front of us -- I already got started, sarah, you can catch your breath. >> Okay. >> Morrison: We had this in front of us a couple of times and the last time we postponed it, we postponed it because we were actually waiting for the master plan, and I looked in backup, I didn't see anything beyond the pictures that we had before and we had gotten a draft of the master plan back in may and so we were -- I think it was council member martinez that said let's wait for the plan to be here before we approve it. I was wondering if you could give us a status. >> Council member, we -- it is part of the backup. We just checked this morning, so the pull plan is part of your backup. >> Morrison: Okay. I saw two slides. Are there two slides -- two slides things. I didn't see any texts. All I saw were slides. Am I missing something? >> You should -- I believe you are, because the full plan is attached, so it's a big file. We just checked this morning and it is part of your backup. >> Morrison: Okay, because I sure looked over the weekend and I could have just been blind, but -- >> let me do this, to be on the safe side, we will go back and double check, and if there are problems, we will send you a link to it, send it to all council members if you do have it. We do have it, and it was a link, I believe, to the backup -- to the material but sometimes those things don't download and we will send you a direct link. >> Morrison: Okay, so this is like 100 pages or something like that and it's all of the text describing -- >> it's everything. >> Morrison: Because we were saying there were nice pictures and conceptual things out there but what we didn't have was the actual plan to know exactly what was in the plan. [04:18:16] >> This is the actual plan. >> Morrison: Either I missed it or there was a problem downloading when you sent us the link. >> We already sent it. >> Morrison: Thank you very much. >> Martinez: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member martinez. >> Martinez: Sarah, beliefly, if you could -- briefly -- there were subtle differences of opinion and major differences of opinion. Where are we with the major differences of opinion? And have we been able to achieve any more consensus since the last time it came before us? Last time you sent us a red line version of -- >> sure. Council member, as of the -- the meeting that we held in july, we are still -- the staff is holding to the staff's recommendations and east town lake, in particular, among some other stakeholders, you know, have agreed and disagreed with some of those recommendations. >> So basically that last document you sent us were still at this stage so that each side has taken those positions. >> Council member, chris of the parks department and of the documents I sent you, there were about a dozen or so items. I believe we reached consensus on the majority of items and two we haven't done. >> Martinez: Which were what. >> Mayor Leffingwell: The food forest and central bridge. >> Martinez: Could you -- >> the food items and the central forest. >> Martinez: So could you send those to us that you believe this is consensus? >> Yes. >> Morrison: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member morrison. >> Morrison: And as soon as add thing when it was postponed, it was postponed for a time certain of 7:00 p.M. Is that correct? >> [Indiscernible]. >> Morrison: Okay. Good. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Okay. We -- we will now go to our briefing on restore rundberg. [04:20:28] ." And I want to ask, has the request been made for the 7:00 p.M. Time certain? >> Morrison: Mayor, I believe the motion in may was to postpone until 7:00 p.M. Until it was already adopted. I guess this is a question for -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: Can we verify that? Okay. >> [Indiscernible - no mic]. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Go ahead, chief. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Today we are excited to give you an update on the "restore rundberg" which is a project and we are as soon as of six that got this grant. It is a million dollar grant that is really about innovative problem solving, innovative solutions to areas suffering from some policy challenges, and as soon as of the things we are excited about this project is it is a multiagency, multidisciplinary private/public partnership to try to leverage these partnerships and relationships and community engagement to not just make a difference in the two-year grant cycle but actually moving forward to actually sustain the good outcomes [04:22:28] that we hope to achieve by the end of the two-year cycle. We have partnered with the community. We have partnered with sister agencies in the city and we have partnered with nongovernmental agencies as well and most importantly, we have partnered with the university of texas that has allowed smart people that are helping guide us through this process. So this morning we are excited to be here and chief mandly and amanda baker will make comments as well. >> Good morning, brian manly, assistant chief, austin police department. Let me get the clicker. As the chief alluded to, I think as soon as of the probably highlights of this grant is this is an innovation grant. This is not money that the police department have acquired to put cops on dots for a certain period of time and when we remove the resources we expected areas of return. We are looking for ininnovative solutions to help us and I know from the grantor's perspective we come up with innovative solutions for the community that face the same challenges. I think it was of great benefit that austin was awarded this grant to work in this neighborhood, it is also a sign of the great challenges this neighborhood faces because we were as soon as of the very few cities that were chosen and so therefore it really highlights the level of -- of challenge that we have in this neighborhood. Today our plan is to give you a little bit of the background information on this grant. We are going to talk about our efforts in the area of community engagement. Our project partners, the revitalization team that has been formed, and the successes of that team and the expectations of that team going forward. Talk about what our focus is, the law enforcement agency partnered in this project is. First year outcomes. Plans for the future. Next steps. We will walk you through that. First of all, when we look at the background information, we've hive lighted the challenges and I think everybody is aware of the [04:24:28] challenges we've had in the rundberg neighborhood but to put numbers to it, the rundberg neighborhood encompasses 2% of the city's geography, of the geographical square miles. It encompasses 4.5% of the city's population. Within that part of austin resides 11% of our violent crime, 7% of our property crime, and 9% of our property 2 crimes, so to go over the numbers again. We have 2% of the city's geography is located in this area, 4 and a half percent of the city's population resides here, but yet they experience 11% of the violent crime, 7% of the property crime, and then 9% of the overall part 2 crimes. So part 2 crimes are lower level offenses. Part 1 crimes, by usr standards for reporting purposes to the federal government are going to be changes like homicide, murder, robbery, rape, burglary, things along those likes. Your part two crimes may be lower, may will offenses like graffiti -- I am sorry -- simple assaults, things like that, obviously. It's how we classify crimes for reporting to the federal government. So, again, looking at this neighborhood and why -- why we chose this neighborhood is the as soon as that fit the needs -- the needs are shown up top. We were looking for an area that had concentrated criminal activity, concentrated poverty, high unemployment. Without reading all of them to you, diss investment, limited infrastructure, all of the criteria that this grant required. This was the as soon as neighborhood in austin that fit all of those. We also saw it as a neighborhood based on the 2010 census. Approximately 30% of the neighborhood was living below the poverty level and aisd reported to us 95% of the use that attended the six schools were considered economically disadvantaged and we believe we could go in with a program [04:26:29] like this and make differences not only in short term but long-term change sustainable through community involvement. Our efforts at community engagement, prior to getting this grant, we actually held preapplication meetings with community leadership getting not only support but letters of support that helped us in actually winning the award of this grant. On the slide, you will see kind of an example of the different types of meetings we held. These numbers were actually from a few months ago. We had 60 weekly meetings with neighborhood groups, 50 neighborhood watch meetings. Again, I won't read them all to you, but I think there is some of importance. We had key stakeholder meetings. We brought in other groups that could help. The rental owners, apartment managers. Again, this was an opportunity to try and bring in all of the individuals that have a stake in this community but also is going to help us make a difference in this community. So the level of engagement that we are having on this grant is like none that I have ever been involved with in the department and I think that will help us lead towards an innovative solution that will last when the federal grant dollars run out and that we will be able to continue the improvements that we have made. Some of the efforts that the engagement -- again, the success is going to be based on the community's involvement and the community's assistance, and so we truly are trying to get as much community involvement as possible. We have done web-based outreach, which you