City Council Budget Work Session Transcript –8/10/2015 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/10/2015 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/10/2015 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== >> ... before 10:00, we are in the board and commission room, City Hall, 301 west Second Street, Austin, Texas. The delay this morning was that we are unable to broadcast live. We're working on that technical glitch. But rather than start the meeting without it being taped, so that we would have something to preserve for for posterity, future future observers, so that people that missed this meeting can go back and see, we waited until we had a camera here able to tape, we are now set to do that, that gets us to today's today's budget work session. We are noticed to discuss the the departmental proposed budgets. And as part of that conversation, I want to stop just for a moment and touch on our process and how we could proceed with the budget. It was a question that was asked and I said that we would get back to the council with a suggestion on a way that we might be able to proceed. Between now and September 8th, how we get from here to there. I think everybody is concerned and wanting to make sure that we keep this to be a thoughtful deliberative process with the goal being to avoid having everyone running around on the very last day of the budget, throwing out ideas, having staff going off and trying to cost things and coming back. There's been some issues with that in the past where so much is happening on that very last day so as to have us work forward in a way that enables councilmembers to get ideas in front of the council, test council council views on different things, priorities, but to have a process kind of like a funnel that's ever moving us closer and closer to where we want to be. So prior to November 8th we have a what the budget may be, with the opportunity maybe even at the last minute for the majority of the council to change anything that they want to change, but to have a process that kind of funnels us toward where it is that we want to get to. Can you give us your thoughts on the overall process? >> Yes, mayor. Ed Van Eenoo, deputy CFO. We had a short presentation that I put together just to try to outline at least the remaining meetings that we have with with city council, so that you can at least understand the steps that are before us. Then I think the mayor has some comments in regards to the details of that. Before I start, let me just make sure because we're going to get into right into the departmental presentations on this. Everybody should have been intercepted and received a packet of the departmental presentations in your binders from last week with the overview presentation. I just want to make sure that everybody has a copy of that. In regards to the process, this isn't new, we showed this slide to you. We gave you a copy of the presentation, I'm making here, too. This just talks about about the budget timeline and so that so that the words there in bold and slightly larger font, the budget work sessions, we have now four that are planned. Originally, today on August 12th and then council decided to add August 17th and August 19th. At least the mornings, for budget work sessions, discussions with the departments and about their budgets. We will have public hearings on the 20th and 27th of August. We have a final prebudget adoption work session scheduled for September 1st, and that leads up to budget adoption on September 8th through 10th. Those are kind of the key dates, things in red and squares around them, those are the dates pertaining to the tax rate. Of course, as you know, there's a disconnect this year in adopting the tax rate relative to the budget, due to the delay and certification of the tax roll. So in regards to today and on August 12th, we just list the departments that we are planning to come before you and present. So everything over in the blue columns, those departments, are the presentations that you received this morning. On the morning of August 12th, we will add the presentations for the group of orange departments, to your binders on August 12th. I think that I mentioned when we last spoke this is I think an ambitious schedule. We may not get to all of these departments, so those departments we don't get to will fall back to August 17th and 19th dates. But if we are able to get to all of these departments, nothing falls back to the 17th and 19th, we would plan on August 17th to come forward to you with presentations from some of our internal service departments, communication and technology management, fleet services, and then we would provide you a more detailed presentation on our support services fund. We gave you a very high level presentation on July 30th, this would still be a fund level presentation as we envision it, but just more detailed than what we provided during the overview. Also discussion from council about what you wanted to hear from our city wide pay and benefits plan, so we would have that presentation as well scheduled for August 17th on civilian wages, medical benefits as well as our retirement system contributions. Then on August 19th, I just have put it up there as any other business. So that could be any other topics that we hear today or next Wednesday or on the 17th, any other topics council wants to hear about, we would be happy to bring back to you on the 19th. That's also a fallback date for some of these items that maybe we don't have time to get to during their scheduled times. I will mention that we currently have a number of items from council that have been approved and that staff has has, you know, has is tracking. These are items that go back to the previous council, as well as items that this council has has approved. These are things that have come through the regular agenda process that are currently on our list of things that we're tracking for potential funding initiatives. You can see what they all are. Again, I just mentioned these all came through the IFC process and have been approved by city council. The total here is about $12.5 million, split between the general fund and other city funds. Now, I think a lot of the question comes to, you know, how does this council bring forward additional funding initiatives, ideas that you have that you would like to see get addressed in this budget. Staff feels that there's really four or three mechanisms by which council can bring forward additional funding initiatives. The first being to to sponsor an initiative at any of these scheduled work sessions that we have. Again, we're on your calendars for August 10th, 12th, 17th, 19th, we've talked about August 27th after the public hearing on the 27th, we've talked about continuing in the afternoon for additional discussions and then, of course, that all day, September 1st work session. So we're in fronts of you 234 front of you a lot over the month of August and into early September and at any of these work sessions beginning right now here today, we are prepared to to track any items, funding initiatives that you would like to see addressed and we'll be adding those items to the list. The second would be to simply list the initiatives that you have in mind on the message board and see if there's council support for those items. And then the third would be to email any initiatives that you have directly to the budget office, similar to what you are currently doing with your council budget questions, you could just use that same process to let us know that there's something that you are interested in having us cost out or having added to this list of potential funding initiatives. As we go through this, staff will provide council with a summary of the list of funding initiatives on a regular basis. Leading up to this August 27th work session that we've talked about having in the afternoon of August 27th, before that date, we would like to get you a a kind of a somewhat final list of all of the different funding initiatives that have been brought into play at that point in time and at that time staff would also bring forward for council's consideration some potential funding alternatives that you might want to consider as you're looking at additional funding needs. We're going to try to bring forward for you some funding alternatives for your consideration. Council discussion and potential action on individual initiatives we anticipate occurring on August 27th and September 1st. Budget work sessions leading up to budget adoption on sent 8th through 10th. This is kind of the higher level picture. I know the mayor has passed out some more detailed thoughts that he has in regards to the particulars about how this process would work. >> Mayor Adler: Let me explain what I have handed out. I would appreciate if everybody would take a look at this and either comment on the bulletin board or when we are back together as a group on Thursday, we can talk about whether the council would prefer to do something other than this or to tweak this or change this. But what this was was kind of an attempt to get us from here to September 8th. This does not discuss the choreography of what happens on September 8th itself yet. My hope is to be able to come back with a proposal pretty quickly, but from getting here to September 8th. I'm concerned about us coming together on the 27th when we're going to be asked to start making priority decisions, having just gotten a list on the 27th. I want us to have that list as early in the process. In fact, I think that should be a living document. And that we should get it tomorrow. And as the staff is asked to cost out different options, those things should start to populate that list. So that we can see those things. And so that so there needed to be a vehicle or function to be able to add things to that list or for the council to take things off of that list, but also in a way that preserved the ability for the council, again, all the way through the budget process, to do whatever it wants to at any point in time as is the will of the council at that point in time. So I went through some of the issues here, I just wants to walk through real fast. We're meeting, it's on our schedule for the briefing today and on Wednesday of this week, the staff laid out what the departments were that will be discussing with us in detail. We had also talked about getting together on the 17th and 19th. I will tell you that some of the council offices have pushed back and said I've already scheduled on the 17th and 19th. My days are full on the 17th and 19th. There were some people that wanted to to have at least half of that those two days to be able to work. I'm proposing that we meet tentatively for the morning of the 17th and 19th, but just for the morning. And I would like for people between now and Thursday to see if their calendar is such that they could make all or part of that. Recognizing that some people may have something on their calendar where they need to duck out and then come back. But we won't take any significant substantive decisions on that day if we're not all here. It gives us an opportunity to be able to discuss things as a group and we could call back particular departments or we could just engage in conversations on significant policy or items. So I would urge everybody to take a look at their calendars on the morning of the 17th and 19th. Then I think we should start, if we're going to meet those mornings, to identify if anything that we know that we're going to get briefed on, so we know what staff it is we want to have available in the room so we can give notice that way. But I would like for us to be able to discuss that on Thursday. The morning of the 27th is an is an additional day for us to be able to to throw in. And then we have the September 1st and September 8th. The goal is to have us really discussing that list of of that menu. And I'm calling it a menu because things that are on that list are not necessarily things obviously that we would do. And putting something on that menu list may not be an indication that whoever put it on that list wants to do that. But it's an opportunity to see what different things would cost out at. What would be the cost of the budget ramifications of this, say, or that, say. So that we could all see that. So it's more in the nature of a menu than it is a proposal list. So in this document, I actually referred to it as a concept menu. But that would be the general calendar we would follow. With respect to that concept menu, this is kind of how we get from here to there. The goal is to have us moving forward but funneling down to decisions. We would have the staff create that document and basically email that document out at the end of every day. This is what the concept menu looks like as of the end of today. Or they could do it first thing in the morning. What I said was sometime on a daily basis just send that out, it's a living document, so we can see what's being added to that. Sold many of, I think, the budget decisions we're going to make, they're relative. What I want on the budget depends in part on the decisions that are made on other things that are in the budget or where we are with respect to revenue, do we have a way to increase revenue and where we want things? So this concept menu would be something that would be updated daily. I would include the approved IFC's, the items from council. It would also include Councilmember initiated concepts. Now, the staff was concerned about having 11 people sending them proposals through the budget process and saying cost this out, cost this out, cost this out. So so they wanted to have some kind of vehicle so that we went through a filtering process among ourselves. What I'm proposing here is something where the bar to get something costed out increases over time. So initially if you want to get something costed out, you just have to get one other person who says, yeah, I would like to see that on the menu, too. And over time it gets harder to do that so that when we're in the last week, as we go through, it actually gets up to where it takes four people, like a council, to get something that gets costed out. And that's in response to the staff's question about about, you know, being able to narrow that down. >> Tovo: Mayor, can I ask are we going through the whole document? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Tovo: Let me ask you a question then about what you about that particular point. So right now, I think that I would like to better understand what changes a question into a concept. Because it because that would be a pretty substantial change. If I asked a question, as I have already in this year's budget process, for example, please please provide the amount that we would that our revenue would increase if we raised our development fees to the cost of service this year. I submitted that through a through the budget Q&A. Just one Councilmember was necessary to do that. I get back the information and then I could bring that forward as a proposal that we do that and we will increase our revenue by X. I at what point I mean, that is that is not anymore cumbersome than answering a budget question, so I would hope that we would not, we would preserve the opportunity for people to ask those kinds of questions through our budget Q&A as we always have and have been in this process without it being necessary to get, in essence, a sponsor and then later three sponsors or four sponsors to be able to to present that to our colleagues. >> Mayor Adler: Two thoughts on that. the first one is that there's no difference between a concept or an idea. They're both questions that relate to what does it cost, what are the budget ramifications of this thing happening. What I'm trying to do is gather them altogether in one place, so that the menu of things that we might consider as a council or any one person wants us to consider are pulled into one place so that we're not having to look for for in the budget questions for things or for email responses, so that you can still ask those budget questions to ask, but I'm asking the staff to to compile all of those in one place, so that there's a single document that is a compendium of what our different concepts for things we might be able to do. Either with respect to expenses, with respect to spending, and with respect to revenue. Now, the next question that we can have ed talk about it, I mean, I'm fine having one person being able to put things on that list by way of questions through the process. Staff has asked us to consider the impact of 11 people doing that all at once. So we can have that conversation with ed for a second. >> Tovo: Sure, but if I could just say, so we have that information some of that information will be already available through the budget Q&A. So in terms of meeting the staff's need to minimize, you know, the amount of complicated equations they're running, they will have already done that work or I, for example, could look through and see a position that is not being funded, it's on the unfunded. I mean this is the kind of thing that's happened in past budgets, there was a technology person, for example, at I think the carver center whose position was being discontinued, so there was a question asked about what it would cost to fund it in the budget Q&A and then it made it on to the list of basically amendments. I this I what is different is that it sounds like to move from a budget question to the list now is going to require sponsors. But the work will already have, in many cases be done or be available in our budget. >> Mayor Adler: I think that you are thinking this is a more substantive change than what I am proposing or intending. I don't see this as being exclusionary. Whether it's on the list or not, doesn't impact whether or not it makes it into the budget. There's nothing about the past practice that is changed by this. I'm just asking the council, the staff to the degree that it can, to pull those things into one place, so that people aren't having to look at three or four different places to be able to have that. They're not going to be able to do that in a complete sense because there are lots of places that someone could go to, you could go to the base budget document and come up with an idea or a concept. There's nothing about what we're doing here that limits anyone's ability to be able to present any idea or concept before the council. In terms of saying, hey, I want to do this to the budget or do that to the budget. This thing only does two things. It asks for some of those ideas wherever they originated to be pulled into one place. So that to the degree that we can, we can see them, gather them. The second thing was in response to the staff's question, which was over time, they're concerned as they're getting the budget done, that that as we get closer to the budget, they're concerned about getting 11 requests for different things to cost out and not having the bandwidths to be able to respond to all 11 of those. Let me go through this and then we'll come back to that question with ed to speak about that. But but Kathie, there's nothing substantively changing about the past practice associated with this. Other than that issue which we can talk about in just [Multiple voices] >> Sponsorships. >> I'm sorry, did you finish? >> My thought is if I'm hearing the question and I have this question, too, sounds to me like we have two different processes, two separate processes and that's the question and answer process, which will continue the same. Which I think is what you're asking about, Kathy, but the question and answer process continues the same and then there's a separate process for actually getting something on the list. So, for example, I might ask a question that really is not a concept. You know, it's really just a basic informational question. I can still ask that through the Q&A process if I'm understanding correctly. Then when I'm ready and I think it is a concept and I want to move it to a concept. I label it as a concept and submit it to them in unwith of the three ways that they have in one of the three ways they have suggested. Is that what we're talking about here? Seems to me we still need that Q&A process. >> Mayor Adler: No question. The Q&A process continues. It's just area visibility by saying I want people to see this. And it encourages people to to put those concepts out, earlier than later in the process. So that we have more chance to be able to see them and think about them. But it doesn't stop anybody, one person alone, when we're together as a group even, all the way through and including September 8th, one person saying I would like to make this change to the to the budget. We're just talking about a a document that will help process help us procedurally and to be able to focus on ideas that people are proposing as concepts. >> Kitchen: With no change to the Q&A process. >> No change to the Q&A. Now, ed, would you talk for a second about the concern that staff had about about being asked the cost concepts? >> Sure. And we I never even thought about the Q&A process when we were having this discussion. Did you want to go. >> Tovo: Just to be clear, I understood no one was proposing a change to the Q&A process. I guess the point that I was trying to make is a lot of the information, unless I'm bringing forward a proposal to decrease the amount of the strategic reserve fund and, you know, increase and in doing decrease the tax rate, I mean that is a concept that would take you some time to cost out. What I guess the point that I was trying to make, a lot of the information, a lot of the amendments that some of us might want to bring forward, the work has already been done in the budget Q&A process, but sounds like to move it from that to the list is now going to require sponsorship. >> Mayor Adler: No. I think if the work has already been done, it just gets moved over. >> Tovo: I guess that's what I'm trying to do. I want to preserve for us the opportunity to look through the position and say hey this doesn't sound like a position that we need, I'm going to propose an attempt to eliminate it. This sounds like something we need, I'm going to propose to add it in. I understand the more complicated things with 11 of us would be a lot, I want to be very clear I understood we weren't changing the budget Q&A, I was just trying to make the point that a good deal of the information that we will use for amendments we may already have through the budget or the Q&A. >> Mayor Adler: I think that's a really good point. And I think you're right and it was not intended to limit people's ability to say I want the council to be considering this. This document is almost like the bulletin board. It's just another way for us to communicate to one another. What I would do, when I when I rewrite this based on the comments that come from people, I'll put in there specifically that items that can be included in that any Councilmember wants included in that list that doesn't require the staff to spend time costing stuff out, just gets put on the list. >> Tovo: I appreciate that clarification. