City Council Special Called Meeting Transcript –2/19/2015 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 2/19/2015 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/19/2015 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:12:30 AM] . >> Mayor Adler: Are we about ready to gear up? I'm going to go ahead and call to order the city council meeting, Thursday, February 19. It is 10 after 9:00. We're in the Austin city council chambers. Today, this morning, we're going to have a conversation about education support. This afternoon we're going to have a conversation about neighborhoods. I want to begin by thanking the panelists and the other voices that have come here today. And as I've said to other folks, I made the mistake of calling these deep dives when we first started off, and they're not. In order to do that well we would obviously need, you know, several days to really talk about education in a meaningful way. But we did want to just brush on the topic and give the council a chance to ask, you know, high-level kinds of questions, in part to identify what it is that we have to in the future spend more time talking about. There have been a lot of inquiries come to my office asking and suggesting questions and topics for us to discuss, and as I've discussed with people on the dais, council members as well, panelists and folks with other voices, there are several real important and admittedly controversial and emotional questions related to education and form of education, and we're not going to engage in that conversation with the process that we're having [9:14:31 AM] here. Ours is a real limited inquiry into what is the role, if any, of city government in supporting education. And if there is a role, then what is that -- what forms should that or could that take. And I think everybody is here today because they're willing to help us deal with those issues, and I think to the degree we can stay focused on those issues we'll best use the five to seven minutes that each of you have individually plus the group conversation that we have, and I would urge my colleagues as well to help facilitate that kind of conversation, focusing on what is the role, should there be one, and then what that might take a look at. So that said, again, I appreciate you all being here. We had originally set this up so that everybody talked for five to seven minutes and then we had an open conversation. Our past experience has shown us that kind of morphs into just one session, so we'll start, we'll try to keep the introductory comments to that five to seven minutes but then conversations seem to be just organically growing. And feel free if you think there's a short comment that you should make relative to what somebody else has said, even on the panel -- feel free to go ahead and do that as well. So we'll go ahead and start. Ms. Dawson, executive director of E 3. Why don't you lay out the framework. >> Thank you very much, thank you, mayor and council members for this important topic. We'll go ahead and bring up the slides, please, of education, in ten minutes, which is not going to be a deep dive, I'll tell you, we're going to move through very quickly, but all of us on the panel, myself, are available for questions and follow-up. Thank you for having us here [9:16:32 AM] today. I wanted to touch on four primary take-aways. First is that too few students across our region, and we will look here at the central Texas region, not just city of Austin, not just one school district, because students are highly mobile and move across our entire region as our commuters and workforce does, but too few of those students are getting the credentials they need to succeed in the 21st century global economy with a living wage. Having said that there are many wonderful things happening across our region in education. Wellpoint have time to go into -- I won't have time to go into many of those, but I'll show you some. The third is that the city of Austin can help and can do so creatively, and what you can do now some specific recommendations. So first of all I'd like to say as a headline, that too few of our students are getting the credentials that they need to succeed. National data tells us that by 2020 about two-thirds of all jobs, all jobs will need some post-secondary credential. It could be a military credential, a welding certificate, a two or four-year degree but it is not a high school diploma, and yet here in central Texas only about 30% of our high school graduates get any sort of post-secondary credential within six years. So we have a long way to go to provide them the credentials they need to succeed in our economy and our future workforce it it starts early, hees a comparison of child poverty growth wait. In the last decade the blue line is across the united States. Child poverty rate has increased by about a third. In Texas the red line, it's about 40% increase. In central Texas it's nearly triple that. It's gotten a little better just in the last year, but we've basically doubled the number of students who are children in poverty here in the central Texas region, and you can see it's growing [9:18:35 AM] vastly faster than the state or the country. What does that mean? Because these students face many challenges at home, about half of our students come into kindergarten ready to learn, in early language and communication, social-emotional scales, we do a sample study across the entire region and we can see that almost half of our students are not ready coming into kindergarten and have many assets that they need to gain to be able to succeed in school. By the time they get to 8th grade we're looking here at standardized assessments for our 8th graders. This happens to be math. You can see the good news, that if we look across different ethnic groups and income populations, that for the past -- since the Tak student outcomes have been better in terms of passing rates but we're closing the gaps between different groups. As you know, in 2012 we introduced across the state of Texas a new way to assess students called the star test, and it is a -- known as a more rigorous test, more challenging test. It's more closely tied to critical thinking and you can see that that gap widened again immediately and has been pretty much flat as students and teachers in our educational system understand how to better serve students to meet the expectations that our state has set. I can also tell you while I'm not showing it here, that if you look at not just the passing rate but the rate that predicts college and career readiness, these obseroutcomes are over 20 points lower for our hispanic and other children. One of the things highly indifference tif is student -- we know a high school student absent ten days a year is three times as likely to drop out as one who is absent five or fewer days a year. [9:20:35 AM] We've compared our absenteeism rate here in central Texas against all the major urban areas, San Antonio, Dallas. If you look at our not low-income students, not on free and reduced lunch, everybody across the state is about the same in terms of absences. However, if you look at our clclose income population central Texas students have far more absences than Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, any other urban area of the state. And this is predictive of those students meeting challenges across their entire educational attainment system. Finally, I wanted to show you back to needing to have some credential post-secondary. This is looking at students who graduate here in central Texas and go to college within the state of Texas, again, comparing our non-low-income students on top and our low-income students on the bottom. What you can see is about a little less than 70% of our non-low-income students are enrolled in college within a year of those who graduate, yet only, third fourth year, but complete some sort of certificate or degree within six years. For our low-income students, alarmingly, only 11% of them get any sort of post-secondary degree or credential in the state of Texas within six years of graduating. So there are a lot of challenges that our students across central Texas are facing. Having said that, I wanted to make sure that you understand that there are wonderful things happening in our region on an individual school, on a school district, on nonprofit community levels, and we're seeing the impact of that. One of the most important ways that we're seeing the impact is if -- here, if you look at graduation rates, again, of our low-income students, those students we really need to concentrate on helping succeed, and again, comparing to urban areas across the state of Texas as well as the dashed [9:22:36 AM] line you can see is Texas as a whole. The green line is the graduation rate of our low-income students in central Texas, and you can see back to 2007, which is at the time that the -- the down slope is a new definition that was being ramped in, but starting in 2007 our low-income students had much worse rate of graduation than any other urban area in the state. However, we've been working together on this regionally, across school districts, across community groups, and I'm excited to say that that graduation rate has increased at a much higher rate than any other part of the state, and, in fact, we're now in the middle and continuing to grow that graduation rate faster than other urban areas across the state. And that's great news. Here's another way to look at what is happening to those children and those students after they get out of high school. You can see that the not low income student enrollment rate, direct to college enrollment is pretty much flat. We need to work on that for sure, but the good news again is that there's been significant increase in need to direct college enrollment of our low-income students and especially our hispanic students are showing vast increases in their college enrollment rate. One other example of succeed of the region working together, here is a comparison in the red diamonds of the overall student enrollment rate over the last decade or so, which you can see is rising at a very steady rate, compared to the total number of student absences of all students across the region, which has been rising at almost exactly the same rate until 2011, when districts and schools and community groups across our region started working cohesively on student attendance, and because our schools are paid by the state based on student attendance, we're able to show that for the first time since that cohesive effort has been under way, we've been able to bring back $20 million to central Texas school districts due to revenue saved because attendance has improved while enrollment [9:24:37 AM] continues to grow. That's great news. Let's talk a little bit about how the city of Austin can help. First of all, it's important to say that unlike New York, Tennessee, many other parts of the country that have a system where city government is overlaid often on county governance on school district governance and all have the same authority. That is not true in the state of Texas. In the state of Texas the city council has utterly no governance or financial authority over any school district or any school. So what does that mean? There are many other ways to influence change that are not through a mandate or governance authority. How are those influences made? Certainly a bully pulpit, the ability to bring issues to the surface, the ability to be vocal about our needs and wants and our ability to work together to create solutions. There is a joint committee, which many of you know about, and the council members will be assigned to, between Austin I.S.D. As well as the city of Austin and Travis county, that looks regularly at issues that impact all of those -- for instance, truancy. There is a great ability to coordinate service and facilities that the city of Austin has acknowledged to. For instance, community groups have crossed the region -- across the region have been working with the city of Austin for the last year to better coordinate summer learning gains, to attack summer learning loss by coordinating parks and recreation, health & human services, libraries, all of whom have resources that can be shared to help students over that summer so they don't lose the learning throughout the school year. And finally, I would say that the most important thing for you all to think about is better using data and results in funding decisions. There are many programs, after-school programs, child supports, early childhood, that the city does control finances for, and often because there is no governance authority it's easier to make those decisions based on emotion or good marketing, rather [9:26:38 AM] than good data and documented results, and there is always an opportunity to approve the use of data in making those decisions. Lastly I'll just touch very quickly on some opportunities now in front of the city of Austin. First, there is a regional campaign called missing school matters, that ce continue to work on to -- we continue to work on to improve attendance. It's important for student achievement and outcome, it is also what brings revenue back to our schools. I would encourage you to continue to support that. We've worked with sla Majid and many others. School readiness is important. A parent guide has been created with the city of Austin we need to put in the hands of every family. Third, there is my brother's keeper, national opportunity that aisd has already signed off on. It's in front of the council now, and finally there's a college sign in day planned for may 1 that we would like the mayor and council to be behind to celebrate every first generation student who is making that successful transition to higher ed. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. (Off mic) Ms. Hinojosa. >> Yes, thank you, mayor. We'd like to have the slide show up. I'm Gina Hinojosa and I am the president of the aid board of trustees. We are a school district representing or educating over 84,000 students. We have 12,000 employees and 129 campuses. We are a board of nine. Two of us are elected at large. The rest are elected from their districts and we are [9:28:38 AM] also elected in November in staggered terms. You may have heard that we recently appointed a superintendent, a new superintendent, Dr. Paul Cruz. He's with us here today. He is a resource for you here today as well. He has been with the district for ten years, but he started off as a teacher. He -- he's a longhorn, has his doctorate in education and was a superintendent in Laredo for some time and also an associate commissioner at the tea. I want to talk to you a little bit about who we are, our demographics. The slide shows some statistics on demographics, but I want to point out something that's not on your slide, and that's our ethnic and racial makeup. We're 60% hispanic. We're 25.4% anglo, 8.2% African American, 6.4% other. The reason I want to point this out to you is because 25.4% anglo in an urban district is unheard of in this state. Only Fort Worth comes close with 14% anglo. Houston, Dallas, they're probably 5%, around there, and that's an indication, really, of aid being the school district of choice for families in Austin. Our middle class still come -- city buy in and still support our public schools, and -- and that is something that is unique about our culture. What makes us proud, we have diverse programming for -- there we go. We have diverse programming all throughout this district. Early college high school, I'd like to talk more about if I have time. Dual language programs, fine arts academies, creative learning initiative, all sorts of opportunities, career -- career academies, [9:30:39 AM] I think I said, all sorts of opportunities for our kids to learn. We have strong academic performance, our graduation rate in 2013 was 84.1%, up from -- just in 2008, from 74.3%. So a lot of good work has been done in very little time. Some of our challenges are enrollment has decreased recently because of affordability. I'd love to talk to you more about that. Decline in birth rates because of the recession, so our pre-k and kindergarten grades are affected, and because of private schools and charters. And I'd like to show a video that talks a little bit about our financial pressures. >> In Austin our thriving economy is leading the way for the entire nation, (indiscernible) Austin made successful, capable students fully prepared to compete in tomorrow's economy. And right now Austin is (indiscernible) Barrier to success. An updated state school finance system that doesn't combine the resources Austin students need. Because the tax bills are (indiscernible), you'd think local school property taxes would be paid directly to educate students and pay teachers. Not exactly. Our school district (indiscernible) Property rate. That means a percentage of local school taxes go to the state as general revenue. State funding comes back to Austin based on the number of students (indiscernible) And it's far less than what we send. Austin sends more local school tax dollars to the state than any Texas school district. Last year more than 11% of the total collected by the state came from Austin, and more than 20% from central Texas districts. And as property values rise, more and more of your local tax dollars will be sent to the state under the current [9:32:40 AM] system where Austin is considered property rich. (Lapse in audio) Don't. Like more students from disadvantaged households, more students with limited English proficiency, more students at risk, and more needing special education. We embrace the diversity of our students, and because of this diversity, specialized programming and resources in place to support them, regardless of whether the state funds it. Our state system for funding our schools limits the investment we're able to make in our kids and our future, and salaries for our teachers are falling further behind. We need more access to our local school tax dollars to address our local needs. And the court agrees. In a 2014 decision a judge found our state system for funding schools inadequate, unsuitable and inequitable. Tested school funding method will soon be reviewed by the Texas supreme court. No wonder. The Texas school funding formulas were developed in 1984, and have not changed significantly in 30 years. Plus, the state slashed $50 million in aid funds in 2012, which was never fully restored as it was for many other school districts. And that has been jeopardized many programs vital to our students. Our state school finance system simply has not kept pace with the cost of educating our students and preparing them to succeed. It's time for the state to investigate more in public education and have austinites have access to local tax dollars. To our state legislators, it's time for change. State formulas need to reflect Austin students at today's costs, not 30 years ago. After all, it's our tax dollars, our kids, our future. >> Okay, so you can see we have challenges that come from our state finances, what role can the city play. We had to make 75 million in cuts over the last four years because of our state [9:34:40 AM] finance system, and so more and more if we can partner to serve our family taxpayer, we would like to explore those options with this council. And I was very pleased to hear many of you campaigning in support of our public schools. That is refreshing to hear from city leaders. Full-day pre-k, you heard from Ms. Dawson how important that is to child success. We currently pay for it, full day pre-k, but we only get money for a half-day program from the state, so we are spending down reserves and really making up money to pay for the other half of that. We support our kids and families with many social service contracts because we know it's important. It's not just what happens in the classroom but what happens -- what supports that child and the family so a child can show up ready to learn in the classroom. We -- because of robin hood system we have to currently charge the Austin taxpayer twice as much as the city would to provide those same services and to give you a cent of that. So for every penny that we tax for aid we bring in 3.4 million because of recapture. That's what we keep. The city brings in 8.7 million for every penny, so whatever -- where it makes sense for the city to pay for it, it's a good deal for the taxpayer. Travis county brings in 11.3 cents. I think my time is probably up, even though a buzzer hasn't rung but thank you for having me here and I look forward to working with all of you for the sake of our students and our families. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Are there any questions? >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Ms. Hinojosa, thanks so much for being here. I know that you were sort of pressed for time and said you would love to have spoken to us a little bit more about how housing enrollment impacts [9:36:41 AM] affordability. In my district you have schools that are busting at the seams by the time you finish building them and thanks for having built them, but then in other parts we're seeing underenrollment. Can you talk to us a little about housing affordability and how our planning can help support, make sure the investments we've made in building schools stick? >> Right. Well, you're right. We are losing families in central Austin because families can no longer afford to live here. We have the same problem actually retaining teachers. Teachers cannot afford to live here because the cost of living has gone up so high. Housing is a big issue. I think there are things to explore, all sorts of ways to explore how we might address this problem. I think affordable housing that is for families in those critical areas where it's just unaffordable for families would be something worth exploring. I think, you know, we have these (lapse in audio) Statements that we send to the planning commission, the zoning commission, whenever there is a project that is before them that affects schools, but there is currently no mechanism, no method to address a negative impact to the school district. I would like to -- I would like us to be able to explore how we might creatively address that issue. >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: Two things. Well, the first thing is actually, I understand that you all would have challenges as you're going through our permitting process for new new schools or improvements to schools. So I expect that one of the ways that we could help you, perhaps, would be an expedited process. Can you speak to that at all? >> Well, I think you said it just perfectly. We passed a bond recently, and so many of our campuses, my guess is in every single [9:38:41 AM] one of your districts, are having critical improvements done to their facilities, and sometimes we get -- we get delayed and it costs us money because we are stuck in the permitting process for the city. So where we can maybe be given extra consideration fast tracked, it would be very helpful for school communities. You know, we planned these projects around the school year so we can have -- so as to have minimum burden on the student and teaching and learning. So timing is -- >> Kitchen: We'll work together on that. >> Thank you. I appreciate that, council member. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston and then Mr. Zimmerman >> Houston: Thank you so much again for being here. My suggestion, I guess, is be careful what you mean when you say affordable housing, because it's -- as my staff say, it's a very elastic term, and some people will come in with affordable projects, but when you look at the units and the kinds of units and the price points of the unit, we're not talking about families with children who would bring increased enrollment in some of the under-enrolled schools because they have minimum Numbers for those people. So we just need to think about what we're saying when we talk about affordability. >> I appreciate that. Thank you, council member. Mr. Zimmerma N? >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, thank you again for coming. I want to ask a few questions quickly about the video that you showed about the robin hood school financing. I believe those lawsuits go way back, right, to the 1970s on inequalities, and judges have ruled repeatedly -- this is not something new. In fact, this redistribution of wealth from so-called wealthier school districts like aisd, that's been going on, right, for decades, has it not? >> Yes, it has. [9:40:42 AM] >> Zimmerman: It has. And I guess the irony, I'm a fiscal conservative and I'm in (lapse in audio) On the council, and I get that, but it seems to be a core value in the city that redistribution of wealth is a good idea. We hear a lot of that. And so now -- the irony I've got is will we have redistribution of wealth and the people who promote redistribution of wealth are now complaining that they don't have enough wealth. School says too much of our money is going outside of Austin and we don't have enough money. So it's an irony to me I can't understand. >> Well, I appreciate your perspective. We struggle with our current situation. Our position in the lawsuit has been really that all children need more money for education, but I think that the robin hood system is -- we're at a point in Austin where people can no longer afford to live in their neighborhoods because their property taxes are so high because we have to collect so much of it to pay for the services we need because we send so much of it back. So I think that is a real equity issue for our city, that people have to sell the homes that their families have lived in for generations because they can't afford their tax bills. >> We're in complete agreement. Just, the irony is that the judge ruled the school system was inequitable and that's what got us to where we are now, and once again, the ruling that it's inequitable. I feel like we're chasing our tail here. >> Mayor Adler: To a degree there are two elements to the school finance system. One element of the school finance system is the equity portion of it that says that a child anywhere in the state should have equal funding for schools. But what's hitting the schools in central Texas are not so much that as it is the policy that says that certain students are more expensive to educate, by that means they require [9:42:42 AM] additional support services or other programs. Some of those students would be disabled students. Some of those students are students that are bilingual or English second language. Some of those students are comp ed (lapse in audio) To those kids. It's not really a redistribution system as much as it is the system recognizing that certain students need additional funding. And part of the challenge in central Texas is that while we are a property-rich district, we have a lot of students, as the slides show. We have a lot of students that fall in those categories, a lot of students that are economically disadvantaged and a lot of students that are bilingual. And the weights and measures for those haven't been adjusted since the 1980s. So I think that that's not so much due to inequity as much as understanding what it costs to educate kids. >> Thank you. Very well said, mayor. I appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: Further questions? >> Tovo: Yeah, thank you. I want to thank you all of our school district representatives and trustees here today for all the great work you've done and continue to do. As a parent with two children in aisd I appreciate it every day, just the quality of that education and the challenges that the school district is facing. I wanted to talk for a minute about one of the ongoing challenges, and you've talked a little bit about it, trustee Hinojosa, in talking about the increasing -- the increasing difficulty families with children are having in staying in our central city and how that's created some challenges for schools in terms of overenrollment and underenrollment in other areas, and I know the facilities master plan is part of the way in which the district hopes to address that and the educational impact statement and some of the other work that's going on as the joint subcommittee [9:44:44 AM] is also attempting to do what we can do as a city to plan together with our school districts and aid. So I wonder if you could talk about where the master plan is and when it's going to be rolled out and give us a little highlight. >> Yes, so we approved a new facility master plan within the last few months. We have implemented -- well, we are implementing phase 1 of it. It's very different from the facility master plan that got many of us down with placards to aisd central office six years ago. It's -- it's very community- driven, and it's very specific to areas -- geographic areas, neighborhoods, communities. And so where we see an issue in north Austin on overcrowding, we're there looking for solutions with parent leadership, teachers, principals, and engaging the community on what are solutions, everything from -- we're looking at boundary changes to re -- programming at certain schools. We recently made a decision in north Austin to move a pre-k center to -- I'm sorry -- a pre-k grade at an elementary school to the pre- k center to make more space at that campus, but that was -- we had no one show up. We didn't have anyone show up with pitchforks because of that decision, because it -- it really is community-driven. So - - but we're aggressively looking at how we can find efficiencies in our building. A large part of that also is programming in under-enrolled schools. We've seen that the dual language programs in many of our central city schools have -- have brought parents and families -- students back to campuses that were [9:46:45 AM] once under-enrolled and considered for closure. So that's been a real success. So engaging the community about what we are looking for for our students has really helped us to address some of those issues. And I just want to say, while I've got mic, that I want to thank you, council member tovo, for your leadership in finding partnership opportunities with us during the last budget and how much we so appreciate having now our parent support specialists in a full-time capacity working for our families and students and the after-school programming that we were able to maintain after a cut in federal funds for our -- for our schools. So we really appreciate it, and we're making that money work hard for us. >> Tovo: Well, thanks very much. I appreciate that, and I look forward through the joint subcommittee and other meetings to figuring out how else the city and the county and the school districts can work together on those partnerships, and I think Ms. Dawson mentioned another area of opportunity, which is joint use, which has been a recurrent theme in a lot of these discussions, including the facilities -- the first facilities master plan task force that you referred to earlier. So I think we can make some great progress on that in the future. So thank you all. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. Ms. Troxclair? >> Troxclair: One of the biggest concerns when it comes to education in south Austin or in my district is the issue of building a new high school, either east or west -- west of mopac or east of 35 (lapse in audio) Are enrolled high school in aid and I know a lot of parents have asked me over the past several months about, you know, what's happening with the bond money that we passed in 2008 to buy land to build new schools. I know there was an article recently in the states man that kind of outlined where we are in that process, but [9:48:45 AM] can you just give us a quick update on where we are with that bond money and those decisions and then maybe also how the environmental issues, particularly in southwest Austin, have played into where we are today? >> Absolutely. So we have -- you all have a new council. We just got four new board members on our -- on our board, and so this is an issue that we are getting our board up to speed on. We recently met in executive session. We are able to meet in executive session on issues of land purchase, and so we did that within the last month to get our board members up to speed. We are scheduling -- I think the calendar committee met yesterday and are scheduling an open meeting to talk about where we are now. A lot has changed since 2008, new board. I think all but -- all but one of us -- only one of us was here in 2008 when that bond was passed, so it's -- we're going to look at this -- looking at demographics and what makes sense to address the issues in south Austin. So I wish I could report that we're farther along, but -- but we're -- we've scheduled some discussions on it. And I want to report to you that I think the statesman had reported that we were pursuing a two-school option, and while we are legally allowed to purchase two parcels of land with that bond money, the board has not made a decision to do so. >> Troxclair: Okay. Okay. Well, I would love to keep an open line of communication with you as we move forward on that process, because it is a huge topic of interest in my [9:50:46 AM] district, and I know -- I think buoy is -- their enrollment, not only is it the most overcrowded high school but expected to grow 14% in the next seven years or so. I don't know. You're the expert in this topic, but I do want to -- I am very interested in it. So thank you for your work on this so far. >> Well, I appreciate it and I'd love to schedule a follow-up meeting with you to discuss further. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria? >> Renteria: Ms. Hinojosa, I just wondered, hearing this -- we're in the -- in the inner-city right now we're looking into building affordable housing and more parking lots at the library, we're trying to figure out how to go through that process now. Have you all ever thought about maybe building affordable house engage some of your land so teachers could be -- could move into that area, you know, build some family-style housing there, apartments or something like that? >> Yes, that -- that idea came to us recently, I'd say within the last year or so, from a community member, and it's getting some traction. We are at initial stages of considering options like that. We do have -- we do own a lot of land, and so we've made no decisions on anything like that, but right now, given our financial situation, we are -- we've made lots of cuts, but we're also looking at ways we might be able to generate revenue, and so potentially in a way that makes sense for everybody. That could be also a revenue-generating endeavor for the district. >> Renteria: Yes, because (lapse in audio) Working on a revenue that we can bring into certain areas, we're going to try to develop some tifs through the homestead preservation act, and then we're going to be able to [9:52:47 AM] identify some funding. So -- but as you know, in east Austin and some of the areas where, you know, the schools -- there's not that much land available and if it is, it's very expensive. So we have -- we're going to have -- we have some money that we want to invest also and help the school district also develop some affordable housing, so our teachers can be near the school. If you all can identify some land that would be great when you work with our committee. So I really would appreciate that. >> I'll schedule a follow-up meeting on that, council member Renteria. >> Renteria: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Gallo. >> Gallo: Thank you all. Is it on? Yeah. Thank you all for being here. The information I know we're going to hear today is really important and I think we all really agree that a community develops best in a positive way when we all work together to make sure that our younger generation is educated. A little bit of concern that I have is -- so far what we've heard is information on college-bound students, and I think what's really critical for us to realize is that there is a large group of students who will not be college-bound but instead are interested in professional trade careers. I'm thinking of electricians and plumbers and car mechanics, those people we all so desperately need in our lives, and it may be that someone else is going to address this but I would be really interested in what the school districts are doing in that trade track for an education -- for a student that is perhaps not interested in being college- bound. >> (Indiscernible). >> Yes, please, thank you. >> I think it's very important to understand that all of our school districts and, in fact, the state of Texas -- >> Mayor Adler: Can you put the mic toward you? It's on. You're on. No, no, you're on. >> Here you go. [9:54:48 AM] You just have to bring it closer to you. >> It's very important to understand that our school districts as well as the definition of the state of Texas of college and career readiness is a holistic measure. It does not mean a four-year degree. It doesn't even mean a two-year degree. It means preparedness through a post-secondary credential for a wide variety of futures, and that could be a welding certificate, it could be an auto mechanics, it could be in network technology, it could be a two-year degree in nursing, it could be a four-year degree in business. It is a very holistic measure. However -- and we want students to be able to access all of those tracks and all of our school districts are very actively working on that, and I would also say in the last legislative session when hb 5 passed, which was the single largest change in education policy in the state of Texas, probably in the last 30 years, it was designed precisely to have school districts and particularly high schools work with community college and industry and higher education as a whole to create better aligned pathways towards careers. Having said that, the data shows that it is almost impossible today for a student to get a living wage job without some post- secondary credential. A high school diploma is not enough to get a living-wage job. We have to have all students on track for some credential, whether it's a trade or four-year degree or whatever, military, whatever it is. >> I will say something that I didn't appreciate until -- until I was on the board for a while, though, is that while I agree with everything that was said by Ms. Dawson, there's something about also engaging students in trade curriculum that keeps them engaged in school in general, because they're interested. So beyond the preparation, which is good, for the work -- for their future in the workforce, it keeps kids excited about school, coming to school. And so even -- I think that [9:56:51 AM] kind of work is worthwhile just in that respect. >> Gallo: And I appreciate you saying that, because when you see the (indiscernible) Rates in the school attendance, obviously for a large population there needs to be some other interest. So thank you for addressing that. >> That's precisely what hb 5 is designed today, although it's still very much in the early stage of rolling out. But that was the intent of hb 5, was to engage students in those relevant pathways. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Gallo? -- I'm sorry, Ms. Garza. >> Garza: Thank you, president Hinojosa, for being here. I think that the new high school is a big topic in south Austin and I think it's a great opportunity for some joint facility ideas and opportunities, so please -- please, as you're having that conversation, let my office or let the city know about any ideas where the city can have a joint facility with aid. >> I appreciate that. Thank you, council member Garza. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Casar: One more point to be made that I think everybody here is aware of, while we don't have governance authority over the school district in many ways, we have authority over other areas that involve criminal justice or social services. Some -- we touch on immigration issues and that affects the outcomes of our students and families so much. So I don't know if you want to address this now or if maybe there's some report we could get from Dr. Cruz on the number of students that are facing some of the difficulties that -- we do -- we do have governance over in the criminal justice system, with food and security, border homelessness, those that are new Americans whose parents may be in fear or in process of their fears being separated from them by our broken immigration system. And so I don't know if -- I would not imagine that you would have those statistics with you now, but as somebody that has in the university worked in the schoolhouse and seen how, you know, students with parents in the criminal justice system or students whose parents are being separated from them, are [9:58:53 AM] border homeless, how much impact that has on our educational outcomes, and I think this city council and I in particular, would be very interested in pushing initiatives to create the environments that students can learn. So any information you can bring to us about the number of English learners and new Americans or those, you know, facing border homelessness, I think that will empower us to make better decisions on the policies that we do set. >> I agree, and we have various (indiscernible) In the community to address those issues because we know -- we know the impact that has on student success. The family resource centers that we have in our schools help us to manage those different services, because often it's not one service that a family or child needs but a variety kind -- kind of the wrap around services, wrap-around support. But we -- we can work on getting you some more information on those specific Numbers, but some partnerships that come to mind are the seedling foundation, mentors for children with parents who are incarcerated. We also have a program that works directly supporting children who are homeless that -- because we know how much mobility and homelessness affects a child's ability to learn in the classroom and just to really show up in the classroom. But we'll get you some -- some statistics. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: Just very quickly. Could you include with that also -- give us -- give us some current status of the family resource centers in whatever level detail you can in terms of where they are, where they're not, and where the additional needs are. That would be very helpful. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Dr. Crook. Thank you. >> Good morning, thank you mayor Adler, council members. We are very, very excited to be here. [10:00:53 AM] My name is Kelly crook. I'm the superintendent of the del valle independent school district. We have representatives from our board of trustees and our administration here in the audience, just to show you how important kicking off a partnership with the city is to our school district. Five minutes is not very long. I'm going to go rapidly through these slides, but I'd be more than happy to offer clarification or answer questions. Which way do we point? Ooh, fancy. What you see here is a map of del valle I.S.D. We are the entire southeast corner of Travis county. The dark gray that you see snaking down from the north, that is full-purpose city of Austin. Those are the strange lines that demark the top left up there, that is the Riverside montopolis neighborhood. That is in del valle I.S.D. The large square kind of under it is where the airport is located, and you're all familiar with circuit of the Americas as we snake down to that area. We have a number of subdivisions that have come up in there. The yellow stars that you see are our current existing campuses. More important, I believe, for our purpose is the light gray. That is limited purpose. Those are all of the major new housing developments that are under way in del valle. Those are only the large ones with 2,000 or more units planned. At total build-out just two or three of those will approach 22,000 units. That is a massive change for our district. Being limited purpose right now, the residents aren't there yet, you're not collecting any taxes. As they move in and grow they will move to full purpose, but even under limited purpose they do vote in city council elections. Some quick facts about our [10:02:53 AM] district. We are 174 square miles. That's quite large, especially considering we are maybe 20% built out. Most of us are rural in del valle. We do have suburbs coming up, and then of course you're familiar with the urban parts of our district in the Riverside, montopolis area. So we actually encompass every different type of district in one district. We currently have approximately 11,700 students. 14 different campuses you see listed there. Our demographics, 88% of our students are economically 34% are limited English proficient, which is the highest percentage in region 13. 66% qualify as at risk. Our student population is below there. We are 84% hispanic, 9% African American and 5% anglo. We have a number of challenges in del valle. We've decided to focus these next two slides just on city of Austin issues. Funding and support, that's obviously the first one we need. More and more Austin residents, city of Austin residents, are moving to the del valle independent school district. Del valle has no local city government of itself, okay? We are actually eight different communities comprised in one school district. We are the cities of Austin, Garfield, webberville, pilot knob, el Roy, creedmoor mustang ridge and the (indiscernible) Area. I didn't look down. My staff is loving that one. That's always a game we play. Because of that no single (indiscernible) Group together except the del valle independent school district. Needing outside community resources is something that has always been an issue for our area. District was almost [10:04:54 AM] incorporated, if you will, around Bergstrom air force base. We were largely a military district, similar to Killeen up in fort hood. When the military left our unifying entity sort of left us, and now our residents have lots of issues on where to go and who to get help from because even they aren't sure sometimes what jurisdiction that they live in and who to approach on certain things. The school district has become kind of a clearinghouse for everybody, so that's why these partnerships are so important to us, because we right now are the only voice that they have. Health services are an issue for del valle. We have no hospitals, no doctors' office, no dentists, nothing within our border. We do have some clinics that have popped up. We absolutely rely on our nonprofit partners. Community care has helped us out with a part-time clinic in the Hornsby bend area. We actually provide a clinic on our own site near our administration building in partnership with the UT school of nursing, because that's pretty much the only access to immunizations, physicals and basic health care that many of our residents have. Mentors. This one doesn't cost a thing. Council member Gallo was talking about those who aren't going to plan a college track. We have many of our students who are interested in moving into the career track with various house bill 5 certifications. What we need are local government and business mentors to work with our kid. Being such a rural area we don't have a lot of industries that can bring people out, and we always hear from other industries that we're just too far away to send people to. So any assistance that the city could provide, we would be very grateful for that. Out of school time programs. As board president Hinojosa mentioned, we also recently lost our federal 21st century grant, and we're not reuped. [10:06:54 AM] Our school board decided to pay for our after school programs out of our own local budget. We have a small grant from the county that helps us out, some of our other partners are trying to get various grants to help us out, but for the most part we're locally funded. We don't have any recreation centers. There is no ymca. We don't have any other programs in del valle. Everything has to be provided through our schools. Any assistance with that would mean a great deal to our families. I listed community leagues up there because without the recreation and the ymca, we have no athletic leagues for our students. We have a lot of health issues in del valle. We'll get to some other issues on why that is the case, but we -- it's very important to us that we have active healthy kids and provide them those opportunities for community athletic leagues. Council member kitchen brought up permitting process. That is a huge issue for us. In del valle I.S.D. We don't have any swing space. All of our campuses are at or near full capacity. We just passed a bond and we're very excited about that, but renovations must go on in the summer months for us or do them very quickly during spring break. The permitting process can be over a year for us. We had some freezers go out, and those are pretty important. We applied -- that happened last may. We applied for a permit. It went through two or three different departments. We missed last summer. We had to apply again. Still the freezer is out. We can't install the new one. Now it's February. We still haven't heard back. We've got to know if we can get that done this summer because right now we're having some food storage issues and trucking things in from other campuses. So permitting is a big problem for renovations for us, but it's going to be a bigger problem when we start building these new campuses. [10:08:56 AM] We have a very short timeline to get these things turned around because of our enrollment Numbers. I do want to also mention, thank you, council member tovo and our previous council, ensured that when new developments come in of a certain size, that in order to get their water permit they have to donate land for elementary schools to our school district. That is going to make a huge difference to our district, but not getting that permitting process, since most of our district is an E.T.J., is going to hamper our ability to get those built. Transportation. This is an issue that we are really hoping that the council, and through capital metro, can help us with. The problem with annexing new land and as Austin slowly moves out there is the transportation plans were completed many years ago. We weren't on the list because many of our annexed areas didn't come on board until the last few years. What that means is that our riverside/montopolis neighborhood has pretty good access, but as you move down into del valle we have one carts route that comes in, that we actually brought in through a grant with the school district and capital metro that comes on to the administration building property and connects us with ACC Riverside -- to ACC Riverside for college classes. I would say 90% of the ridership is our residents living around there now rather than our students, because it is the only route that they have in order to connect with the Austin transportation system. Access to internships, college and job opportunities. Because of the income level of our residents many of them do not have vehicles. If they do have a vehicle, the wage earner needs it. Our students cannot get to job opportunities, they cannot get to internships. [10:10:59 AM] We have many students each year that are accepted to college, but no transportation to get there, they simply don't go. So we've got to have more transportation options to be able to bring up that direct to college and career rate in central Texas. Teacher and staff transportation. The housing hasn't arrived yet. The vast majority of our teachers live outside del valle I.S.D. They're coming in from other areas and putting more traffic on our roads. If we had even more park and ride options that would drop them off toward del valle, we might be able to do something to give them some options to get into work a little cheaper. We lose teachers every year because the toll road bills that they have to pay coming in from Round Rock and pflugerville don't match up with the raise we're able to eke out every year and we don't blame them for wanting to teach closer to where they work. Housing will help out with that but I think in the interim transportation options that will bring more people in and out would be beneficial. Economic development is the last area we want to talk about. Del valle is a food desert. Most of our residents are not within one mile of a grocery store and as council member gal ber drew our attention to -- Gallagher drew our attention to, so miles maybe within the limit but that's a still very long walk when you have no transportation options to get there. Access to high-paying jobs. Del valle is home to the airport and circuit of the Americas. It is also home to the Travis county correctal facility. Most of the -- correctional facility, most of the electrical plants and the dump that takes up most of our area out there in creedmoor. What that means is that we don't have a lot of job opportunity. Our board has stepped up. We did pass a freeport [10:13:01 AM] exemption this past fall so that the del valle area is now a triple free (indiscernible) Allowing jobs to come into our area because of our proximity to the airport, and the fact that toll road 130 bisects our district and provides good access in and out. Inclusion in planning and development. Probably the most important thing is include del valle I.S.D. In your talks, in your planning, in your negotiations. We -- we are so excited to be here, and all we're asking for is a seat at the table. More and more residents are moving out there, and it's -- it's very confusing to everyone being the only major school district in the area that doesn't have a city government of its own. Sometimes we're not sure who to talk to. People come to me all the time with traffic light issues and transportation issues and things that I'm certainly not qualified to deal with, but I would like to continue to be the voice of our residents and continue to work with the city council as more and more of our residents become city of Austin residents. Thank you so much for giving us this voice, and I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> Mayor Adler: Any questions at this point? Mr. Zimmerman? >> Zimmerman: Yes, thank you very much for that. I -- sorry. I noticed -- you made a remark right off that you're excited about kicking off a partnership. I wrote that down. I hope that's not what we're doing here. I thought this was a policy discussion and we were not committing to kick off any partnerships. >> Mayor Adler: Any other -- >> Anytime we're invited to a discussion, we don't mean a formal partnership but just by recognizing that city of Austin residents are part of the del valle independent school district, that's what I was thanking you for. [10:15:04 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Any other questions? Ms. Garza. >> Garza: This is a question for president Hinojosa, and -- what -- do you get any city funding? I know aid gets some for, is it after school programs? And does del valle get any city funding? >> We don't have any direct ones right now. A lot of the city funding that funnels to the partner agencies and the other nonprofits, they will also serve del valle. So we have been served by any of the organizations that you're funding that are expanding out. For instance, seedling foundation just this past year has expanded out to work with the children in del valle that have incarcerated parents, and any funding or grants that the city provides to them are slowly starting to move out to us. But del valle does not receive any direct city funding. >> And I'm not sure the way the after-school program -- we're in a similar situation where it's actually funding partners to provide after- school services. I'm not sure if it was to increase the amount of money that was available for prime time after-school programming and if that money is going directly to partnerships or if that is passing through the district to the providers. But we'll find out for you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: If I recall correctly, I think it might be both. I think we fund prime time through some of the health & human services contracts, and then money that was allocated through last year's budget, it was my expectation it was going to go directly to the district for the use in the programs that were losing their funding. We also helped fund the family resource centers and some other needs and actions. And there's a very good list that our staff and Austin independent school district has put together. They've been over the last [10:17:04 AM] couple years at the request of looking at ways in which we currently partner and at other opportunities for partnerships. And so I hope our staff might make that available -- that body of information -- it's really not just one document at this point -- available to the new council. And I wanted to thank you, Dr. Crook, for being here, and participating today, and also one of the ways in which Austin and other communities has gotten to know some of the needs in del valle has been through your service on the community advancement network, and so thank you for that. I think it's really -- I remember when you did a presentation to that body of some of the challenges that del valle I.S.D. Are facing. It was really illuminating because the challenges are very different from some of those that aid are facing and manor and some of the other school districts that fall within our city limits. So I think there are a lot of opportunities for us to increase those partnerships and make sure that all the children in this region have an engaged partner in assisting in that work. So thank you. >> Thank you, council member tovo. I agree. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Bert? >> Mayor and city council, Bert Lumbreras, assistant city manager. I was going to say that we actually do have both in direct contracts with aid and with some of our partners for everything from prime time to the victory after-school program. We are also in terms of the mentoring, you mentioned the seedling foundation. You know, the city of Austin is the largest employer to mentor, which is outstanding contribution that our employees give back to the community, and it is a very worthwhile program, but it does highlight some issues that are currently -- the school districts face. President Hinojosa mentioned that. It's not just the academic but it's also the social issues and the pressures that families are feeling that you see with these kids [10:19:06 AM] every time you meet with them every week. So we do have -- and mayor pro tem is exactly right, we did some extensive work several years ago, and I helped lead that effort, in putting together any and all possibilities in terms of partnerships with aisd in particular, and we'll be happy to provide that report to council, which I think is very relevant, because it will show you where we, you know, look at not only partnering with the school district on playgrounds, land for both parks and playground space for kids. So we look for any and all opportunities that we can, and I think you'll see where we've done a lot, but yet there's still a lot more that needs to be done. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Yes, just a quick question. Thank you so much, Dr. Crook, for being here. I was amazed at the issues that you bring forward that as people who live in the city we never even consider what happens as we begin to move out and your lack of resources in that area. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. I have one question about Austin independent school district. Can you tell us how much you receive from the city of Austin, just globally? >> I'm sorry, I don't have that figure with me. I know last year when we worked with the city through its budgeting process, all in all, including funds that come from -- that are specific, they are funds that we get from cable providers that go to -- I can't remember exactly what they're called, I'm blanking on what that's called, but funds that -- I think there's federal law that says the school district gets some too, and the city, nos those funds for parent [10:21:07 AM] support specialists, taking them back to full-time after we cut them, the after-school program. I think that was all -- and that totaled to about 2 million. Overall, I don't know. I mean, there are lots of -- and we just -- it's interesting, Mr. Lumbreras, you brought up the facility issue. We just got a list of all the different trustees just yesterday and I haven't had a chance to digest it, a list of all the different facilities that -- they're called peg funds. I'm sorry. Someone just -- all the different facilities that -- where we have agreements, I guess, interlocal agreements with the city, and there's lots and lots of them where we have shared use -- I don't know that they're called leases but interlocal agreements where we are sharing property. So I think it would be nice if we could also share that information with council members so you get a sense of that as well. >> Mayor Adler: That would be helpful. Thank you. >> Houston: So the answer is about $2 million from the city? >> That's what we got -- that's what we got last budget cycle. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Go ahead. >> I just would note that I think it was back in the '50s, maybe, that the school district and the city agreed to collocate parks and playgrounds on the same parcels of land, and many of the parks that we have in Austin are due to this collaboration and partnership between aid and the city of Austin. >> Mayor Adler: And I think that the $2 million might just be one program. If you could get for us a more complete answer for Ms. Houston's question, the budget, I think that would be helpful too as we gather information. Ms. Barksdale, thank you very much for being here today. >> (Indiscernible). >> Mayor Adler: Is your microphone on? [10:23:09 AM] On? >> Can you hear me now? It's on now? >> Mayor Adler: Yes, thank you. >> Well, I have to say it's difficult, trustee Hinojosa, or president Hinojosa, all our notes are scratched out now so I don't have much to add. But I did want to talk about an important and critical direction I see the school board moving, and I'm not on the board, place no. 9 representing Austin and all parts of town. I want to punctuate one thing, and I like to do this when we're talking about bodies that can help the school district. It creates a crippling burden on the school district. The video I just saw does a great job of showing how the money we collect, goes directly to the state and we only get to keep such a small portion of it that we are, I think, unfairly disadvantaged in the system and it seems the courts would agree. So thank you for having us today. I do echo president Hinojosa's comments. I was so glad to hear many of you on the campaign trail makes pledges to support education, health & human services that can support our students, and especially to you, mayor Adler, for elevating education to your cabinet- level staff. So I'll be very brief. My comments have been covered. When we have 61% or around 61% of aid students who are economically disadvantaged, I think it's really critical that the district and the city, our partner, pay attention to mitigating the effects of poverty. Certainly will help us address issues of adequacy and (lapse in audio) Approach to education and it's a very effective strategy, and improving education now comes, again, by mitigating the effects of poverty and it's called community schools. We all live here in Austin and in Texas, the united States, and have been witness to the education reform movement, which has taken hold in the nation and especially here -- with very strong roots here in Texas. That places a high emphasis [10:25:10 AM] on high-stakes testing and alternate school models and a lot of times not really valuing teachers but a better model and a more Progressive way I see the community moving forward is with district schools. I want to show a video that will cover a lot of what you've seen this morning and some of our panelists about how providing wrap around supports for students, makes them better prepared and more ready to learn first thing in the morning. So I'll tee up the video. >> (Off video). >> Wrong video. >> It's called communities, community schools. So as that's coming, the tee-up is there is a name for this thing that we're doing, and it is the evolution of the school reform movement outcropping from very dedicated education and folks in academics from around the country that see a better way to move forward. Hmmm. Okay. (Playing video). >> Every child needs nurturing and care for the light to shine, their fire to burn and their sense of wonder to expand. Right now our (off mic) Our students are falling through the cracks. Too often kids come to school to escape the (indiscernible) Carrying the baggage of fear (indiscernible) Physical [10:27:11 AM] pain and psychological distress. They don't have opportunities (indiscernible) And college seems like a far-away dream. It's only by coming together as a community that we can create thriving students who will climb to meet their full potential. That's going to take work. It's going to take a change in mind-set. We must break the system built on division and build in its place a new model that connects individuals, families, neighborhoods, schools and other institutions together with the understanding that our fates are linked. This country can only reach its potential if we help our children develop the skills required for success in school, career and life. The goal is thriving students. The vision is community schools. Community schools are welcoming fun and attractive spaces for students and families to use before, during and after the school day, and this approach, the school acts as the hub of the community, breaking with public and private partners to serve children, their families and their neighborhood. Use of (indiscernible) Opportunities, health and social services are not seen as extra or complementary. They're (indiscernible). Every community school responds to local needs but all community schools provide a safe, healthy and supportive environment for students. Collaborate with community partners to enhance learning and create opportunities for students. Developed (indiscernible) Skills needed to students to succeed in college, career and life. More and more schools and communities across the country are working toward the day when every school is a community school, providing every child with high-quality instruction with a focused psychology and career, expanded learning opportunities beyond the school day, health, nutrition and physical education and strong family and community engagement that includes [10:29:12 AM] access to crucial family support systems, such as housing, language learning, and employment. The road is long and the work is hard, but it's the most important work there is. Please join us as we work to create a nation full of community schools and thriving students. >> (Off mic) And it's important (indiscernible) Are a way for our district to (off mic). And I want to say (indiscernible) Which is also important but to fulfill the promise and (indiscernible) Of the school district (indiscernible) Career college life and career ready. So I'm an optimist, I don't believe I.S.D. I.s.d. (Indiscernible) Tens of millions of dollars (indiscernible) Operating budget of the past 40 years (indiscernible) States have no funding going on. That's not good, but that does remain (lapse in audio) Opportunity to make (indiscernible) Programs and build benefits and will help the district focus less on those tests and more on real learning and supporting our teachers and families and students. So to your direct question, what can -- what role can the city play or how can the city (lapse in audio) Affordability, that issue is always critical making sure kids can afford to live in the same place for longer than three or four months, without having to move and take five or six days to get reenrolled and missing critical days in school that students pointed out have so much to do with learning and adequate instruction. Funding full day pre-k. As trust' Hinojosa pointed out, we need the whole day reimbursed to make sure the 4-year-olds are ready to learn by the time they finish pre-k. One of the most gratifying moments I had on the school board was having a violates -- a pre-k teacher come in and introduce her 4-year-old, saying the pledge, and fantastic kids [10:31:13 AM] who I knew would be would have a great year be in school all day. Those wrap around health & human services regarding immigration and language services to make sure the kids are fit and ready to learn when school starts. This concludes my comments. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Any questions at this point? Ms. Tovo. >> Tovo: Trustee Barksdale, I want to thank you for your scfs and all the work you've done and finish to do for our community. You ended by talking about pre-k and one of the partnerships of the city has had in the last couple months is to promote pre-k enrollment, and I believe the intent was to do so through utility bills. I don't know if you can speak to that, that work that the city has done with the school district to promote pre-k. I'm particularly interested too in the tuition-based pre-k programs that exist and what we can do as a city to try to get out the word about that poor families who don't qualify, they might take advantage of the tuition-based pre-k. >> Well, I see someone else wants to speak to that and I did promise myself I would maintain my discipline and not (lapse in audio) The district. So I would defer to Susan and Dr. Cruz. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> And thank you four for your comments. >> Okay. So, yes, the city has been very, very active. Wic, snap, health & human services, a variety of city departments have been very active, again not just for I.S.D. But for the entire region, reaching out to be able to identify those students who are eligible for pre-k. Typically based on income or language spoken at home and there are other reasons like being in foster care and bringing them into high-quality pre-k. We can look at tremendous roi for that. If you look at the value of [10:33:14 AM] pre-k to not needing intervention and services later on in life, if we -- if they were eligible and got them enrolled it would return $30 million every year to our region to get them enrolled in high-quality pre-k. So we've been working very hard on that. That's the good news. The bad news is that the increase has not actually happened. In fact, the number of students enrolled in pre-k across our region has typically dropped. It's dropped in Austin. It's dropped in almost every surrounding school district. So there is much more work to be done. Why that is we are still trying to understand. Again, we believe that it is due to declining birth rates partially but more importantly the lack of affordability, students moving out, typically students moving out to school districts that don't provide full-day pre-k like Austin I.S.D. Has taken from its own budget to be able to do. So it's harder to attend a half-day program. So there are lots of very -- there are lots of important factors having to do with transportation and access (lapse in audio) To be eligible into pre-k. I'll like Paul or someone else talk to the tuition. >> Mayor? There were some acronyms that I don't know what roi and snap. >> I apologize, return on investment is a business term that we use, how much money do we put in, how much -- what return do we get for that investment, and for the investment in our time and ability to get those students who are already eligible into pre-k. The predicted return to the community in their net lifetime lack of interventions, increased earnings, increased taxes, et cetera, for every year's Co Hort of those students would be $30 million to our region. Wic and snap programs refer to the particular service programs that are run by the city of Austin, women, infant and children, snap stands for something that I -- supplemental nutrition, [10:35:17 AM] low-income families who would qualify for free public school pre-k. >> Thank you. Here, you can use mine. >> All right. Maybe there's another control there. And so to the question about tuition-based pre- k. So thank you, council member tovo. So we did start that a couple years ago, because we had some space utilization issues, but yet there's a bigger need out there. So we are -- we are continuing to offer tuition-based program for students who do not qualify under state requirements for the funding that we get from the state. We're also looking at some type of incentive to maybe lower the cost a little bit so we could increase enrollment and better utilization of our facilities. What we've also done along the side -- and of course we partner with e3 alliance for the (indiscernible) This past year to communicate to families in the language they understand, they prefer to get more kids engaged and involved in our schools. What we've also done is we started 3-year-old programs. We started that at Zavala elementary school. Two half-day programs. Specifically looking at housing units in the area and we also started another full day -- it's a full day but it's really two half-day for students, at oak springs elementary school. So we'r we're looking at expanding that. We're looking at spatial concerns at our Allen school, forces for education and youth, so we're offering a 3 and 4-year-old program we're partnering with Avance and child inc. To get 3 and 4-year-old programs in the facility and also parent engagement. That's another strong part of what we're offering. Continue to offer at Zavala, at oak springs but also at the Allen facility where we have 3-year-old programs as well. >> Tovo: Thank you thanks very much. >> Mayor Adler: Cruz thank you for being here. Good luck on the new job. Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: I just wanted to follow up on your discussion [10:37:18 AM] of community schools. It's communities in schools, right? >> (Off mic). >> Kitchen: Community schools. I consider that to be a very important concept and of course the key issue is both strong schools and strong neighborhoods. So I would be interested in seeing information -- I know there's a lot of people in the community working very hard on this issue, so it would be helpful to see specific recommendations to the extent that those have been developed by this group, and I'd love to be briefed on that at some point. >> I will coordinate with my colleagues (indiscernible) And the district to get you the information that you requested. I will just follow up with a comment on that. Again, stepping away from the reform model that says to the kid, we'll take you out of your community and what could be some dysfunction, underserved and put you in the classroom and test you into brilliance. The community school's model says, we understand it takes a community and a family approach to make that happen and to improve educational outcomes. So again, we'll be happy to share that information. Thank you. >> And we'll be happy to work on that information for you, council member kitchen. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: One last thing. I want to thank you for talking about community schools, because I grew up in that kind of environment, even though it was during segregated times, and I think that I got a fair to good education, and it's taken me far. So I appreciate you defining that model for us and that's the wrap-around services, the infrastructure is there, and we help the whole family when we help that child. There's so many micro-aggressions that children experience who are low-resource and that we don't even think about them as adults, so I'm glad to hear you talk about that. >> Thank you, council member Houston. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Bussey? Thank you very much for being here. >> Good morning. While the presentation is coming up I want to just thank everybody for allowing [10:39:19 AM] us to be part of this discussion today. We feel like charter schools are an important part of the equation here in Austin, and I'll show you that on the first slide here in just a second. There are charter schools in eight of the ten new city council districts, so they are all over the state -- all over the city. If you want to pull up the next slide, shows the map. [Laughter] Thank you. All right. There you go. So the red dots are charter school campuses across the city, as you can see. So there are over 12,500 students this year in charter schools across the city of Austin. And there are 45 of those campuses and there are 1900 kids in the city of Austin who are on a waiting list to get into one of those charter schools. That number of students has grown 25% year for the last four or five years, so it is growing quickly, and there's a lot of interest in -- in these schools across the city. They look very different. They're not all the same kind of schools, so there are some college preparatory schools out there. Mr. Casar you were asking about kids who are in the criminal justice system currently. The majority of those kids across the state residing in the juvenile justice facility are in charter schools across the state, and we have some of those here in town as well. And those challenges are very unique, as you kind of allude to. So those schools have a special place in my heart as well. There are residential treatment centers, so kids who are going through those issues and receiving education at the same time. And then there are pre-k elementary. We've talked a lot about the pre-k model today and many of our charter schools have learned the exact same thing that was -- has been critical, to have a full day of pre-k to be successful in kindergarten and beyond, and that, in fact, this concept that Ms. Barksdale just spoke about is critical as [10:41:20 AM] well, because you don't just take a child and throw them in a classroom and expect everything else in their life to be fixed because they're learning. So all of these schools are open enrollment, tuition-free, free to the -- free to the student and the family, and are subject to the same accountability that you're familiar with on the -- there they are, I encourage you to visit charter schools in your district and I'm happy to arrange such a tour if you're interested. We face our -- again, very similar to the ones that Ms. Hinojosa and others have talked about today. Funding is one of those critical issues, so charter schools receive significantly less per pupil funding on average than a traditional school district school. And the way that manifests itself typically is facilities. So many of you might have seen downtown -- I was visiting a charter school the other day and a gentleman pulled up in his car in the parking lot with an lc dtv and wanted to return it because he had bought it last year when that facility was a Sam's Club. And so many of our schools find anywhere they can to have school, and what that typically means is that on average charter school students find themselves in buildings not designed to be schools, right, again, Sam's clubs, light industrial complexes up in north Austin near where I live and all kinds of places that were not built to be a school originally. They tend to be more crowded and have less common spaces, so less, you know, open space per student, which has been proven to be helpful for kids, right, common space in schools? And these schools are less likely to have things like cafeterias, auditoriums and libraries, which I think we all agree are important to learning. Oftentimes one of my charter school leaders calls it her cafetorium, so it's a multi-use room where they eat and do sports and -- all [10:43:21 AM] in the same room because there's no space and no money to build those facilities. So those are the challenges this these schools face as it relates to the funding system, and again, lack of facilities. I did highlight here some things that other cities across Texas and across the nation are doing for consideration. So we talked -- council member tovo, you asked earlier about the facilities master plan and many districts are finding ways to rent those underutilized spaces to other school models, charter schools. It's a way for the district to get some well-needed revenue and a way for the (indiscernible) To get access to a facility that was, in fact, built to be a school and has the amenities that I mentioned above. Fa facilitating charter school -- so they're able to open up performing arts facilities and sports recreation centers for students who don't have those facilities at their schools to be able to use after school. Ms. Kitchen, you brought up a topic that's near and dear to our heart as well. We talked about permitting. As you can imagine, turning a Sam's Club into a school is not an easy process and requires a lot of build-out and a whole lot of permitting and that does, in fact, as Ms. Hinojosa talked about earlier with district facilities as well, hamper our ability to grow as quickly as we'd like to and serve kids. So any help there would be -- we'd love to be in on that conversation as well. And then it's been discussed briefly here as well that a lot of cities are creating publicprivate partnerships, to locate schools that neighborhoods where we want schools to be, Mueller is a great example of that where there's a disciplined effort to develop a certain area and folks qawn want schools there so cities are doing those kinds of things as well. One of the other challenges was I think really hit home with me when Dr. Crook was giving her presentation. Charter sc schools, they're growing at 25% every year over the last several years, you can see there over 12,000 kids. Our demographics are similar [10:45:22 AM] to the ones that have been referenced earlier today as being challenging, 76 hispanic and African American, 72% economic hi disadvantaged, over a quarter of limited English proficiency, as has been mentioned several times these kids are, in fact, more expensive and more difficult to educate, which makes it all the more worthwhile to do. So the way that this growth is put at risk is really recruiting and retaining high caliber staff. Specialists, teachers, and principals, frankly, to drive -- to run these schools and drive the kind of results that we want to drive. And so I know from my work with aisd in the past, this is a common concern for aid as well. Every one of those 127 campuses needs a principal, right, and those people don't just fall out of the sky. So other cities are leading common recruiting efforts. There are several cities across the country that say, you want to be a great teacher and want to be part of a great educational system and city, come to, fill in the blank, Austin in our case, and be a teacher here, and so those things have been -- have been successful in bringing talented teachers from other places to those cities. Some cities even here in Texas are instituting new teacher and leadership preparation programs or certifications. And those are proving to be really interesting as well. There's one currently being launched in Dallas. Partnering with existing educational talent pipelines, there are all kinds of programs across the country that provide teachers to schools, and a lot of our schools work with those. And then joint training and development programs. The most interesting one I've seen here is in Dallas, and it's a partnership between Dallas I.S.D. And uplift education in Dallas, and they have an equal number of principals and teachers that come to this program every year and work in the same curriculum and through the same preparation program to be principals in the future, in Dallas I.S.D. Or in uplift, and it's been an amazing experience not only for those individuals as they grow through their own organizations but has created other side partnerships with charters [10:47:23 AM] and the district in Dallas, which have had a lot of great results not only for those employees but for -- most importantly for the kids in those schools. So those are the challenges around talent and growing as quickly to serve these challenging populations. And then lack of economies of scale. So most charter schools are, in fact, community schools, as Ms. Barksdale mentioned, and are small, and so they don't have access to the kinds of purchasing power that 85,000 student school district has, so they pay more for things like employee health insurance and benefits, school breakfast and lunch programs that the vast majority of our kids qualify for, student transportation is a luxury, really, for most of our schools, and so unfortunately these things are not provided in many cases because they're frankly not as important as paying teachers and buying student materials. So what other cities here again have done is expanding employee pools so that the rates for employee and insurance go down for everybody, and cities and districts have saved a lot of money doing those kinds of things, again sharing -- sharing some of those services across larger districts and smaller schools. And then some cities have actually -- Dallas, again makes the list here, provides subsidized access to city transportation. Dr. Crook you mentioned the challenges your students have. Some of our students have the same thing. And so the city has gone - - some cities have gone out of their way to provide sort of subsidized access to public city transportation to be able to go to school. So those are the highlighted -- kind of the high-level challenges. Some -- there is an expanding spirit of collaboration that we see across the country, and frankly right here at home. So I did want to highlight one (lapse in audio) High schools that you're all familiar with in aisd. [10:49:25 AM] A charter network is providing services to the overage, undercredit kids at those schools and helping them at what they already do, which is bring those kids back into school and get their degrees. And the district has seen some great results there, and so has the charter network. So we're just really excited about that partnership because at the end of the day we've graduated hundreds more kids than maybe otherwise would have graduated, and doing it together. And that's pretty awesome. There's another partnership in spring branch outside of Houston where the district is bifurcated by the interstate and one side of the district is relatively wealthy and one side of the district is not. Stop me if this seems familiar to anyone here, perhaps. The I.S.D. There -- spring branch I.S.D. And kip, and yes, the two -- charter networks there have teamed up, and so the district provides the feeder pattern basically for one-half the district and the charter networks provide the feeder pattern for the other half of the district and it's been a real win. Superintendent Cluesman the outgoing superintendent in spring branch, has credited hundreds and hundreds more kids coming to the district and coming back to the district to access some of these kinds of options, and so it's been a real (lapse in audio) Kids. There are a lot of interesting partnerships going on around the state and even here in Austin that are great things for kids and great things for the district as well. So those are my comments and I'm happy to answer, obviously, any questions that anyone might have. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Any questions on the diocese? Mr. Zimmerman? >> I'm sorry, can I -- I have to leave, I have a sick child at home, so I apologize, Dr. Cruz will be taking my spot. But thank you for your time. >> Mayor Adler: All right. We hope your child feels better. Mr. Zimmerman? >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Chris, for that. I was a little bit fascinated with the statistic about the 25% growth, but it looked like that was austin-wide, and [10:51:26 AM] we've heard some statistics -- some interesting statistics from aisd and two of our four members are from aisd. So is there a way you can give me an idea of what that growth is within the aid boundary? >> We can -- I can give you a more specific answer. Off the top of my head from looking at it in the past, it's about 18 to 20%. So I mean, it's a little less, but still significant growth. >> Zimmerman: It is. I didn't know it was that high. I'm kind of astonished at that, because actually you're getting less money, you don't have the ability to issue bonds for facilities. So I'm struggling with trying to understand, 20% growth in a district that's losing students when you're spending less money. >> Mayor Adler: To a degree we're trying not to have a conversation about the relative value of different systems, so the point is well-taken. Ms. Houston, do you have a comment? >> Houston: Yes, I had a question regarding the demographics. You lumped hispanic and African American together. Could you give me the break-out between those two groups and what's the anglo -- >> Yes, it's about 60% hispanic and about 18% African American across the city in charter schools. And then the anglo percent is about 10, I think it is. Again, it's -- because where the map -- because of where the schools are that you saw on the map, it's serving typically east and southeast and now northeast Austin. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: Thanks very much for being here. I wonder, just as a follow-up to council member Houston's question about the demographics of your student population, could you give me a sense of what percentage of your student population in the Austin area are special education? >> About 10, just like the district. It's about the same. It's interesting, we have schools that -- it's probably more broadly distributed, so we have schools where that [10:53:26 AM] percentage is very high because they seem to have success with those kids, and those -- it's sort of a word-of-mouth thing that those schools find where more of those kids, you know, try to get in. As I mentioned, they're all open enrollment so they take any student that shows up, assuming there's a space for them. And so it ends up being about the same amount, 10%. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. Ms. Troxclai R? >> Troxclair: That was -- >> Don't be angry. [Laughter] >> Troxclair: Looking at the map of where the charter schools are, I appreciate there seems to be a (indiscernible) To serving economically disadvantaged populations, so thank you for your work in that area. But when -- and you may not be able to answer this question, but when a charter school operator is looking for a place to open, why -- why are there are no charter schools? I think my district is one of the few districts that doesn't have charter schools, so what kind of criteria go into that decision-making process or does it just depend on this kind of charter school and what kind of population they're looking to serve? >> It does mostly depend on what you mentioned at the end. It mostly depends on what kind of population they're trying to serve. I will say many folks who want to open a charter school are motivated by what you said at the beginning, which is wanting to serve students that they perceive need the most help, right, those students we've all talked about this morning. And there is definitely a desire among -- by the Texas education agency who grants these charters to see schools located in those areas as well. A good example I wanted to mention, which goes to a question, Ms. Gallagher, you were asking earlier, goodwill industries is coming to southeast Austin to provide educational vocational charter school to do the things you talked about. It's a model that's worked in India Indianapolis and other places and they want to bring it here. [10:55:27 AM] (Lapse in audio) Transportation is an issue. They want to be as close to those people they're trying to serve as they can be. >> Thank you. >> Sure. >> Ms. Carpenter, would you talk to us about pre-k and any role that the city might have? >> I sure will. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Could you turn on your microphone? >> I'll just bring it closer. Very good. Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, and thank you to all of you for your public service. I was invited here to talk about early childhood so you can imagine my delight in hearing all the conversation so far about pre-k. So seems like there's a lot of energy in our community to support our youngest -- our youngest residents. I'm the director of the success by 6 initiative, which is housed at united Way for greater Austin. Success by 6 is a coalition of child care providers, pre-k in public school systems, parents, nonprofit agencies, such as any baby can, business leaders, and advocates, and a lot of academics too who work in this particular arena. Our goal collectively is to make sure that all central Texas children enter kindergarten prepared for school success. And we know that that's a major issue, as Ms. Dawson said earlier, only 50% of our children overall are entering school prepared for success. Even more scary is a study that United Way commissioned with UCLA in 2012, and we looked at the highest poverty areas in Austin, and in those areas only 13% of the children were entering school ready. School readiness is very, very predictive of later academic achievement. If you start behind you're likely to stay behind, and many of the things that we've talked about as challenges of the schools. So what the heck is going on? I want to provide a little context with it. [10:57:27 AM] We know that the brain is the only organ that is not fully developed when a baby born, and the way it gets developed is in those early interactions that you have with a baby. So when you're playing peekaboo and sticking out your tongue and talking to your infant and toddler during mealtimes, you're encouraging all kinds of neural development, and the more interactions you have, the stronger those neurons are. So we're literally laying down brain architecture, which is the foundation for all later academic achievement. Between the ages of 9 months and 4 years there's a critical window for language development. That's when our brain is most able to be able to capture all that, and it will predict later reading development and again, academic success. We know that children who are born in poverty have very, very different language environments at home. The middle or upper income children. By the age of (lapse in audio) Has heard 30 million fewer words than a child who was living in a professional family. And the number of words that you've heard by the age of 3 is highly, highly predictive, again, of how well you read in 4th grade. So early -- so these are very, very important years. The good news is, is that we do know that early education can ameliorate those kinds of differences and begin to close those gaps. It's very, very effective. Low-income children -- low-income families with children ages zero to 4 in Austin have much, much less access to early education that we need. According to community survey data there's about 28,000 children, ages zero to 4, living in low-income families. Only 5,000 of them are receiving any research-based [10:59:29 AM] early intervention, and I'm counting headstart, child care, home visiting services, parenting education, all of it are getting services, so we've got this huge gap with many, many children having no services before they enter public school pre-k at age 4. So why is that? In Austin, the average cost of child care is the same. The annual cost is about the same as UT tuition is annually. So obviously families in poverty can't afford around $9,000 a year per child for child care services. Also, we -- because Austin grew so rapidly, our community has a very small number of slots that we can allocate for headstart. Nationally about 40% of children in poverty are able to get into headstart. In Austin it's 10% of our children. And that's -- that's not based on our local headstart provider. That's the number of slots that our feds are giving us for our community. Larl. Similarly, only one in ten families who need child care can get subsidies, and that's because of the way the subsidy system works. So most families in our community are relying on a very shaky system of friends, family and neighbors prior to school entry. It's not surprising when aid does their assessments, when children enter pre-k. They do a language assessment called -- it's a Peabody assessment. Children in our school district, aisd school district, are about two years behind in language development. So 4-year-olds are more like 2-year-olds in language, and if any of you have had children and you can imagine the differences between a 2-year-old, typically two-word sentences, that kind of thing, versus a 4-year-old, who typically, [11:01:30 AM] in a -- you know, in an ideal setting would be jabber >> So this is obviously an important issue. It's not an easy issue. So what are we doing as a community to work at it? What I'm pleased to say is that we, in Austin, have had -- this is just such a collaborative community and we have had such interest in working together that we have been able to pull together a very strong coalition, that's part of E 3 and the whole pipeline of nonprofit organizations and so forth to really try and build out a strong pipeline, build capacity to do very high quality early intervention. Research-based programs that we know will make a difference. So let me flip through. There's some great info. Here's kind of our collective work. The work that we do with children, we know is very effective. We talked about some of effects that we know in public school pre-k. I wanted to share this basic slide. I'm not going to go over it in detail, but I think if I ask almost anybody on the street do you believe there's a connection between smoking and lung cancer? Almost everybody would say yes, of course there is. This graph designed by some of our U.T. Colleagues, looks at the strength of the correlation between the intervention and what it's trying to effect. And one of the preschool projects has even a stronger effect size on school achievement or that connection is even stronger than smoking and lung cancer. You can see there are early childhood interventions listed in here and how strong the intervention. The very lowest one on here is the correlation between taking a daily aspirin and lower risk of [11:03:31 AM] heart attacks, which has been a huge public health outreach program that we spend millions and millions of dollars on. You can see how much smaller that is than any of these preschool interventions. Very, very effective. What I call our benchmark cities, cities that we look to to learn about what are you doing in early childhood? What's going on? We also have checking to see what kind of investments are being made in the community. If I can get it to go to the next slide. Whoops, went too fast. We always check what kind of investment is being made in early childhood and some of these other high-tech innovative cities that we look at. And you can see that and the way we calculate is this is based on the number of low income children 0-5 and their investment in early childhood. Austin is one of the best cities in Texas when we compare to others except for San Antonio has us beat, but compared to some of our other communities that we want to look at, Portland, Seattle, some of the communities in California, we're lagging well, well behind. They are already saying, hey, we believe if we invest in early childhood we will be able to reduce costs to our city further down the road. So what can our city do? I've got a few ideas and I decided, I promised that I wasn't going to come in and say give us more money because of course everybody needs more resources. But I think there's some interesting policy and shifts you can make in some existing programs that can make a huge impact for our youngest children. First of all, you know, talking has created a beautiful document. We also have text messaging services that send messages calibratedthe child's age. [11:05:31 AM] Totally free in Spanish and English. We just need to get the word out to families. That will help support school readiness. We have e-mailsos, helps parents become better parents. These are free resources. We need to get the word out. We would love to partner with the city departments on those kinds of things. We want to make sure the city is exploring the pay for success models, which are really kind of a new innovative way of doing private-public financing for proven evidence-based interventions. We're already looking at a few of them. Hopefully they will be coming through. We think that that could put Austin in the forefront of our country. N get some of those programs to fruition. We currently have a group that's beginning to study and we would like to invite any of our council members and mayor office and staff to work with us on a study group to look at tax relief for nonprofit. Because currently they are paying very high property taxes and getting some property tax relief for those programs that serve low income families would make a difference between survival and not survival. Also there's huge fees that many of our child care centers, nonprofits, are providing educational services. Food, fire folks that come in and cost thousands of dollars every year we would like to think about some fee waivers for some programs that have been proven to deliver the kind of educational results that we are talking about. And finally, of course we have been talking -- oh, two things. We want to make sure that we encourage some of your existing partners, particularly parks and rec to do more early childhood [11:07:31 AM] programming. Currently most of their programming is targeted to older children and I think that's an opportunity to look at the balance of programming that they have and begin to target families with young children. And then finally we want to make sure that all children who are eligible for public school pre-k are going into public school pre-k. Again, I think that's a whole community response that we need to make. We are opening up more and more slots for 3-year-olds as well and making sure we can get those children into those program. I did it speed so I could be within my five minutes. >> How much would it cost to provide pre-k to 4-year-olds, to the level that you would want to provide it? >> Well, currently our public schools do it. I think the gap between half day and full day is really what we're talking about and making sure that all eligible children are going there. I would defer to our public school partners to help us understand exactly what that cost is to the school district. It's many millions of dollars. It's that kind of gap. Yeah. Yeah. >> Do you know, Dr. Cruz, about how much that number is? >> It's around $9 million. >> Thank you. Thank you. Questions before we go to the next speaker? Ms. Kitchen. >> Thank you, sue, for sharing that information and those ideas. If you could provide that to us maybe with an e-mail or something that would be helpful. >> I would be happy to. >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> Both of my children attended the U.T. Early childhood program, which was wonderful. I know that program is repeated with the different colleges and universities here, what type of collaboration are we seeing [11:09:32 AM] right now and is that a potential place that we could use some of those resources to help provide the early childhood. >> Yeah. I think that we are really gifted here in Austin with the brain test and the thought leadership we have from all of our colleges and universities. Andcertainly the faculty members of those respected institutions have been partners in figuring out how to move forward. In terms of actual service delivery, the U.T. Lab school and the child development program on campus do not typically serve community low income children. The U.T. Lab school pretty much targets, you know, wealthier families. So I think that what they have been most helpful to is helping us build our model. >> Okay. >> One quick question. >> Mr. Zimmerman. >> Maybe one quick question. Is there any limit on the age at which a program like yours would take children? Has anybody looked at research to say, you know, if you take a child too early away from their parents that there will be some damage done. There's been some criticism about low income families, they don't hear enough language or enough words, but what about the damage that can be done to children taking them away from their parents at a very early age? >> What I would say to that is there's really decades of research that says that high- quality child care settings don't impede development of young children at all and in fact can be helpful to the family if it helps the family develop economic or more financial security. So if both families or all the adults in the household need to go to work, if they are able to [11:11:33 AM] have their children in high quality settings that is not damaging or does not impede their childhood development. What we encourage is, we think that the family is a great learning environment. Families who are under poverty are also disproportionately under a great deal of stress. There's a lot of research about the stress in the home and how that affects the interactions that families have with their young children. >> Okay. Again, you're making an argument that children are being damaged in the homes of poor people and that they need to be rescued. That's really -- there's a sense in which I can take that from your comments in that children should be taken away earlier and earlier and earlier and it would benefit. And I think you could probably produce some studies that would show as soon as the baby is born to poor people it should be taken away because you can show a benefit right from the womb. >> Well, I would frame it very differently. I would think all of our communities need to surround families with the kinds of support they need so families can thrive. Very few families are able to just do it within a vacuum, you know, we all need different kinds of supports whether it's extended family or formal and regulated care. But I'm not making the argument that families are damaging to young children. >> We have another panelist and five other speakers. But first, Ms. Houston. >> I just want to say I don't know what the justice foundation is so I'm interested in learning about it but at some point I will have a question for everybody about the school to prison pipeline and how we can interrupt that. >> Mayor Adler: Can anyone speak to the school, the prison? And then we can come back to other panelists. So let's go to Mr. Parker. >> Thank you very much. My name is Allen parker and we are going to be having a [11:13:34 AM] conference at the Texas capital on March 23 on the black education summit of Texas because, how to break up that school to prison pipeline is an extremely important thing. And that's on March 23. It's open to the public from 1:00 to 5:00 P.M. In the south Texas state capitol auditorium. My name is Allen parker. I'm the president of the justice foundation. I'll briefly give a few of my credentials since I'm not as well known to the members of the Austin city council. I went to the university of Texas law school and then I went into private practice of law and represented public school districts for the first eight years of my practice. Because of an education reform technique called the education of all handicapped children act, I got to do that kind of work. The lawyers in my firm said here's the law, read it, you will know as much as anybody else in the country and we started implementing that reform. Then I taught education law for six years along with civil procedure. And then in 1993, after the fourth round of the school finance litigation, when funding had been equalized among all the districts in the state on the theory that you ought to be able to have an equal education no matter where you live in Texas, we began to be a parents' advocacy organization. I have represented low income hispanic children, black children, anglo children throughout the state. Most parents' involvement with the government is actually with their government schools since 96% of the children are educated in government schools in Texas. So public education is extremely important to us. I also mentioned that we're a Christian organization and I believe each of you is a minister of god for good [11:15:37 AM] according to Romans 13 so we pray for your success and wisdom for you and hope you have very happy and successful careers. Why I am here in a way is to talk about the proper role of education and government together, all right? If I can put my slides up. Okay. And I'll push this. This is the Texas constitution provision on education. And I think it's good to go to the basics a little bit sometimes. A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people. It shall be the duty of the legislature of the state for the support and maintenance. Let's break it down a little bit. Why do we have educational systems? Because we want a general diffusion of knowledge. Everyone in this society should benefit from it and have the knowledge, but more importantly so that they may preserve the rights and liberty of the people. It's not just economics, those those are very important and people need to be able to support themselves and have good jobs and careers of different kinds, but liberty means we want people to be able to make choices for themselves and we envision a society where different types of things are allowed and encouraged and people make choices. Ultimately it's the duty of the legislature, not cities, to provide that. And traditionally it's the legislature who decides when the school age begins. We have a minimum and maximum. The legislature can do that. The legislature is considering funding full pre-k this session of the legislature. So it may be that the legislature chooses to do that. What I want to talk about, since this is a big topic type of thing is I think the question you all need to decide among yourself or just think about it. It may take a long time to come to conclusions, how do we [11:17:38 AM] increase the number of great public schools? And I want to say there are great public schools. I'm going to get some data in a little bit about some schools that aren't great but I want everyone to know there are great public schools. And as a consumer myself, I have chosen all kinds of schooling. And most people who have the economic wealth or prosperity to make a choice often go back and forth between public systems, private systems. Our president has his children in a private school in Washington, D.C. So it is -- I'm not against public schools. And I want to show that. >> You don't have to say that because we're not even going to get into the conversation about public schools versus private schools. We want to talk about what the city should or should not be doing. >> How do we decrease the number of failing public schools? How do we give alternatives to a child whose needs are not being met in a public school? >> Specifically in terms of what city government. What this council, as a city government, should be doing. >> My recommendation is basically I kind of agreed with Susan Dawson at the beginning on some of the things that cities can do. But my basic outline is we need a greater number of suppliers of educational services. >> And what is it the city council can do to increase the number of suppliers? >> The city council can encourage the bully pulpit where they encourage school districts to cooperate with charter schools. I have been involved with public school education reform since 1995. I was one of the evaluators appointed by the state board to evaluate charter schools. And people couldn't understand where would new schools come from? For example, if you created a pre-k program, you should basically empower parents. Because I'll go to the last thing on my thing. These are just some of the brief [11:19:42 AM] statistics. Only 44.2% of Texas public schools currently meet no child left behind adequate yearly progress standards. The state has now gotten a waiver so they don't have to publish that data anymore, but we still have the same low level achievement in some places. There are 892 schools on the public education grant list, which means 50% or more of their students did not pass any of the state assessment subjects for two years, or the school is is rated improvement required or academically unacceptable. That's an awful lot of campuses. I'm not putting up the local ones but you can get that off the tea website. Aisd had some of the schools on that list. And we have a 162,000 students in remedial classes at public higher education because of where they were in the current system. And we have 100,000 people on the waiting list for charter schools. These are parents. My basic thing is going to say you need to empower the parents to be full partners in education by letting them make the decision among a variety of alternatives and then having the money follow the child. Because then you get a million watchdogs, or every parent becomes a watchdog. What is the role of government? What does the city government do well, for example? I think there are some functions that Austin does well. One of the government functions is to be a watchdog. It's easier to be a watchdog on a service you don't provide yourself than it is one you provide. Let me give an example. Austin has city health inspectors and we have restaurants who serve food and are critical to the enjoyment and health of the city. You have city health inspectors. If they see something bad they [11:21:44 AM] can shut down that restaurant. They can tell the truth and say this. [Lapse in audio] Private individuals do that and then the city inspects it. And if it meets the city code and the minimum requirements, it's allowed to do it. So as a result you get a lot of restaurants, you get a lot of buildings being built, and they meet minimum standards. But in the area of public education, I have found over the years that it is more difficult for public schools to confront and acknowledge their own failings. Because it's their employees. And it's just human nature. >> Is there a city role that you think in evaluating schools? >> Yes. And, again -- >> By city I mean city government. >> Yes. I think city government could do what the charter school representative Mr. Busey said and encourage cooperation between charter schools. San Antonio has made an active effort to recruit charter school suppliers to come into the city and start charter schools. >> Is that the school district? >> No, that's the city of San Antonio. Because they recognize there's a huge. [Lapse in audio] >> There's over 600 charter school campuses that were all created without a bond election or a vote of the people. They're started by entrepreneurial heroes. They are heroes in the education system who have a passion to start a school and meet the needs of the children. It's difficult for heroes sometimes to get those things started in the current system. Charter schools allow them flexibility. All they have to do is come up with a plan, an idea, a location, and then if parents voluntarily attend that, they will have the funding. [11:23:45 AM] Once the funding mechanism was put in place, that parents could choose where to go and the money follow the child, new schools began to be created all over the state. >> And the city government role in that? >> The city can encourage the charter school movement by inviting people. You're sending it already, as he mentioned, goodwill wanted to come to town to meet the needs. A new industry may want to create trade schools for people. Wherever the human need is, once the system is created that the parent can choose where their child's needs can be met, then the educational heroes respond by meeting those needs. For example, there's different kinds of children. Not one school fits all. And so what I'm a strong advocate for all kinds of choice. I like great public schools, great private schools, and great charter schools. Charter schools are public schools, and including the private sector. My last comment is if you're moving into a pre-k area where there are already many existing pre-k institutions of a private nature, you don't want to crowd those suppliers out of the market. You want to make it fair, equal, and all providers should be treated equally. Even as the chart on early pre-k show, it had a much higher effect than head start. The head start is a government program. What it shows you is there's different kinds of pre-k. You don't want to just put your money into pre-k and say we've got it now. If you allow the parents the choice, the answer, I believe, is empowering low income families to have what well to do [11:25:45 AM] families do, the power to make a choice for what's best for their child. And the government can then set, if you have an idea what kinds of things you want to see, then it's a cooperative rather than a compulsory system. >> Mr. Parker, thank you very much. I think Ms. Houston, one of the voices, Texas apple seed will be speaking to the school to prison pipeline. Questions for Mr. Parker. Mr. Zimmerman. >> Mr. Parker, thank you, but can you make a few remarks from your perspective about that school to prison pipeline? If you could just make a few remarks based on your experience. >> Well one of the most underserved population that I believe you have to think what will meet the needs of this population? And that may be different from other people. For example, someone who comes from Mexico and has no English is going to have a different kind of educational need. Everyone recognizes that. And some of the school districts are responding with things. Black leadership academies for black males is one program. There are others, but it takes tremendous political will and sustained accountability as the community schools programs have successfully shown, but it takes an immensely long time to get something started. No child left behind was a good example. It was in 2002, 2014, every child in Texas was supposed to be proficient in reading and math and yet half the schools are failing. So we took 12 years, a whole generation from k-12 to figure out that didn't work. And when you empower the parents, then they can begin to go to the schools that work, [11:27:46 AM] administrators begin to say why are you leaving, when the money follows the child. Oh, I want a school for black males. We need help. And then they begin to respond. We can create a program like that. It helps change the incentive system in the public schools. >> Thank you. >> I'll try to get to your workshop to hear more specifics about stopping that prison pipeline. >> Thank you. I'm happy to provide it for you. >> Okay. Mr. Parker, thank you very much. And panel thank you very much. We have five speakers, other voices. Alan weeks? Is Alan there? You have three minutes, Mr. Weeks. Thank you very much for being here. >> Thank you, council. My name is Alan weeks, I'm the executive director of Austin voices and a program called save Texas schools. I would like to invite you to a conference tomorrow night at first Baptist church on testing, funding, and community schools. Austin has an amazing urban school district as has been stated. We have been able to offer a range of attractive options and have kept the middle class in our schools. Where we have struggled is in east Austin where we have low income and diverse communities. And I live in one of those communities, St. John. I have been there 13 years. However, we have seen amazing changes there as well. Great neighborhood schools are a key element in strong communities, and I think that's a shared interest between the city, city council, and school districts. The converse is also true. Struggling schools impact communities and services in a number of ways, as we know. In 2007 we almost lost two of our east Austin campuses, web middle school to school closure under state law. They are in my neighborhood. [11:29:50 AM] [Lapse in audio] Receiving both statewide and national attention. The school improvement model we used is called community schools and it takes into account the external factors that affect low income students. One of our approaches was to start family resource centers, and this was in partnership with aid, with the city of Austin, with about 30 different community partners. Austin voices runs five of those center, the Austin project runs two of those centers in south Austin. Our centers serve about 300 families a year with case managed and other services including employment, housing, health care, other things. We could not do that without the cooperation and the support of the city of Austin. Webb is now aisd's highest performing middle school instead of slowest. Reagan has gone from 48% to 85% graduation rate. This year graduates will get 60 credits walking across the that stage. That was a bringing together of the community. The community said we wanted more but we did it in partnership with our school district, United Way, all of our key partners, it was a hands on deck effort. That's community schools and it works. Our job as a city is to not to send out lifeboats but to turn the ship around. We have done that at St. John through our partnerships, and it works nationally. There were 4,000 identified community schools. We need your continued support with family stability, access to health care, out of school time opportunities, and more in collaboration with the school district and with our local neighborhoods. You are a key part of that. Our efforts fail if those services aren't there. If we don't have parks and rec and libraries, etc. I invite you for further conversation around this productive partnership between our school district, our communities, and our city and county. Thank you. >> Mayor, could I ask a [11:31:50 AM] question. >> Ms. Kitchen. Mr. Weeks. >> I just wanted to thank you for all the work that you are doing. I wanted to invite you to provide information to us as I talk to trustee Barksdale about what we can do from the city perspective to support community schools. >> Thank you. >> Ken zairefus. >> You got the name right, thank you. My name is ken zairefus. As I oftentimes say or usually say a teacher of 12 years at burnet middle school in north central Austin. I want to thank you for inviting us to participate. It's very important. But two very quick issues. Employees were a union. Obviously we are concerned about employees but also about community and how those two things can come together. The job of aid is to educate kids. And the way we educate kids is with grownups. We have teachers in the classrooms, bus drivers, custodians, food service workers that feed them every day. Counselors that counsel, and numerous other roles in the schools to ensure the success of our common and collective goal that our kids get a quality public education. And this continues to position Austin as an economic leader as well as open up opportunities for all of our kids to succeed in our community. By the city providing economic support for some of the programs that are vital to student success. In doing this we can free up dollars within the district to be able to provide wages and benefits that are competitive. Austin, as we saw earlier, lags way behind. We're nine on the list of central Texas schools. We're one of the last in the urban schools in the state to [11:33:52 AM] actually pay for teachers and school employees in an increasingly expensive environment. So by having this type of support will help us in doing more things in being more dynamic and support our employees. One of the things I want to mention is this partnership. One of the ways of those programs is a parent support specialist which the city council has wisely invested in. Parent support specialists connect parents in our communities, in our cities, to our schools. Our most struggling schools. How do you navigate the public school system? A lot of parents don't have that access. Through an agreement with the district we have funding for that program that runs this year through December. But we want to see the city and the district continue that relationship. Council member tovo was so instrumental in helping to spearhead that along with trustee Hinojosa to see that we kept those parent support specialists in our schools to connect the communities to the schools so the kids get a better outcome. We talked about poverty, those access to services, this is that person that connects it, and it's how it connects the city to the district in a very fundamental and real way. We have a great public school system in Austin. I have been here for 17 years. I have seen it happen as a teacher, I have seen it as a labor leader. And I know that if the city and the district and the county continue to work together, we'll see outcomes. Aisd is not simply this silo out in the back 40. It is Austin. This is the Austin school district, not an individualized entity. Thank you so much, once again, for your time. >> Ken, I know that you were short on time so can you [11:35:53 AM] elaborate for us what parent support specialists do and the information they might be able to gather at the school level can help inform us as a city. Maybe give us some background as to why we have the partnership in the first place. >> The parent support specialist was created during the alliance schools in the late '80s and '90s to give support to struggling schools on the east side so that parents could begin to organize and understand what the