will see on here. We used city of austin webpage, citizen observer, next door, red, all of the tools that we have being a technical hub that we are, we have a lot of opportunities to get messages out there with technology. We also recognize that a large part of the community we are trying to reach may not have ready access to these types of technology, so we have also gone out and handed out over 15,000 pamphlets in both english and spanish, again, in an attempt to reach those individuals, let them know what we are trying to do in this [04:28:29] community, pull them into the process, get them at meetings, so, again, these are all of the steps. We have worked with aisd. We had them call the parents through the systems they have in place, notifying parents when we have meetings in the neighborhood. Again, trying to draw the community into the meetings to get their involvement. We have done work with radio stations, televisions and the neighborhood newsletters as well. Again, all in an attempt to get the maximum level of participation. An example of the different types of meetings that we hold, again, we want regular involvement, so you will see that we have weekly meetings every tuesday night from 6 to 7:00 p.M. At the ymca that is located right in the middle of this area. There have been a great partner on this project. What this allows for every week between the hours of 6 and 7, residents citizens know they can go to this location and have representatives of the police department to meet with them to talk about any concerns or issues they have identified. Our vision for this program, as this expands and the community becomes more involved, is to get other city agencies to partner with us in this, if we can get code compliance and some of the others that have a large steric in this neighborhood, again, would be a one stop shop where people can go at a known time to look at getting assistance from the various city services. We also have team planning meetings, the second thursday of every month and that's for the revitalization team which we will talk about here in a minute. And then there is also community meetings, the fourth thursday of every month. So, again, on average we are getting between 30 and 50 people at these meetings. It is a hard to reach community at times but we are pleased where we are at and we are trying to continue and try to do more. The restore rundberg revitalization team is going to be really the key to the long-term success of this program. The purpose of this team to increase partnerships and alliances in the rundberg area, leveraging social and economic capital to build a stronger and safer community. [04:30:30] So that's the stated purpose of this group. I will tell you when we first got this grant and putting together revitalization team, we brought in a team of five individuals. The design was to have five individuals on the revitalization team to carry out this program. We realized very early on the scope and magnitude of this project was going to far exceed the ability to be as encompassing what we need it to be by limiting the membership to 5. So as you see here we have 14 different positions that represent different various stakeholder groups. They represent the three neighborhood groups that have neighborhood plans. They represent city departments, and then the -- the education community as well from aisd, so what we try to do is pull together a cross-section of all of the service organizations and service providers that have a stake in this community or that can help us with the long-term strategies for improving quality of life, reducing crime in a manner that is sustainable beyond the life of this grant. This group acts as advisory capacity to the department. Again, this is not an effort for the department to go in and tell the neighborhood what solutions they need. It really is an opportunity to work with the community, for them to tell us what they want and then to work with them towards those goals, those ends, and at the end of this presentation, we will be highlighting our focus areas and what we have done in those areas to this point. I guess on the outset, I should have mentioned, there is also a very strong research component to this and the university of texas at austin is our research partner. Again, I know I mentioned that this is more than putting cops on dots and things we have done in the past and putting on overnight officers. This -- overtime officers and this is to get to the solution for the root cause and so this will solve the cause not the symptoms and so we have had a university of texas research partner and we will have a presentation presented by him for the work they have done for us on this [04:32:31] project. Dr. Springer. >> Good morning. My name is david springer. I am a professor in the school of social work and beginning yesterday, director of the rgk center for philanthropy and public affairs at u.T. And I have done research since '97 and this work for number of years. You have heard there is strong community engagement and partnering with this, and this is true as the research team as well. When they were drafting recommendations to submit to the department of justice, this plot demonstrates that we solicited input from the community so we were combining research with the specific needs of the community. We met with neighborhood teams, community stakeholders and then we will share our draft recommendations over the period of 3-4 months at various town hall meetings so that when we submitted our recommendations to the department of justice they really had been vetted through the community and doj blessed those recommendations and the implementation plan in march of 2014. The frame work for our work is grounded in the work of sherman. For those of you who are familiar with this area of research, it is similar to the sarah model and essentially what we are doing is a million dollars only goes so far so we are targeting our concentration on hotspots of crime. We will test those methods over time to see if what we are doing is working and we will track our efforts so if it's not working, we can do adjustments. If it's working, we will do more of that. So there is a continual feedback loop in realtime that the research team is partnering with the community and the police department so we can monitor our efforts and know if we are on the right path or not. We -- we looked at crime data for the past 7 years. Going back to 2007. And identified roughly 7 hotspots of crime in the [04:34:31] rundberg area. We -- we chose 3 hotspots to focus on for purposes of the grant activity. There is as soon as hotspot that corresponds with each of the three existing neighborhood teams in the rundberg area. And the hotspots have in common a variety of characteristics: Large open fields, a lot of prostitution, a lot of open drug deals. High risk youth living in the area. Physical disorder and social disorder and a large number of homeless residents living in the area as well. So in these three hotspots, we've made recommendations to apd and to the community on what to do and we will talk more about that in a few minutes. The three hotspots that are outlined in red account for 12% of the crime -- 21% in the rundberg area and 12 and a half percent of crime in the city. So they account for not disproportionate part of the city but the area as well and we are using the hotspots to see if the efforts in the identified hotspots prove to be effective. Some of the hotspots that we do not select for a variety of reasons, as soon as of them is a wal-mart and accounts for -- a kroger vehicle is as soon as of the reasons we see the hotspot. We close not to select that as soon as. It wasn't congruent with the purpose of the grant. The perpetrators of crime and the victims of crime in the rundberg area are primarily young males of color. The perpetrators of crime, almost 92% are male, 84% mr. People of color, and the victims of crime, 80% are male and 84% of the victims are the people of the color. And we -- there are so many things that we potentially could have done. We selected to focus on five [04:36:33] core areas. First is persistent crime. The second is the physical and social disorder across the three hotspots. There is a very heavy emphasis, as you have heard, on community engagement, which we -- which includes the cultural and linguistic barriers that come with the residents that live in the rundberg area. We are focusing heavily on the community's relationship with the police, so, in fact, if we are on the streets conducting neighborhood surveys with residents to get their sense of their feelings of safety and levels of trust with the police and we will monitor to see how that changes over time. There is overarching emphasis across the three hotspots on high risk youth. Particularly we will focus on school based and community based intervention efforts in the rundberg area and also prevention effort. And to reach out to that population and the work has already begun. >> Thank you, dr. Springer. What you see here is just a different representation of the three neighborhoods that we are focusing on. This kind of gives you an ariel view. You can see each as soon as encompasses really just a handful of city blocks, and to highlight the point that dr. Springer just made within these very three small geographical areas, 12 and a half percent of the city's crime occurs and so this really is a very targeted effort to get at the heart of the issue, and really try and make an impact in these three areas. So far our first year outcomes as we have been at this, we have completed our planning year, which has been pretty -- a pretty large undertaking. This is a significant project with a lot of community members that want to be involved. They are glad that this project is here and they want to work with us on it, so it's been a significant effort to be as inclusive as we can. We have also had reporting requirements back to the doj. We had to come up with a plan, submit it to the doj and get them to approve it, to say that we are actually complying with what their [04:38:33] expectations were of this being an innovation grant, that they wanted to see new ideas and not just as I said before, cops on dots. We established the revitalization team. Again, early efforts thought it would be a team of 5 and enultimately a team of 14, a -- and ultimately a team of 14, a very diverse group that have an interest here. We also increased neighborhood cohesion. We have seen the different neighborhood contact teams contacting each other and working together without the police department being present. We've seen the contact teams reach out to other city departments like code compliance without a police department even being involved and making those relationships so what we are hoping to see as far as the plan for sustainability with the revitalization with the effort is taking place right now and that gives us confidence when this grant ends, although we will still be there, that this team that has been put in place and forming relationships and working together will continue the great work they have done and will continue to recognize the success that we want to see in this neighborhood. And then what we also have done is identified key priorities for the revitalization team. An important point there, as I mentioned earlier, it says we identified them. This is a team approach. This is really addressing the issues that the community has brought to us. And so what we will look at now is we will look at the different priorities. The -- the presentation actually says the -- that we are going to talk about the four key priorities. I can tell you that there is already a fifth priority added to this project and there is a sixth under discussion right now, so we continue to see this grow and then we continue to see the community working with us and identifying these areas. The first area that we looked at is the revitalization of four key properties. And these are properties that were brought to our attention by the residents of these neighborhoods. You see the properties listed here without reading them to you but these are four specific areas within [04:40:35] these -- these three prime locations that needed some attention. The community wanted to start in these areas. What I will say as an early success, you see the pictures up there. That's actually before the showplace lanes, before and after, when we went in and did significant cleanup. Community members were present and helped with the clean up and taking ownership of the neighborhood and the city stepped up and you as a council, mayor, will probably remember -- I believe it was august 7 -- you purchased a plot of land near powell for a city park and that was something identified by the "restore rundberg" group and the teams of something that was needed in the area. So I think the work they have done in conjunction with the work already being done by city half, I think, helped -- city staff I think helped push this forward and give a neighborhood park in this area to offer kids alternative places to go. A second priority that the community has brought forward is they would like the development of a hybrid community services, kind of a as soon as-stop shop. We' a 1 stop shop and the community center has done something where they have the community development and they want the see that as well as senior services and gardening as an opportunity to do and along with neighborhood and social services and so there is a center that you are probably well aware of on montopolis, the old va clinic, I believe it was, that was turned into a 1 stop shop for services and that's something that this community would like to see replicated in their neighborhood, something they have been working on with the group. Our third priority is after school programs for the kids that -- that -- maybe they are latchkey kids, coming home to an empty house or they don't have the [04:42:35] opportunity to be involved in other after school activities, so what we are doing is working with the middle and high school counselors to define what that need is, and then we are looking to match the students that are in need along with some of the assistance that is out there. We actually already had success in bringing kids in to afterschool programs under scholarship programs that the families were -- they were not aware these opportunities were out there. So through these relationships that we've built, we have been able to bring kids into programs that otherwise would not have happened and that's something that we want to see continue in this neighborhood. Along these same lines, back in september of last year, this group went out and did kind of a take your neighborhood community march and may marched from barrington elementary school to the gus garcia center and you can see the attendance at this march. We had a lot of people come out but what was interesting about this is a group of young men joined the march and this was a group of exgang members and they started what is called the kin street bible ministry and they got out of the gang and were doing good for themselves and started a bible study and they came out and met with the officers during this event through this partnership and utilizing the gus garcia rec center and we have given them a place to hold the bible study because the group was growing so large they were having a hard time housing it. And this group has now become as soon as of the major contributing groups to this overall effort. I understand they have been at almost every -- every community meeting that we've had or community event where we have done neighborhood cleanups and things like that, so this is as soon as example we want to highlight today of really what the end purpose, the end game is here. We have an opportunity to make a change for as soon as of the most challenged neighborhoods in austin [04:44:35] and we are seeing early successes, and we believe through the teams that have been formed and the community's partnership, that we will continue to see opportunities like this. The fourth priority that we are looking at now is the accountability for housing and property code violations. We've got a lot of issues in this neighborhood. We've got a lot of absentee landlords, individuals from other states that own properties in this neighborhood that are in states of disrepair that really need some attention and so through partnering and working with the code compliance group, we have seen a lot of work in this neighborhood in improving the conditions and the quality of life for the residents. I mentioned earlier that although the presentation mentioned four priorities, we had already included a fifth, and this was something that came to light during the work of the program and in the discussions with the community, is the challenges with the homeless intervention and prostitution diverse. And -- diversion, and, again, these issues are impacting this neighborhood to a significant level and they are impacting the quality of life as well, so you see some of the neighborhoods cleanup efforts that have taken place along these lines as well. What we see as our next steps is the hiring of a community engagement specialist -- and this is currently in process, and this is going to be somebody that will help us continue to work with the community and to engage the community beyond the abilities that we are already doing in this neighborhood with our drs and the police officers that work in this area. You will see a mobile walking beat. As soon as of the things that we have actually done is we are assigning officers to work a walking beat in this neighborhood three days a week. We are taking officers that work in our district rep program for as soon as day and our medtac program as soon as day and as soon as day working overtime for the grant and putting the officers on a walking beat, not for enforcement, but for meet and greet. This is to go out and shake the hands of the community members and to shake the hands of the business owners, [04:46:38] and form those relationships that, again, will provide for the success of this program going forward. Since april of this year, we've had over 5,000 contacts and these are not enforcement contacts. These are the shaking the hands, the meeting and the greeting, and so this program is proven very effective. Although it is three days a week for 6 hours at a time, it's not a huge at this point, but we have had 0 violent crimes occur during the hours -- the 6-hour blocks three days a week when this team is out there. So, again, we know it's making a difference and to that end, what we have done internally trying to do the best with the resources we have had, we have identified six positions in the department that we are going to transfer up to the rundberg neighborhood and we are making a permanent walking beat up there because we see the effects that we have been able to have with just doing this on a day to day- to-day basis, so we want the push forward with this and see if this will continue to make strong gains in this area. Some of the other areas, obviously, the apartment and landlord coalition. We are working directly with the apartments in this area, especially up in the gaylewoods and north gate neighborhoods and all of that, making sure they are aware of the resources we have and working with them to combat the crime, making sure their apartment complexes are safe as possible with lighting and other opportunities there. The marketplace concept, we have talked about that, that we are, as soon as night a week, -- 1 night a week we are available as a community as a police department