school was like. To provide services and support for them to, if they needed some public support, how do you access that? How do you talk to a principal? How do you organize on behalf of parent concerns. Many communities don't have a voice, and this provides an opportunity for parents to have a voice. Parent support specialists were put into the district a decade ago as a very intentional way for the district or for schools in many of our challenged communities, burnet being one of them, being able to reach out to the community, being able to have a place for parents to go. You could have after school sessions or trainings. You are able to connect parents with social services when they needed it. If they didn't know how to address the district at the district level, not just the school level, but aid, a way to give them the information, the phone Numbers, the information they need to advocate for their children. Many people in our most challenging communities don't have access. You don't have the voice that -- and what we wanted to create or what the pss created was a voice for those communities, families, and parents that typically had been ignored, marginalized, and haven't had access to the system. >> Great. And my hope is that as we continue the partnership on -- hopefully continue the partnership on parent support specialists that we can push parents to connect with the city council if we are going to be [11:37:54 AM] providing some of that funding and also provide some of the governance that they are seeing at the school board and school district level but also here locally. The last thing I did want to address just to share this moment with you, I know there are lots of teachers that we lose from Austin and then also from our state because of conditions teachers face here, but I was so excited to learn recently that this morning we had the first legal gay marriage in the state of Texas with my great friend and hopefully our teachers will be able to share that as well and hopefully have great benefits that come to married couples. So I want to mark this moment here with you and everybody in the room. >> Absolutely. I think it's very important. Aisd was way ahead in ensuring coverage for all and we are very proud of that. >> Mr. Zimmerman. >> How many school districts are there now in Austin? >> How many school districts are in Austin? >> In the Austin city limits. >> Austin, del valle, pflugerville. >> There's about six or seven, right? Six districts? Roughly? So historically I would completely agree with you that historically and past generations the Austin school district was the Austin city. That is no longer the case. I just wanted to correct that. You made a remark, it sounded like, that Austin ISD is Austin, and it's not. >> I would respectfully disagree. >> It's not. >> Point taken. >> Good morning. My name is Mary and I'm the director of the school to prison pipeline of Texas apple seed [11:39:55 AM] based here in Austin. And I work on school disciplinary practices and school policing practices that push children out of school and on the pathway to drop out and juvenile justice system involvement. We know that students in a school setting inevitably are going to misbehave, but we have a choice as to how we as school administrators and educators respond to that misbehavior. And there is a growing body of research that shows that certain responses make dropout and involvement in juvenile justice more likely. When I think about the school to prison pipeline I think of two sort of areas, the first of which is the internal school disciplinary policies, and inparticular exclusionary that removes the student from the classroom. Sus suspensions and expulsions. I would direct you to the report on the council from state government that was focused on Texas statewide. And that report found that when a child was suspended or expelled they. [Lapse in audio] Tripled. A lot of care needs to go into whether schools are relying on on suspensions and expunges as -- expulsion. There were over 1500 placements in disciplinary alternative schools. You know, these Numbers are -- that is a significant number of these exclusionary school disciplinary instances, but more than that we see that certain student groups are disproportionately represented in those school discipline incidents. And in particular African-American students [11:41:55 AM] represented almost 25% of out of school suspensions and 20% of disciplinary alternative placements despite the fact that they are less than 10% of the student population. Special education students as well are overrepresented when it comes to suspensions accounting for 22% of out of school suspensions and 25% of dap placements despite the fact that they are only 10% of students in the district. So we know that, you know, these suspensions and expulsions can lead to negative outcomes and they continue to be used. Aisd has done some very good things implementing social and learn curriculum, also making a commitment to pbis, but more needs to be done. >> Thank you. Ms. Houston. >> Yes. A couple of things. I don't know what the acronym dap means. >> Disciplinary alternative placement. It's like an alternative school if you are removed from the traditional school setting. >> Is that like the one over on Thompson? >> I believe so, yes. >> The other thing is three strikes you're out still a part of the school system? Like I know that's the federal level. It's something about -- >> Zero tolerance? >> Zero tolerance, thank you. >> On the whole, the zero tolerance model is correlated, I think, with the school to prison pipeline and the idea that, you know, one mistake is going to get you removed from the school setting or from the school classroom. But while I think there's a movement away from calling it zero tolerance, I think what we still see is there's an [11:43:59 AM] overreliance on suspension expulsion but also on the school policing side. Arrests to deal with minor misbehavior, for example. >> That's an internal system, the arrest of students for minor infractions. Is that an internal or is that a state requirement? >> Well, every school district can either contract with local school police or in the case of large districts like aisd often have their own school police departments and have a school police presence on campus. >> Who sets that policy for the school police? The school district? >> The school district. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Mr. Black. Thank you, ma'am. >> Good morning. Congratulations to each of you on the council. I'm excited to be here today on behalf of child, inc. Which is a head start grantee for the Travis county. This is exciting to hear all the things on education today and also the movement here. I come from an education background, retired from the Texas education agency and on and on. But I came into a program through a friend of mine probably four years ago. She said I want to take you over to a site where you can see where great things happen as it relates to parent, as it relates to community, as it relates to school districts, and a whole bunch of collaboration. That was the head start of Travis county. [Lapse in audio] We have received our five year [11:45:59 AM] grants when many cities had to go into recompetition, but we have received our five year grant for the next five years, until 2019. We serve 1,188 low income families. And these are infants, toddlers, and young children. We have 14 centers and we collaborate with four ISD. That's aid, pflugerville, Maynor, and del valle. And they are super partners, and we enjoy. Some >>garza:ed some of our challenges are finding affordable facilities, location here in the city. Finding qualified teachers that have the credentials as it relates to head start. Trying to make all of our campuses fully automated for our children. I'm challenging each of you here if you're not visiting one of our sites within the school district, stop by one of oh you are sites and see the innovative, motivative things we're doing in Travis county with head start. I have five minutes, going to give one of them back. Thank you. >> Ms. Gallo: I'm not sure about this. But I heard as tin is underfunded in federal programs compared to other communities. Can we talk a little bit about that? And is that something that the city council can help move so there's more equity in that funding? [11:48:02 AM] >> Yes. I mentioned earlier in terms of head start funding, most communities are nationwide the stat is about 40% of the children are served in poverty. But in Austin, it's more like 10%. I think it's because of the rapid growth and we've had decades of the number of children we can serve. The problem with head start is it's not an entitlement program, it's a federal program. We have a certain amount of slots they can allocate across the country. If we want to grow, that means another community gives up head start slots. And of course they're loathe to give up head starts because in their community, only 40% are being served. So it's one of the political difficulties. I'm not saying that it's impossible. I do think it's worth some conversations. Other communities have received additional slots. Not where we're going to put a lot of energy because of a low return of investment I think because of time, yeah. >> Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Our last speaker had to leave. I want to thank the panel for coming by and participating, giving us the high level view and for the other voices that spoke. We are scheduled to come back at 12:30 to talk about neighborhoods. That's about 45 minutes away. Do we want to push 12:30 to a quarter to 1:00 or 1:00? What's the -- >> I've got a question, though. If we have panelists who know that they're supposed to be here at this time, I would hate for us to be here and us not be here to listen to the presentation. >> Mayor Adler: That's the concern. Last time we were here, they waited there for 20 minutes for us all to gather. And Vanessa can try to reach as [11:50:03 AM] many of them in the intervening period of time. But that's the question. Do we stay with the 12:30 and actually make it back? Or do we call it off to 1:00 or -- >> It seems we're typically 15 minutes later anyway. If we can call it 12:45, that would be preferable. >> Mayor Adler: Let's do that but try to start shape at 12:45. >> Can you help us understand the rest of the agenda this afternoon? >> It will start. Take two hours to talk about the neighborhood. There was something that was posted on the -- on the bulletin board was posted at -- can -- can y'all hang on for one second here? No, no, it's okay. In the room, can you hang on one second real fast so we can hear each other. Sorry. 12:45 we'll start. The other thing we had posted was the committee schedule issue. So we put on the bulletin board yesterday a calendar the way the staff had laid it out. There will be handouts that people get after lunch. We're only going to touch base on that briefly enough to talk about the assumptions that staff went through when they were trying to lay that out so that everybody has it and then we'll pick up the conversation on that next week. But there will be more information and you can see these. >> Okay, thank you. >> Okay. >> And I just had one quick question that -- excuse me, aisd -- it's about the flexibility to be creative in programming. And whether or not you all have that kind of flexibility to do things kind of on the dime, or does it take a long time? And you too, Dr. Cooke. Because there are innovative programs that people are developing in the community. And it feels like it takes a [11:52:04 AM] long time to respond to those innovative programs. We tend to stick with what we know. And our -- and that's the question. I'll at a you can to you afterwhile. We've got to go eat. >> I'll just say flexibility can be our best ability and we need to be much more agile as a school system to respond to individual communities because one size does not fit all in Austin and we have to move forward with that at the forefront. >> Thank you so much. >> Okay. >> That's basically our entire mission is flexibility. In order to take advantage of things that come on last minute, dale valley has made sure we can move on a dime so -- >> Thank you so much. >> Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Ms. Tovo. >> Tovo: I appreciate that. I hope as you supply us with information, I know there are great models out there in the community, community supported efforts that have born fruit in our public school system. Those are great examples and could be good models to other areas that could be achievable in partnership in school districts. And I really would be -- it wouldn't be right not to acknowledge. Thank you for several of those who helped me on the budget request. I have to credit my colleagues mayor pro tem Cole who was a specialist long before I had a clear sense of what they did and %-pcouncilmember Morrison were champions of that as well. Thank you all, it's been a great, really a great discussion in education. >> Mayor Adler: We stand in recess for the next 55 minutes.>> Mayor Adler: [12:51:03 PM] Going to go ahead and call to order coming out of recess on our city council meeting February 19. Austin city council chambers, 12:49. Councilmember, what we have handed out to folks that will also be posted, I guess, on the bulletin board and where else would this be posted? >> The documents other than the memo you have are posted. The documents themselves are posted on the bulletin board yesterday. Those are duplicates of what you've seen. The manager's memo tries to summarize a little bit of that and explain some of the assumptions we used to try to set that schedule. As much as we could do, the external agency as well. Some of that is hard to figure out. We tried to put all of that together so we can see. And we true ied to use that as we scheduled the committee so obviously you won't have an overlap with the outside commitments. >> Now's not the time to discuss through this. It's going be set on the work session on Tuesday as well as every meeting we have here after, there'll be a posted identification for us to be able to talk about the committee structure and scheduling. The schedule page you have today notes not only the evenings that were set. And you'll recall, we had each of the council meetings either in the evening on a Monday or a Wednesday, so that all of the committee meetings could be televised. And captured. It means that it would be closed captioning so the transcripts would be made for each of the committee meetings so it could be part of the enhanced record that we've been talking about so if someone who did not choose to [12:53:04 PM] attend a committee meeting would not have that information. But it also shows an optional day meeting for each of the commi committees. Thinking how the committee can decide whether it wanted to meet just in the tevining or a work session in the day. But the options we put in place in the event that the committee chair and the committee decided to avail themselves of -- of both an evening and a day meeting. You want to hit those real fast? >> The council committees in the evening, we assumed you would want to be in council chambers and the optional work session for boards and commissions. That's the assumption. Monday, Wednesday, evenings and days for both of those. So we're going to reserve council chamber and the board and commission appropriately for the Mondays and Wednesdays. Some logistics that we'll work through with some of the boards and commissions with that adjustment. >> The zoning and planning -- the zoning and platting and the planning commissions continue to have this dais the same way that they have had in the past. The schedule has one committee, Monday and Wednesday where we're running these. There's a ninth committee we have that doesn't meet on a Monday or Wednesday night unless it's a fifth week. But in the fifth week, the ninth committee would have a Monday or a Wednesday night. In the event that there was no Monday in any given month or a fifth Wednesday in a given month. That means that within the committee will meet perhaps on Wednesday during the day and some alternative would have to [12:55:05 PM] be made. But this is a calendar that made value judgments that you could talk about as you review this. The decision could be made not to have a night meeting on Wednesday before a council meeting Thursday and to move to Tuesday and figure out the reordering of that. So we can discuss those things. That's how it was set out. This sets out the city council meeting. >> The idea is to have zoning separate from other matters. So working in a planning and developmental review staff, they thought the second council meeting of the month would be preferable to dedicating that with zoning matters in line with when the planning commission meets and when the cases are coming forward. And so we would propose the second council meeting of the month. Primarily, there will be this both ways. But primarily zoning matters and the other two meetings will be for nonzoning matters. So that's the way we'll begin based on your approval of that. We'll be scheduled items based on that assumption in the near future. >> Mayor Adler: The other parameter would be council meetings week one and three. Week two, zoning, week four would be the Austin energy committee on the whole. It would be the you Aring the day. It's in place in the council meeting on the fourth. No, it could be a 10:00 start. We haven't set a time for the day meetings. >> That's right. >> Mayor Adler: Part of that gives the committee the flexibility. If the committee decided to have a meeting, a day work session, you schedule it from 9:00 to 11:30. The rest of the day is open. [12:57:05 PM] If Therese a schedule that day, the whole committee goes there. If they decide to do it from 1:00 to 3:30. Decide to do it from 1:00 to 3:00, 3:00 to 5:00 or 1:00 to 5:00. The staff has been blocked and the room has been blocked. They're able to set the schedule as it would want to do. I think it's also important to note that the staff is fully invested in the process that we're trying to have here. The council committee staff assignments basically show you how the staff is staffing. The committee so they get aligned with the departments and the staff. Which is one of the things we wanted to have happen so that you can see that -- you can see that as well. >> Might want to mention the idea would be to move the council off of Thursdays. So hopefully as your work session is completing, we would adjourn to the executive session room and have a working lunch to get your executive sessions done on a Tuesday rather than the Thursday counseling. >> Mayor Adler: Then Tuesday afternoons would be open following the executive session. So if you look at the calendar, I think you'll find it's not taking up a lot of time and the committees have a lot of control for their committee about how much time they wanted to take up. It can vary from month-to-month depending on the items that you were considering or hearing. You know, the first task that we have in trying to move all of the pieces on the board to make the committee appointments work was a tough assignment. This was is even tougher because we're working with council peek to try to look at where everybody needed to be, everybody's relative roles on various committees, making that [12:59:06 PM] work with the staff and when staff would be available. So again a lot of time and effort on this and we appreciate that. I would suggest that if everybody just take a look at this, this is not what has been decided. It's a place for people to look at and make comments on. Bulletin board would be a good place for that. But we will continue to set this agenda item on our meeting so that we are able to talk about it until we figure it out. The hope is to have this done and implemented over the course of the month of March so people could start setting meetings. Hopefully by April 1, we would be full tilt boogie moving forward on this. Part of what we're going be doing is having the record catch up to the committees. So one of the high priorities is making sure we have a complete record. This moves us to kind of like a committee report coming out of the state legislature that the staff would be helping to prepare following the regulations -- resolutions and ordinances. We still have to figure out a lot of the small things we had talked about in terms of the automatic notifications. Getting things posted early enough in the process so if something gets sent to the committee, they are retrievable and searchable by the public. So we need everybody to be patient as we enter the new world. The completeness of the record will catch up. Hopefully it will be informed by the work of the engagement task force also being put together. >> Kitchen: I'm thinking it would be hellful -- helpful for me if we have a date by which we [1:01:06 PM] want to finalize this. Then I could plan for April, for example. So then my thought is that I don't know -- we need some time to talk through comments. So I don't know if that's next Tuesday or when we do that, but it should be in the next week or so. I'm prepared to ask questions now if you want to do this now. But I know we have a panel so -->> Mayor Adler: I don't think that would be a good time. Gear it up for Tuesday. We'll make sure we have a good time. Look ate and make sure everybody has questions as well. Then maybe on Tuesday, we see the volume of the comments and the nature of the comments, then we have a feel for how long this will take. >> Kitchen: I would just request we set some deadline. We can do that on Tuesday. Otherwise we'll be talking about this and talking about this. It won't be clear to the public or to us when our meetings are going to be scheduled. So I was thinking -- I was thinking that maybe and maybe, are we going to be voting on this? Is that the thinking that -- so maybe we vote on it next Thursday or -- >> Mayor Adler: If we're turning it to a vote instead of an administrative execution, then the item would have to be posted. >> Kitchen: I don't know if we have to. >> Mayor Adler: Let's not end the meeting on Tuesday without time set for us to be able to resolve it. I think it's a great point. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: The first thing I got this I tried to look up backup materials. I couldn't find it. You would have to go to your bulletin board. At that time, I couldn't get access to it. So I was wondering if we can post the backup material. The public can have access to it. >> Mayor Adler: Absolutely. Good point, Mr. Zimmerman? >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A quick comment. [1:03:07 PM] The calendar looks sensible. We looked at the paper, council committee agenda process. A flowchart is here. I'm going to flag this right away. This looks really, really unacceptable. It shows that the agendas from the committee have to be approved by an executive assistant reviews, approves item and that needs to be taken out. If you can get me an electronic copy of this, I'd love to put more edits on and make reasonable suggestions if you could. If you can get me an electronic copy, that would be great. >> Mayor Adler: There's more of the kinds of things that the staff would be trying to get for us, not something that would limit our ability or the committee's ability to set what they wanted to discuss on this agenda. >> It says agenda office approves item. >> Mayor Adler: No. I think everyone shares the same concern that you have. That's what we have. I don't anticipate that will be controversial. We okay? We'll pick this up on Tuesday and close the agenda. Again, in the time that you had to do this herculean effort. We'll begin with the panel. I apologize for the delay. We are here to talk about neighborhood issues. And we appreciate everyone being here to talk to us. We've as we said to each of the panels, you may have seen the amount of time we have is limited so nobody ever ends this feeling completely satisfied. Because you only got to talk about a few of the things that we got to talk about. But for us to have a good general overview, we're finding it's a helpful thing to happen. We're going to start off with five minutes and they'll have five to seven minutes and other [1:05:08 PM] voices to speak as well. Who's going to start us off? >> I'm Carl smart, director of the Austin co- department is we thank you for the opportunity to come today and share with you some of the neighborhood issues and concerns, co-compliance issues. We'll start with three primary categories of neighborhood issues, sub standard and land uses and zoning. In the Austin code department alone, we received over 18,000 complaints annually dealing with the same issues that you see here. So we think the same issues would frame the dialogue of the neighborhood issues that Austin residents have concerned with and this Austin panel can certainly address the next issue, the sub standard housing, dangerous buildings. Oh, there we go. Currently we have over 1,000 cases that involve sub standard and dangerous buildings. The majority of these concerns involve rental properties, whether they're single family or multifamily properties, specifically tenants who call in and voiced their concern about the lack of maintenance. In extreme cases they're displaced and have to be relocated in the issues that affect the health and safety. In recent years, we had an influx of complanlts to deal with commercial buildings. And I'll -- in some of the -- some of the areas of the city faced the problem with vacant abandoned structures, abandoned [1:07:11 PM] buildings that pose a hazard. So all of these are a concern to the residents of the neighborhood. Another category of neighborhood nuisances, particularly high grass and weeds, trash and debris. These are a listing of some of the nuisances, the clicker is not -- okay. The listing of some of the nuisances that affect the health and safety of the quality of life of the residents in our neighborhoods. These issues also affect the aesthetics, and not the -- and the livability of our neighborhood. So you can see a listing of some of those. We get complaints primarily again through 311 on these issues on a daily basis. And it is important that we respond and respond effectively and happened to resolve these issues. The next area is a neighborhood issues, land use, and zoning. This group of neighborhood issues certainly impact the X compatibility, livability, quality of life in the neighborhood. The director of planning and development review will provide the overview of group homes. >> Thank you, Carl. So dwelling units. What are they? You might know them as garage apartments or granny flats. Under the zoning regulations, we call them two family residential and secondary apartments. The two family residential use has been around for quite a while. And it's basically a dwelling that's subordinate to or smaller than the house that's usually in front. We actually limit the size of them in Austin to be not more than 850 square feet. And in the early 2000s, there [1:09:12 PM] was not a size limitation to these and people were actually building garage apartments that rival the size of the house in front. But council then passed ordinances that limit the size to 850 square feet. Not more than 550 square feet on the second floor. There's limitations on occupancy regarding these. That has taken place through time. You cannot have more than two unrelated people living in a garage apartment or residential. A dwelling unit as we have them now. And there'll be a limitation of four unrelated people on the front. Were they allow ed? Most of the neighborhoods have what's called family resident zoning or sf rezoning. And these districts allow by right on a lot that's at least 7,000 square feet, a two family residential dwelling. In our neighborhood planning areas, some of them have elected to have secondary apartments and if they did, you could have a second unit on your property on lots as small as 5,750 square feet. So the regulations that apply to them that do have a parking requirement of two spaces. There's a separation requirement from the front building of about 15 feet. There's limitations on having openings that would -- if you have an opening on the side of the building, might have to step ten feet from your neighborhood. So those are the general regulations that apply to them. There's a council resolution that asks staff to go back and look at it to allow them to occur in more areas of the city, partially eliminating the parking restrictions and allowing the increase of a building sites. And reducing the separation between the front unit and the back unit. [1:11:13 PM] These are things that are going on right now that are still in the planning commission and maybe coming to you later. Group homes, on the other hand, are structures that are family-based. These are individuals that live together in a -- in a family-type unit. They are usually individuals that have a disability of some kind, physical, mental disability. By our ordinance, we have three types of group homes, one type of group home in general. A class that's limited and general and class two but basically deal with physical or mental disabilities. The most intensive one is a class two group home which speaks to those that might be a halfway house where you might have individuals rather than serving out a sentence perhaps in a jail that might be serving it remanded to a group home. They can go anywhere in the city of Austin where a single family residence is permitted. Because they typically serve a protected class that included individuals that may have drug or alcohol offenses. So even though the zoning may be single family neighborhood, you can have them next door. We don't register them. They may be registered by the state. We don't know the number of them because they can go anywhere a single family home is. We are taking a look at the code department because of a council resolution last year regarding health and safety issues, if they exceed more than six, basically over seven or more india individuals, then we're taking at how we're applying building codes to make sure they're safe [1:13:13 PM] for the individuals that are there. They can exit the building appropriately when a fire or hazard might occur. Back over to director smart. Of. >> Mr. Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> I have a quick question for Mr. Gurn sei and Mr. Smart. In the instance of sex offenders who may be registered, are there some zoning requirements and rules prohibiting where they may reside or directing them in certain areas? >> Although traditional housing is not a group home. We have a category of transitional housing talking about more than 15 individuals, 16 individuals or more. They are limited to certain parts of the city. They have appropriate zoning and those are different than group homes. >> Okay, so transitional can have 16 or more unrelated family -- unrelated people residing there? >> That's correct. We do regulate those where they can go in the city. >> And then on the sex offender issue, are there regulations as to where the folks may live? >> Not by the zoning regulations. >> Not even in proximity to a school? >> Not by zoning. Leaving out the other sections of the code, on the state law or ordinances that exist that limit the individual's ability to live in proximity to a school -- >> Okay. >> But not by zoning. >> Does Mr. Smart have anything on that. >> The state regular laters that. We have no code that actually applies to sex offenders and where they can or cannot be locate in the community. >> May I speak? >> Yes. Ms. Houston. >> Mr. Gurnsey, do we have any health and safety regulations for the class 2? >> We would -- we certainly have regulations. Because that would apply. We're looking at where we have [1:15:13 PM] greater than six -- basically seven to 15 individuals that might be residing that we might be applying more strictly our building codes. There is a rooming house ordinance that -- or a rooming house ordinance that applies in our codes. So they might have to maintain a certain license. When you get more than seven individuals, seven or more individuals in a house hold, that is something that you might have to come in and go through the process. Right now we're looking at the building codes to make sure they're a safe facility in applying. Make sure they're not overloading the home in that sense. >> So just looking at the building code regulations, we're not looking at staffing or the health and safety issues of the people who live there, not the building that they're residing? >> That's correct. The city only would regulate the safety of the structure not necessarily the individuals being maybe serviced in that home. >> Thank you. >> -->> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: In regard to the group home and senior housing. I know the state regulates a lot of the group homes in things like assisted living and other types of group homes. And I believe they regulate -- they may regulate health and safety issues. Anything with regard to senior living or senior homes that the city does in particular. Or is that considered to be like group homes. >> Certainly seniors would be a group home that could exist. There's nothing in particular that I'm aware of that we do particularly for seniors versus anyone else. >> Kitchen: Okay. My second question on a different issue relates to the ads that you mentioned earlier. I know sometimes there's confusion or -- about the [1:17:14 PM] difference of an Adu or strs. So can you help us understand the difference between the two or is it possible for an Adu to be an str? Of I guess that could be a possibility. Director smart is going to cover short term rentals for sdrs in a couple of minutes. >> Kitchen: I'll wait for that. >> Mayor Adler: Please continue. >> Thank you. >> The next group is step dorms. I wanted to note that the step dorm term is not an official term. You won't find it anywhere in the land of development code. It's a term coined by the neighborhood to emphasize their concern about lost and Normal single family homes into places that resembles small dormitories. A lot of times the situations where small single family homes was demolished and removed and a larger -- a big home was built there with the number of rooms that could be used for bedrooms and then the final inspections are done, the certificate of occupancy is issued. It changes and a lot of students maybe move in or unrelated persons move in to that place. So they coined the term step dorm. It could impact the character of a neighborhood. It can have issue of parking, noise, parties, cars left at the curb, different types of nuisances particularly related to overoccupancy. I want to show you a map here that the dorms are not located near the university area, they're actually located all over the city of Austin. It lured the occupancy from six [1:19:16 PM] unrelated persons to four unrelated persons. But this is only applicable in the shaded area in the map. And this area is the same area that is covered by the mcmansion ordinance if you will. So it is intended to help deal with the issue of overoccupancy and the issues surrounding that. I wanted you to know this will expire March 31, 2016, unless, of course, city council approved an extension of the ordinance or replaces that ordinance. I think the council when they passed this, they considered that the hope, the intent, the code next, the land development code would cover this issue and take care of the issue by the March 31 date. Also want to let council know that this issue is under review, has been under review by the step dorm working group, a subset of the planning commission and the ordinances committee. Now to get to councilmember kitchen's questions with reference to short term -- yes, accessory dwelling unit can be a short-term rental. We have five different types of short term rentals that include owner- occupied, none owner occupied, and apartments. These are rentals that in 30 days or less, and particularly rented to do special events and we have our share. And vacation rentals, the combination of those things. We issued over 1200. 1200 licenses in the city of Austin since this ordinance was adopted in 2012. [1:21:16 PM] Some of the challenges, of course, is that the str is taken care of, it will look like any other home in the neighborhood. If there's not, there could be again the step dorm issues, parties, noise, parking, those kind of nuisances that occur that's somewhat disruptive in the quality of life in single family neighborhoods, particularly. Listed here are just some of the tools that we used to outline today. These tools focus on a collaborative issue. No one department alone can handle most of the issue that we talked about today. And it really does take teamwork and these tools here to list and emphasize that teamwork that is happening with these issues. It's very important that we look at critical partnerships. We found it to be very effective to work with our stakeholders, work with boards and commission, work with federal and state agencies. Some of the things that we don't regulate the state agency, the federal agency may regular later and actually help us to get compliance. And, of course, working with other city departments really makes a difference. Lastly, as we look at the role of city council, there's several items that may be coming before you in the next few months. And we've listed, tried to list those -- make a listing of those items, accessory dwelling units and Mr. Gurnsey has already described. That item is making its way through the planning commission and should come to council soon. Looking at ways to make it easier to allow for accessory dwelling units. Group homes. As Mr. Gurnsey indicated. [1:23:18 PM] Looking at that from a collaborative standpoint, plan and development review, building department, fire department, and codes all looking together at how we can provide reasonable accommodations but look at licensing and or monitoring, providing oversight for group homes. In short term rentals, there is an enforcement issue. How do you identify a short term rental and make sure it's properly licensed and operated properly? And so part of our challenge is to enforcement, we may be coming back to -- we're looking to coming back to council in the upcoming months looking at the amendment to the ordinance that would strengthen the enforcement. The neighborhood enhancement team is interdepartmental team. We briefed previous council on this issue. And we've not briefed you. It is interdepartmental team created by the city manager to address an array of neighborhood issues for the team, staff, different departments, working with neighborhoods and other stakeholders, go into a neighborhood and actually address on array of issues that are occurring in that neighborhood and hope to make a difference. We're looking at the runberg area. The area has been chosen. We're working on that. But I think we're looking forward to doing a briefing for council on that program. Lastly, the shoreline access registration enforcement. An ordinance was passed last year that has an extensive set of amendments to this ordinance. And included in that is the idea of doing a registration program for boat docks along lake Austin. So we've been challenged to look at that, review it, and come up with the proposal that will be brought forth to council in the next few months coming up later in the year. So these are basically the [1:25:18 PM] issues that have come forward. And, of course, additionally we learned just recently that the code committee and the dorm working group is making the recommendations to the planning commission and the planning commission plans to bring those recommendations to council in the next few months. >> Mr. Mayor? >> Thank you for the opportunity. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Questions, Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: Just a quick question. When you bring us information back about group homes, it would be helpful from my perspective to understand the relationship between the city oversight and the state oversight. So if you could help us understand that, that would be great in terms of what's the state responsible for? Is there any relationship between what you do and what the state does? >> Absolutely, yes. We will do that. >> Houston: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston? Did you have something? >> Houston: Yes, I did. Thank you so much. Mr. Smart, you gave us a number of 1200 short-term rentals? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Houston: Do you have any way of knowing how many we have in the city of Austin operating? >> No, when we started out, the auditor's office did some projections, some estimates. And that estimate was around 1500. And but we've been -- we've been going on the internet. We've been going in the directors. Using all kind of resources to try to identify. We don't really know. Like I said, we've -- we have a license over 1200. But we believe that's a lot more out there. And so that's part of the challenge for us is trying to identify where they are. >> Houston: And one other question, sir, is that the reason we did this was to get more money from the -- is it the sales tax? That they're the ones that are supposed to pay the city? [1:27:20 PM] Hotel occupancy tax? Something they're supposed to pay us. >> Yes, short term rentals are required to be licensed and pay the city but they're required to pay the hotel occupancy tax. That has been effective. Of the 1200 we licensed, all of them have become current with their hotel occupancy taxes. That's made a big difference. The main issue we're here for, the health and safety of those persons coming in and living in those places and the impact it has on the neighborhood surrounding neighborhood those strs. >> Houston: We don't have any way of monitoring those not compliebt in the rules and regu regulations, we're missing out on some funding for the city? >> That's probably true. We are -- we have limited staff, we're pursuing what we can. We have staff looking on the internet, looking at advertising. One of the things that the ordinance allows you to exercise, the test of market would not be a license. Some folks are advertising out there. Once they get a commitment, they'll come out and get the license. Other folks were organized and being able to distinguish those two identify those is the challenge we're having. >> Thank you. >> As an aside, I would point out that for the councilmembers, when we have power point presentations like this, if we have them early enough, they're posted associated with the agenda. Sometimes they show up as late backup. Sometimes they appear to us for the first time as they're being presented. And those, then, are also posted on the agenda. Even though the agenda item has passed. So if you could go back retrospectively and see the power points that were presented. All right, Ms. Gallo and then [1:29:25 PM] Mr. Renteria. M. >> Gallo: It appears sometimes the short term rentals are used for a vacation use. Perhaps during festivals. One incident of a large retail box vendor renting the space as a wedding venue. Not a wedding venue, but a bride stay sales venue. What uses are allowed for the short term rentals and what would be the appropriate action to take if the neighbor was aware of something like this happening? >> The intent, council member, is that the short term rental would be used for residential use. And when you mention commercial use, some have a call -- the type II. The type II is nonowner occupied. You can construct, purchase, or use a residence strictly for our short term rentals. So a family does not have to be living there. He can rent it out, weekends, weeks, however you want to do that. So that occurs and sometimes people will come in, groups of folks, and they have parties and things like that. When there are nuisances, some calls from the neighborhood, we encourage folks to call 311. 911 is something dangerous is going on. Call 311. We will respond. Even if it's on weekends and during events. Kind of a pace -- pace team paces the what is it? Help me out? Public events code enforcement. But we'll have a combination of teams and the weekend. And we'll do that by south by southwest. [1:31:26 PM] >> Gallo: In type two, a nonresidential use is allowed. >> You can't use the term commercial. It's nonowner occupied and used for short term rentals. >> Gallo: So if a person had a type II short term rental. They were using it for parties, no other violations for noise and parking, would that be an allowable use. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Gallo: Okay, thank you. >> You're -- >> Renteria: Your question goes to not a party for the people living there or as a party location that would not have been a residential use, but rather a commercial use. I guess we're going to agree on it. >> Good point. >> Renteria: I have a lot of people in east Austin, I'm so close to sixth street. It's closer downtown. We have a lot of people moving in. Buying the homes, tearing it down. The big mansions there. They're advertising on the media and Facebook that they're booking for 20 people. This is a single-family housing next to single family. And I know it's strictly just illegal for them to have 20 people in this house. But they're getting away with it. And they're advertising. And people have been calling 311. And not getting any kind of satisfaction because they said they can't prove it and say, wow, go to the media where they're advertising and you can see they're advertising for 20 people. And they party all night long and keep my neighbors up all the time. I mean, I hope we can go out and enforce it with what we do call 311. [1:33:29 PM] There's a place where nothing is being done. You need to take a picture so we can count on the people there. I mean, that's what's going on. >> We realize that. It's important for us to come back and bring some proposals that will help to strengthen the ordinance. The ordinance allows for advertising, even though we're not licensed. And so for some illegal advertising, actually, and you're advertising more than six other persons can stay in the single family home, then that's not -- and I think we can strengthen the ordinance to give us a little more enforcement power if you will to take care of the situations. I would still encourage them to call. If you've got a party going on, we can't necessarily stop folks from partying and this goes to the mayor's question earlier too -- they can come in and say we're having a party. Everybody come over. But still, if you're going to have a party, you need to comply with the law. And not that will disrupt the neighborhood, disrupt your neighbors, that kind of thing. Parking issues still have to be a concern. Trash, debris, all of that. So there's no law against having the party, but there's a law against the nuisances that sometimes they could create. >> Renteria: And we're seeing a lot of type twos in the neighborhood. And you should really focus on those that have type two license agreement with the city that's registered. My biggest thing is a concern also on Sr that, you know, we have a group of people that are willing to rent out their house for south by southwest to make enough money to pay for their taxes because of the gentrification going on in east Austin. We turn around and penalize them. But not only do you have to pay for a registration fee, which you have to pay $275 for the [1:35:30 PM] first time. But then you have to file quarterly, hotel taxes, all four quarters, or you get penalized if you don't. Even though you're going to be around for ten days or seven days or five days. You know? And it's totally unfair because you have low income people who can make some money there so they can pay their taxes and we turn around and penalty iepz them going through that and file for the city hotel tax. They had to file for the state hotel taxes besides renewing your fee yearly. It's totally unfair. It discourages a lot of people from taking advantage of the little income they can make during these times when we're having some kind of a -- so many activities. Putting so much pressure on our neighborhood. Because, you know, they all come in and they park and we just want to get out of there and earn a little bit of money and just move out and let them have their parties and we can come back when they're done. But then we get killed for it. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: Thanks. I think there are a few policy questions that have arisen that I hope we can talk about that as part of the planning and zoning. You referred to one of the changes that made it more difficult for you to investigate cases or move forward with cases that are short term rentals that are advertising. Advertising is evidence. Code compliance could use that change. That's one issue. The issue councilmember Gallo raised is a curious point. I hope we can explore it as well. I think I heard you say that neighbors had mentioned that there was an example of the short term rental that was being used to host a clothing sale, which I would think is not contemplated by the short term rental ordinance. There were no sales, but it was a bridal fare. [1:37:32 PM] So it was an invitation to go out to future brides to come in and view. I don't think anything was sold and there wasn't a charge, is my understanding. So it was a -- >> Kitchen: Interesting concept. >> Mayor Adler: It is. We heard that complaint too. That would be a commercial use. We're certainly -- I think we are already looking at that particular property and that particular situation. So but a lot of the parties and all still present themselves as a challenge and clearly the advertising -- allowing the advertising without being licensed is a concern of ours too. >> Tovo: I did have a question for you. You talked before about the 1200 licenses that you've issued in the city of Austin. Are those both type 1 and type 2? >> And three. >> Tovo: And three. Okay. >> All three -- well, there's four types. Type one is the owner occupied properties. That's where folks come and stay with the family. Type two is none owner occupied where the property is used solely for it, specifically for it. And type three is apartments. >> Tovo: So I guess my question is, do you have off of the top of your head, can you give us a sense of how many neighborhoods, maybe you could provide us with the information afterwards. One of the things that the ordinance did was to cap the number of commercial short term rentals. By that, type two, the structures that are used in short term rentals 100% of the time. It's my understanding that in several tracks, they reached that maximum. I think that would be information that would be useful to the council to hear. I know of several at least that fall within that category. I thought I remembered that the ordinance, when it originally passed, included some direction to staff to return to council with some information on whether or not there's been impact on the availability of long-term [1:39:33 PM] rentals. I don't think we've seen any of that information yet. But I think we may get into a conversation about that with our panel. But I think that's very important information for the council to have as well. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, okay. Any other questions at this point? Mr. Casar, then Ms. Houston. >> Casar: Can you talk about the powers that we have but also the limitation interior inspections, especially, when we're talking about unsanitary or dangerous properties that may arise from those but monitor code violations on the interior rental property? >> Be glad to, councilmember. The code officers, Austin code, is allowed to do -- allowed right of entry to go on to properties for a specific purpose to enforce the ordinances that the council has passed. Of course, that right of entry is limited by the constitution. You have a right to privacy on your property. So we can knock on the door and ring the doorbell. But if the owner or the temp -- the resident, does not -- does not want us to INT the property, we cannot enter the property. All they have to say is no. And the officer had to leave the property. And so our right of entry is limited, if you will. Now the exception is a warrant. A warrant to inspect a search warrant basically that would have to be issued by the judge after we show probable cause. That they're if violation probably occurring on the interior of the property. Then we would be allowed by court action actually to inspect the interior. Additionally, in the apartments and all, the tenants can allow us to enter the department and look at the apartment and inspect the apartment even if the property owner, the landlord and the tenant is the one with the right of privacy in that situation and they can allow us [1:41:34 PM] that entry. So we have to be careful to protect the rights of the residents of the property owners when we go out and do the inspection. So thank you for that question. >> Yeah, and as far as anti-retaliation protections for the tenants that may allow code inside, is that in the city code or is that more state or federal? >> It is state and federal. There's fair housing, but there's also a local code situation also. If a tenant has a problem inside their property, a lot of time they are concerned about retaliation. They would like for the inspector to come in. We always encourage folks they can call 311 anonymously. But if it's specific to a particular unit, you know, the landlord could easily figure out, okay, the tenant must have call and there may be retaliation against the tenant. The raise may get raised. Several things could occur. But the retaliation itself is a violation. A violation of local code and fair housing rules. So the issue becomes -- it's still difficult to prove, difficult to enforce that retaliation. But it is against law. It's illegal for the landlord to retaliate because the tenant used their right to allow the inspection of the interior. >> One last thing, Mr. Smart. You all have a very difficult position. I can see that. But this is an example to me of an ordinance that's unenforceable, untrackable, uncollectible. It puts neighbors of being in a position of being policemen in our own neighborhoods because we have to constantly monitor who's coming and going. By the time we get someone to come out, the event may be over, landlords always, always, in my district, I can't speak to other [1:43:35 PM] people, live out of state or outside of the city. They don't live in Austin until it's hard to find out who those people are. And so so we're in a very difficult time because we put commercial properties inside residential areas that started that whole commercialization of neighborhoods in single family homes. So I don't know how we undo that or how we try to make it better, but I hope that you will send us forward. The other thing is there's been a group working on these board and cure homes in district 1 primarily. And station 18 switches in Windsor park brought this even to our attention on how much money is spent because we have so many people who have even though health issues or other kinds of challenges of life because we have nine, ten in a home, adequate staffing, no beds. So we're going have to bring that group together and try to work on that issue as well. >> Yes, we've had some discussion with Travis county interim care and our own health and human services department. We realize that's a challenge of board and care homes of not being properly monitored or regulated. There is some new legislation at the state level that enables the cities to do more as far as regulation. But that's one of the issues that we're going have to study review and hopefully we can put something together that would be workable and come back to this council for some direction on. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, councilmembers, by way of time check. We're halfway through the allotted time and yet to hear from any of the panelists and other voices. Mr. Casar, a lot of these issues may be hitting you and your committee. There's obviously considerable interest in this to have a [1:45:35 PM] longer conversation. We could certainly call it back as a council if we wanted to have that here. My suggestion is since people are speaking about some of the issues that we talked about, we tried to give the panelists a chance to talk and move through so that we make sure that everybody that came here today gets a chance to participate. Thank you both. Let's go ahead and start the conversation. Amy Hartman with Arra [ phonetic ] Hi, thank you. Of. >> Thank you, mayor. Thank you, councilmembers for inviting me to speak. I'm Amy Hartman, I'm a resident at zilker. I'm a board member of aura. Advocations for land use and transportation policy. I struggled to write down my thoughts on this topic. I wrote it this morning. It's really important to consider the issues with the overall context in Austin. So, it's probably not news to anyone in this room. But it bears repeating because it's very important. In 2013, Austin became the only in Texas that the median income can qualify for. And according to Austin's comprehensive market analysis, the majority of renters, a third of homeowners are cost burdens which means they pay more than 30% of the gross income towards housing costs. In a large part, that's because we haven't added enough new housing stock to keep up with the roughly 350,000 new residents that have moved here since 2006. So in less than ten years. And in a consequence, Austin has increasingly become a place where middle income house holds are finding it difficult to afford housing. So the reason that this is important is that the list of neighborhood issues that were cited for this panel, accessory dwelling units, short term rentals, and high occupancy [1:47:36 PM] units should be put in the context of what they are with their strategies that people take to increase housing affordability in our current environment. Whether by building a secondary unit on their property to help with the property taxes or make extra money renting their home to visitors occasionally. I wanted to address that because I rent my home as a short term rental and I own my home. The people who rented it are people who are visiting Austin for their nephew's graduation or something. It enables me to pay my mortgage and doesn't cause a disturbance. So I don't think we can assume, especially the homesteaded short term rentals are all party houses when we're looking at how to regulate it. Too often in Austin politics, there's a resistance to these things. They come up, people try to stop them. When the affordability comes up. People say we care about affordability. This is not the way to do it, put restrictions on I want, but we never circle back around and find an alternative. The occupancy limit debate is one example that you heard a lot of arguments that we can provide a better alternative when we reduce the number of unremitted people who live in a house hold from 6 to 4. But we haven't seen that happen. And so when affordability is a top concern in Austin, it's really important that we avoid making any policy choices that have impact on affordability. Especially if we're willing to provide any alternatives when we do that. So then -- the second thing that brings to mind is a challenge to some pre-existing assumptions about the way people want to live. Outside of the downtown area, and directly on a handful of busy traffic corridors, Austin is currently zoned pretty much with the assumption that every house hold wants a single family home with a large yard for a 2.5 occupants. [1:49:38 PM] And in addition to the fact that most established neighborhoods in Austin don't have the land to provide that kind of housing for everyone who wants to live in them. There have been a lot of shifts in housing preferences since 1984 when Austin designed the current land development code to. The extent that they can afford it, it's an increasing number of people who are prioritizing the location of their housing over having a lot of personal space, living in a smaller home, or having more than one housing unit on a property, or having a larger house hold size. So it's important that Austin is proactive in ensuring that our development code and the way that we handle these code issues provides for a different housing options to address changing living options. If we don't get open to other living alternatives, people spending too much income to live in Austin, having to leave the city. The affordable areas in Austin, neighborhoods for the periphery of the city or historically lower income neighborhoods taking more than their fair share of residents relative to other areas of the city because everyone -- that's the only place you can afford to live, so everyone goes there. And neighborhoods becoming out of reach to people who aren't well off or who bought a home several years ago. The price of housing has gone up a lot in Austin in the last ten years. So I hope as we discuss this on this panel that we can keep in mind sort of these bigger picture perspectives. Thank you again. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Any questions, should we go to the next speaker? We'll move on then. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: David king, Austin neighborhoods council. >> Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to be on this panel. When we talk about the strategies to create more affordable -- more affordable city for our citizens I think we need to look at and uncover some of the myths related to what causes the problems with the [1:51:39 PM] affordability and the strategies we're dealing with to handle that problem. Urban density has been -- policies have been justified based on the strategy to limit sprawl and that in a way that will increase affordability and decrease green house gases. A 2016 study found that policies to contain sprawl and densifiy urban areas has less affordability and no impact on green house gas emissions. This was done in China, Hong Kong, Australia, Europe, and in the United States. Consistently, these strategies did not lead to more affordability. In fact, they led to less affordability. The economist reported that the consequences of these policies that attempt to stop sprawl have resulted in higher property taxes, forced many people to undignified homes, and widened the health gap between property owners and everyone else. A Berkeley researcher said there's no evidence of density in urban core or suburbs. So let's get past the myths and let's focus on things that don't negatively impact the livability of our neighborhoods but do help to address the affordability issue. Growth and density will continue. But the question is, how will we manage it? In a way that preserves to build up our neighborhoods but allows them to be affordable as well. We have not done a good job in the past decade in managing the rapid growth. And we can see that in the negative impacts of traffic, too much parking congestion, noise, and the afford about issues that we described earlier. Overdevelopment from rapid growth is a big problem and impacts the ability of oh you are neighborhoods. Overdevelopment and areas that [1:53:40 PM] have insufficient infrastructure is shortsighted and dangerous. That's what happened to the south Lamar neighborhood. Flooding was such a serious problem that the city council had to enact the mitigation project for infrastructure in the south Lamar neighborhood. Because we don't have good infrastructure information yet, we're making these decisions to apply these strategies to increase density in these same areas that we don't have sufficient infrastructure that's old aging infrastructure. That's why we have these problems. So we do have to change the way we manage growth going forward. Or it's going to be much more expensive to come back and fix the problems that we could have avoided in the first place. And that, I believe, is what impacts affordability and puts the tax burden on property taxes and renters as well. The code next process is really pressing for increased density in central Austin without this data on capacity of infrastructure. The city should conduct an analysis of the capacity of the infrastructure so it can inform the process. Neighborhoods need infrastructure capacity data to help them make informed decisions about growth and density in their own neighborhoods. Many neighborhoods have spent decades and countless hours developing neighborhood plans. These plans should be respected in the code process and reflected in the new land development code. The new code must include tools and standards that are necessary for neighborhoods to continue the character of the neighborhoods they have today. The proposed accessory dwelling ordinance could have neighborhoods that could not handle the traditional parking or storm water runoff. Therefore, the neighborhoods should have the option to opt in and out of that ordinance. In fact, the ordinance should be tabled and handled in the context of the code next process in a comprehensive manner. Some of these accessory dwelling [1:55:41 PM] units are being used as commercial, type II short term rentals. In my own neighborhood, there's one advertised for $149 a night for a starting rate. That's not affordable. Commercial type two rentals drive up rental rates, deprive neighborhoods with homes and families with children that could attend neighborhood schools and some of them create traffic, trash, noise, and parking issues in the neighborhood. We had some problems with some of that in the zilker neighborhood. I received another complaint from a neighbor in that same area and multiple complaints from that same short term rental earlier this year. There are repeated complaints. The civil Kerr neighborhood have 81 short term rental units, commercial short term rental units. That's 81 homes that are not available to families. The proposal to relax business and residential parking requirements can make parking congestion even worse in neighborhoods, many neighborhoods. When we do both, when you say you ear going to relax parking for businesses on the corridors, they've seen the impact of those strategies. It's pushing parking to neighborhoods. You all have probably heard about that in your campaigns. That's happening. If we continue to relax those parking requirements for both residential and commercial, we're going have the worst traffic problem -- parking problems that you could imagine. These decisions to relax the parking rule should be coupled in the infrastructure for transportation. We need to have the transportation options in place. We shouldn't be passing these strategies now and putting people through all of the problems and then the transportation infrastructure comes along later. We need to change that and change that order of things there. [1:57:42 PM] One last thing is the overoccupancy issues that have been discussed here. I won't go into detail over that. Y'all know, you heard about the problems that they affect livability, life, and safety of our neighborhoods. And we need to solve that problem as well. So thank you for listening to my com com com comments. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. King, thank you very much. Next speaker? >> Hi, mayor I'm a clinical professor, and a mother of a nine and 11-year-old boy, and have been an active member of city council commissions that have touched upon these issues. I'm here to present to you from several different perspectives in those roles. I'm going to focus on two areas of code issues. The first, I'm going - - this map captures it. I served on the city council, families with children task force, and the county city aisd joint work group on retaining families with children in the city. There's an alarming trend. Even though the region has added 86,000 children from 2013, the urban core is rapidly losing families with children. You can see from the map, Orange and yellow areas have lost children from the last census, and across the city, the percentage of households with families with children have been plummet eting from 30% in 1990 to 17% in 2010. And I think there are a number of factors at play here. I'm going to speak specifically to the code issues I feel like that touch on these issues. [1:59:43 PM] Four main ones. One, the loss of single-family housing. We've he heard references, from the type 2, no family, purely commercial purposes, as well as delph dorms. I know on my street alone, there is a house that was occupied a couple years ago by a family with a child. Now, it's a type 2 short-term rental. It's a bachelor party pad every weekend, there's all these cars, tons of guys pl playing football in the front yard every weekend. Second, parking. Parking comes up a lot, but, think about it through the lens of how it impacts families with kids. My kids walk to school, bike to school, play in the streets. The more parking pushed onto residential streets impacts families and their quality of life, and kids' ability to safely walk or bike to important places, or having a place to play. And the third is notice. And the fourth is dangerous housing. And that's the second area I want to focus the most on here. This is a picture of Woodridge apartments. Hopefully you remember this from the news in 2012. I know ruby was speaking about some of these issues here. But, we were in the midst of a major crisis in our city, of our most vulnerable members of our community, relegated to housing that is dangerous and unhealthy, and after Woodridge, a balcony collapsed, displacing households. We're looking at a ticking time bomb. It's not a matter of if another Woodridge is going to happen, it's a matter of when. Hopefully, not any time soon. I worked with a team of students at the law school, and we produced a report examining these issues more in depth around code enforcement. I can't get through the report in my remaining two minutes, but I brought copies for all of you. It's not 50 shades of gray, but, [2:01:45 PM] it may be exciting reading for your evening entertainment. But, in the report, we identify four -- I just want to touch upon four key elements of what we identified as successful code enforcement programs. Identification of code issues, that's what the registration gets at. Monitoring, enforcement, remedies. We identified deficiencies in all these areas, listed in more detail in the report. The code staff and other staff in the city, and council members from the last session were doing a really good job of trying to tackle the issues, but, there's a lot of work to be done. I want to just highlight what I think are some of the two most important policies that we recommended in our report. To get at these issues, and problems. I'm going to go here. One is comprehensive rental registration ordinance, which really is going to be critical to identifying code issues. We know from other city studies the bulk of code violations that are out there, including some of the most dangerous conditions, never get reported because of retaliation, because of language barriers, there's a whole host of issues. And rental registration is a program where the city conducts comprehensive inspections of all rental properties over a certain period of time. And 20 plus cities in Texas have adopted this, as well as numerous cities around the United States. And this is what I think councilmembers really like about this program, it's cost-effective. It pays for itself at a minimal cost to the tenant and landlord. A couple other just quick policies to throw out, things we recommended as another area I think the policy change is needed, the dedication of more resources to enforcement, including our city attorneys. We really like the Dallas program, where they have a community -- set of community prosecutors who are placed within each of the communities that are confronted with a lot [2:03:47 PM] of these substandard housing conditions, there directly working with the community members and bringing enforcement actions where needed. We highlighted the need for a multidisciplinary team of city officials to really go after the ten, 20 worst problems in the city, tackle those, go on to the next list. I understand code has been working on that. I think this is an area where the council really could make sure it's asking and getting status checks and updated reports on a regular basis of what's happening. Are we seeing changes, what's working, what's not working. I wanted to close on a softer note, I think this is a serious issue. This boy is holding a pick which picture oftwo young children who died in Houston when their stairwell collapsed. They were playing under it, it collapsed because of a code issue. The kids suffocated to death. This could be in Austin. Houston responded to this by adopting a rental registration ordinance, and they haven't had any kind of catastrophe like this since then. And I feel confident that is a council, and a community, we can figure out what we need to do to make sure we never have an episode like this happen. Thank you. [ Beeping ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: I have a quick question. I'm sorry, when you brought up 50 shades of gray, I immediately thought of a property owner with a run-down house, and code compliance officer putting handcuffs and a blindfold on him, I couldn't help it. Just a quick question. Have you ever managed a property before? Do you own any rental property now? >> I do not own any rental property. >> Zimmerman: I grew up in the rental income business, and my dad served a low-income market. For those people who could not qualify for section 8, they came and rented our buildings. And it's kind of a near and dear [2:05:48 PM] subject to my heart, because I grew up with it. On weekends, I was cleaning dirty apartments as a young teenager, for people who beat the rent and left town. It's kind of a sensitive point. I think the rental registration is a terrible idea. I'm a mechanical engineer, and I can guarantee you that rental registration will do nothing to stop tragedies like, you know, a roof collapsing or a stairwell or a balcony. The only thing that'll fix those kind of problems is construction work and repairs. And the reason a lot of these people don't make the repairs, they don't have the money to make repairs. They don't want to provide substandard housing and dangerous conditions for tenan tenants. No landlord does. The reason they don't make the repairs is because if they did, they would have to kick the people out, make the repairs, recover the money they invested, and raise rents. So, there's some basic economics in this that I just don't hear being addressed. And I want to make you aware of that, that I don't think the landlords are in the business of providing dangerous housing, it's just that the houses get old, run-down, their only solution is kick the people out, make the repairs and raise rents. There's no other way around it. >> Mayor Adler: Further comments? Ms. Tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks so much for being here today. I know that your clinic at the law school has done some work on affordable housing preservation, including recommendations for strike funds to bring resources to property owners who wanted to make those repairs, but may be unable to. I wonder if you would be willing to maybe send a followup to us, and send the links to the other reports. I think some of the great policy work that has come out of prior councils with regard to housing has come really from your students and the work that [2:07:49 PM] they've been doing. I appreciate all of your work, and I think that would be good fodder for future policy discussions. >> Thank you. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. We'll now move to Barbara Scott. >> Hello, mayor and council. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Scott. >> Hello, mayor and council. It's an honor for me to be here today, to be able to address some of the code issues. I will not be able to address all of Austin's code issues, but I can address the issues that we see in our neighborhood. The number one thing that I have on my list is staffing for code compliance. They do a wonderful job with the people that they have. But they do not have enough staff to do what needs to be done. Calls are complaint-driven, and I think they should not just be complaint-driven to 311. I think there need to be patrols in all neighborhoods. There's an overabundance of absentee/slum landlords in our district, in district 1. We have repeat offenders, and the time allowed for persons to correct the issues is too long. It should not take six months to get someone to correct an issue that is dangerous. The process of reporting is misleading because if you report to 311, and call in the next day, then you're going to get a recording saying that the complaint has been resolved. And it has not been resolved, it has gone to a code compliance officer, and he's working on it. But you think that the complaint is resolved, and it's not. [2:09:55 PM] Single-family homes. We have a lot of three bedroom homes in my area, and we may have 10 to 15 people living in them. And they're not renters, they're family members. And that needs to be addressed. That is unsafe. It's also unhealthy. We have a combination of code issues and police issues, so what we have done in our area is we have worked with code and police to address those issues. We have done what we like to call ride-throughs, where we will ride with the code compliance officers. You know, and they explain to us, they can't do anything about ugly. You know, it may not be a code compliance issue. But, it's ugly. And it's nothing that they can do about it, but the code compliance issues need to be addressed. And they need to be addressed frequently in our area. Just the simple matter -- and this is all over Austin, of mowing and cutting yards. Even commercial mowers. You will see them blowing trash in the street. They blow the yard cuttings in the street. And if you happen to be driving by and you have a freshly washed car, it's very upsetting to have all of the grass blown on your car. We have a lot of street parking in our area. There's a lot of street parking because you may have one person that lives in a house that owns five cars, and so I think there is a code somewhere, or should be, that, you know, you should have parking for your vehicles. If there is ever an emergency on our street, the fire department is going to have to drag cars to get to where they need to go because of the street parking on both sides of the street. We have a problem with what I [2:11:56 PM] like to call livestock here in Texas. People are allowed to let their chickens and different things roam free, and I say livestock because I've seen Turkeys, I've seen goats, I've seen just about anything that you could want to have on a farm, which would be nice to have in a farming community, but that is not our community. The combination of code and police make it very difficult, because if we call 311, sometimes they don't know who the problem needs to go to. There's a simple matter of calling in. I've called in, like, you know, for a dead animal to be picked up on a weekend, and we're told that we've got to wait until the following week. And sometimes it's picked up, and sometimes it's not. So that's something that needs to be addressed. I understand what the councilman was referring to about renting to people who are of lower income that don't qualify for section 8, but as a person that rented in our younger years, we kept our rental property as if it was our own. The landlord did not have to come in and clean out. He did not have to come in and repair, because we were taught to respect other people's property. And I think that's a major issue here, is that we have not taught to respect each other or other people's property. Mainly, code needs to be enforced. And we need to give them the tools to enforce what needs to be enforced. I've lived in my home for, soon it will be 40 years. [2:13:57 PM] And it's not falling down. It's repaired on a regular basis. And that's something that we need to help in our area with, especially because we have a lot of seniors in our area. And they don't know where they can go to get the help that they need. A lot of misinformation has been given to our community that, you know, if you go through this city process, then the city will own your house. I'm sure the city is not looking to own any more property than what they already have. We also have an issue in our neighborhood with the city maintaining their property. We have a lot of open space out there that's owned by the city, different fields. And I've had to call on the fire department out there, because they have not cut their yard. It's an area that's disfranchised, and will continue to be if something is not done. [ Beeping ] >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Scott, thank you. Questions, comments? Thank you very much. Rachel Martinez. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you very much for letting me come today to speak. I am a new person to all this procedures. Thank you. And it's very interesting, and very informing, and I've learned a lot of things today. And I really appreciate being here. I live in geor georgiaen man nowhere housing complex. We have rules we have to follow. Our code compliance is taken care of. We have clean yards, no junk in the street or in our back yard. Our houses are well-maintained. And we have someone to call when we need help. Anyone who thinks that a poor [2:15:57 PM] person cannot keep a house clean is not thinking very well of a poor person. Anyone who owns an apartment building that is falling apart and thinks that's because of money that they don't fix it, aren't they required to have insurance? That's what the insurance is for. But I didn't come here to talk about those things, it's just that it got under my skin. My complaint is that we have so many streets in and around my neighborhood that have no sidewalks. The children have to walk to school. We are predominantly poor. And so, a lot of my residents in my neighborhood do not have cars at all, so they rely on the bus. And if you don't have your money for the bus, you have to walk. There's no sidewalks, and the kids are walking by themselves. They go to school at Barrington, which is on the other side at the far end of runburg at Georgian drive. Also, if you use the bus, and you get off at the bus station terminal on Lamar and 183, if you come home like most people do the shortcut, you cross right into Lamar boulevard onto Powell lane, which comes across to Georgian manor, but that's a winding road where barely two vehicles can go by, much less some of the 18-wheelers that come to that property. And there's a deep curve, you know, where the water runs off into. There's houses, some apartments with so many cars, no grass, no parking, it's all mud. No sidewalks. There's no real good lighting. If you're walking through there at night because you got off the bus and you're on your way home from work, you're in a lot of [2:18:00 PM] danger. There's commercial buildings there that don't have adequate lighting at night. I have never seen anyone there as a patrol, and that's a serious problem for everyone. And if you take Powell from Georgian drive to interstate 35, you have the same thing. Many houses, they are not -- they're not clean just to look at the outside. There's a lot of old furniture, big, tall grass. There's a lot -- of the girls who are on runberger now on this street. And so, the farther down you go, the worse it gets. Then there's no sidewalks from Sam Rayburn down to 35, and so you're walking on the edge of a two-lane street where there is, again, they're cleaning out some of that property, but, again, anyone could be there. And anyone could get hurt. When you get to the stop sign, there's holes on the road big enough to swallow a little car, almost. So, if you've got to get on 35 and in a hurry, because there's a lot of traffic, you could have a really bad accident there. And that's just -- I mean, that's just simple maintenance for the city to fix. My real concern, my real, real concern, is the children walking to school when there's no sidewalk. So, that's what I had to say. And I thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Mmhmm. >> Mayor Adler: Questions, comments? Mr. Casar. >> Casar: A quick comment, thank you so much for coming down. I actually met Ms. Martinez, when I was knocking on doors, everybody told me to go meet her, because she took care of the whole community. I appreciate you coming in and voicing what's going on there to us. And, of course, while Adu is a critical issue that will be coming before the council, I think it's really important that as the council expands to include ten districts that we [2:20:01 PM] think of things like children being hit by cars or pushed into ditches. That's a critical neighborhood, and thank you for voicing those concerns for us today. >> You're very welcome. Thank you for inviting me. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Gallo. >> Gallo: I want to thank you for being here, too. As one of the people that was responsible for the reorganization of the housing authority back in the '90s, the residents, councils, and different developments were very much a partner in that effort to make the changes that needed to be done. So, thank you for continuing to be involved. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you very much. Paul. >> Thank you, mayor, council. I really appreciate the opportunity to participate on this panel today. I am Paul Hilgers. I was, for ten years, the director of the neighborhood housing and community development department for the city of Austin. I am now here today as the chief executive officer of the Austin board of realtors. The Austin board of realtors has about 10,500 members, and over 11,000 subscribers to our listing service. We are involved in all aspects of real estate, including home sales, leasing, and property management on small-scale properties, one to four units. The public policy agenda has focused on issues of water, transportation, housing, land use, and energy, and will continue to be involved in these and other critical issues of the city. I want to focus today on some attention on housing affordability. I would suggest to you that all of the issues you're talking about today are really symptoms of the major problem, and the major problem is the lack of housing stock in this city. The lack of affordable housing stock in this city. So, let's look at the couple of the big factors that impact the [2:22:01 PM] cost of housing. Clearly, it's a supply and demand issue. Austin has a very high occupancy rate, reducing options, increasing prices for renters. We have few home sales inventory, a measurement of supply and demand in home sales. Austin's current inventory is about 2.2 months, well, below the six months regarded as a balanced market by the Texas A&M real estate center. But, another factor that affects cost of housing is the regulatory requirements that the city imposes through its land development code. These regulatory requirements such as the layers of restrictions and over overlays in the development code come with a cost. They simply increase the cost of housing. Extended development review times and staff omissions also increase the cost of housing, the cost of carrying loans while a development is suspended in a review process is factored into the unit price of the development. The key thing here is these costs impact not just market rate housing, they impact the cost of any subsidized, or un-sub-cy sized housing in the development review process. So, it's true uncertainty increases risk. My role here today -- and I would like to show one other slide, if I can, of the -- the next slide, please F. If you look at this issue, this area meeting income since 1990, when the median income was $39,000, the cost of a home, median price of a home was $73,000. Now the median income has gone up to 75,000, but the median price of a house is $239,000. And look at the increase in that steep rise. So, this problem of a lack of affordability is going to get worse, and we have to do something, and you have a chance to do that. God bless you. [ Chuckling ] My role here today is to provide an answer to this question, what makes it difficult for businesses, property owners, or managers to maintain the [2:24:02 PM] required standards, and how can they make it easier for them to comply? Fundamentally, we need a fair, consistent, and simple code that clearly supports the city's priorities for how it wants to grow and develop. Property owners and managers need to have a clear understand offing the rules so that compliance becomes easier. Why is it important to have rules their fair, predictable, and understandable? Because when you do not, when you have a system that seems arbitrary -- I messed up. When you have a system that seems arbitrary, that seems complicated and confusing, it makes people feel like their city is against them, and places them into an unnecessary battle with a bureaucracy. It makes us a very litigious city, and the increase costs and energy to develop housing affects affordability. I'm telling you, this is energy you've had to spend because of complicated development rules and people not understanding how are they supposed to comply with them. So, it's in the public interest to be sensitive to private property rights. And in addition to a development review process that meets the standards of fairness, we need to look at ways to incentivize good behavior, because you can do that. Development incentives can incentivize the private sector to create development that meets the city's needs. That's been proven. In fact, most affordable housing in Austin is provided by the private sector, and it is not subsidized, but we are no longer an affordable city. We're excited about the good landlord program the city adopted. I'm not sure where we are on the status, but, it's incentive-based and encourage professional standards. We can work with that. [2:26:02 PM] In addition to the programs, we need to increase our support for preferred development. That should be defined as development that advances the goals of imagine Austin by removing barriers to preferred development and providing certainty and consistency in the inspection process, our housing stock will be increased. Imagine Austin is a balanced, thoughtful plan, and it should be the driver for your decisions that you use to support the big decisions on land use. This council gets to define what preferred housing is, it gets to define the new standard for fairness. The greatest challenge you may have in your seats as councilmembers is to realize that the different positions you're being presented with are all valid, and have merit. And so you'll need to decide what public priorities take precedence over others. Is it affordability, neighborhood preservation, or can you strike a balanced approach based on an agreed-upon set of principles that could be based on imagine Austin? These are real issues for real people. They need to be addressed, but they are symptoms. It's good that you're taking the time to learn what you can control, what you can stop, and what you can influence through incentives. The code compliance issue, first of all, I agree, multi-departments is absolutely essential to address this issue. But, I would say this about rental registration. When you create a rental registration program that is applied city wide, compliance with the code does not become the goal of the program. Rental registration becomes the goal of the program. So, registration fee and collection becomes the focus of the staff. You already have the tools necessary to enforce those who do not meet your building standards. We would encourage you, and have, to go after the repeat offenders. Go through the process of condemning property and show [2:28:03 PM] land owners that Austin, Texas, will not allow property owners to make money providing substandard housing to its residents. Don't spend time creating a huge bureaucracy to identify a hundred percent of the rental market when the problems are created by 5% of the bad actors. Finally, always ask questions about what could be the unintended consequences of proposed regulations. There are always un- intended consequences. Everything you do has a perceived public purpose for being imposed. Everything in our land development code has a perceived public purpose. It wouldn't be there if it didn't. But, it does not take into account the unintended consequences of those rules. That is why it's important to conduct affordability impact statements, and to have open, viable, public review processes that receive input from both sides of every development issue coming before you. So, once again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to participate. The Austin board of realtors and our diverse membership care deeply about this city. We are here as a resource, stakeholder, and a participant in your processes. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Any questions? Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: I have a quick question, thank you. This may not be the right forum. If not, let me know. Where did the ordinance on the source of income, and I think the apartment association lawsuit against that, does that fit into any of the discussion here today, or . . .? >> I don't really believe so, frankly, councilmember. I don't think it's an issue of code enforcement. I believe in looking at what the impact is on establishing rules that are easy to understand, that are easy to comply with, would be -- maybe would be a stretch. But, source of income, while that's an important issue for property managers, an important [2:30:04 PM] issue for the apartment association to . . . It's not really a development issue on housing, I don't think. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Gallo. >> Gallo: There we go. I'm not sure who needs to answer this, probably code. I've seen recently multiple commercials on the code department members. And my question is, because although we don't determine administration decisions, instead we deal with policy issues, it sounds like that the resources in code compliance from a manpower status could be enhanced, and I'm just wondering if that particular department paid for this commercial to be run? I hope that it did not, because I would hope that resources would go to hiring additional code enforcers instead. >> I'm going to ask my public information off officer manager to come up and address that issue. We're looking for ways to -- one of the ways to effect code enforcement is to do more education. And to help prevent violations, and help to educate property owners and tenants on what are violations, what do you need to do to remedy and prevent those violations. So we've been looking for creative ways to do that, and the commercials have been one of those ways. I'm going to allow Ms. Candice cooper, our public information manager, to respond to your question. >> Absolutely, hi, Candice cooper, Austin code department. One of our objectives is public education. And what we found is that individuals do not know the code officers in their neighborhood. For example, the commercials we're running now is a commercial to try to build a relationship with the code officers and those residents, so, therefore, you do not have the fear that you've heard some folks talk about. [2:32:05 PM] And to also get to know the code officer. As you know, the code department is a fairly new department. We're just five years old. We're still evolving. And as we develop, we want to help build a relationship. So, the purpose of our public education campaigns is to meet the community where they are, but to also be -- provide transparency, and to build a relationship with the community. Oh. In terms of the costs, the current campaign that we're running, I don't know off the top of my head, but, if that's what you're requesting, we can certainly get you that information in terms of the cost of that campaign. >> Gallo: Thank you. And I think, to compare that, it would be interesting to see what that cost would have purchased in man hours, or additional staffing, because what I'm hearing is that we have an issue with not enough people on the street to enforce code, so. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry, question? Ms. Houston. >> You can go first. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston, then Mr. Zimmerman. >> Houston: I want to speak to two things. First of all, thank everyone for being here today. It is a real issue for members in my community that don't know about the code department. They don't know who to call. So, sometimes I get those calls. [ Chuckling ] Luckily I know who to call. So, I think it was genius of you all to start putting that information out so that hopefully, that can shift to the appropriate group, and they can start working on it in a more efficient and timely manner, rather than going through me and then to you. So, I appreciate them. And thank you for doing that. The second question has to do with . . . I'm curious. We talk about accessory dwelling [2:34:05 PM] units, short-term rentals, stealth dorms as ways to increase affordability, and my question, what data do you have to support that, that if we implement all of these innovative new ways that people can charge what they want to charge, again, this is one of those things that sounds great. But people can charge whatever they want to charge for their accessory dwelling unit, that doesn't make it affordable. Could you speak to that, Mr. Hilgers? How do we know that will happen? >> I'll defer to the professor on the issue. I can give you adeck dotal information, from my experience. One, I believe they can be helpful to families maintaining their home, to people who could add an extra structure that would allow, in central east Austin, for example, students to live there and help them cover their taxes and help them cover their expenses so that a family who would not be able to stay in a home, if they could get help building a small, accessible dwelling unit, they could add value to the property and generate a little extra revenue for themselves. I don't have any specific data. >> I can add to that. On the type one, I support type 1 rentals where someone is renting their home to generate extra income. But, the type 2, you're taking single-family housing stock largely out of the market, the housing market for people to rent or buy, so that's only going to suppress or impact prices going up. I don't see how that has any impact on improving affordability. One thing that's important to understand about the supply and demand argument, I'm a law professor, but, the studies that happened, I've looked at some, it has an effect on the margins. Yes, you increase the supply of rental housing, it's going to -- [2:36:06 PM] as the occupancy rates lower, you're going to see rents go down. But, it's really at the margins, you're not going to get at the deep affordability that families making 20,000, $30,000 a year are going to need on the single-family side, homeownership, or on the multifamily, rental or ownership side. Gall>> Houston: I just want to add, you can do an accessory dwelling of 7,000 square feet. We have some in my neighborhood. I went around and looked at how much the accessory dwelling unit was going to rent for. It was market, it didn't add any "Affordability" whatever we determine that number to be, to the marketplace. So, that's my concern, is it will do this, and we won't see any stock of the group of people that we're talking act, families with children, and those people who are making 25, $30,000 working two jobs. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Houston, applying the strategies in neighborhoods where the infrastructure cannot support that additional density, I think, actually creates more of an affordability issue, because then we have to come back and retrofit that infrastructure, and that imposes more taxes, which becomes an affordability problem on renters and homeowners. So, I think we have to look at, you know, where we actually allow the strategies to be applied, and look at the infrastructure cost associated with that, too. Thank you. >> If I could just -- if I could add something to that, because I think a lot of times when we talk about affordable housing, we sort of limit it to the talk of people who are very low income. But, I just want to point out that middle-income people are having a lot of affordability problems in Austin, as well. And that's where things like accessory dwelling units can [2:38:07 PM] help. I mean, it's very important that we have strategies to increase affordable housing for people making less than $25,000 a year, but it's also important that we have an adequate supply of market-rate housing so that middle-income people have places that they can just afford to live. >> If I could add to that, too, just quickly. I would agree with all of that. I would also agree that there is a huge issue with regard to the infrastructure of the city being evaluated and looking at what it's going to take to increase the infrastructure that we need for our housing stock moving forward. That is something that is critical. But, I would suggest to you that the policy of this city has been that housing is really looked at in invested in to some degree like infrastructure, which is why we passed the housing bonds, a long-term financial tool to invest to provide support for very low-income families and low-income residents. The issue and the problem with housing issues is that it takes all of the above, not one or the other strategy. It's all of those strategies that are required. The critical issue from my perspective for today's conversation is, how can you impact the regulatory process to provide certainty to the development community and the property owners to let them know, if you do these things, we will make it easy for you to develop, because you're developing what we want you to develop. And you don't have the unnecessary development lawyers, litigation lawyers, all sitting here before you, in five-hour public meetings, because you're debating not over whether it meets imagine Austin, but whether the neighborhood is going to support it, or it really does what it says it's going to do. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mr. Zimmerman. >> You go ahead. >> I've known you for years. We served -- the served on the community development commission with you. And I had a perfect example last night where we had a developer [2:40:10 PM] that's developing affordability senior housing at Rebecca bane, and he had gone before us for the last three years, and we all proved, giving him the added height of 40 to 60 to move the seniors to the new unit while they bring it up to code, the old rbg building. And then we had people that said, no. We want to postpone it. And they're ready to go. They said, oh my god, we're going to have to wait another month. Here we are, what do we do? Just sit around and do nothing for a whole month. Then we have to go back to the neighborhood and say, hey, this is what -- you know. And then they're going to say, well, we don't have time to go and meet with you right now. And postpone it for another month. Now we're raising the cost of that development even higher, and this is for affordable housing. And it'si it's beyond me to understand what people are thinking, saying, we want to build affordable housing, we want to reduce the cost. And at the same time, we're delaying these projects so they can't get done, or get delayed where it just adds to the cost, and now we're having to raise the rates from 30 to maybe 60% mfi. These are the kind of issues that we're going to be facing. I'm really glad you're coming over here and educating us on some of these problems that we're facing here in Austin. You know, our neighborhoods saying no, we don't want this. They try to meet and work with you, and you finally get a group that say, okay, this is fine. And it's already another year, and these people leave, and another group comes in and they say, oh, we don't know anything about it, you're going to have to educate us again. It's just not going to work, you know. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: That's interesting you brought that up, councilmember Renteria, because I'm going to build on that. If I could get Mr. Smart to maybe comment. I had a particular question on [2:42:10 PM] code compliance. I'm looking at a letter in front of me. I can't put it up, I'm sorry, but, September 9th, 2014, a very powerful illustration of how not only does the public not really understand the code, but code enforcement also doesn't understand the code. And I'm talking about Matthew palmer's case, when there was a complaint about his rv. A code compliance agent came out. He put a fence around the rv and got a letter saying he was incompliant, in the summer of 2013. Maybe nine months later, another code compliance person says, no, you're not in compliance. Long story short, thousands of dollars of money our constituent lost. Meetings that were cancelled. He had some television appearances. Finally this month, he showed up in municipal court and the jury agreed with Mr. Palmer in opposition to code compliance. And it was a pretty tragic case, unfortunately, not isolated. We're getting lots of complaints about confusion among code officers. They don't understand the code, and different code officers interpret it differently. Do you have any comments about the Matt palmer case that was just decided in his favor? >> Mr. Councilmember, sure. I can comment a little bit on it. I think it was a fairly unique case. I've never seen a fence case quite like that one before. It was simply a case of a -- the fence was required as screening for recreational vehicles, and the code says a 6--foot solid wood or masonry fence. And I think it was a misinterpretation by a code officer a year ago. And, because they checked out the fence, and allowed it to -- allowed the fence to continue. The fence was two-thirds. Instead of a full, solid wood [2:44:12 PM] fence, six-foot fence, the top two-thirds was constructed, but the bottom third was left out, the bottom panel, a two-foot panel at the bottom was left out. The code says, strictly solid wood fence. But, it was allowed by one code officer. And I think that was a mistake. Mistakes do happen. But, it's unusual. We have not looked at other fence cases all around the city of Austin, and I've not seen any others like that, and I hope I don't see any others like that. A year later, though, a different code officer went by. There was no fence up, no fence at all, the fence has been taken down, temporarily I suppose, to allow for moving the rv in and out. Large rv on the side yard. But anyway, so the officer went back later. The owner re-installed the fence, and the bottom panel was out. He said no, it has to be a solid wood fence. I think the second officer was correct, even though as you say, the jury found him not. Not guilty. It was an unfortunate situation, there was an error made, we apologized for that error, and worked through the case. It went through the process, as it should have gone through the process. The court found the respondent not guilty, and so it is. >> Zimmerman: Okay. The request I would have, let's not spend any more money on TV ads until we get people to understand the code from the inside. That's just a request. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you very much. Let's hear some of the other voices. Frank harrin. And we'll go ahead and excuse the panel. I know some of you need to pick up children, and some have to get to the capital metro bus. [2:46:14 PM] Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. >> Good afternoon, mayor, mayor pro tem, and council. Thank you for the opportunity to address you this afternoon. It dawned on me when I was waiting that two of you have had to listen to me for about 5 1/2 years, so if you want to just check your email and respond, that's not going to hurt my feelings. Two others of you, your spouses have had to listen to me for three years, so you make your own decision. Neighborhoods has been a difficult topic in recent years. In fact, recent decades. It's a broad and varied topic, but I think the essence of the most contentious part of neighborhoods debate has been on one side, save our low density detached single- family housing. The other side has said, no, we need denser for affordable housing options. The decision during imagine Austin was to commit to the latter alternative. It was clear keeping the established neighborhoods as predominantly low-density detached single-family was creating problems. It was preventing effective transit, appropriate urban density, and affordability. Certain folks who generally oppose change in these neighborhoods refer often to page 207 of the comp plan. I would ask you to, in your spare time, refer to page 201, that talks about one of our eight priority programs under our comp plan, and that is to create affordability throughout Austin. The old policies of protecting low-density single-family housing throughout these expansive neighborhoods had [2:48:14 PM] disastrous consequences. From most affordable housing market in America in 1990, last year we were proclaimed to be the most overvalued housing market in America. That was a span of 24 years. We became the worst sprawling major American city, and we had the fourth-worst traffic conincongestionen a rush hour. A primary cause has been resisting density and change in our established neighborhoods. It was clear that we needed to grow inward and closer together rather than outward and away from one another. Thus, the therm compact and connected that provides the foundation of our new comprehensive plan, and the foundation of our future vision for our neighborhoods. The vision statement that began the process says, Austin respects its people. Values and respects its people. It says that we are going to provide all of our people, across all of the city -- [ beeping ] >> I'm sorry. >> Mayor Adler: No, go ahead and finish. >> I'm sorry? >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead and finish your thought. >> That we're going to provide all of our people across all the city accessible and affordable housing. We decided in the imagine Austin process that that was more important than tying ourselves to an old neighborhood style, or a building style that was popular back in the '30s and '40s. We need to go in a different direction, that imagine Austin says we're going to go in. My ask of you would be to continue that new thinking, where we concentrate on the real impact of our decisions on the people that live here, and the people that will live here generations to come. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [2:50:20 PM] Alejandro bullano. You have three minutes. >> First, I want to thank mayoremayoradler, and the new council. I hope these efforts grow. Participation is exactly what brings me here. I represent friends of Hyde park, a new neighborhood association formed a few months ago. The driving force was a deep concern about how most neighborhood associations and contact teams handle representation. It boils down to barriers. In a time when it's easier than ever to participate, it is counterintuitive and counterproductive that so many of our neighborhood associations and contact teams seem focused on making it harder and not easier to voice an opinion. One common barrier is membership fees, which in Austin range anywhere from the symbolic dollar bill to a poll tax at $50. It is common for voting issues to be announced publicly just a few days before a vote, while you often have to sign up to be a member 30 days or more in advance, or have to attend previous meetings to vote, making it impossible for a neighbor to participate. Votes are often held after hours-long meetings, which neighbors cannot attend. Renters, one of the most important stakeholders, are tragically underrepresented. In one case I've seen, even barred from voting. Ultimately, it results in member organizations submitting opinions to you guys where only ten or 20 people actually voted, even though they claim to represent an entire neighborhood's opinion. They become echo chambers where the same voters make all the decisions. Neighborhood associations, and especially contact teams, which are an actual part of city government, need to be pushed to make sure all stakeholders in [2:52:20 PM] the neighborhood are represented, and that voting is somewhat swe convenient, or at least not outright prohibitive. We are trying this out. We don't charge membership fees. Voting is online through a secure platform, and anyone in the neighborhood can sign up to be a member, even when a vote is going on. Voting is open for a seven-day period, so people can vote at their convenience. You don't have to attend long meetings in order to participate, but there are meetings, if that's your thing. This philosophy resonated with our neighbors. Our first vote on relaxing regulations had one of the largest, if not the largest voting participation in Hyde park. 156 total people voted, 91 in favor, 65 opposed. We modeled our organization of what we believe the contact teams were intended to be. Open to all stakeholder input and available to everyone to participate in. We hope the city council will consider these issues when member organizations present their opinions. A very simple question like, how many people voted on your resolution can be illuminating in many ways. Thank you for your time. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, sir. [ Beeping ] >> Mayor Adler: Sue long. And then noria Zaragoza. [ Off mic ] >> Mayor Adler: That would be fine. You have to press it on, though. >> I've had to make quite a few adjustments to what I wanted to visit with you today as I heard everyone else speak, so please be patient with me. I am a member of the Austin rental alliance. The Austin rental alliance is an organization, a professional organization of owners of short-term rentals. A few of us are also managers. I own one. , And that's a type two. [2:54:23 PM] I'm concerned about what I'm hearing about the short-term rentals. I didn't see it as a serious issue. I thought when we passed the str ordinance we were enacting regulations that would solve the problems that we have identified at that time. And yet, I heard the lady here, gentleman on the council, gentleman here, complaining about short-term rentals that were party houses in their neighborhoods, that I heard them complain about in 2011 when we first started this conversation. Why have those not been shut down? Are they regulated? Are they registered? Who's running these things, because it's not your short-term rental owners I know. We have 200 people in our organization. Maybe what we have here is not a problem so much of . . . A successful ordinance and rules, but maybe it's enforcement. And I would love, myself, to see these places shut down. They shouldn't still be operating like that. There are owners and managers that have been registering as short-term rentals that wound would indicate it has been successful. Strs are slowly growing. There's no huge movement to squeeze short-term rentals into every available area. As a matter of fact, in answer to a question I heard over here earlier, there are only nine census tracks in the whole city that have maxed out the only 3% of residences that are allowed to be used as a nonresidential short-term rental. Only nine tracts. And of those, only five have a waiting list. There are, as of this morning, 1,265 short-term rentals of all types in this city. 389 of those are type 2, nonowner occupied. 389. 688 are type 1, owner-occupied. Where are the problems coming [2:56:25 PM] from? I don't know, but they have us outnumbered two to one. I think that there are a lot more of these houses out there, too, that are being used that just haven't been registered, and we're not enforcing, again, to find them. I had this slide that I have up here, is straight from a report by the code office. And that's where I got my figures on the bottom, how many areas have been maxed out. It says that the short-term rental-related complaints for the whole three years of this program have only been 380. [ Beeping ] >> Why haven't these other complaints been dealt with? Austin -- just in closing, Austin's getting a reputation among other cities, among mayoral conferences, the national league of cities, and other municipal leagues as the place that has done it right for setting up your short-term rental laws and regulations. And, again, I repeat, perhaps what we're not doing right then is enforcing what we already have. If I remember correctly, the law included a sentence that said a non-occupied short-term rental cannot have gatherings. That means I can't have people there that have a party, I can't rent my house to somebody that has a party. I heard here today, people are going that. Why aren't we stopping them and enforcing what we have? I think it will work. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> And I'm available for questions. And also, the Austin rental alliance is more than willing to help provide any information to the council that you might need. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> I have a quick question. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, [2:58:27 PM] Ms. Garza. >> Garza: Ma'am, did you say the current ordinance says that they cannot have gatherings? >> I remember, because I've been interested in this from the beginning, because I did want to rent my house that way. It's too small for me to live in myself, it's a historic house and I wanted to preserve it for my neighborhood. I remember one line in there. I wanted to rent every now and then to a quiet wedding party, and that one line said to me, I couldn't rent to anybody that had a gathering. I might fudge on that, because my neighbors would like to gather there one night. So, other than -- we should check. If that's been taken out, it ought to be put back in and reinforced. We have what we need. >> Garza: That's interesting. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Zaragoza, you have three minutes. >> Good afternoon, thank you more having all of us here today. I've never been as excited about 10-1 as I was hearing voices I've never heard before. It's a lot of fun to see. I am on the planning commission, and I am on the codenext code advisory group. We were asked today to speak about issues that might come to you in the next 60 days. Two issues that came to mind, the proposed code changes for ads, and the stealth dorm issues. Their timing is interesting to me. After two years of consideration, one of the stealth dorm recommendations is to preserve the parking requirements for single-family housing. Concurrently, the main feature of the accessory dwelling unit proposed ordinance is to reduce parking requirements. There are about a hundred neighborhood planning areas in Austin, and I live in the densest one. I can tell you what happens when you allow development with inadequate you have a- street off-street parking. [3:00:32 PM] Parked cars congest narrow streets. Trash bins block sidewalks and degrade the pedestrian experience. My kids and I drive to a park that we can see from our house, because it is both unpleasant and unsafe to go by foot or by bike. We ride to school, and the scariest part is not crossing Lamar boulevard, it is getting out of our neighborhood. When compact and connected was first presented to Austin, it was not with pictures of congested streets or homes overwhelmed by multiple cars or trash bins. It was presented with visuals similar to Mueller development, which is the poster child for form-based code. Most people don't know that Mueller has higher single-family parking requirements than most of Austin. They also do not have parking spots in their front yards of their houses like the new Adu proposal is proposing. In order to make their density livable and conducive to a pedestrian and cycling culture, they manage their parking so it does not overwhelm public spaces. If we want to get away from the tug of war that has become the Adu proposal, we need to come up ways to do both to increase housing options in a way that does not set us back in creating friendly pedestrian and cycling environments. As you will see when you read the planning commission's report of stealth dorms, when we do not support density appropriately, it creates perpetual work for the code compliance department. An incredible amount of city staff is spent on parking, trash, and overcrowding issues. If we don't regulate it at the front end, we waste resources attempting to manage it for the life of the developments. This may not be the case in the future, but today, Austin iaustinitesdrive cars and produce trash. [3:02:36 PM] [ Beeping ] >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Our final speaker is John Barts. >> May I sit here? >> Mayor Adler: Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you very much. Oh, and for the record, please. My name is spelled Joan, it is pronounced Joann. You may talk to my mother about that. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, ma'am. [ Laughing ] >> I had some things I was going to talk about, as previous ones have said, I've been listening. As they say in a court of law, y'all opened the door, so I'm going to talk about these rogue homes. Ms. Councilmember Houston alluded to it. University hills neighborhood association is my group. I'm vice president. We have them all over the place. We have had for years. We've been trying to work with the previous council on an ordinance. They refused. Director smart indicated we need some legislation at the big building down the road. No we don't. We've already got it. Our organization was instrumental in 2009 finding a law that would solve the problem, lobbying, appearing, testifying at both houses. Seeing it signed, passed from both houses by a huge majority. Signed into law by the governor. Went into effect September 1, 2009. As of this time, and I think I'm a little bit behind on my information, San Antonio, Dallas, El Paso, Houston, have all instituted ordinances using this very law. In fact, using the very words in the law. A rogue home is a home that does not exist in the eyes of the city of Austin, Texas. [3:04:36 PM] There is nobody helping the people in these homes. There's no Austin Travis county integral care, there's no dads. There's nothing. These people are found and are housed by the owners of the property, or they lease it or rent it. $500 a pop is the general whatever, and they're lucky if they get a roof over their head for that. The worst-case scenario that we've addressed in a long time was one in Windsor park. And by the time that place had to be closed down, there were 24 filth-laden mattresses stacked at the curb, in a three-bedroom house. The money that they use from these people, it's federal money, except maybe for 5% that some families pay for. Information on our task force, it's the university hills neighborhood association. We've changed it from group to rogue, because in the eyes of the chief of staff of the house bill 216 said it was a perfect description of it. We meet on a monthly basis. It's not a city task force, it's composed of representatives of Coronado hills, university hills, and Windsor park. We're doing what we can to help these people. When I testified before the house, the last question I was asked was this. [ Beeping ] >> Ms. Barts, are you saying that you don't want to get these houses closed down and kick these people out? They won't have anyplace to go. We've said, our goal has been clear from the start. Our purpose is to increase the health and safety, and the dignity of the people in these homes. And if that's done, if you had used an ordinance like the other cities did, those locations would be an asset to our residential neighborhood, and we have no problem with that whatsoever. It's definitely not -- we're proud of the work we've been doing. It's a very slow process. [3:06:37 PM] By the way, we're not stopping. While I have you all here, a captive audience, at our last meeting -- we meet monthly, it's open meetings -- we made a decision we're going to formulate a complete package for each of you on this subject, because unless you've got three hours, each of you, to talk about it, you're never going to understand what's going on. It's a very bad subject. And people are suffering, and my comment to the house that I -- the committee I testified before was, we're trying to get these people out of their own version of Dante's inferno, their own ninth level of hell, because that's where they are. So, you will be hearing from us, and I appreciate it. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, ma'am. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Council, do we have any other comments? I think the next thing that is on our agenda is the Tuesday work session for Thursday's meeting. I'm going to post something probably tonight or tomorrow with reference to the staffing issue. So, I would ask you to look at the bullytin board. That said, recess. We'll adjourn the meeting, and we will convene a meeting, a new meeting on Tuesday. We're adjourned. Yes. >> Mayor, are we meeting on Monday? Policy work sessions. >> Mayor Adler: Except for the policy work session on Monday, you're right. No rest for the weary. [ Laughing ] >> Mayor Adler: We'll gear back up on Monday. Thanks. >> Almost.