and we want to see if we are available for the city and that's listed on the store front, if you look down the slide, that's to look for war on the other hand this project. We are looking at the juvenile justice programming, we have $127 million put aside on this grant for juvenile programsing and we [04:48:39] are about to put r.F.P.S out there for proposals for groups to come out and propose what they will do with working at kids, after-school programs and that kind of thing for at risk youth and we will put that portion of the grant towards. It will be summer programs, after school programs, things like that, and then obviously we are going to continue with our data selection, our research and assessment and all of that as we move forward in this grant, so really, in wrapping it up, we -- we -- we have seen early successes, we are very pleased with where this program has gone to date. We have had excellent participation and -- and partnership with the community. Our research partners at the university of texas has done some really good work for us as well and we look forward to seeing not only what we do in the next year but I think the litmus test will be what we do five years from now and show what we have done here is sustainable. Thank you. >> Cole: Mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mayor pro tem cole. >> Cole: I want to applaud you for all of your efforts in this area. We know that it is a high need area and that you guys have spent a lot of time out there and also to congratulate you on the grant that you've received. I just have a couple of questions for you. You said that the rundberg area was recommended by aisd because it had 95% economically disadvantaged. Do you have any idea what that means, economically disadvantaged? Is it 30% below mfi? Can you give us any type of -- >> I don't know if we have their guidelines for what they conclude. I don't have those with me here. >> Tovo: This may be free and reduced lunch. >> Cole: Reduced. [Multiple voices] >> Tovo: I thought that's how they measured it, students on free and reduced lunch. >> Cole: So what council member tovo said the students probably on free and reduced lunch and really low poverty levels. I appreciate that work that y'all are doing. You talked a little bit about [04:50:40] the rental property owners. I know that we spent quite a bit of time as a council looking at code compliance, especially in this area and it looks like you have achieved some access with the landowners. Can you tell us a little bit about that? >> Sure, and if I may, I would like to introduce commander donald baker. He is the day to day manager of the program and he is the one leading the efforts in the area and then you see us looking back here, I have lieutenant mcclure and karen fitzgerald as well that are more heavily involved so the day to day, if you want to talk about the success of the landlords, donald. >> I am commander donald baker and what we talked with the district reps of the coalition, right now 14 representatives, and apartment and landowner managers to come together to discuss of what they can do physically with their environment and the residents that are there because we have a large transitory population, usually immigrant based and so it's how can we provide for their needs that come together. And the group that we are seeing the successes with, some of the landowners, where they have cleaned up the areas, they have improved the living structures, without having to increase the rent, also. And that's part of the goal. So some of those successes are -- are spilling over to other apartment managers. We have had a couple that have asked if they can, excuse me, join the group. >> Cole: So that doesn't take up any of the grant money? They actually opt to do that on their own? >> Yes, ma'am. The design of the grant money -- what we were trying to achieve is sustainability without using grant dollars because we know once the grant funding is gone, a lot of times programs cease to exist. We want this program to continue on five, 10 years down the road. So we are trying to find capacity that's already there and build upon that. And show the successes that we have -- because I have one [04:52:40] landowner that has some of the duplexes there that has been able to show that some of the minor improvements he's made with putting up some fences, cleaning up, encouraging the residents to participate in their own living environment has been successful. That he is retaining his residents. He said it has been successful without having to look for other dollars coming from other agencies. >> It's kind of like the -- if I can just add -- the property managers and the owners have realized that the broken windows type of theory, if you take care of your property, if I take care of my residents, I will keep those residents, and if I take care of their living space, they are going to take more pride and take care of my property. So it's almost like a cyclical benefit to everyone involved. I think we are getting more and more buy in from property managers and property owners that see when they clean up, fix up, people remain and people take more ownership, their tenants and their own well -- in their own well-being and in taking care of the property. >> Cole: I am glad to hear that, that's coming as a result of this program. It's a natural result. I wanted to ask you. You gave us a definition or kind of reiterated what were violent crimes, property crimes and lower level crimes but I was not sure how that correlated to the hotspots that you pointed out. How do you define a "hotspot" in terms of those types of crime? >> When we initially ran the hotspot analysis, the whole map lights up red because we included part one and part two crimes. So we went bark and looked at the data and realized we had to run it initially with part one crimes to come up with discernable boundaries that gave us hotspots. When we added part 2 crimes back into the hotspots, there were no significant differences in the shot spots and they remained table for the past 7 years. The hotspot map you saw up on the slide was part 1 crimes [04:54:42] only. When you add part 2 crimes in, it doesn't change the hotspots. >> Cole: Okay, so that's mostly violent crimes and property crimes? >> That's correct. >> Cole: Okay. You mentioned that there were two additional priorities that had come up that you were looking at and then I thought you actually listed the fifth one but didn't list the sixth one, and I was going to ask you, the fifth one was the homeless intervention and prostitution diversion. So what is the sixth one? >> We just revealed earlier today. >> The sixth one that the team is talking about, we are going to have a public meeting this thursday, at 7:00 p.M., It's on affordable housing, looking at the issue within the rundberg rent area. >> Cole: Okay. Now, have you gotten any insight of how long this grant will last or when we can apply for another one or any information on that? >> The grant was for a two-year period and that's why the focus was on sustainability and why so much went on focusing on the revitalization team because when the money goes out we don't want this to end, not like when other officers we take out from overtime, that we slip back to where we were, so it is the heavy revitalization team, they are the core going forward for this. >> And if I could just add, I think what this is really focused on is public input. It's people that live there. They have the greatest interest in continuing the success and the trajectory to better outcomes. And what we have set up is -- is a system of processes where people have committed to participating, and our deepest hope is it will continue beyond the grant and I really believe, because they are seeing these positive outcomes. Think about it, 5,000 contacts between the law enforcement, a very [04:56:44] concentrated area -- that was 5,000 -- that wasn't about writing a ticket or taking somebody to jail or responding to an emergency. It was a consensual, hello, meet and greet and building a relationship. Not just building a relationship with the police department. It's building a relationship with the neighbors and it's the foremost priority we talk about, and that's the people we serve. I am really hopeful beyond the grant period that all of these teams, meetings, these standing meetings that people have not lost interest in, that it will continue. And I think that's what is going to be the interest on -- I don't know what your sense is doc, or don. >> I agree and one of the things we will specifically track through the neighborhood surveys in collecting data, see if things like social cohesion increase and levels of trust with the police increase, to the extent that neighborhoods feel like they have a sense of control over the environment, we want to track that and we are going to -- and I suspect that we are already seeing promising results and those things will continue to improve. >> Cole: Thank you, mayor. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Council member tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks very much and I see a lot of the community members here or a good number of them so thank you for all of your work on this. I think it's very exciting. I have a couple of questions. First of all, what other city departments are involved and actively engaged in these meetings s? >> We had a strong presence with code compliance as some of the priorities that are intimately involved with code compliance. They will show up. City legal has participated, we have resource recovery, the corporate pio involved with some of the initial meetings. We also had the fire department that came out and they helped us with some of our distribution of material. We ended up doing a brochure that had one part was for "restore rundberg," and the other one was on fire safety and joined up with their resources. I have not had a lack of [04:58:45] involvement. If I ask, usually somebody is there or we have someone comb knocking on our doors. There is a couple of grants that have been floated out of ideas that looked like it might be advantageous in the "restore rundberg" area and so they have come and made presentations, so I have been very pleased that we ask for assistance, and the other city departments are willing to help out and they are even coming to us. >> Tovo: I think that's great and I am glad to hear that. I was looking back the information and the earlier work that was done and I was looking at past problem properties and for a safer austin and safer rundberg and this was done by the u.T. Sch entrepreneurship rundberg clinic and one thing they came up with is there is more disciplinary collaborations under the city departments and primarily talking about problem properties, criminal nuisance, abatement and the importance of having the police department, code, and the city attorney's office involved. So I am glad that piece is working really well. How about some other departments that I think would be really important to earn gauge? Maybe you have? Health and human services and the parks department? And I want to talk about the parks department for a minute. I hate to be a broken record on this subject, but, you know, no sooner had the crime -- a greater crime commission talked at one of their sessions a couple of years ago about the work the police department was doing in really working, this is before you got the grant, but in looking at the work that had been done in the rundberg area to try to reduce crime, we noted that on one of the lists of programs that were being contemplated to have is there was a team program aimed at, well, teens -- a teen program that was looked at the gus garcia rec center and so I think if you are looking at opportunities for kids and possible ways for them to be involved, that the parks department be involved in in conversation and [05:00:46] frankly, the libraries, too, because there are at least two libraries, I think, within the "restore rundberg" area, I think, or are there just one? Walnut creek. [One moment, please, for change in captioners] >> what you're going to see because 30% are under 17 that this next portion is is going to really be about what to keep kids out of trouble and steer them in the right path and parks and rec play a huge part of that. >> Tovo: Have they been involved in these conversations in an active and engaged way? >> Yes, ma'am. We've had several event at gus garcia rec center and kelly has been very helpful. Anything that we've asked from parks they've opened up. We actually did a-- last week we partnered up with hart elementary. There's a program where they're giving elementary kids bikes and we worked with the nonprofit bone shakers. [05:02:46] They held training for the kids. Anybody that wanted to come up free training during the morning hours there at gus garcia rec center. So we cordoned off some of the parking lot and they're able to use that and the trails. So anything that we have asked, parks have been involved. They opened up their building for us for public meetings and also the kent street ministry to do the outreach to other youth who were at high risk. They opened up to have some facility to be able to open up and talk to them. >> Tovo: I think that's great and I'm glad they're involved, but rather than just using them as a facility to locate programmings, I think they should be actively involved in the conversations about how we -- how they and you figure out what kind of programming is going to best appeal to youth in this area because -- and that's something we've talked about as a council and I know we brought together some providers outside the city and within the city at our youth summit to talk about how do we leverage our really scarce resources for kids. So to the extent that you can, I would just encourage the city manager to encourage all of these departments that are serving youth to really work together on this. >> We'll reach out to -- >> Tovo: And they make choices about the programs that they're doing. How can you all make sure that you're working -- >> and the other component is scouts. We have really revitalized the waterloo district of scouting, which really focuses on inner city youth and in east austin we have almost 50 kids, boys, that are involved in partnership with the school district. And I know that we may not have already started, but I don't want to speak out of turn. We may have already started another waterloo troop in that area to give these kids -- it's actually paid for by the boy scout of america with professional scout leaders to give these boys and -- another thing about girl scouts, we need to think about them as well. Maybe they're not ready, but that's coming as well, which is huge. >> Tovo: Great. And I know the parks department has started [05:04:47] the roving leaders program. I don't know whether it's -- I don't know whether this is one of the spots they've selected. It may be. But that is particularly aimed at high risk youth. So I guess I do have some additional questions about what your plans are for after school. You talked about after school and that there's a line item forworn 28,000 to do an rfp and I guess I'd like more information about this is a more appropriate time. I'm sure my colleagues have additional questions and I unfortunately have a dental appointment I will have to leave early for. But let's see... I think the idea about having the group of property managers pull together some very youthful, are you doing also educational briefings more generally for landlords and property owners? In looking at criminal nuisance abatement that other cities have deployed, I saw that some of them do kind of general sessions for any interested property owners and they focus on some of the issues you were talking about. What are some of the things that property owners can do to reduce crime through lighting -- I've forgotten what the term is. My colleague bill spelman probably remembers what it is. The reduction of crime -- >> crime prevention through environmental design? >> Tovo: That's exactly it. Are you doing more general education sessions. I think it's a great perspective to make sure whatever you're doing is going to continue through the life of this grant and open up that kind of information to the general property owners, landlord population would seem really critical. >> That's a program that we do through our district representatives. And frank wilson is one of the district reps that's pulled the [05:06:48] apartment coalition together. We also do it for individual homeowners and we'll do some of the meetings through their neighborhood association, put out that this is something, a service that we do. And we'll do a site visit and they'll actually walk around and look at the property and we did this just recently for a new property management company that came in and bought a large complex. And they walked through and just did an analysis and then took pictures and everything and then did a presentation and pointed out here are areas of concern that you can make physical improvements. So we'll do it with larger complex to the individual residential homeowner. And we're going to continue. We do that through the district rep program. >> And councilmember, this is citywide. >> Tovo: I guess I was thinking about more general information. It looked like some cities actually have sort of a monthly informational session about reduction of crime through building environmental design or whatever you said. That's a way to hit a bunch of people all at once and some people may feel uncomfortable about having a representative from the city and it sounds like from the police department come to their complex and review it. I'm thinking it's a less risky environment for people to go into a room off their site and listen to strategies. >> But the good news is, councilmember, that if we identify a problem but data, we're very data driven and when we identify a problem starting with the property, the first step of an eventual abatement is trying to get them to help us help them. And so when we identify problem properties, whether it's a duplex or just a single-family residence or a big complex, they will get a visit with the police department and we will have the discussion of what -- some of the suggestions of the things think need to do. So I understand what you're saying is that we should have just general meetings, but at times you invite people, they don't come, there's nothing worse than putting toying a meeting and nobody shows up. But I want you to be assured that we do keep track on problem [05:08:49] properties and with data we can identify them sooner rather than later now. Probably better now at doing that, pinpoint those problem properties. They do get visits from us. So -- but we do extend them, those invitations on a regular basis to the property owners. That's about 14 of them are big property owners are now participating. But nonetheless I think we do a much better job of pinpointing problem properties on the front end and they get those visits suggestions. And if they don't help us help them we utilize the code compliance and our partners in the law office to use the judicial system and process to abate the property. >> Tovo: Thanks. Since you mentioned problem properties I'll make that my last question. How can we submit additional questions? Can we do it through the regular council q and a process? I was a little surprised when we got our code compliance memo reporting back on the repeat offenders ordinance and the results it that we only have eight registered repeat offenders. So that's really a question that my staff are in the process of asking code compliance because that doesn't seem to jibe with the numbers that we had. We had a very lengthy discussion about the various rental registration models. There was a lot of work done by the u.T. Law clinic proposing that rundberg especially be an area where there's a more proactive rental registration. That wasn't the direction we went in. I would be interested and I wonder if you know how many of those eight repeat reporters are in the restore rundberg area. >> I turn to laura pressley. The priority number four -- >> well, I think it's time to reevaluate -- >> what they're doing, the group for priority four, has really spent a lot of time. They did a public information request, took the information, put the data, really analyzed it. Once they had their information we had a meeting last week with code compliance and brought those properties that were of concern that were at a higher level and asked code [05:10:50] compliance where are we with the process, and it was also a nice education moment for everybody there. How does a process work? How does somebody get to that on the 522 and when does it actually trigger the registration and process? So code compliance was very open in that meeting, but we've made some progress, but yes, this is what priority number four, the group is really pushing on and watching and making sure that we are all coming together and working as interdepartmental so we can see some progress. >> It and I see this grant as an empowerment grant. It's a grant that is together we're learning -- community is learning that together when they are engaged, they are empowered. And when they build the relationships with one another, with the police department, with all the entities, whether they're ngo's or governmental agencies, they're empowered and they're ultimately the ones that droll their own destiny is the community. It's exciting when I've gone through half a dozen of the meetings and I've got people there who don't speak a word of english, they're not stopping from coming to the meetings. They're engaged and empowered and what I believe we will see at the end of the grant cycle is a community who has taught itself and learned how to gain and secure better outcomes for their future. It's really exciting. We're hopeful in the next few years this would be a case study to see how we could replicate it throughout the city. Think about it, it's very little money. A million dollars in the scheme of things a drop in the bucket. Nonetheless we're seeing through engagement, the empowerment of a community and I think ultimately you will see a revitalized rundberg. >> And if I may, I would be very remiss if I didn't add that the neighborhood planning and review department has been very heavily involved. We also resource [05:12:51] recoveries, helped especially with our homeless initiative, priority number five working together, and one of my staff let me know that the library managers were very involved at the initial setting up and helping us out and asking if there's anything we can do or they could do. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember spelman. >> Spelman: Thank you, mayor. As at least commissioner lauderdale and chief manly know, I could talk for hours on this subject, and I won't. Like many of you I suspect you're like councilmember tovo and preferring a root canal to going to a city council meeting. So that won't happen. I'll keep it really short. I'm really, really happy that you did this and you're doing so well on this. It's exactly the sort of thing that in my bright of hopes, hoped that the austin police department would do more of. You're doing it exactly the way I hoped you would do it and I'm thrilled you're doing it. In particular I'm thrilled that next time I see larry sherman I can scoff at him because target test and track leave out an important part which is included in sera, which is included in plan check acdu, it is what they do in japan manned what the mounties do and it is a missing t between target and test, which you guys instinctively added, which is think. After you've targeted an area, well, gosh, what do we need to do to this area? Let's talk to our partners and think through what needs to be done in this area. You didn't just jump in and do something. You talked to people, you looked at what you were dealing with and you thought about it in advance before you started doing something. One of the nice things about that part of the sera model or missing piece of the target test track model is sometimes you have to go back and do that again, you miss something the first time, you need to engage your partners again. What did we miss? What else do we need to [05:14:51] do? Now we've done that, well, what else is there? You're on the right track for doing that because you have the structure in place to be able to return to that group and have that group identify things that didn't work out the right the first time around and so on. All that is in place. I'm really happy about that and I'm going to give larry hell the next time I talk to him and he richly deserves it. The only other thing that I will take the time to mention now is to remind all of us that this is a demonstration project by the department of justice and the point behind a demonstration project is primarily to show this can be done. What you've done is show that this can be done in t and identify some things that other police departments in similar settings will be able to do to solve similar kinds of problems. And I presume one of the things that dr. Springer is doing is keeping track of the index of crimes and other calls for service to verify that in fact we're actually making an impact on that. Dr. Springer, can you identify whether or not we've had an impact yet or is it too soon to tell? >> It looks promising so far, but it's too soon to tell. We're looking at 911 calls, calls for service, and we're going to keep track on that over time. >> Spelman: You're also doing a community survey so we can survey social cohesion. >> We'll look at social cohesion, relationship with the police and so on. >> Spelman: Consistent with the demonstration project idea, chief, I'm really happy that you're thinking this might be a model for future efforts going forward. I know that rundberg was not the only part of town that you could do this sort of thing to. There are probably two or he three others on the cutting room floor that didn't rise to the top, but are really good places to do similar kinds of stuff. I wonder if after you're done with this, after you come to a conclusion after what it worked, what worked particularly well, what you might want to do particularly differently next time, how soon do you think you would turn to another neighborhood and say let's try this in [05:16:56] montopolis or in south austin somewhere? >> We're already doing something in the dmi initiative that started about a year and a half ago with the da's office. I think between the dmi, now I'm looking at the next spot where in talking to had the da where can we start our next project. I think when we're finished with this one, come back, look at lessons learned and find the next spot. I'm hopeful that again what we're doing, there's beta testing, a model that will have an impact that with six bodies it on that walking beat, for example, no violent crimes while they're deployed deployed. That's huge. That's a huge, huge thing to be able to talk about. So you will be seeing in a short order, I believe, a replication of this type of comprehensive process. Again, a million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but at the end of the day it's a drop in the bucket. Luckily we live in a city where we can really have an impact by just looking at half a dozen neighborhoods, half a dozen small geographical errors and have one heck of an impact. I think you will see that sooner rather than later along with our dmi drug market initiative that we have going on at 12th and chicon. >> Look forward to seeing it. Thank you. >> If I may, just in response, one of the things dr. Spelman, that's interesting to me when you look at other cities around the country that have gotten funds in this period over the past two years, I think we're broader in scope. Most cities that have burn funds are doing something analysis to what is happening in sam rayburn. They don't have three hot spots. They don't -- the geographic region isn't quite as large. I think as you indicate we're being successful in what you're doing and we're doing more than than what a lot of the other cities are doing. It's been interesting to watch. >> It would be a good demonstration of other cities to broaden their scope. And I guess the other burn grants are not spends as much time with neighborhood meetings, not meeting with citizens and creating the partnerships that you guys are forming. [05:18:56] Is that accurate? >> I think that's accurate. >> Spelman: A good demonstration. Thanks. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Councilmember morrison. >> Morrison: Thank you. Just two points really. Chief, to your point about a million dollars, a million dollars is a lot of money, but I think it's very fair to count this mall dollars as an investment in the community. And you could probably -- there is no way to count the return on investment in terms of quality of life. It's great that we got the investment from the feds, but I think we clearly have to to have it on the table for the city if that federal money is not available to be investing like this in other areas of town. R. Should it prove to be successful, which it certainly appears to be. And then I see that we have a trustee who represents this area and I wanted to invite you up if you would comment because obviously the school district is one of the major partners in the community and especially in that community and I know she's been involved and all. So I'd love to just -- if you have any thoughts to share, anne, and also looking forward how the school district and the city are going to be partnering here on this project. >> I very much appreciate your information to come up and thank you, council, for listening to me and I do have some thoughts to share. Just for clarification, I am place five on the restore rundberg revitalization team. I call it the triple r team now because I can't say all those words at once. And that means I represent elementary -- >> Mayor Leffingwell: It's on, but you're not quite close enough for people to hear you. >> And I also have allergies. So I am place five on the triple r team, the restore rundberg revitalization team and I represent education, elementary, middle and high school levels. Just a few observations. And I am going to kind of update you on what's been happening because the team has been moving forward with a lot of things since the last [05:20:57] time I believe that you had to finalize this report a little bit early. So so number one, I would encourage council to ask for a presentation from the triple r team because a.P.D.'S a great partner, great partner, but emphasis on the partner because the community is doing a lot. The neighborhood leaders. I'm doing some stuff. Michael willard, who is behind me from goodwill, the community members are doing a lot to carry this forward. But we can only do so much because we are volunteering our time. And I did put a dollar number to my time by the way. I devised a formula. I pretended like I was a consultant and I'm a cheap consultant so I'm paying myself $100 an hour and I haven't been keeping records, but I strongly urge the triple r team to start keeping some records on their volunteer hours and their vial image and how much gas they use and how much electricity they use and how much cell phones they use because we do text a lot. >> Morrison: Not while driving, I presume. [Laughter] >> by my very modest conservative calculations I have already contributed $23,700 in my time, in my resources to this effort. Okay? So I just want to put that out there. Once again I want to say I very much appreciate a.P.D.'S participation. We could not do it without them if we had not had enforcement, some hot spot policing. If we cannot had our wonderful dr's, community policing -- I've only had three hours of sleep, I'm sorry. Community policing, critical. Critical. We've got to have it, we've got to keep it because our dr's do a great job of building relationships and that's the key. And as the chief said and everyone else said, that's the key, building relationships so that our kids are not afraid of the police, our families, many of whom are immigrants, refugees [05:22:58] are not afraid of police. So a.P.D., Kudos for building the relationships. The walking beat that will now be permanent, perfect. But now we need a presentation from the triple r team so you get a fuller picture of what's been going on. So two new priorities have been adding, priority six affordable housing and I'm heading that work group because I've been interested in it for dwight awhile. -- Quite awhile. We'll define what it means for the rundberg area. We'll maintain, we're going to improve and we're going to expand affordable housing if you can believe it in that area because those of you who know that area, we already have a lot of affordable housing, but it's not well maintained. We need to improve it and we could actually expand it so that we can perhaps attract -- affordability is on a continuum. We could attract professionals like teachers, firefighters, police officers, who now live outside of town because they can't afford to live in town. So priority seven is an economic development priority that was recently added, and that's being headed by kerry roberts. So I have to emphasize that we on the team, we volunteers on the team, have taken on these priorities. And we are donating our time and our resources to carry out these priorities, that means meetings with community members, meetings with governmental officials, meetings with anybody we can find who can help us on this. Okay? So I think that really needs to be emphasized. We want this to be sustainable. We're working hard for this to be sustainable. We need your help. We need everybody's help to do this. It can't just be us in isolation. Okay? I'm look at my notes, which are really scattered. We have been working very hard can austin code which I understand it's going to be called, right? And I can't say enough good things about the cooperation we have gotten from austin code. [05:24:59] A number of the neighborhood leaders from my neighborhood tnaca, have been working with austin code for quite awhile and they give us everything they can. They meet with us, they talk with us. Just a little snippet of information, when we last met with austin code about the problem properties and you were kind of like surprised or some of you that only eight properties were identified, well, first of all, the code officers have to manually extract all the information and we have laura pressley here who actually did -- she and one of her work group members did the same thing code did and it took them hours to manually extract all the information they need so that they can move forward on working with, citing the problem properties. And these eight problem properties had over 200 violations. So they were at the top. They weren't in our neighborhood, but we had one that came close. It had about 100 violations. Let me tell you this, let me share this snippet of information. It was a complex in which the owner's son was cremating animals in his oven. Let that sink in. It was his fireplace, I'm sorry. Let that sink in. Okay? And so it was attracting bugs, okay? This is the owner's son. So responsibility, landlord responsibility is a key issue in this. Key issue. And working with the landlords and apartment managers, something that frank wilson has known for I think even before this project started s fabulous, but we need to keep building that relationship, the apartment managers need to feel like they'll be backed up and supported. So let me go to the back of my notes. Bear with me. There are questions about incorporating health and human services. I think -- I work on priority two, which is the health priority. And there's not going to be a clinic, per se, built. We're going to do a needs assessment first through the auspices of the latino healthcare [05:27:01] forum. And they're looking for all the money. All we have to do is say to frank rodriguez and jill ramirez, all we had to do was we need this. We need something like you've got together down in the montopolis area. And they said, we'll go for it. So they made it part of their hispanic latino quality of life commission request. That kind of cooperation, that kind of community cooperation, across town, is what we need to sustain. Okay. So yes, we will eventually engage with health and human services. We will have to. But we need to identify where the gaps are in our area first. Transportation is a major gap. Getting to the community care clinic on braker lane for our residents, many of whom are tugging along little children or they're pregnant, they don't have cars, and cap metro -- we've met with cap metro. We've had several conversations. We need vans. And expect expect has some vans. But we need community care to ask for those vans to get those people up to the community care clinic on braker. So we need a lot of coordination of small moving parts. Pard. We have engaged some. As I mentioned, the gusgarcia rec center and we need a volunteer to step up and take that on as a priority because it is listed. We have had about 15 priorities listed initially. It's listed. It's part of a priority down the way. We need more green space, all that kind of thing, but that will only come if we have a leader who is willing to lead it. And that's a volunteer. We all have other things to do, some have day jobs, some have volunteer jobs. That kind of thing. We need more volunteers. We need coordination with libraries absolutely. By the way, another little snippet of information, freedom schools. One of our priority work groups working with youth is bringing in freedom schools to the area. [05:29:01] I encourage to you look that up. I won't go into detail, but that will require resources and I would urge the austin police department to look at perhaps funding that because I think it's a great investment in our community. It's a summer program. It's an elementary program and it works. It works. What else? By the way, part of the problem that I've noticed in listening to information is that we don't have all the information we need about what the city can offer to us. We didn't know about the roving leaders program. So we need more information. Perhaps the city could come and report to the triple r team about what are the resources out there. And this is a slow process, but it's a great process. It's really bearing fruit. I am thrilled to be part of this group and we need to keep forward. I'm old and I will eventually drop away and so -- or get senile. And so it's important that we build up our young leaders and I think we are doing that, but it's a slow process. Many moving pieces. People are can complicated, neighborhoods are complicated, so forth. I'll stop there. >> Morrison: Thank you. I really appreciate that. And your comments demonstrate how much the community is investing at this point. A million dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to that. You do have another unpaid job serving on the trustees. I'm thinking especially with priority 3 looking at after school programs and things like that, are we partnering with them. You know, on the joint subcommittees we've been doing work trying to make sure that we're keeping in mind and understanding how we can support each other and those kind of programs. Have they been at the table as aisd? >> Yes. Right now I am pulling in any aisd resource I can find. Trustee bradley, mel waxler, anybody I can find. If somebody has a question I'll find a resource for you, I'll find somebody to answer your questions. The neighborhood was very concerned about this biking program at hart because now all the -- most of the kids [05:31:03] except for about 150 are walking to school or biking to school. We had concerns, safety concerns, the neighborhood did, because we've got a lot of people in the area who are not very respectful of children. Not only that, they are riding on rundberg, which is too narrow to be striped for bikes. So we are working in collaboration as much as I can I connect people to resources and make sure that aisd is aware going on in the rundberg area because half of the schools in the area are mine and half are miss bradley. I think I for are got your question. >> Morrison: Specifically priority three looking at the after school programs. We fund some, we have our social service contracts coming up. We've done some work on the joint subcommittees about all the programs where we sort of share interest and things like that. Hopefully we take advantage of that work going on. >> Yes, robot tow martinez and -- robert martinez and roberto perez are working on that priority and they are very well connected to the community and aware of city resources. They will continue to add to the portfolio. Right now we have a binder of after school and summer programs they are handing out to every complex manager they can get to so they can communicate that information to the residents. That's a really good way to communicate. So they're working on that. We will continue to work on that. There are lots of moving pieces. We have programs that we're looking at like the freedom schools and that kind of thing to bring them into the area. So yes. >> Morrison: One other thing talking about kids and involvement. What about early childhood education? Has that been much of a topic of conversation here with such a high youth population to be able to start some of our investments really early, obviously is the best thing for your buck and a great thing. >> No, it has not surfaced as a priority that I'm aware of. We would need a volunteer to take it on. It's absolutely something the team could help with because all of these priorities are interconnected. But we don't have a lot of bandwidth in terms [05:33:03] of -- because neighborhood leaders tend to be people. You know. >> Morrison: I know. >> If we can find someone to take that on. And it's a priority of mine. It's a priority of school districts. That's something I can pay attention to, but I can't necessarily -- school district would be open to as they did at the allen campus, bringing in child inc. And having a program on an aisd campus is something we're already doing so I think we would be receptive to that at one of our schools. And sharing our schools for -- with healthcare and that kind of thing. Wing he would be receptive and many other trustees would be receptive to that. >> Morrison: If we were trying to make this a -- the completeness and full spectrum of services needed it sounds like a natural evolution to get that involved. Maybe I'll talk with our staff to see about how we could try and insert some of that. >> Yes. The concept is community schools and there's a nationwide organization that is connected, community schools, and I highly encourage everyone to check that o it's something that I'm really excited about. We do a little bit of did here in austin in the reagan vertical team. In the st. Johns and pickle has co-location services. I think we need to expand that and pilot in the rundberg area. >> Morrison: Great. Thank you, anne. Thanks to your work and to everybody. >> Mayor Leffingwell: Mar. >> Martinez: Just a couple of points. I appreciate the conversation that's gone on and all the folks that are involved, but two things specifically come to mind when I hear the questioning and 'the answers in the presentation. One of them is what controls are we putting in place to ensome you are that we're not just pushing some of the activity into other areas, neighboring areas of the community? When we talk about homelessness intervention, what I heard was cleaning up homeless camps and having austin resource recovery be there and code. Are we ensuring that [05:35:04] we're not shoving it out of this area. A second component to that is when I hear something like homeless intervention, juvenile justice programming, storefront space, at some point do we envision case managers for specific families and individuals or groups to help them understand the broader picture? This looks like we're making healthy policy decisions based in good data and good input but at some point it looks like we'll need to get to a case manager level and I didn't see any of that in the presentation? >> Do you want me to take the second part of the question? >> At some point we will need to hire neighborhood engagement specialists that aren't case managers, but what they can do is help residents in the rundberg area access existing services through nonprofit organizations, cbo's and so on. So what we've been doing thus far is doing the best that we can and essentially piecing together access to services through existing nonprofits and other providers. We have not yet moved to a model where we have case managers that are funded on the project beyond the neighborhood engagement specialists. I think you will get to that point. At some point you can only do so much. You will need a hands on case manager to help some of the families and groups and I would certainly be supportive of that. >> Councilmember martinez, I would like to introduce -- actually, we have our community engagement specialist, nelson andred. And then our community engagement admin specialist april gutierrez. We just recently hired them part-time positions and they both come with [05:37:05] different experiences. Nelson has a lot of community engagement expertise. He's also been a certified bilingual instructor in some of the schools in the area. And he also worked for next door.Com and walked in the neighborhood and met the residents. We're pleased to have both on the team. They just started next week and it's been like the fire house method of -- fire hose method of absorbing all this information and everything we've been doing for the last year and a half. We're pleased to have them with us. On your first part of the question you had, it's really the issue of displacement versus diffusion. He said what do we do with the individuals we moved off that property? And through that question we started in priority five, that's what development priority five, a care team. And we're bringing in other social service providers that have a role in the homeless issue and prostitution prevention so we can do outreach beforehand so that we can actually have a diffusion effect and not just a displacement. We connected him with the v.A. So we could did try to get services. We had another gentleman from kentucky who was receiving services there but couldn't get back to kentucky. How do we help them out? We're trying to bring the partnerships in and this is where michael willard has brought in -- we have caritas, [05:39:07] echo, austin-travis county integral care, e.M.S., Community care, goodwill. Dr. Streeter with the university of texas who is part of helping us out on this problem. We actually did -- echo does the population homeless pulse count in january? We did another one in the area trained volunteers. 50% of the group that went out in the county were from the neighborhood. We've been able to identify more of the openlation counts and it increased 50% from what it was in january. We're going to train more volunteers from the neighborhood so in january we'll do another count. But we are watching the displacement effect and also which I promise as commander of region two I don't have just this 5.74 square miles, I'm responsible for 84 square miles and I realize that we don't want to move a problem, we want to try to really address it and get the needs and connect it, which comes to the case manager, I'm sure. >> I do see that you have a very comprehensive wrap around, if you will, component to dealing with everything. But I have been a part of cleanups on browning drive since the late 90's, the fire department and the police department went in and cleaned it up and then we bought -- we turned the little open space drainage area at the end of browning drive into a park thinking that would creativity. That recidivism rate seems to always be there and I'm hoping that this time because of the really, quite frankly, the community involvement and engagement as opposed to us us going in and cleaning up is going to make that long-term sustainable change that's needed. >> I really have, if I may, a point where we're having the town meetings a resident came through and she had several newspaper articles of all the efforts that we had done over the years. She was like what has really changed? And I think that was a [05:41:07] very important point that she made. And that's with the sustainability piece, that's when anne came in. Michael, the team to really have a lasting effect, it has to come from the community and building that leadership, the connections, cross-sector partnerships. And that's what our goal is not just the million dollars and the three years that it's over, it's to lessen the impact. >> Martinez: Thank you guys very much. >> Cole: Any further questions? Without objection, this meeting of the austin city council is ADJOURNED.wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww [09:16:12] wwwwwwwwwwwwwwññññ