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Do you want to talk for a second about the about the issue that you are talking about, which is not when you actually have to cost new ideas out. >> Sure. I would just, you know, say in regards to the budget questions around this time of year, we'll typically get maybe 100 questions between now and the time we actually get a budgeted option, so we're pushing out three to four questions a day, some of them are complicated. [10:23:01 AM] So, what we've learned is a lot of council funding initiatives don't come forward before the final week to 10 days before the budget process where I will routinely be getting emails from councilmembers asking for different things to be costed out in the final week to 10 days, at the same time we're trying to process the final budget questions to the two tune of three or four a day. Some of them are complicated. I can tell you from past budget cycles we've had like a number of competing wage alternatives being kicked around. Those are all very detail and complicated work that affect every city fund and when we do those, even the day of budget adoptions, you know, staff upstairs trying to run three Numbers for different proposals. So I think some of our thinking on this was to try to avoid that -- that frantic part of the budget adoption, have something that was a little bit more orderly and structured. Again as the mayor indicated, I wasn't in any way attempting to limit the questions or information where the information has already been calculated. >> Mayor Adler: In the past that has gone up even on the final day. So the groups together and on that day they have to make the budget, but staff is running out trying to cost ideas and coming back in with Numbers that may be close but not exact because the process doesn't allow for us. I'm trying to get us to be able to consider things a little bit earlier. Ms. Tovo, what I will do, on this outline that you have, where it has concepts for staff to cost, that's what I was thinking was where they actually had to do costing stuff. But to make that clear, in what is 2 a 2, where I talk about initiated concepts with a threshold, I'll break that into two categories, one where there's actual costing work that's required to be done, other things where it doesn't have actual costing work to be done, but just concepts that somebody wants to throw on the menu and I'll change it to make that any person, any single person can -- can throw something on the list to have it because the attempt is not to slow that part or limit that. [10:25:08 AM] >> Tovo: Good, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. And Anne and then Greg. >> Kitchen: Just a quick question. We're maintaining the concept of -- of initially going through that concept list earlier, so that what I don't want to do is go through the concept list of first time on September 8th. I know that we may be refining things at that point, but I'm hoping that people don't bring up new ideas on September 8th, because I think that's not fair to everybody. We really need a little more time. >> Mayor Adler: So let me go through the rest of this, because I've tried to build had some of that into this process because I have the same concern. Greg? >> I think I understand the distinction that y'all are trying to make between things that would take more work versus less work. But just can you -- can we -- can you give me awn example, I don't know if you would be you mayor, or ed. For example the mayor pro tem's example of how much revenue would we grain if we brought up a development piece from the cost of service. From this conversation it's still not clear to me if on September the 1st, the mayor hadn't asked but was interested in asking that, I'm still having trouble understanding whether the mayor pro tem would be able to email that to the budget office through the q&a process or if she would need to get three councilmembers to co-sponsor that question for that to be calculated. >> Mayor Adler: It changes over the time. The initial proposal from staff was to have a threshold that was high beginning now. I pushed back against that a little bit by saying let's make it a lot more wide open now and just get progressively tighter, but let's run through this -- >> Casar: That's why I chose September the 1st. >> Mayor Adler: Let's -- let me go through the balance of this, you can see the answer to that question in context for the overall process. But again I'm fine with whatever the will of the council is, recognizing that the staff is asking us to come up with a program that is not -- that limits the number of requests they're going to get from 11 different people to actually be costing out proposals the closer we get to the budget. [10:27:21 AM] >> Casar: I flipped through this and I think that I understand the point that you are making. The question that I'm bringing forward is that it sounds like it's based on how much work it would be and it's hard for us to know when we're asking a question how much work that takes. So I guess when you go through it, it might be helpful -- if we just need to know that we may not be able to get a budget question answered because something we may think is not that much work, may ends up being very complicated and require quite a bit of it. I want some of us to be aware of that decision we're making because it sounds like on the one hand we're saying, yes, a lot of these questions can be answered by just one councilmember -- [multiple voices] >> Mayor Adler: As we go through this, keep in mind that if someone is saying I want to drop these three positions, we know what we cost, that's something that anybody can add at any point in time. The hope is that at the ends of the meeting on September 1st, we have aired most of the topics and concepts that we're going to be working for so that on September 8th to the degree that we can, aspirationally we're fine tuning or making that really big controversial decision on that thing that's hanging out that everybody knows what the financial really indications are, but we're going to make that December on September 8th. The goal is after we conclude on September 1st, when hopefully we're pretty close except for those things, council -- staff does not get 15 new requests, new concepts, complicated issues, hard things to look at and they are now chasing those things down when we want them to basically be working what we have on September 1st. But recognizing that the -- even at that point, even after September 1st meeting is over, and I had us just in the really fine tuning part, it only takes four people to in fact ask them to go through that drill in the last week. [10:29:22 AM] So that -- which I thought was a relatively low bar for that kind of work to be requested after the September 1st meeting is over. >> Casar: I understand your role, mayor, and my inclination is that it makes sense to me. I guess that I just wanted to put out there that we would be changing that q&a process because of this concern because you just can't as one councilmember submit a q&a and expect it to be answered on September 2nd or 3rd. I just want us to understand that is a substantive change not necessarily be opposed to making, I want it to be out there. >> Mayor Adler: I meant to answer that in Ms. Tovo's question. The only substantive change that I think is presented by this is in response to the staff's question to come up with a system whereby they are not responding to -- to 11 separate substantive time costing questions. And what I and what I have done is to layer that in. Rather than setting that bar immediately, I am proposing something that actually gives us kind of a grace period that's getting ever more difficult the closer we get to the last week, as you will see by what we have, and you've probably already looked it. I will differentiate between costing and throwing the things on the menu list because I want to consider or I wanted to see it. By putting something on the menu list I will again fa especially size that does not constitute endorsement. If something joining in something to throw something on the menu list, it doesn't mean they're endorsing the idea, it just means this ought to be on the menu list for us to be able to talk about. Those three areas, budget cut reductions, budget increases, the changes in revenue, again, the list is maintained realtime. And then also what I have is the staff has said they have five days to be able to respond to those questions. [10:31:23 AM] And the staff has agreed that if we can come up with kind of a limitation like this, they will make sure that they're responding within five days to different concepts that people might propose. So I have us through August 20th. Any two people can give a cost idea. Anybody can give anything for the next two days. I want everybody to cost it out between now and Thursday and then on Thursday we'll give all those things to staff and we'll just do it themselves. But after the 20th -- the goal is to see if we can do that. Then on August 27th at that point again it doesn't limit anybody's ability to throw anything out when we're discussing something, but it doesn't have to be on the concept list to be considered. Anybody can come toward and say hey, I want the council to consider this. We do want on August 27th to pare down that list. If somebody wants to say hey, this is on the concept list. I think we could take a vote on this at this point, the council could have something removed from the concept menu. That doesn't mean anything depose away. Anybody can bring up anything they want to as it goes through the process, but it would give an indication of where people were generally. I had a high standard for us to remove something from the concept list. It takes eight people to remove something from the concept menu at that point so that people who want to have their ideas kept in the hopper are able to be maintained on that list. At the south first meeting it's exactly as it was on August the 22nd, but the standard raises a little bit now. [10:33:25 AM] It only takes seven people to remove something. But it takes seven people, more than a majority to remove something from the concept menu. If it's a 6-5 vote against it it's still going to stay on the concept menu at that point. Then if you want to get something that's considered at that point after the September first meeting it takes four people to do that. It takes three people after the August 27th meeting. So it just gets us -- we'll have a list that is getting ever more refined as we move forward. So that we are not confronting these issues on September 8th for the first time, which I think will be bad policy. >> And with respect to what it is when the staff is costing something out, they just put what the expenses are. Also asking them with respect to it costs to see if there's a proposed offsetting budget cut for an increase in spending. If someone wanted to make that, if the manager had a proposed cut that was associated with a particular thing. It might be project related or you wanted to do something. In other words, it might be a substantive reason if you say if you're going to do this, this is probably where you would line R. Find the money to do that to give the manager the ability to give us that association with it. I would ask the council to look at this between now and Thursday. I'm not asking for reaction to it now or certainly to decide this now. And we can discuss it. But just generally speaking if this is okay, this is how I think that we should just generally proceed. And then between now and Thursday let's move this conversation, if people want to make comments or ask questions, to the bulletin board so that people can see that. And I'll post this on the bulletin board to initiate that thread. Okay? >> Kitchen: I know people want time to think about it. [10:35:27 AM] Can we go ahead and start the process? Go ahead and let the budgets office know if we want to put something on the concept list? >> Yes. >> Kitchen: So the details we may change some on Thursday, but the basic idea of identifying something as a budget concept, we could go ahead and start that. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. In fact, I would recommend that. That's a good idea, Ms. Kitchen. Anybody who has anything now, let's get those things in now let's get them in to look at them, certainly before Thursday because it will get a little bit harder after Thursday and a little bit harder a week later and a little bit harder after that. We'll post on the thread -- ed, if you would send us an electronic version of what you presented. I will make sure when we post, my office will see it, I guess we're on TV now, we'll post both so the public can see it, both what the ad presented as well as this document. Ms. Garza? >> Garza: Just to be sure, these existing council funding, those are part of the menu already. We don't have to add that. >> Mayor Adler: Correct. Where we'll start is the proposed budget from the manager's office. So everything that would be in the concept list would be a change to that. Either expense or revenue or cuts or whatever anybody wants to do. But anything that's already in the proposed budget is sitting there already. >> Garza: Some of these aren't in the proposed budget. >> Mayor Adler: Those ifc's will be the first thing that populate the concept list. Sorry, I understand. Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: I have -- one of those ifc's I think is the one that I brought forward on health insurance and we've refined it quite a bit on that. It's not everybody. So it wouldn't be the two-million-dollar cost. So I'll submit that refinement and perhaps it can be linked on the concept list. [10:37:29 AM] >> Mayor Adler: That would be fine. And for purposes of the concept menu, I would leave on the two- million-dollar number because that tells us what the cost is to do it all. Then if you have refine meants under that, let's see it, and people can see what the savings is as compared to the -- so they can put in context whatever your refinements are. Okay? Ms. Pool? >> Pool: Were the questions that we asked at the last budget meeting, Mr. Van meanio, would they have been added to the Q and a, along the lines of what councilmember kitchen was saying, I had asked for information about a hold harmless with the insurance increase on the salaries. Should I submit that formally or is that already in the queue for answer for costing out? >> We trucked all those questions and we sent them back to the councilmembers and to get final approval that you want these questions posted. If you haven't received an email back about that specific question it means we missed it and you should resubmit it to us. >> Pool: Thanks, will do. >> Tovo: Councilmember pool, I believe my office did submit a question about that. I think I mentioned in the work session that we were doing some scenarios. So if that one has been posted you might look and see if you have follow-ups or if that covers -- >> Pool: That's perfect. >> Mayor Adler: In fact, I would ask my colleagues to the degree that you are submitting concepts to be looked at, we may not see that for five days because of the response. So if people would be willing to post on the bulletin board the questions that they're asking -- I guess you're doing it in the question and answer period. I guess it's already posted. >> Pool: It should be. I think it initially went to the wrong avenue, but then went to the Q and a. If it -- it should already be posted. If not answered. >> Mayor Adler: If somebody gives you an email and you are responding to it, would you post that on to the Q and a? >> We'll post the question while it's pending in the Q and a system. [10:39:30 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thanks. Cool. All right. Are we ready to actually do today's work? All right. Mr. Van eenoo, your meeting. >> Thank you, mayor. So we have a list of departments. We're going to start off with the community service departments and then if all goes well we'll get into the public safety departments this afternoon. Within the community services department we're going to go alphabetically, that means our animal services department and our new director will be the first presenter of this budget cycle. She's coming to the table now. And we'll get that presentation up on the screen. And again, you should have received when you walked in a packet of all the presentations. Those may or may not have been put into your binder depending upon if you brought your binders with you, but those are the presentations we'll be going off single-family the packet of information you received. >> Good morning. It's good to be here with you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for your help with the elephants. >> Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for the thoughtfulness and the patience. I thought that was remarkable. Thank you. So I think you have in front of you the proposed budget and the paperwork. And I am just going to walk through a little bit -- I don't want to read to you, but I'll point out some highlights, if that's okay, as we get started. The mission, and I know some of you are more familiar with some of these statistics and information than others, but just for the sake of kicking this off smoothly, that's our current mission that we see at the top, the mission of the Austin animal center -- the mission of the Austin animal services department is to prevent animal homelessness and prevent humane, compassionate treatment of animals by enforcing regulations, providing a safety net for lost or homeless animals and achieving live outcomes for at least 90% of sheltered pets. [10:41:38 AM] So that's our current mission. And what I would like to point out here is that we are kicking off, we are beginning our strategic planning process for animal services. And we imagine that that mission statement will probably be reflective of where we're going since the mission is what you do, your vision is where you're going, your values are how you do it. And so in that strategic planning process that we're kicking off, we will be meeting with your offices and our staff as one of the stakeholders so you can have input and questions, concerns, issues, opportunities, challenges, there will be those meetings. And I had a great meeting with councilmember Houston and her staff just a meet and greet and getting to know and talking about some issues. But the strategic planning process will involve that. We'll be meeting with our partners in the community as well as residents and folks out in the community. I'm very interested in hearing from people who have never been to the center as well, not just animal folks, but the community at large. I think there are some great opportunities there. I wanted to just point that out. Major accomplishments, obviously we're in year four sustained of a no-kill mandate and we are the largest no-kill city in the country. We serve over 10,000 community members with no, low cost spay newt, vac sane nations and free microchips for pets. There are some Numbers in front of you. The 14 actual fiscal year column and then the estimate where we think we'll finish this year. Those updates were made in April. And the projected Numbers on the right I would like positive point out that those were established in February if there's any questions on that. And before I go any further I was here with you last Tuesday and then I saw you on Thursday, but for the record I'm tawny Hammond, the chief annual services officer. I got so excited here that I just launched right into business. [10:43:45 AM] Any questions before I move forward? Okay. >> Houston: Mayor, before we move to that next slide, I do have a question about the projected '16 number of animals sterilized in the community. Is there a way that that could be increased? Because until we move out into the community and offer sterilization to folks that are further out, we are not going to decrease the number of shelter intakes. >> Yes, ma'am, absolutely. And point taken and it's a very good point. We -- I confirmed this morning that we can adjust those Numbers and we can always exceed our goals, and we plan on exceeding our goals because when we get a little further into some of the information here that was one of our number one goals is reducing intake, reducing length of stay, increasing preventive services education with the community, major opportunities there as well as some efficiencies. So thank you. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Let's see. Before I move off of that, any questions? On the basics? This is an overview of department use of funds, and as you can see the yellow is 2015 and the blue is projected 2016, is that right? We've seen a slight increase, a bit of an increase in shelter services. That's something I'm looking closely at. We have to work saturdayer, more efficiently and -- smarter, more efficiently and we're looking at our services and what we're doing internally. Again that goes back it to if you decrease your length of stay and have plans for animals as they come into the building and if you're also addressing intake we can control that cost and get that cost down, where I think we're going to see an increase and where it's appropriate, given our mission, is where we'll see an increase in obviously prevention services and field services. [10:45:53 AM] One thing I want to point out is when you look back on the previous page at our percent of sheltered animals returned to owner on the first page, that doesn't reflect about 30% of animals that are returned in the field by the animal protection officers before they -- they don't come into the building. So that's huge. That's remarkable. And the national average for returned to owner is 25%. And you see Austin is already exceeding that, which is something to be happy about. But there's always room for improvement and we know that. So I know that our shelter, our goal, excuse me, for shelter services, for efficiencies, leveraging resources with the community, reducing length of stay, also looking at medical services closely, looking at national best practices, what they are. We'll see an increase in prevention services and field services. Support and transfers, I don't see any change there. The budget highlights. We've got seven new animal care workers in the budget. That's a conversion of temporary employees to permanent employees. And the other increase is in funding for animal care and adoption, overtime costs. The goal obviously is to always reduce the overtime costs and we're looking closely at again, this is about length of stay, it's about reducing intake, and looking for efficiencies in the medical department. And this is also working closely with our community partners, how we can work smarter and leverage our resources. The $50,000 for the additional funding for medical life saving pilot, heart worm treatment, what's important to point out there is when other community R. Communities don't dough what we're doing, that's why they're not achieving the results we are. And another community and many communities around the courtroom, heart worm positive animals are simplely euthanized. [10:47:58 AM] So that's a very important piece. The other piece I would like to point out is the animal technician technician that's in there, that will be critical as we move forward in Austin. One of the things that we've learned about behavior in samples is that everything we thought we knew -- I was research symposium in December in December and an expert said that everything that we thought we knew about temperament easements in a shelter, we were wrong about. So animal welfare is evolving rapidly as a profession and as a field. And this position will be very important because we want to be on the forefront of doing it right, getting it right. And that position is going to be critical. We're launching dog play groups here at the end of April, we're founding in the -- bringing in the founder of dogs to life. I think that will be a big game changer for us so this is a critical piece as well. >> Mayor Adler: Excuse me, one moment. Ms. Gallo? >> Gallo: I want to just make a comment to the animal behavior person. The animal advisory commission has a working group that's set up that is looking at ways to encourage multi-family communities to work with more of the breed restricted applicants -- owners that have those dogs. And I think that having this person on staff will really help continue that dialogue and that discussion because one of the concerns is always, you know, it's not necessarily the breed, it's the owner or the behavior of the dog. So I -- I'm really glad to see we're moving in this direction because I think parallel to that you're seeing a movement in the multi-family community through the advisory council's task force to start encouraging a little more open mindedness on that. [10:50:00 AM] And I think a person educated in that field will be very helpful for that. >> Thank you for saying that. One of the things within animal welfare we operate in the world of gray, not black and white. And there's always danger and uncertainty. I think if we stay learners and constantly evolving, it's the best place to operate in. Having one person in charge of behavior, how can you be an expert on rabbits, reptiles, cats, dogs? It's a very, very complex subject and more of a collaborative approach is in order. I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned. Thank you for saying that. Appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: There was the issue that the council worked with on an emergency basis as far as walking the dogs, are you afair of that issue? >> The dog walking? Yes. We have made great strides in addressing some of the perceived and real concerns in getting animals, getting dogs out of their kennels. We've launched a staff initiative where all staff are walking at least a minimum of one dog a day. Getting a dog out of their kennel. And the concerns that I think folks had about that have been addressed and taken care of. One of the things that I've shared with the staff and the volunteers is that we've done really well here in Austin. It's done very well, but there's always room for improvement. I think there was this notion that maybe we were failing and we weren't doing -- you can't compare it to anything and if you don't know what other jurisdictions and entities are that are resourced like Austin and have innovative policies and values. So when I came here one of the things I found is a lot of the things we are doing well and we have room for improvement and we know that. But the staff dog walking initiative was great. We put out two press releases and had two open houses, news releases. And I talked to both of those groups that came in and we've onboarded more volunteers that are participating in enrichment. [10:52:02 AM] Yesterday I spent -- I came in on a Sunday and I sat with a dog that simply was not ready to be walked. Enrichment is different to different animals. I sat down with this dog that we call pancaked. Only nine months old and already had a litter. She didn't want to be walked. She needed tlc and time and time with other dogs. That's why the play groups will be life saving. Dogs it's a very sterile environment, even cats do, but dog walking, if they can just be dogs and get away from some of that fear, the stress hormones are off the charts for some of these animals. If we can address that and get them to just be what they're meant to be, and calm them down, we can get them adopted quicker. So I know that was tmi. [Laughter]. The answer is I think we have it well in hand. >> Thank you. Sounds that way. Ms. Gallo? Ms. Houston? >> Houston: I figured when councilmember kitchen moved over here you would be able to see my light better. [Laughter]. I had a question about the nine month funding. For the dog behavior presume. Why nine months for funding only instead of a full year? >> I can respond to that. You will see that throughout these presentations, councilmember. That in crafting staff's premeditated budget most of the positions we're adding in the budget we are recommending for nine months of funding because it takes some time from the time the council actually approves the budget and that budget goes into effect on October 1st you have to do the recruitment, you have to bring people in, interview them. It takes some time. That's why we did that. >> And the last slide, because I know you have a lot of -- >> Gallo: I have one. And this kind of stair steps on to your question. When the conversation came up before you got here about the dog walking there was always reference to a donated fund that animal services had. [10:54:07 AM] And could you just help explain what that is and how much is in it and what it's used for? Because people continually ask us why can't we use that to hire more people? It would be helpful to have a better answer of what that fund is. >> Good morning, Kimberly Maddox, officer for health and human services. The donation fund is simply that. When citizens give donations of money to the shelter, it is in that fund. There are several rains in that fund. Some folks give things for very specific purposes like spay-neuter. Other folks give a general donation and say use it for what the shelter needs. That fund is generally used for one-time expenses because it is -- as a donations fund it does ebb and flow with what comes in. We only use what we received the previous year, so what we receive in '15 we will budget to use in '16, so it is solid what we're using it for. We know we have those monies in the bank. And I do not have an exact balance for it today, but I can certainly get you that information. >> Gallo: So as part of the budget you have incorporated into your budget the use of that portion of the donated funds? >> It's not incorporated in the general fund budget. We have a budget for the donation account and it's allocated for services. Like for instance, the emancipet funding comes out of that. Some of it. So we have -- it's actually -- there's actually a budget associated with it, and we talked about it at the last commission meeting and I have a commission meeting this Wednesday and we'll be talking about that again. But we can get you the latest copy. >> One of the main uses for it is emergency surgeries or special si surgeries, so when a animal comes in and needs a special surgery that our veterinaries don't have the skill set for we will use the fund to pay for specialists to take care of that animal. [10:56:10 AM] >> Gallo: Okay. So what I'm hearing then is that it provides over and above what this budget does. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Gallo: So if we see something is lacking on this, it's a possibility that the donated fund would provide those resources for us. >> Yes. And it's generally programs, not personnel. Or it's contracted programs is what the donation funds have been historically used for. And that's why we address that issue the way we did with staff. >> Houston: Mayor? One more question. Thank you for that clarification. Because I wasn't sure what the funds were used for, but that makes sense. If you have an animal that comes in that has a broken hip and you need a special kind of orthopedic person to do that, then you would use those funds to take care of that ed. >> Houston: I know I see emancipet all over town and people are getting their pets spayed and neutered. We really appreciate that. And we did talk about some other community volunteers to get them engaged like eastside memorial high school and some other possible volunteer people in the area that might be willing to come and volunteer at the shelter to walk dogs. So I think we're off to a good start. >> Absolutely, thank you. >> Mayor, I wanted to clarify on the discussion of donation funds when we were talking about using the donation funds more for programs as opposed to staff, just to clarify, we don't typically use donation funds to replace funding for ongoing city programs. We have city programs related to animal services and we don't use donation funds to replace the bread and butter programmatic funding in animal services. [10:58:13 AM] It's usually those donation funds are being used for specific things that would kind of be seen over and above what our typical business is. You will see a similar thing in the parks department as well. I just wanted to clarify that's what we meant when we said program funds. >> Thank you. Last two slides are capital highlights. I think the big take away here is we are -- actually, we just kicked off the upcoming development -- the improvement of the campus, the health and human services campus, as well as the expansion of the shelter and the additional kennels. And then the rate and revenue highlights, we've got a projected revenue increase of .3 million. And that includes -- what that is comprised of is the interlocal agreement with Travis county, adoption fees, rabies, Karen tee fees, boarding and boarding care fees. So there will be a spike there and a bump and a little bit of an increase. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Gallo. >> Gallo: Is the interlocal with Travis county, is that an amount that covers the actual cost of theirs? Six the interlocal agreement is set up -- >> So the interlocal agreement is set up on a pro rata methodology. So whatever the city's cost for the program, the county pays their pro rata share, so the demographer gives us the population in the county and not in the city limits and we apply that percentage to our costs. Now, for -- we also do it by activity for animal services, so whatever animals are coming in that are identified as from the county, then that is calculated in as that is charged to the county. >> Gallo: So back to the question. Do you feel that the way that it's being prorated and handled now appropriately reimbursed us for Travis county expenses? [11:00:19 AM] >> Yes, ma'am, I do.. >> Thank you. Any other questions? >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Garza? >> Garza: My understanding about the -- about the volunteers is that it takes the process a little bit long and I think the animal advisory group recommended on line registration, what's the timeline on that and -- and, also, will there be -- will you be able to do the background checks through the online process as well? >> I can't comment on how we're going to do the background checks just yet. That's something that we're working on. I do know that we have excited on dashboard on -- on dashboarding, more open houses, more mentors to onboard volunteers. I think there was some administrative processes that we could address and we did. I'm working with the public information office on some improvements on our website. There's also -- there will also be some software improvements coming hopefully. Doing research on that, that will save us a lot of money and create some efficiencies in how we track our inventory and communicate with volunteers and staff. We're definitely addressing that now. >> I have a question about I believe the previous budget approved more kennels and what's the timeline on those? >> That's the construction project that I think was the last or second to the last slide. 2017, just kicked off, we're working on the design. I do not think that the contract has been let. We're still working on all of the preliminary processes, permits and the contract process. So no -- no official communication has taken place, but we have had our kickoff meeting. Council has approved that. >> Right. That we could negotiate is what's been approved, so that kickoff was information purpose only. >> I will just add that the total project that was approved by council as part of the fiscal year 2015 budget was for $5 million for two additional kennels. [11:02:28 AM] This funding here is just for the design work. You'll see additional expenditures in the 2017 budget. I think it's in 2017 when we -- will be open. >> Two buildings, to kennel buildings, approximately just shy, I think, of 100 new kennels. Again, making this reflective, we don't want to build what we need today, we want to build to be relevant in five, 10, 15 years down the road. >> With that new building, there will be -- I guess there be requests for additional ftes as the building is done and ready to be -- >> It's a very good question. And I think I really think if we can decrease length of stay, decrease intake, population is growing rapidly, that's something that we need to watch closely, the 100 people that are moving today moving to Austin, what are they bringing with them, how are they taking care of their animals. I think this is kind of a moving target. A very fluid process that we are trying to kind of get our arms around. Four years into the no-kill mandate, having the success that we have, I think every year is going to be a learning year, but the goal, the goal is to be modeling best practices. Intake down, length of stay down, adoptions up. We can't just keep building new kennels, do we need additional positions? I can't say that yet. Maybe. But nothing certainly right now. Still figuring these things out. That are critical, these management indicators. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, mess troxclair. >> The chart on page 2 where you talk about the number of spay and neuters performed and number of animals centerrized in the community -- sterilized in the community, why do the Numbers remain constant instead of shooting for hopefully a higher number there in fy '16 projected? [11:04:33 AM] >> Well, the bottom one, that's -- those are stray animals and if -- the reason that's 6400 is that was set in February and that's an estimate that can be adjusted. The second column for 15, that's probably where we're going to finish. So we based an estimate based on where we were going to finish and you're right, those can certainly -- those can certainly go up. That could be adjusted up. And we can do that. The first number, the number of animals sterilized in the community, those are owned animals and I think we're going to finish at about 9,000, but we can certainly adjust it. That's a good question. >> Troxclair: Okay. Then I guess my second question is about adoption fees. How much -- where are the adoption fees? >> You mean where do -- >> Troxclair: No, just how much is it to adopt an animal right now? >> One second. >> Erin Caldwell, acting deputy to comment on our adoption fees. >> They vary anywhere from 25 to $50. But we do a lot of free promotion. So it's really hard to say, to calculate what the amount would be as far as revenue goes. >> Troxclair: Okay. Then how much of the revenue comes from those fees? >> I don't have that number. >> Troxclair: Okay. I certainly appreciate as someone who has adopted a dog from the shelter, I certainly appreciate the low cost and I assume that you want to keep the costs as low as possible to incentivize as many people to come and adopt. For me personally knowing the services that that dog has already been provided knowing that they were spayed or neutered, they had a microchip, et cetera, I would have been willing to contribute more. [11:06:38 AM] I just didn't know if that was something that had been considered to maybe set those prices higher, but do more promotional things or need-based something or another. I know that I -- I love my dog and he's worth much more than $50 to me. So -- [laughter] >> Priceless. >> Troxclair: So I thought that was something that I could ask about. >> If I could help a little bit on that. That answer. The -- the budget for animal services, the general fund budget is $11.6 million and the department, through its various fees that they charge, including the adoption fee, is 1.7 million. So, you know, a little bit more than 10% of their costs they are recovering, this is largely a tax supported operations. Included in that $1.7 million would be the reimbursement from the county, so the piece of that that's the adoption fees will be quite a bit less than that 1.7 million even. >> The county is about 1.3 million a year. >> Troxclair: Okay. I thought if there was a way to increase the amount of dollars that we're recovering through fees, it could then help to offset the amount of money that's coming through. Just a thought. >> I just want to point out any fee that we have is related directly to the cost of service, so we tie those two things together. People can certainly make a donation to the animal shelter in addition to adopting an animal. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool. >> Pool: I think part of our approach on adoption fees is to keep them low enough so that the cost doesn't prevent people in a lower income from -- from adopting the animals and that is, are I think, what Anne Morgan was saying, that we also have the additional programs to bring in additional money. I think when I adopted cats a couple of years ago, it was -- I was asked if I wanted to make a donation at the time that I had the adoption. Is that still the case? >> Yes. You can make a donation when you adopt or you can take advantage of any services. [11:08:40 AM] People that come in to reclaim their dog, if the dog was running loose or reclaim their cat, will often donate because we don't -- we can't and we don't solicit for donations. People donate on their own because they are grateful for their services. That's where -- where most of the donation funds come from. The other thing that I wanted to say about the adoption fees is that -- keeping them lower does encourage people to come in and we are -- we do -- we are wanting to recoup our costs and services. But I think less than 25% of people in the nation get their pet from a shelter or a rescue. And so we're trying to do things to make it convenient and attractive, doing the right thing, altruistic, being a part of community solutions, saving a life. And then, also, too, financially not making it prohibitive in doing adoption specials. Right now we're at capacity for cats. So we're going to be creative so we can help find those cats homes. >> May I have one last question then? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Houston: How much does it cost to actually microchip and spay or neuter a dog? >> The microchip itself varies anywhere from five to $10 depending upon your supplier. Takes a few minutes to do it. That's why we offer free microchips and tags and collars to the community. That saves money. If an animal protection officer rolls up on a scene, they can scan the dog or the cat, wow, you belong six blocks from here. Return that go dorks it didn't come into the shelter. There's a huge cost savings with that. The spay-neuter surgery itself, the bulk of the cost is in the medical personnel that are trained to do that, the doctors, veterinarian staff, pain meds and anesthesia and all of those things that go into just surgery. [11:10:41 AM] If we were having surgery, as far as the exact cost on it -- >> I don't have the exact cost. >> I know that working with the humane society, talking to emacipet, my experience in the field, anywhere from $100, our staff, how quick are you, what are your supply costs, they go from table to table and they're very good when -- skilled surgeon is very quick, very good. I think it's insurance and it's medicine and it's the environment, all of the supplies that go into the overhead. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Gallo: Before you finish, I want to say thank you for coming to Austin and particularly thank you for coming to Austin right before the budget cycle discussions. >> Yes, my boss just reminded me I've only been here a month, I thank you for your patience, I'm very excited to be here. >> Mayor, if I could take a point of privilege, assistant city manager, I don't think that I took the time to formally introduce tawnie, even though I think most of you have had a chance to meet her. She came from Fairfax county, Virginia, one of the things that we strive to do in looking for this position was looking for a national leader that was going to take us to the next level. So when you hear her talk about all of the different elements of what she's going to focus in on, these are elements and strategies she has actually formulated and perfected in her career, so we are very excited to have her on board and she has been here a month and came in right at a time when a lot of what you see in here is -- has been formerly developed but she's presenting but she's also making a huge impact in the community. So I just wanted to take a moment to officially and publicly present her and then also welcome her to Austin as well. [11:12:43 AM] >> Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Anything else? >> I don't -- mayor, I don't have a question of them. But it's something that we've noticed as we've gone through the different department budgets. There seems to always be a reserve transfer. So this really is more to the budget office than it is the particular department. But I thought maybe as we're switching to the next one we can talk about this. For example, in this one there's a transfer and other requirement. I guess my question is to know what those transfers are because we see them in all of the different department budgets and this -- this -- to us there is the potential for a larger policy question, depending on what the explanation of that is. Because if departments are building an escrow, kind of the real estate term for it, account somewhere for future capital improvements, within their annual operating budgets, and that would keep us as city council from actually going out to the community to look for bond elections to fund capital improvement projects, then I do think that there might need to be a policy discussion on that. And whether or not our departments should just be looking for actual operating costs on a year to year basis or if there is this method that has been put into place where there are transfers, each budget cycle that goes into future capital improvements. That so kind of a long question, but if you could share with us, because we've noticed that in every department there seems to be transfers that happen. >> I'll try to give you the short answer and then maybe elaborate and just stop me anywhere along the path. But, you know, the short answer, in regards to transfers, the C.I.P., general fund departments don't typically do that. I think the only general fund transfer to C.I.P. That I can think in recent years related to a general fund project that was the new central library where it was decided that the books for the library were going to be funded out of the general fund. So for four years we did a million dollar per year transfer to the library C.I.P. Related to that project. [11:14:50 AM] So for the general fund there's generally not transfers to the C.I.P. For things like parks projects, library projects, police projects, those are done through the bond programs. The enterprise are different, convention stare with occupancy taxes those can only be used for convention center activities, and so after after they have covered their operating costs and there's additional revenues, they do transfer that to their capital program. You have seen large transfers and -- [lapse in audio] On a regular basis. Is our drainage department. Part of their fee structure is a general fund transfer to their capital program. I think currently about 24 million-dollar. They are trying to get it to $30 million of an annual cash transfer to the C.I.P. Program, which keeps them out of having to go to the voters to ask for -- for bond propositions related to just routine drainage improvements. Austin energy and Austin water also have a combination of cash transfers, their C.I.P. In debt, all covered under bond covenants. The short answer is general fund departments not so much. Enterprise departments absolutely. To the extent that you are looking in the budget document, you are seeing a general fund department that has a transfers and other requirements, the vast majority of that transfer is going to be that department's cost allocation share of those support service functions and communication and technology functions. So these are corporate functions that get allocated out to the departments that they support and then those departments reimburse the support functions. So from human resources to financial services to communications and technology management. That's what those transfers typically are for our general fund department. >> So where in our budget information would it show a breakdown of the -- I'm just using this -- the previous one as an example. [11:16:51 AM] The -- the 1.6 million in transfers and other requirements? Just so we know specifically what that was for. >> That was from animal services. >> Gallo: I'm not picking on animal services, that's the first one that has come up as an example? >> From the presentation or in the budget documents? >> Gallo: It was in their presentation on page 3 in the run down of their budget. But I'm curious where that corresponds to our -- where in a information is in our book. >> Right. It would be back, there would be a transfers and other requirements section in the book as well, but it's not going to have a lot more detail than that. It will say down in the services, it will talk about support services allocation, ctm allocations, workers' comp allocations but won't give the dollar amounts. We could certainly compile that information for you, for those transfers for those corporate activities how much -- what the breakout is. >> You know, I would just say that I think that it's important, we have a detailed break down on all of the other columns that are in there. But we don't seem to have that one, that's larger than -- than all of them except for one and the one, two, three, four, five. >> True. >> It's the second largest. So I think that would be helpful to have that for each department. >> We can absolutely do that. >> Thank you. >> Did I need 28 other people to ask for that, too? >> Mayor Adler: We'll let you ask for it right now. >> Just checking, making sure that I'm doing it right. >> Mayor Adler: You're grandfathered. [Laughter]. >> All right, our next department is our code compliance department or code, Austin code now. >> Could I ask a piggyback question on those. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Garza? >> Garza: If it's a transfer -- my guess is if you put an ad on a capital metro bus that our marketing department, you know, created that ad; is that what you are saying? Like it's a transfer from animal services to the cost of that ad? [11:18:53 AM] So if that's the case, when we look at the marketing department's budget, will that -- will that -- let's say half a million transfer out for that purpose, will we see a half million revenue? Line item? Like in the other department that that money went to? >> You wouldn't see in the department budget. It will be a transfer in to the support services fund. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Most -- most of the larger departments have somebody who does that type of work. It would only be a pretty small department that would actually be using the corporate public information office for that kind of marketing or advertising. They just have a very limited staff to do that. But bad example aside, in general, yes, the costs allocated to the department, those show up as a transfer in to the support services fund. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Good morning, mayor, members of the city council. I'm Carl smart, director of the Austin code department. And with me is our financial manager, franklin ferring. We are very proud and thank you for allowing us to be here this morning to share with you our proposed budget for fy 2016. We'll start with our department overview. Of course our mission to provide quality education and enforcement of codes and ordinances for our citizens in Austin to make Austin, help make Austin the most liveable city. Our major accomplishments is, one, we've implemented the neighborhood enhancement team, which is an interdepartmental team and its focusing -- it's focusing on a section of the restore rundberg area. With that project we are able to work closely with the citizens in that area, work closely with property owners and business owners to help make a difference. And so that project is in process and we will be coming back to council with updates on that project, but it really seems to be working well. [11:20:59 AM] A lot of the departments are working with us on that one, including the police department, fire department, public works and neighborhood housing and a number of others. Secondly, we have implemented the administrative hearing process. It is -- it is up and running. And doing well. We have heard to date over 30 cases and we've got another probably another 30 cases by the end of the fiscal year. The administrative hearing process -- process is an alternative to municipal court, with a lower burden of proof, so the cases can be heard easier, still with good results. Still looking for compliance. But the administrative hearing officer is authorized to impose penalty, financial penalties, if you don't get that compliance. So that's working well. Thirdly, as we're in the testing phase now, for a web-based search engine that will -- that will greatly, significantly increase our transparency to the community, and we're looking to launch that soon and in the next couple of months and we're hopeful that, mayor, that you and the city manager will get involved in launching that for us. It will allow citizens to log on to the search engine and get the status throughout the city. A lot of citizens have been asking for that kind of access to information. What is the status of their complaint. They turned in their complaint a week or so ago, they want to know, has it been inspected? Has the notice been issued? The citation been issued? This search engine will provide that information. Testing phase now, looking forward to launching that. Our key performance data, several items there, the first of which is the response time. [11:23:01 AM] Basically. How quickly can we get to the complaint and we're projecting three days at this time. Fy '14, you will see the four and a half days, certainly improving on that. Our goal is still two days, but it's going to still take some more work to get there. But we're certainly making progress toward that goal. Secondly the average number of days from a nuisance abatement. That complaint is basically overgrown lots, in some cases it's open and accessible, vacant and open buildings that are accessible to the public. Those kind of nuisances that can be abated fairly quickly. We still have to provide notice and give the owner the opportunity to comply. But if the owner fails to comply, most of those cases we can go in as a representative of the city and abate the nuisance ourselves. We can have the grass cut. We can board up the building. And then bill the owner for the cost of that service and then place a lien, if the bill is not taken care of. Right now we are showing 25 days projected. We certainly hope to do better than that. We think we can improve on that. It has to be a tight process of notice and then have a contractor ready to actually go in and get the work done. The next two complaints is -- next two performance data is the average number of days when substandard structure or zoning complaint is first reported until you get to non-judicial compliance or you transfer it to a judicial process. In all of those cases again, we hope to compliance. We notify the property owners and explain to them why it's a violation, explain to them the remedy for that violence and provide a reasonable time for compliance and hopefully they will comply within that reasonable time. [11:25:11 AM] Especially when we've done the proper education and communication to the property owners. If they fail to, then, of course, the alternative is to move it to -- move it to a judicial process, either issue a citation, going to municipal court or in cases now we can go to administrative hearing we would -- we would issue administrative hearing citation that goes there. Of course, in some of these cases, there are hardship cases and the hardship cases are going to naturally take longer. We may have to work with neighborhood housing to look at access and rehab funds or -- we may have to contact other agencies, social agencies that may be able to help. Outside agencies that could help like meals on wheels and more sometimes and urban league helping to -- helping owners who have hardship cases, particularly financial hardships and they need help in getting it done. But those cases that are dangerous, those cases where there is a danger to the residents, renters and/or owner/occupants, then of course we move those cases along quicker. They give them priority and move them on quicker. But some other cases may linger longer than we would like. Our goal as in your booklet is 107 days and so the 180 and the 130 still not where we want to be. The 107 is closer to where we want to be as far as the number of days to that transfer. And the last two items -- >> Mayor, I'm sorry -- [multiple voices] >> Casar: Thank you for that, director smart. I know we had a chance to talk about this on Friday. As far as that 107, is that something that we would then amend this document so that next year we're talking about the 107 or are you -- it was -- you and I had a conversation about the 180. Talk me through that a little bit more so that when we come back to have this conversation again next year, I would sort of want to know what it is that we put down on paper because I'm not going to remember. [11:27:21 AM] >> The 107 is still the goal. We have 180 and 130 here as we make progress toward that 107, yes, it will be adjusted next year. So you'll see better Numbers next year as we make progress toward that 107. It may not be 107, but it will certainly be a lot closer than it is now as we make progress towards that. We are adjusting our procedures and looking at other resources, particularly technical resources providing the inspectors with more access to more data, more information in the field, so that they can move those cases quicker. So you will see better Numbers next year. And -- but it may not be the 107, but it will certainly be closer toward that. >> Casar: Just as a follow-up, I thought it was very helpful that you mentioned that we push quickly for compliance on those dangerous properties where there really is danger as opposed to some of the one that's may have a hardship that aren't as dangerous. It may be helpful for us to be a account to -- to see that sort of breakout of how long it's taking us to get people safe as opposed to some of these smaller hardship cases. As you and I just discussed last week with the recent U.T. Study about some of these dangerous properties not complying over a great deal of time, I think it would be helpful for us to resource you to make sure that those dangerous properties get fixed quickly. But I do understand that there are going to be some exceptional cases that drive, that take a long time because of complicating circumstances. But when they are all bundled together, then I think it's difficult as policy makers to sort of get our arms around the problem if they are -- if they are two separate issues. Even during this budget cycle, if it's not too difficult for you to break out what's the amount of time that we are planning on taking on those truly dangerous properties versus those exceptions, I think that would be helpful. >> Yes, sir. We can certainly do that. And -- let me add, also, that -- another part of the of the judicial transfers, our building and standards commission. [11:29:26 AM] So if we have a dangerous case, we can even set, we have set in some cases some special meetings of the buildings and standards commission so that he can hear that case right away. That's part of that judicial transfer if we're not getting the compliance voluntarily from the property owners. So we can give you that information about the average number of -- the average time for those cases of dangerous and substandard versus the ones that are just more minor cases that are substandard. >> Casar: I think that would be very helpful given the context in the conversation with the recent U.T. Study that we approve some metrics on -- that may separate those two out. So thank you. >> Okay. We can certainly do that. I think that we'll see that the dangerous cases are probably better than the 107, while the others are higher. >> Casar: I think that would be helpful to see >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Smart, there are some more questions over here too. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with a projection that's in the 180 range, but an aspirational goal that is 107 just because the Numbers are so far off. What would be really helpful for me is that if -- because it's such a wide disparity. What would be helpful to me is to know what is in fact you're projecting for next year because it sounds like what you're saying is based on the changes that are being made, there is a goal that you are saying this is the goal that I'm going to be trying to hit. I could do better than that goal, but there's such a wide range between those two, it would be helpful if you could come up with what the real goal is. >> We will certainly do that, sir. >> Just to expand on that a little bit, I know that code is asking for eight additional fte's, is that right? >> Nine. Eight plus a transfer, so I guess you're correct. [11:31:29 AM] Eight and then one is a transfer. >> So when you come back with after putting pencil to paper on these Numbers,, you have factored in the additional staff, seeing that maybe these Numbers could be lower, and then the other thing I wanted to say was on bad actor situations, similar to what councilmember Casar was talking about and the issue that councilmember Gallo has been talking about with the short-term rentals, I've got bad actor short-term rental in district 7 and a three-day turnaround for response to that call is absolutely insufficient. It really doesn't address the neighbors' concerns and complaints at all. And so I was wondering if we might have some kind of a swat category for inspections that would partner with the police department and have -- I think there's a different response when a police shows up in that uniform versus when code shows up in that uniform. There seems to be a different response in community and especially if those cases where we have dangerous circumstances or a party house, we really need to bring the most authority to that visit as we possibly can. Does that make sense? >> Yes, ma'am. As a matter of fact, our July pilot program with short-term rentals, we did just that. We had kind of a paste team that was police, fire and code. It made a difference and the response time was fairly instant. We were out there from 10:00 P.M. At night until four A.M. In the morning. And if calls came in to 311 during that time she responded during that time. They didn't wait until the next day or anything like that. It was a fairly immediate response and it was very effective. [11:33:31 AM] We're preparing a report to council. We'll have a memo coming to council for this Thursday, so you will see that report. But yes, that kind of response is very effective and we're looking at how we would propose going forward, how would we integrate that kind of an enforcement tool into a short-term rental program. >> Pool: The only other thing I would say on that is the administrative ability for code to pull a permit on a short-term rental or -- I'm not as clear on -- with a bad landlord. I would really like to see us tighten that up so that you have every tool in the tool box for you to be able to do that and not simply suspend and then allow a party house to come back into operation like 30 days later, really need to look carefully at that. >> Yes. I think we're going to address that in our recommendations also. Good point. >> Pool: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Gallo? >> Gallo: A couple of things. First of all, all of you know we've been very involved in the short-term rental discussion and working with the community and listening to neighbors and neighborhoods and stakeholders. I just want to say thank you to the code department because they've had a presence at each of those meetings, which have been numerous, and it's been very helpful because they could be there to listen to the neighbors and also concerns and address some of the concerns about specific properties. So thank you. I do want to kind of mirror the mayor's concern about the number of days that we're looking at as far as issuing complaints or reviewing complaints. And I think particularly through our discussion with short-term rentals is that we want to move more towards an administrative type process than additional. [11:35:31 AM] So I hope that in itself will help shorten that time frame out so that's just a comment with the length of time. I think as all of us have addressed in responding to things is important. The issue of the pace team, I think that what it showed more than anything else is that as we have public safety staff that works night hours that we need to have code permit staff, that works night hours. When code was going out and looking at short-term rentals between the hours of 6:00 in the evening and 10:00 at night they were all nice and quiet. But when you move to the pace team philosophy of let's see what's happening in the middle of the night when the bars close down and these parties move into the neighborhoods, I think you found that that was the appropriate time. So I think sometimes it's not necessarily adding more staff, but it's making sure that the staff hours that they're working correspond to when the problems are happening. So I appreciate the fact that the pace team moved to that philosophy and I would think that as part of any staff that you hire that would be looking at short-term rentals that it would be important to have staff members that are actually working the night shift. That's when -- night and weekends are when they're happening. Now, a question. So looking at your page 5, which is the positions, could you help me understand what the total positions with your description of what would change, what would then be the total positions under each of those categories would be? So there's five categories? >> The categories, first one starting out is for if we go into budget highlights on page 5, four new positions to add to case investigations. Actually three of those are web pagers. So that would bring that total number of inspectors from 58 to 61. And one of those persons is a a dispatcher in that four new positions for case investigation. [11:37:40 AM] And we actually moved the dispatcher to -- we actually moved the neighborhood coordinator, the neighborhood corder for the net team out. And so that still brings that number to 61. And then for licensing and registration you see the one transfer position, that's the community relations person that's helping with -- that's coordinating the neighborhood enhancement team. And so license and registration moves from a total of 14 to 15. If I got that correct. Support services, adding two program specialists, and that number is actually three. Three positions to add support services. >> Franklin Ferrell, financial manager. So one position from the case investigation program is actually a public information position. So that was moved to a support services position. So like Mr. Smart was saying, case investigation there's actually going to be four positions that would be added to that program. Two inspector C's for the districts, one for the work break ordinance and then one dispatcher. The support services will be having two positions and that is the program specialist for the rope program, their repeat offender program, and one program specialist for the multi-family. >> That was the third one? I want to make sure I have the Numbers right from 14 to 15 on the second line item? >> For the four new positions for the growing caseloads, those are case investigation that went from 58 to 61. [11:39:46 AM] And then one transferred out. And the license and registration, one new and one transfer position, that is in the support services program. The two new positions for the process improvements for the multi- family, that goes into these operational support and then the new positions support and short-term rental -- >> If you can go back to the third one. What does that mean in that category you're going from, to? >> Fy15-fy16. >> In the third. I'm just trying to figure out you've broken down the different positions, what the functions are that they're going within and what's increasing in those areas of oversight. >> If we can start back at the top, the four new position positions for caseload and case investigation, three of those inspectors and a dispatcher, that will certainly help increase our response to complaints and help do more inspections and handle more cases for us. And of course, I've mentioned before that we have a temporary dispatcher and we've kind of been testing that position out for the last almost two years now, pretty close. And that position works so well. It is so needed because we've got inspectors all over the city covering all of the districts, and the dispatcher is able to keep in contact with them. The second one listed is the new -- the transfer position, and that's transferring from public works into Austin code. And that's the coordinator for the neighborhood enhancement team. [11:41:46 AM] That person will be handling special projects and the neighborhood enhancement team working in the restore rundberg area, certainly with special project, and will spend some time in that area and then will move to different parts of the city dealing with very problem neighborhoods that have code problems as well as crime problems, and other neighborhood situations, infrastructure, other situations that need to be addressed. The third one there is multi-family and repeat offender programs. Those are support positions. Program specialists or admin support. And they will help with the licensing and registration, particularly the repeat offender program, and handling the admin support, getting notices out and setting up inspections, setting up scheduling, inspections, et cetera. We've never had the admin support. We set up the multi-family and the repeat offender program without admin support. So we've been using temporary staff to handle that too and now we're suggesting that we add -- recommending permanent staff. And then the last one, the short-term rental, that one is for -- is admin support also to help with licensing -- initial licensing and renewal. Of course, we're working on report on short-term rentals as you mentioned earlier and we're probably going to be looking at additional resources, particularly the help with nighttime inspections and all. But that will be a part of the report coming to council. At this time we're only asking for admin support. >> Gallo: So my question is how many people do you currently have in your department that are working on licensing violations? I'm looking at the quarterly report that you sent out not too long okay and it breaks down very well the different types of licenses. >> Yes. [11:43:47 AM] >> Gallo: And when short-term rentals are 43% of the number of licenses I'm just curious in your department as it's set up now what is your allocation of staff to short-term rentals? >> Right now we have two inspectors for short-term rentals, and one full-time admin support. We realized that was not enough, so additional we've got 1.5, maybe two. One and a half to two persons who are temporary admin support helping with the str program. The str program, the demand is a lot higher than we expected. Starting out it was fairly -- it wasn't -- the demand wasn't as high for services, but now we've gotten into renewals. Originally they were just doing licensing and registration and checking advertising and additional inspections. But now the activity is very high and we're doing renewals. The licenses expire one year from the date of issuance, so we've got licenses that are expiring all the time. And so you're having to do renewals all the time and you are also having to keep a close eye on the caps because we have a three percent cap in central district and there are a number of districts that have reached that cap and there's a waiting list. So we're finding that there's more admin support needed for the short-term rental program. >> Gallo: So right now in your department how many inspectors do you have allocated to short-term rentals and how many do you have allocated to the other programs that you oversee? >> There is two inspectors allocated for short-term rentals. And then each of the licensing programs, I don't have those Numbers right in front of me, but we have one allocated for billboards, one allocated for hotels, motels, rooming houses, boarding houses and bed and breakfasts. [11:45:55 AM] One allocated for mobile home parks. And we have a number allocated for the waste hauler licensing program. And I can't recall that number. >> Three. >> Three? I heard three from the audience. [Laughter] >> Gallo: It's got to be right then. Okay. So I'm just comparing the Numbers that -- when you come back with your report about the str I think that an equitable allocation of the staff that you have for inspections would be appropriate. So what I'm seeing from this is that the boarding house, hotel, all of that, billboard, that's a very, very small percentage of the licensing that you do. Waste haulers at 27% you've got three inspectors assigned to that. But then once again you have short-term rentals at 43% and you only have two assigned. So just looking at it, it concerns me that we've got a need and we've perhaps got inspectors allocated to other areas that aren't as large of a percentage of licenses that you have with the short-term rentals and the waste haulers. I was looking at what you sent out, which was really helpful to understand what a big percentage of licenses there are for short-term rentals as compared to all of the licenses y'all are dealing with. And I just want to make sure as we go through this process that we're making sure that we allocate sufficient number of resources and inspectors even if we have to pull them from some of the other areas that are perhaps not problem areas as we have right now with some of the short-term rentals. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yes, Ms. Tovo and then Ms. Kitchen? >> Tovo: Thanks. I have several questions about different areas, but I want to thank councilmember Gallo for her questions about that. And I would like to ask you whether you have considered trying reallocating your staff before asking for additional staff particularly for your licensing program? [11:48:04 AM] It would seem to me that would be an appropriate first step to try to reallocate the staff so they more clearly reflect the needs. >> We've certainly considered that, mayor pro tem. And we do that on a temporary basis. We actually had to pull from different areas to help handle the pace team inspections that we did during July. So some of the regular neighborhood inspectors, for example, were pulled to help out with short-term rentals. We still have an increasing demand on the neighborhood inspectors as we reported earlier, last year we had over 17,000 complaints come in through 311. And a lot of those are in different neighborhoods around the city and so there's an increase in demand there, there's also an increase in demand with repeat offender program, with multi-family, and with group homes and mobile homes and other areas. So yes, we are looking at whether or not we can do reallocations, but we're also finding that there's such a demand for code services right now. And part of it is our own fault. Because we've been marketing, we've been doing more public information now that we have a team to do that. Folks are more aware of code violations in the neighborhood and they are calling. We've asked them to call and they're doing just that. So we've got a demand all the way around, realizing that short-term rentals is really a hot issue right now. But there are other hot issues too. So we're certainly considering that. The other thing that really is helpful is being able to hire temporary staff, particularly those persons who might have retired and they have the experience in code and then they could hire them back as a temporary. Then they're helping us too. We have two or three that are like that and we've got others who are being trained as temporary employees to help us out in those problem areas too. [11:50:05 AM] >> Tovo: Okay. I have some questions regarding the short-term rental, the finances of the short-term rental program. But I also am really concerned about the repeat offender program and also for problem rentals generally. I appreciate the strides you've taken and I know that it's very important to Austin code to headache sure that we've got safe housing throughout our city, but I still persuaded that we need to do more and we need to consider doing what we're doing differently. So I guess I want to ask you when you think you might have a response to the repeat offender report that came from the university of Texas, it did identify some challenges with our program in terms of the length of time of response, the length of administration of repeat offenders, the fact that some repeat offenders are not being registered. And thus not inspected, that the inspection time lags, the average inspection time for other code violations, all of which is extremely concerning to me. And I'll just highlight for my colleagues in late may, I believe it was late may, there was an incident at one of the apartment complexes here in Austin where a child was playing outside and was electrocuted because of some faulty wiring. So I think it is just a critical concern that we make sure that we're doing everything we can to identify those substandard properties before those hazards become health and safety hazards. Thank you to your department. I know I've been asking for awhile and I just got a whole bunch of information about that particular complex and its interactions its had through the years with Austin code and it has had some. And I know councilmember Casar requested the same information. We all just got it about 30 minutes ago. So thank you. I'm going to look at that carefully. It seems to me that particular complex, though it had a history with Austin code, probably back through all of its various names, code compliance, code inspection, et cetera, et cetera, would not have qualified in the repeat offender program. [11:52:09 AM] So I think that we also need to evaluate again whether the repeat offender program is broad enough really to meet the great needs we have in our city. So I guess my questions for today are pretty minimal. What are -- what are your goals in terms of -- particularly in terms of enforcement actions? We had talked about at various times about maybe moving toward more court actions versus administrative actions, versus a focus on compliance really being more aggressive about taking things into the court system. I wonder if you see that as part of your goals. And also again when you think your staff might have had a chance to analyze the work of the UT community law clinic or entrepreneurship clinic and might have some recommendations for how you could respond? We're in this period of time where you're asking us to allocate resources and we need to allocate resources if they're needed within your department so that you can meet these challenges, and they've identified some recommendations that I would be very interested in hearing your response to. So if you've got a timeline for us. And again, thank you, I know you're concerned about it and making great strides. We need to figure out what other resources you need to continue to do your job and to really crack down on these properties. >> Yes. Thank you for that question. Mayor pro tem, I think that certainly it's a critical issue and critical issue for us. We've been looking at and tracking the progress of the repeat offender program. We're concerned about the program and we're going to make some recommendations. We are forming recommendations now that would help to improve that program. We've been asked to appear and supposed to make a presentation at the housing and community development committee. [11:54:11 AM] I think that's coming up August 19th. So we'll be prepared to make that presentation on the repeat offender program and problem properties. And share our recommendations with the committee. And some of those recommendations would probably include changes to the repeat offender program. There's still some -- repeat offender program is still in its infancy. And it's still -- we're still sorting it out to a certain extent. It's still a reactive program starting out. It's not a real proactive program where all multi-family properties register. It's only those who meet a certain criteria, and that criteria again is the 2-5-2. You have to have two notices of violation that you did not comply with within the time period over a two-year span. Or you've gotten five notices that you did comply with over that -- within that two-year span, or two municipal court citations. So a lot of the property that should be in the program are not because they don't meet that criteria. And so we certainly need to take another look at that and see if that's really serving the purpose that was intended to by council and staff. So we'll certainly be reviewing that for the housing and community development. So it will take a balance, it will take several actions working together. In some cases the admin hearing process will certainly work. And that's for the minor ones. Admin hearing is not for the major dangerous situations. Those situations need to be channeled through the building and standards commission and/or the court system. [11:56:13 AM] And realizing -- we realize a lot of times we go to municipal court and we can get a finding of guilt, but that doesn't mean that we've gotten compliance. They get a fine and they can pay the fine and continue to violate. So some of those cases will need to be escalated higher to a district court situation where the judge has more power to issue restraining orders or injunctive release in addition to fines. So having a combination of those tools and being able to use all of those tools is really what's going to make us more effective. >> Tovo: I appreciate you mentioning those different options. When we were looking at this before I know you were part of the discussion that included some individuals from Fort Worth and we looked at different programs and in some of the cities that have really seen noticeable improvements they have escalated those cases and sometimes they've escalated them rather aggressively and then as a result some of those property owners saw that the city-- they were likely to end up in court if they didn't address the situation and so that also resulted in a dropping of the number of cases. So I think maybe the best way to proceed from my perspective is for me to submit some questions perhaps through the budget Q and a process just to see the Numbers. I'm very interested to know whether there has been an increase in the number of district court cases with regard to these matters over the last couple of years since we've really been focusing a lot of attention on problem properties and to see what kind of measurable changes those are. And perhaps we'll have some of those answers then before that August 19th meeting. But again, thanks very much, Mr. Smart. I've got a couple of questions on short-term rentals but I'll yield for the moment and maybe somebody else will cover them. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. My question, thank you for bearing with us on our questions. I know we got off your presentation. [11:58:16 AM] My question goes back to the fees, which I don't know if you want to cover under page 3 or page 6, but I would just like to understand with regard to the short-term rentals the relationship between the fees and the cost of oversight. And I think it goes back to councilmember Gallo's questions in terms of the inspectors that are allocated and the other aspects allocated towards enforcement. I would like to understand the relationship between what we're charging for those licensing and what it cost us to both administratively handle the licensure process and to enforce. >> Thank you, councilmember. On the short-term rentals, we did look at the anticipated cost of providing the program and we set the fee to cover that anticipated cost. I think that we're finding that the -- as I mentioned earlier with the increasing demand for services for the short-term rentals that the fees are not going to cover the costs. The fees are at $235 per year, and the initial fee includes -- adds on another $50 to provide notice to neighbors in the area. I think there's like a 50-foot circumference of properties that touch that property that get notice. But 235 is really going to need to be adjusted and we're looking at that as a part of our overall review of the short-term rental program. So we may be coming back to council in the near future with an adjustment of those fees. The 235 fee covered the costs of the two inspectors and one admin person. And as I've mentioned earlier, we've had to add 1.5 to two additional admin support, temporary support for the short-term rental program. [12:00:18 PM] And we're going to need to add -- look at also adding that weekend patrol and covering that cost. So I think the fees are going to need to be adjusted. >> Kitchen: My request would be that-- I'm thinking of the timing for you will a of this it. My request would be that realign what we're asking for in terms of fees with a budget request. So to the extent that the budget request is for new fte's to work on str's, we need to at the same time perhaps raise the fee. So I don't want to approve new fte's as part of the budget process and later think about what the fees are to cover that cost. To me they're simultaneous questions., yes. >> So that was -- so a related question then -- this goes back to the repeat offender program. I'm not as familiar with the fees related to that. So my question would be, you know, that's another enforcement program. Are there -- are there fees that are comparable so those kinds of properties that are then expected under the repeat offender program? That would be my first question. If so, how do those fees relate to the cost of enforcement. >> I think I saw that the mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I will let director smart. But it's my understanding that the -- based on just the executive summary that I was looking at, the fees are far lower than the cost of providing enforcement. Just as the strs. >> Well, I had the same comment then. Again, I would like to understand that in the context of the budget discussion and in the context of asking for new ftes, I really think there needs to be a discussion there. My last question on page 5, I know that you explained this, the one new and one transfer position to improve community relations. That would be two people working on community relations, if I'm understanding that correctly. [12:02:20 PM] Is that -- is that what the total would be, is two ftes for community relations? >> Yes. The one position is the -- is the coordinator for the neighborhood enhancement team. So they are working that special project. Right now it's in restore rundberg and it will move to other areas of town as -- as needed. And as it becomes effective. And then, secondly, is a -- is a neighborhood liaison and emergency tenant response and relocation specialist. We've found the need for -- for a persona does community outreach that work with the inspectors and help deal with those hardship cases and -- and work with neighborhoods on identifying the hardship cases and helping to find solutions, not necessarily in Austin code, but referring to other agencies in the city for help. That -- as I mentioned before, the neighborhood housing, the urban league, the meals on wheels and more, social service agencies, et cetera. That person works directly with them. Kind of a liaison between the inspector, sorry, the inspector and property owners and neighborhood agencies. >> Kitchen: Well, thank you. I believe that I might have asked that question before. I'm not understanding why this requires a new fte given that we have in our health and human services department, we do provide, you know, I believe similar types of services, basically if I'm hearing you correctly, we're talking about some social service types of programs to help people that we, you know, come in contact with through this program. So why would we not just work with those ftes that are in our health and human services department who are specializing in these areas, unless I'm not understanding what's available in our health and human services department. [12:04:22 PM] Just makes more sense to me to do that rather than to create a new position where this is not really -- this is not really the expertise of the code department. >> Right. >> Kitchen: So -- and it's unclear to me whether we actually need a new fte or whether the fte belongs in this department. So I can submit a question to that effect, but I would like -- I'm asking that that be examined. So -- >> Yeah. If I can give you an initial response and certainly we would be able to give you a more detailed response, if you would like to submit a -- a q&a. It's actually not a new -- this is not a new -- new position in that we've had a temporary position for the last couple of years performing this function. They work closely with the inspectors and let me -- let me emphasize that we do work closely with the health and human services department. They have social workers that do this kind of thing, but they don't necessarily specialize in dealing with code enforcement cases. This person specializes with the code enforcement cases and then also access the social workers and work with them as -- as needed in order to handle a lot of these cases. >> Kitchen: So we can talk about this more off line, but I'm still not understanding what that person does that it couldn't be the same person in the health and human services. Because this is not the person that goes and inspects, right? >> They make visits. No, they do not do the inspections. The inspectors are the only ones that actually do the code inspections. They make visits. The code inspectors go out, they inspect a case and they find it's an elderly person with a disability and they are on limited income and can't afford to take care of the code violation, then that code inspector will refer that case to this neighborhood liaison who will actually make a visit and do intake and get information and find out what the needs are and help identify those agencies that can help. [12:06:29 PM] Additionally, when we've got a case where we've got to relocate, we've got to vacate the property and relocate this person will access those -- work with those families to identify their needs and help make sure that we meet their needs in relocating those families. >> Kitchen: That's the same thing that any social worker would do in the health and human services. Anyway, you know, I'll follow-up and we can check. >> Sure, all right. >> Your light is on. >> Houston: I know. I almost forgot what I was going to say there. Thank you, Mr. Smart. I've got a couple of questions. The first one is in several jurisdictions, rather than having extra code inspectors, they have a lawyer to do faster litigation. They have a licensed plumber, that goes out and does the plumbing inspections and a licensed electrician, rather than just general code compliance. If so we've got an issue with electrical wiring, then our electrician goes out and does that. So had you ever thought of reconfiguring so that you would have the little -- the legal ability to move a little faster? In these issues where we have violations and then having a licensed plumber and electrician on staff so we can move fairly quickly. >> Absolutely, you're right, there are other jurisdictions structured that way. We've certainly considered that. We've been working closely with our law department for resources to help us as far as providing legal work as far as looking at cases that can be moved to district court, getting creative in looking for legal solutions to -- to our cases that might be lingering or cases that might have special -- special conditions along with them. And we do have some cases like that. [12:08:29 PM] Then, secondly, we -- we have looked, too, at having special trades inspectors, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, et cetera. Our development services department is structured that way. So that they've got electrical inspectors, plumbing inspectors, mechanical, so we're able to access those services through that department mostly. But additionally, we're finding that, yes, we do need some of those kinds of employees with those kinds of -- that kind of expertise in our department, also. So we've already started doing more recruitment along those lines. Particularly for multi-family. For the repeat offender program and for housing, doing an inspection of houses and finding those persons who have got that kind of expertise. Not necessarily do the work, but to be able to identify the problems associated with the plumbing system or the mechanical system or electrical system and help -- help find a solution to those problems. >> Okay. So thank you. The other -- the other question has to do with the unregulated homes for populations who are vulnerable. We've been working on that particular situation for about seven years now. And -- and there are -- there are a lot of layers to it. But the fact is that we have vulnerable populations who are living in substandard housing and so how would we be able to ensure, yes, short- term rentals are an issue across the city. And part of that is our fault as a council for not having enough input so that we could see the unintended consequences that some of these short-term rentals would have on our communities. But we also have these unregulated homes. >> Yes. >> Houston: In an Austin that's supposed to be prosperous, I'm not sure how do we use the new full- time equivalence to ensure that we move people out of these homes or at least have some kind of inspection so that people are not living in squalor. [12:10:36 PM] >> Yes. Well, our neighborhood code inspectors will certainly help with that. But we are also looking at setting up a special program to deal with those unregulated homes. Primarily we are talking about different types of group homes that -- that for the most part unregulated, we are working on that now. As a matter of fact, we are doing a presentation today to the mayor's committee on disabilities and disabled persons and so we're looking at adding an ordinance, we will be bringing an ordinance to council soon that will allow for reasonable accommodations for those kinds of homes. That ordinance -- if that ordinance passes, then we will be allowed to -- to register them as we doment rooming houses and -- as we do rooming houses and boarding houses and treat them the same way as rooming and boarding houses. >> Houston: And do inspections. >> And that would allow for inspections. At least annual inspectings, but more inspections as needed to help make sure that they are in a safe environment. Now, going beyond that, we also have a task force that's made up of -- of representative from health and human services and the fire department and emergency management and police and other agencies that are looking at who we need model standards that go beyond just a Normal inspection of like rooming houses, boarding houses. Model standards would have to do with how the -- what kind of accommodations, how folks are taken care of within that home. Depending upon what type of disability that might be present. >> The reason that I ask this question is because this has a monetary effect on the resources in public safety. Because every time someone is out of compliance in one of these unregulated homes, we roll police, fire, E.M.S. And when we look at the amount of money we spend in certain areas on the number of calls where people are unsupervised, not on their medication, there's nobody there, if we could get a control on that, we could reduce some of that unintended cost to our E.M.S. Department. [12:12:53 PM] >> Absolutely right, yes, ma'am. >> Houston: The last thing is early, when we first started on this council, there was a resolution about mobile home vendor licensing fees. I can't remember the exact date of when it was and there was a -- there was a recommendation that the fees were to be increased and the council voted early on to -- to stay with the -- does anybody else remember this conversation? >> Tovo: It was a health and human service fees for events, I believe. Is that what you mean? >> Houston: It was a food licensing, mobile vendors. >> Tovo: Yeah, I think it was the health inspection for all events. >> Houston: But we rolled it back to whatever. Are we going to increase those fees this year? >> That would probably be better answered by health and human services director. I'm not certain of the answer to that. >> Houston: Okay. Thank you. >> I would like to add, though, if I could, just fy it., of course, we are -- Austin code is a -- is an enterprise fund basically. 91% of our funds come from the clean community fee and the others are from license and registration fees. So we have little to no impact on the general fund, I just wanted to add that. >> Renteria: Yes, Mr. Smart. I wanted to discuss about the strs. The short-term rentals type 2 it seems to be the ones that are driving up the costs. I'm really concerned that, you know, we're having to dip into the utility fund that -- that clean service fund in our utility bills to pay for these srt problems that we're experiencing here. And I notice that -- all of your fees are based, are solely based on whether they are str 1s, 2s, or 3s,; isn't that correct? [12:14:56 PM] >> Yeah, the fees are actually set across the board, $235, regardless of the type. The type 1, type 2 or 3 they are all the same fee at this time. >> Have you looked into what's really driving up the cost of Sr -- of short-term rentals? Is it really the 2s, the 1s or the 3s, where are you having the most problems with these strs. >> That's an excellent question. I don't have a complete answer for you at this time. We are certainly looking at that, your question lends itself to where are we getting the most complaints, is it with type 1, type 2s or 3s, where are we spending the most time. The certainly there is a difference. Type 1 is where the owner is basically living in that home, should be living in that home and so the tenants seem to act better. The behavior is better. Type 2's, there's for owner living there at all. The house is intended completely for vacation rentals, short-term rentals. So, yeah, I think we probably have more behavior problems there, but I would need to pull the data together on that. It's not just code data, not just 311 data. In some cases it's 911 date or police data as far as noise complaints and other complaints and so pulling all of that together is our challenge and certainly we're looking at that. >> Renteria: Because I really feel maybe it's time to really look at a tier type of fee structure. Where we really increase the fees on str 2 because it seems to me they are the ones that are creating the -- the costs. That they are driving the costs up. And I think we should start really looking at whether, you know, are we really, you know, basing our fee because -- if it's really fair for us for the utility bills to be going up so that we can be paying for the inspection for str's. [12:17:08 PM] >> Thank you, sir. >> Ms. Garza. >> Garza: As a follow-up question to that, I thought the str, the (indiscernible) Is a different one, I thought the clean community doesn't pay for the str's, doesn't that come from the general fund. >> The short-term rental fees are intended to cover the costs of implementing the program. Initially it was. I think now we're having to add additional resources, temporary resources in order to supplement that. Those funds are still not coming from general fund, they are coming from clean community fee. >> So that gap -- >> Yes, ma'am. >> Pool: Mayor, I just have a procedure question for you. Do we have an opportunity either to get lunch and bring it back and eat here or is there lunch in the back? I think that I'm hearing stomachs growling. >> Mayor Adler: We could do either of those. I think that lunch is available in the back. >> It is. >> Mayor Adler: So we could either stop and come back or we could bring back here. Do you just want to stop for 30 minutes and then come back? I think that's kind of been -- want to do 15, 20 minutes? 30 minutes. I think that's the deal. So but before you leave, we do have additional questions. Let's finish with this before we go, then we'll take a break and go eat and then we'll come back. Mr. Smart, it wouldn't surprise at me if this part of the budget doesn't come back several times over the course of the next few weeks. Only because of the attention that it's getting in the community right now. You're at the place where some of the plates are rubbing against each other. Both with str's and with respect to the report that came out from the university of Texas with the condition of properties. [12:19:11 PM] It relates to the conversation that I think Mr. Casar was raising with respect to what the goals are. I think there's a desire for you to articulate more ambitious goals, as I think the expectation in the community is that there be a higher -- higher level of response and catching situations. So I think it would be helpful, as we discussed earlier. Associated with that I think is a resource question. It's important for you, I think, to hit higher goals, but to make sure that you have the resources or availability to be able to meet those goals. I would also like you to take a look at whether or not you can meet some of those goals with respect to reallocating within your office, but I -- but I would also imagine that if you do reallocating, it's kind of like, you know, spinning the wheels on the sticks. If you take away, then there might be problems there, too. If that's true. Then I need for you to articulate those. So that we can have an honest conversation about reallocation and what that means or doesn't mean. But I think that the will may exist on the council to make sure that you have the tools to set and achieve higher goals. And I would like you to take a look at that and tell us what the goals could be. Both aspirationally, but with respect to what you could do if you had more tools and more resources or a different allocation. I would like to see higher goals and then correspondingly how you would meet those goals, even if that means coming back to the council and saying in order to do this, this is what I need. My sense is that over the next two weeks, we're going to be back here having that conversation. >> Yes, we'll be glad to come back. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. [12:21:12 PM] >> To bring that information. Other questions here? >> A. >> Since -- I'm looking at page 6, is (indiscernible) Amount of 76,000 your projected income revenue from licenses? >> No it's not councilmember. -- The number of licenses is increasing as well as the complaints, but we are expecting about 300 new licenses this coming here in fy '16, so that's the revenue. The 76,000 represents the revenue from the additional -- >> The additional, I just wanted to make sure, answering councilmember kitchen's question that wasn't the total revenue expected, that was the additional. Does that also take into consideration if we remove the test the water provision without a license or is that projection an increase assuming that -- if we put that into place, that will perhaps increase the number of licenses that are applied for it could booth those Numbers somewhat. We're -- this is a conservative figure that $76,000 and, yes, if the -- if the code is amended to remove the testing the waters, it may boost it up some more. So we may end up with additional revenues. >> It could actually be higher, okay, thank you. I want to -- to kind of say, too, what the mayor was saying as far as we want to make sure that we have the resources, so I this I that actually having the boots on the ground to do the inspections of the short-term rental and multi-family rentals that are not safe is really important, but I think it's imperative for all of the departments, I'm not just picking on you, but we -- we got a list of all of the vehicles in different departments and for all the vehicles that your department has, there is not one energy efficient small sedan that I can see. [12:23:25 PM] We've brought up this discussion before, that if we are a city that is trying to promote being conservative and really being sensitive to our environment, that I think the message that we send from our city departments with the type of vehicles they choose is really important. So I think as you come back with -- with trying to figure out the resources you need to do the job your department needs to do and will do, I'm sure because you guys have been great about working through all of this, I think all of the departments need to look at the vehicle that's they are driving. If there's an argument that every single person in your staff needs a vehicle that's a truck and needs that capacity to do their job, that's a different discussion. But I think as we start choosing and making those choices, my goal would be to put that money towards staff versus vehicles. So it's just -- it's very apparent when you look at the vehicles by department and yours is not the only one that I think as we come through this budget cycle that needs to be a really important topic of conversation that we start doing what we're asking the citizens to do in this community. >> We certainly agree -- >> Mayor Adler: Mayor, actually -- >> Councilmember, I think that's a very good point. I think it's a conversation that's come up here before. If my recollection serves me correctly, we charged both jerry and Lucia with preparing a report, I think they did, in fact I just read it here recently that speaks to that from an enterprise-wide standpoint. Your point is well take place. It not just Carl. I appreciate you saying that. I think what I would like to do in terms of responding to that larger issue of vehicles is to at some point in the course of your budget deliberations have Mr. (Indiscernible) Come forward and talk about this issue. He can expand upon what he and Lucia talked about in his recent report. [12:25:29 PM] We are very conscious of that issue and I know that jerry and his team has worked very hard, jerry is a leader in his industry in regard to these matters. So I'm sure jerry will look forward to having the conversation with you and the councilmembers. >> Tovo: Mayor, very briefly, thanks again for this conversation. Can you remind us, though, what -- what the proposed increase is, if any, to the clean community fee? I thought this was one fee that was proposed for an increase. >> Yes, the proposed increase is 25 cents. Originally in the financial forecast we were looking at 45 cents. We were able to realize some savings in other areas, so 25 cents. So the code portion would increase from $3.10 to $3.35. >> >> Tovo: That's per customer per month. >> Yes. >> Tovo: Thank you for that information, I just couldn't completely find it. I wanted to bring that up because well it is an enterprise, we do charge our customers to pay those costs. So -- >> That's correct. >> Tovo: I appreciate all of the conversations that are looking toward whether -- which of those cost expenditures seem warranted and whether there are some other options for shifting and allocating resources, I'm very interested in you being successful in the work that you do. That's just kind of the other important consideration that I'm going to be balancing. >> Absolutely, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: I wanted to follow that up with a question. Thank you. So the proposed increases on that fee that we were talking about then, what is the basis for the proposed increase? The 8 additional ftes that we're talking about or -- or what's the reason for raising that? >> Yes. It's the additional staff, it's actually an addition of nine positions as the 8 plus the transfer and the internal transfer costs that help -- goes to help support internal services like our ctm department and others. [12:27:40 PM] So -- so total -- total 25 cents to cover those costs. >> Kitchen: Okay. I'll submit a further question about that, because I would like to see what that break down is. >> Sure. >> Kitchen: Just from my perspective, I think it's important that we align our fee structure with the individual -- with the types of entities that are requesting, you know, requesting licensing. So I don't think the rest of the city should pay for the cost of str enforcement, for example. So -- >> Yes. >> We will have a recommendation to actually look at that. >> Kitchen: That's not the only area. That's just, I mean, the other area is the repeat offender program, there may be other areas, too. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Pool. >> Pool: I would just add to that to say when we look at increasing fees, we also have to balance off the concern that people won't register because the fees are so high and they will go underground. So it's a delicate balance. I know you all are thinking about that, too. >> Absolutely. >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Mess. >> Houston:? >> Houston: I just want to segue something off of what councilmember pool just said. They are already underground, lack of enforcement, that's what's making us all crazy, they are already underground. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, any further questions here. Before we break for lunch, I would point out that we had nine departments to talk about today. We have gotten through two. So keep that in mind when we pick this back up again. But we'll break for lunch and come back at 1:00. Thank you. [Recess]. [1:14:04 PM] >> >> >>> >> >>> >> Mayor Adler: There's the volume. >> Good afternoon, mayor Adler, mayor pro tem tovo and councilmembers. I'm Brenda branch, the director of libraries, and with me is Victoria eager, our budget manager. Our mission: The Austin public library is committed to providing easy access to books and information for all ages through responsive professionals, engaging programs and state-of-the-art technology in a safe and friendly environment. We've come a long way. In 1926 the library opened in rented space on congress avenue with 500 donated books and a volunteer librarian. Today we have 1.4 million volumes and as we transition into the new central library, we will be transitioning in to a world class library system. >> Houston: Excuse me, may I interrupt a minute. Mayor, it doesn't seem like we are live anymore. Oh, there we go. >> Mayor Adler: They're having trouble finding the right powerpoint. >> I'm proud to share with you some of this year's accomplishments. The new central library's topmost structure was put in place on may 22nd with the roof and exterior walls now in progress. Once complete the electrical wiring, cabling will progress. The rooftop's solar panel, which will be the largest on any city building, is in final development. And the city is seeking a restauranteur to lease the cafe. We have undertaken improvements to nine of our branch libraries and the history center. [1:16:07 PM] Renovation is going on at Millwood, university hills parking lot. We're moving forward with that project. The southeast Austin community branch foundation sidewalk work. Oak hill and pleasant hill renovations, little walnut creek A.D.A. Improvements and the will will may foundation repairs and history center renovation. Circulation continues to climb, reaching approximately 5.4 million items circulating at the end of 2014. That is a 25% increase in just four years. As of June 2015, 532,000 registered borrowers checked out four million items, a four percent increase over 2014. In an attempt to address the changing demographics of our community, the library is investing in outreach programs to focus on reaching the underserved, people with English as a second language, and people with special needs. And by the way, the library is about to unveil our new book bike mobile, which is a really greenway to offer material and services to the neighborhoods and at community events. On July 22nd we introduced our much needed and requested by the customers online bill payment system. Projections for outcomes for our key performance measures remain relative stable as that table illustrates. The library's main source of funding comes from the city's general fund. We use the general fund appropriation to support the day-to-day operations of the library. Our proposed budget for fiscal year 16 is $42.3 million, an increase of approximately 5 million over '15. [1:18:11 PM] The driving factor in the increase that you see over last year is primarily due to the first year of funding related to the new central library. In an effort to manage the financial impact on the city's budget we have requested funding over three fiscal years, beginning with this coming year, fiscal year 16. The first year includes partial funding for 48.25 ftes and partial year funding for operations such as utilities and maintenance costs. These increases impact the public and support services function. As I mentioned earlier, partial year funding to begin staffing the new central library along with operations and maintenance costs totals about $2.3 million and that amount is included in this budget. We plan to begin hiring and training personnel in 2016 as we prepare to open the new library in state 2016. -- Late 2016. We'll start by hiring some positions in may so that we have time to train them on the equipment and the facilities -- maintenance of the facilities. One in June, several in July and then the remainder in August. The next shied I'll talk a little bit about these positions in detail. We have critically evaluated what it will take to operate the new central library, this high-tech intelligent green building that is twice the size of the current central library. Systemwide materials collection and development is proposed to receive a 3.5% inflationary increase. This translates into an increase of $107,000, which will benefit the entire library system and allows us to continue to grow our collection to meet the increased demand of our population. [1:20:19 PM] Approximately 200,000 is proposed as an increase in technology, hardware and software costs. 64 of this increase is due to the shift in costs associated with our Microsoft licensing and prior to this fiscal year the funding that I just talked about was included in the ctm budget that's now transferred to our budget. Austin's library for the future will be a vibrant community center that offers leading edge programs and services, state-of-the-art technology in a green, intelligent building. What will enable this building to offer what we will to the community is the staff. The library is proposing to add 48.25 ftes the next-year-old 20 additional ftes over the following two years. This is the minimum requirement to meet the needs of this building. The building is twice the size of the current John Henry Faulk billion, has six floors instead of the current three public floors. We are restoring the eight hours that were previously eliminated in a budget cut. Based on the experience of comparable central libraries across the country, when they opened, we expect our circulation to double, if not triple. Circulation, number of polls, reference questions, customers needing assistance with equipment and finding materials. The library card registration, just to name a few, will increase exponentially with the opening of this building. We're adding 25 special use areas in the library where our current library has none. [1:22:19 PM] The technology throughout the building will be state-of-the-art and will require specialized personnel to keep it maintained and to assist the customers. The collection will increase by 51.7%, requiring additional staff to keep the collections accessible. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to create a vital resource for this community and a vibrant destination for the Seaholm district. The fiscal year -- in fiscal year 2015-2016, the Austin public library is scheduled to receive the last appropriation needed for the construction of the new central library. The new central library project is currently on budget and within schedule. Scheduled to open November of 2016. The Austin public library is likewise scheduled to receive an appropriation from the 2012 bond program which will fund renovation construction for the will Hampton branch, restoration construction of the Austin history center, along with renovation design for the Yarborough and Windsor park branch libraries. In the 2015-16 spending plan includes all of the aforementioned projects as well as other ongoing capital improvement projects totaling 51.6 million. They are all listed here and mentioned in my earlier presentation. That concludes my presentation, and my staff and I are happy to answer any questions that you might have. >> Mayor Adler: I'm excited about the new library. >> We are too. >> Mayor Adler: If you were describing that library to somebody, there's our new library, and it has some really nifty aspects or things to it, what would be the two or three things that you would point to as being special, nifty, exciting, as we're passing it on the street and just pointing it out to someone? [1:24:26 PM] >> By the way, all of the things that we've designed in this building were given to us through input in charrettes in the community. So what we're preparing and what we're building, what we designed and built are what the community asked us for. We will have, as I mentioned, 25 public spaces. Some of those spaces are going to be so exciting. There's a 350 seat special events center which can be converted to formal sit-down dinners or lecture style presentations. It will be a gathering place for the dialogue to have specific issues that affect this community. We'll have 12 meeting rooms where we have none now in the current central library. We'll have a separate teen area. We don't have that in the current central library. We will have a cooking demo area, which will be the first in the country. And we're getting lots of questions from other libraries and architects and so on about it, so they're all very excited about that. The technology that -- we'll have some reading porches, which if you've seen the design you know that. We'll have two reading porches, one for youth and one for adults so you can sit outside with some fans going, which obviously you might not want to do today, but -- and enjoy the view because we are in the most ideal situation as far as what Austin has to offer. We're on shoal creek, we're across from lady bird lake. It's going to be spectacular views from many areas in this library. Do you want me to go on? [Laughter]. >> Mayor Adler: That's good. Two more questions, one is it's the central library, so it's downtown, so it's geographically removed from the rest of the city, lots of -- other parts of the city. This is a resource that we want to make sure is available to everybody and people from all over the city see it as a resource that they could use. [1:26:29 PM] There was someone that was describing to me, you know, kind of a vision at one point where we used the opening of the new library as a tool to help increase the number of kids that had library cards as part of the campaigns that you do to do that. I don't know if that makes sense to do or not. With a vision that people were getting -- kids were getting their library cards from all over the city with the hope and expectation that they would use that card, either old card or new card, going into their central big library, but the vision that on the day when it opened that there would be a line of kids from all over the city that were trying to access that facility. I say that knowing that you already have other programs that give library cards to kids. Can you describe that and whether you're able to leverage this huge expenditure of both time and resources to help leverage some of the campaigns that you're otherwise trying to run? >> We have a very active outreach program and that was thanks to some additional funding that was provided to us from the city council. And that group of outreach -- that outreach team, their primary goal is to go and reach people who, in particular youth, who don't come to the Austin public library. And as I mentioned, we are going to have this bike mobile which we planning to take to all kinds of events and just be in the neighborhoods, and we're going to be very selective about where we choose to go. And again, that's partly to get cards in the hands of youth and adults. We are also looking at -- in fact, in progress to add a book mobile to our stable of vehicles, speaking of vehicles this morning, which a lot of citizens have a very nostalgic feel about and really want. [1:28:40 PM] And it will enable us to reach areas that we don't have a library, that people can't get to the library. It will also provide us an opportunity to provide service as we close all these facilities that we're renovating so we'll be able to give them intermittent service. >> Mayor Adler: I think all these things are good and you need to keep doing those. I'm not suggesting to take you off task, but you also have a very unique tool that you will only have once in the lifetime of our community, and I urge you to figure out how -- those programs, we would be doing whether we were opening a new library or not. To leverage this incredibly exciting moment for whatever it could do to enhance or push or make just that more special, use this one-time tool. And then my last question is I don't understand the -- help me with -- I was looking at the '14 and '15 estimated and the '16 projected Numbers on things like circulation and the increases that we see seem to be, you know, in some respects on accord with what we've seen in terms of historical Numbers. We're not expecting this opening of the city library to give us an unusual bump. >> Absolutely. Won't be opening the doors until next fiscal year, November. We will be giving it a little bit of a bump, but I think you will really see it explode the following year. >> Never mind. That was a silly question, I apologize. >> Ms. Branch, thanks for being here today and I'm excited about the new library opening too. I think it will be a real celebration for our community. I have a question for you about the amount of money that you are requesting for materials and expansion of the collection. I think it's 108,000. [1:30:40 PM] Is that right? >> It's an inflationary amount of money that we've asked for every year just to keep us where we are so we don't lose ground. >> Pool: So my question goes to not losing ground, but I would like to see some Numbers for how much you really need. >> Well, we, our goal has been all along to get to the average of our peer libraries for materials, expenditures. We are at 343 per capita. The average is 871 per capita. That would be about $4 million. It would have to be in -- put into our base budget if we were to do that. The. >> So I think what I'll do is I'll submit a q&a to ask staff to look at a program that would more specifically identify the categories like how much of it is E books, how much of it is periodicals, how much of it is hard cover, soft cover and, you know, in a different classifications for juvenile versus adult. And see if we can't devise a plan to get our library more in line with peer cities on our spending for our collection. I know that -- that with the advent of E books that prices have changed significantly and -- and I think it would be a good test of our -- of our vision to see if we can't make more -- more obvious progress toward a larger collection budget than what we -- than what we've had in the past. The library is a significant community asset. And I would like us to put our money where our mouth is on that. >> We do have that break down for you. We'll get it to you. >> Thank you. You might send it to everyone. >> Oh, yeah, absolutely. >> Pool: And it has a breakdown in the different branch libraries for the types of books that you are sending in that direction? >> I'm not sure about that. I know that we have it broken down system-wide, I don't know if we can or not, but if we can we will get those to you. [1:32:48 PM] >> Pool: That would be really helpful. >> Garza: I have a couple of questions. You said there's going to be extra rooms for I guess community -- community groups to have meetings. Are those reserved on a -- is there a fee involved in -- >> No fee for the meeting rooms. There's 12 of them. They are various sizes from a small one like a small group study of three up to I think 12 will fit in the big ones. No, that's not right. Is that right? >> 12. >> 12. >> No fees for those. There will be fees for special events if you want to, for example, have a wedding in the rooftop garden, which I should have mentioned when I was bragging about the building. Some of the special places we will have fees for those for special events. But not for you're just coming to a -- not if you're just coming to a library event. >> Pool: I just have a little concern about you mentioned there was an auditorium and this rooftop garden. And everybody is going to want to have their event at the new, pretty facility and we already have facilities like the Mexican American cultural center and the carver library that have auditoriums. I feel like we're kind of pulling events away from already existing spaces. So I just, I mean, maybe that's something -- obviously the library has been planned but, you know, I have a little concern about pulling events and I don't know if there's a way to structure, you know, try these places first when people ask because everybody is going to want to have their event, we have places like I said the mac that things aren't happening there, people are asking to justify their existence. Like we keep building all of these nicer, newer places, that's why it's hard to get events there. >> Let me address that. We do hand out a list to our customers when they are reserving rooms or the biggest problem is we don't have nearly enough meeting spaces across the city to accommodate the need. [1:34:50 PM] I don't know about the other venues, but in the library. And so we have to turn a lot of people away. And so we give them a list and we say here's a list, comprehensive list of every meeting area in the city. And hopefully, I don't think we're going to be able to meet our own demand. >> Okay. >> So I think we'll be happy to continue that practice of sending people elsewhere. >> Garza: All right. Then I had a question about some of this new staff. Will some of them be required to be bilingual? >> Every single public service position we advertise for we prefer bilingual. We can't hire enough bilingual people. That's a priority for us. >> Garza: Okay. >> In fact most of our support positions as well. >> I'm curious about, a q&a about visits, how are the visits counted. >> There's an electronic door counter. >> Okay. >> It counts everyone who leaves and everyone who enters and we divide it by two. >> Last question. What's the parking? Is there going to be a parking garage. >> There is, 250 autos will fit there. We also, by the way, will have a bike corral. >> 50? >> 200 bikes. We're working through the details now. I don't know, will it be part of the parking enterprise? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> [Indiscernible]. >> No, no. So we're working through the details right now. We don't know whether we'll give the first hour free or how that will work, we're working through that now. >> I'm sorry, one more question. Because the southeast library in my district is going to close for six months, as part of this budget, is there going to be money allocated to a possible temporary facility or -- >> That's what I was just mentioning. When we get this book mobile we're accelerating that process so we can have that availability for the community when we close that branch. [1:36:52 PM] >> Garza: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, Ms. Troxclair and then Ms. Houston. >> Troxclair: What are -- I know we have talked already a little bit about the 48 new positions. When would you anticipate that you would need to hire some of those positions as we're going through the transition of opening the library? >> The building will be available to us in the spring of 2016. And we -- it's a very complicated building. So the first positions we'll get will be in may. Those positions what we will need to train on the systems. One of them is -- one of the positions that we'll get in may is the events coordinator who will begin representing out or I'm sorry scheduling the various venues that are available in the building. Then in June, we have one position coming on board, I think that's the -- let me see if I've got that. The security - - there it is. The security guard lead. Because that person also needs to begin creating sop's, standard operating procedures for the building for the security staff. Then in July we have five positions coming on board and those are maintenance workers, hvac mechanic and video engineers, setting up our systems, getting familiar with them, learning how to operate and maintain them. Then in August the majority of the rest of the staff comes on board because they need to be trained and ready to go by November. >> So then the funding for the new positions, are those are you receiving funding beginning at the start of the fiscal year? >> No, we. How did we do that? When they come on board? >> We did the same way except the nine month deal, except taking into account they have 48 positions that will come on staggered throughout the year, then we back out a budget savings amount, a negative value. [1:39:00 PM] >> Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you and thank you all for being here this afternoon. I had a couple of questions about do you -- is there any way to capture where people are coming from who are using the central library? Which parts of town they are coming from? Which districts they are coming from? And how do you do that? >> There's a report that we can run by zip code, I believe. Which will tell us that. And oh, okay. And she just happens to have it here. These are the number of items that are checked out belonging to the central library. So in your district, 2,740 items were checked out. And councilmember kitchen is 9,000 items were checked out from central. So we can tell who -- which districts the materials are being checked out from central. >> Houston: Could you share that with me? I don't know whether anybody else would like it, but would you share that with us, please? >> Another thing that's kind of interesting is we also look at where the holds are being placed, 158,000 holds a month are being placed from -- from the -- 172,000, that's not a month. That's three months, right? In a three-month period, 173,000 items that are at central had holds placed on them by district and I can give you that information as well. >> Houston: That would be helpful. Then the other thing that I would like to ask is because we have so woefully lacking services for people who call the streets of Austin home, they use our libraries. >> Very much so. >> What kinds of processes do you have in place to either have all of these new staff and current staff be trained on how to deal with people who have problems, behavioral health issues or substance abuse issues and are using our library? [1:41:08 PM] >> We have regular ongoing training that every employee goes through. >> Houston: Training by whom? >> By I think cpi institute is one of them. The mental health -- I don't remember the name of it, the organization, do you? >> [Indiscernible]. >> What's the mental health one? >> It's (indiscernible) Travis county integral care. >> It's the Austin Travis county integral care, atcic, which is Dave Evans' group. The same folks -- >> Houston: Some security -- >> Security is trained. But so is all of our staff. >> Houston: Okay. >> In addition to that, we have a handout that we give to -- to people, for example, if they -- if they -- if they need clothes or if they need food or if they need housing, if in the communication they indicate that. We have a handout that we give them that tells them where they can go for social service needs. And we are also, we've been going after grants, trying to find a grant that would -- that would possibly give us a -- an onsite social worker. I don't think we've actually gotten one, but we've tried. >> Houston: One of the things that might be interesting, do you give people handouts about expectations? >> Oh, yes, yes. >> Houston: So everybody gets a sheet that says this is the way you care for our library? >> And actually the homeless care very much about being able to use the library. They follow our policies. >> Houston: Good. Then one last question, you said that most of the staff were bilingual. But -- not most of them, but you preference -- your preference is by lingual. I just want to remind you that we have many spell who are just not Spanish speakers, speakers of Vietnamese and so I just want to make sure that we're -- as their population increases, we've -- we also have to try to be more -- more aware of the fact that some people may come in and speak another language besides English and Spanish. [1:43:20 PM] >> Absolutely. >> Okay. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen? Oh -- >> Go ahead. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: I wanted to follow-up on the question that was asked earlier that councilmember. Troxclair asked about the cost of the new staff and when they start. Just a clarification. So I think it was said or I think you said that the budget reflects when they start. So does that mean, am I understanding correctly, does that mean if the first position was in may, then the budget reflects what? May through September for that particular position and on for all of the rest? Okay. So the -- related to that, what about the benefits? Like the health benefits in particular? So does the budget just reflect those times two or is there an amount reserved for the whole year? >> The way we do our health benefits is to do it on a per authorized position, so even if the position is vacant, we still budget for those health benefit costs and then at the end of the year, if the position has been vacant, the full amount of that still gets swept into our employee benefits fund. >> Kitchen: So, in other words, even though these don't start in may, the -- the October through may, you've still got a cost in your budget for health insurance for these folks. >> That's right. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> But just to be clear, if we were to not do it that way, if we were to take -- if we were to pro rate it, for example, that would just mean that we would need more money -- we're not overcollecting, we're basing amount that we're collecting by taking the total dollar amount and essentially divided it by the number of positions that we have authorized in the budget. So if I'm -- >> Kitchen: But you don't have any costs for those individuals during that first part of the year. >> That's right. But the fund itself has a certain level of costs that it needs to cover and we're spreading that cost out over all, say, 13,000 positions, if we wanted to not spread it over the positions that are going to be vacant for the preponderance of the year, we would have to then spread more to the other positions that are full, that are going to be open for the full year. [1:45:41 PM] >> Kitchen: Well, but you're not -- we can talk about this further, but if I'm understanding correctly, you're not charging the employees, so -- so I'm just trying to think through how that works out. So wouldn't there be money left over? Because you're -- if this requires a longer conversation, I don't want to hold everybody else up with it. But it just seems curious to me that -- that that's -- for that period of time, that individual is not needing those services. So -- but we're putting it in the budget. >> We are. We are. Maybe an example, so if we had -- just to use real simple Numbers, if we had $100, if that's what our actuarial estimates were that for the number of employees that we have and for the experience that we're anticipating, if we needed $100 to flow into the employee benefits fund to meet those actuarial expectations and let's say we only had 10 positions, that would be $10 per position, then we would budget $10 per position even if only nine of those were filled and one wasn't filled. We would still say we need $10 per position because we need that money to flow into the fund. So we need that money to flow into the fund whether there's nine or 10 positions. If we were to say, well, let's do it a different way. Let's just allocate that $100 to the nine positions we actually have filled, not for the one that's vacant, then we would say we need $11 per filled positions. But the amount that needs to flow into the fund is what it is, historically we have chosen to allocate that dollar amount to all positions in the budget. >> Kitchen: Okay. Well then it goes back to determining the amount that's needed in the fund. So because the amount that's needed in the fund is based on how many active positions we have, is it not? >> It is. Estimates of how many active positions there will be next year, which, you know, takes into account the positions that we're adding. [1:47:44 PM] >> Kitchen: Okay. So the positions that start in may for purposes of the total dollar amount that needs to go into the fund, you're not counting the time before they're hired. >> That's right, we're not. >> Kitchen: We're not, okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Troxclair? >> How many did you say that we were going to be hiring in may? I just missed that number. >> Three. >> Troxclair: Three. Okay. Do you -- I'm sure you have it somewhere, but do you have just a breakdown of all of the different positions and the salaries and the costs for them? Because I'm just having trouble, I'm trying to do math over here and I'm wondering, because it sounds like the vast majority of the positions, about 40 of them, aren't going to item no. Hired until August, which is only two months. So I'm having trouble just visualizing how we're spending, you know, $1.1 million for just two months for those people. So I think it would help. I hope that you understand [multiple voices], you know, from my constituents who are looking for cost of living relief, this department is one that we're seeing the highest number of new full-time positions, so I just need to have the information in order to pass that on to them. Thank you. I did have one more question much since you have it in front of you, can you just tell us which number of districts has the highest number of checkouts and which has the lowest number? >> [Indiscernible] >> Troxclair: Was it the two that you mentioned? >> This is items checked out -- for one month, councilmember kitchen's was first, councilmember gall O's was second. >> Would you just remind us the category. Items checked out from the central library. >> Items checked out from the central library by citizens in the district. Senate so they could be checking them out in person or through request from their branch? [1:49:48 PM] >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Then the holds filled from central library councilmember Gallo S was first, kitchen second, pool's was third. >> Could you tell us the lowest? >> Garza was the lowest. >> As a whole? >> Then items checked out by district, Garza. >> How many were checked out? >> Checked out -- [multiple voices] -- Total for three months ... Oh, you want just for each district? >> I was just -- >> For yours. >> I was curious about the highest and lowest. You told us the highest checked out was councilmember kitchen's district. >> That was 9,000 items checked out from central and then the lowest is 1,200 in Garza's district. >> Troxclair: Okay, thank you. >> [Indiscernible]. >> When you are looking at the number of positionsance to one of the questions, I think it was councilmember troxclair's, could you also give the salary those folks are coming in on. I think while there may be a chunk of folks being hired because we have an entirely new building here, my guess is that their salaries are going to be at a lower level than, for example, the firefighters that we'll be hiring. For, I mean, there's reasons for that. But I also would like to see the dollar figures from the salaries. >> Absolutely. That's available. >> Okay. Great, thanks. >> Mr. Renteria? >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. The question that I have, what's going to happen to the old library that we are moving out of? >> That's a great question. A lot of people ask that. It's going to be an expansion building for the Austin history center. They've been out of space officially for over 10 years. [1:51:50 PM] And have stopped basically taking collections and so they will renovate that building and use it, they'll immediately move in and start using it because they desperately need the space and then over time they'll renovate it. >> Renteria: Are you going to need some new positions on that one? >> There's a council resolution by the way. >> Renteria: Okay. Are you budgeting for new employees for that operation? >> No. >> None? >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: Thanks very much for the information. I would like to get back just for a minute to the temporary location discussion that councilmember Garza raised. Can you remind me, was Millwood library where they were undergoing a pretty lengthy preservation and the city did secure temporary space? >> It's actually their meeting room. It's because of the work that needs to be done they were able to, jack can probably speak to this much better than I can, they are able to segregate the meeting room space and work on that last. So it will eventually go away because they have to do that work. >> Tovo: So they don't have a temporary location for their collections? I mean there's -- in that area they are -- >> No. It really is -- >> Tovo: There's not a store front (indiscernible). >> Really, all that we can do is let them place holds, a computer where they can look up the collection, place holds, pick up their holds, really that's pretty much it. >> I can actually add a little bit. Because I went to a couple of stakeholders meetings that he was at. The neighborhood was insistent that the library remain open for as long as possible. So staff come up with a fairly innovative solution which was to create what they were calling a pocket library which was to turn the meeting room into a small library in between and you stocked it with an assortment, primarily, I guess juvenile literature mainly. [1:53:52 PM] >> Pretty much what we had there. >> It was clear during those meetings to the residents in the area that they also had access to -- was it the -- >> Old quarry branch, which isn't immediately adjacent but near enough. So our library staff were able to point to other libraries that folks could go to. Toward the end it's all going to close down so reshelving can occur. But that library was able to make that where Millwood would be closed entirely really a short of a span as possible. >> Now that's not always going to be possible. I just want to make sure that the people in southeast for example don't think that that may be possible because depending on the work, I don't know if you want to say anymore. >> It depends on the nature of the work. At southeast we are -- we're going to be -- am I live? At southeast we have a fairly extensive civil engineering project, so it's not going to be safe for anybody to get close to the building. But at Millwood it was much more of an interior renovation so we were able to do it in two phases, keep the meeting room open while we tore up everything else and put it back together. So it works in some cases. It won't work in all. We're thinking the book mobile is really going to be a saving grace for us and besides that, it's kind of a -- it's kind of a fun way to get your library services. At least for a little while. >> Tovo: Thank you, that answered the second part of my question, which was really had you considered that model or a model of a temporary facility for the library in the southeast that was going to be closed. One other question that I've had from time to time, the -- I notice that some of our recreational facilities have book collections, the one I'm most familiar with is the asian-american resource center. They have a small library on the premises with a really lovely small collection, but they have no checkout services available. [1:55:58 PM] So you have to really look at those books on site. I wondered if there are any plans in the works to work with that facility and any others like it, if there are equivalent facilities across the city, to enable them to set up a small system that would link into our public library. I'm just asking this as a consumer. I have no idea whether that would be something that would be of interest to the asian-american resource center, just crossed my mind as I've looked at their collection. >> Absolutely, we would be open to it. >> Tovo: That's very interesting. As I said, I'm just asking as a consumer. Also as a consumer, I want to add my great thanks, you know, as councilmember pool's questions asserted I think or got to our libraries are not funded at the level some other libraries are in other parts of the country. I'm always amazed when I go into our libraries how vibrant they are. I had the opportunity to checkbooks off from two branch libraries this year, neither in district 9 but in some of y'all's districts. The program offerings are always interesting. I was really delighted to see there was adult program offerings that were new that I hadn't seen before, the children's offerings and the youth programs are really interesting and, you know, despite the fact that I know that they have a hard job and work with customers all day long, the librarians are always so tremendously helpful to youth and adults and we have a really good collection. So thank you for making such great use of the really limited taxpayer resources that we provide to you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: I just wanted to follow-up again, not to belabor. I'm just wanting to make sure that I'm understanding how the health coverage is factored in. Because I think it may go back to councilmember troxclair's question about the cost here. The 1.1 million that's for the 48 new positions, is that only for the salary or does that include benefits? [1:57:58 PM] >> It includes benefits. >> Okay. So with the way that, I'm not suggesting this is not the way to do it. I'm just trying to understand. With the cost of benefits like health insurance, those are allocated, right, by departments? So when departments have a budget, they have a dollar amount in there for health insurance and it's under their budget. Is that right? >> For employee based, uh-huh. >> Kitchen: Yeah. Okay. So the way that as you described just a minutes ago, the way that we allocate, essentially the cost for allocated across everybody, so every department pays the same amount per fte, so in a case like this where the ftes are not yet -- they don't start until may, this department still has a cost that's -- that's a 12-month cost. So they are paying a share of the 12-month cost. They are not paying the share of just for their ftes during the time period that they're employed. So I just want to understand that. So what that has the effect of doing, on the one hand it spreads out the health insurance costs across all departments. But it's one way, it's -- it's maybe different than other approaches in that the -- the allocation is not specific to that department. It's -- it's spread out across the whole. Okay. I just want to make sure that I understood the impact. Okay. Thank you.. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Did you want to speak to that matter? >> Ott: So I do know in some cases because it takes time to hire people, we don't always necessarily budget for a full budget cycle and I don't know whether or not in terms of the new position request for the library whether or not we took that into account or -- I just don't recollect. Maybe someone can remind me. >> We do take it into account for wages, fica, wages and social security insurance, medicare, retirement benefits, we take that all into account, but the health insurance costs get allocated out on a per-position basis. [2:00:10 PM] So those dollars need to be swept into the employees benefit fund whether the position is filled or not. I think some of that is just due to the practical basis of trying to adjust what those payments are to the benefits in a pay period per pay period basis. It may be that actuarially this is the amount of money that needs to flow into the fund. We allocate out per authorized positions and then it gets transferred. It's a transfer amount that gets done. >> And that would have to do with the self-funded characteristics of our health plan as well, correct? >> Yes. >> But that would be a distinction from other things associated with compensation, for example, wages, for example, correct? >> Kitchen: It's just a method of allocation. If I'm understanding correctly it's just a method of allocation. It's not a difference in your total funds, it's just how you're allocating them across departments. >> That's right. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Gallo: Thank you for being here. I've got a question. Will the new main library be open -- what will be the hours? >> 10:00 until -- Monday through Thursday 10:00 to 9:00. We're restoring the hour in the morning and the evening that we cut. Saturday -- Friday 10:00 to 6:00. Saturday 10:00 to 6:00. And Sunday 12:00 to 6:00. Is that correct? >> Gallo: Thank you. So the neighborhood libraries will have the same hours? >> Yeah. >> Gallo: So all of the neighborhood libraries will be open everyday? >> Remember, we're closed Fridays from 10:00 to 1:00. And the restoration for that -- those three hours will be in next year's budget, not this year's. >> Gallo: Okay. So other than that three-hour time period, the neighborhood libraries are open everyday of the week, the same hours as the main library? [2:02:16 PM] >> I'm sorry, Sundays -- no, not on Sundays. Sundays only the regions, there's four of them, are open from 12 toke o'clock to 6:00 -- 2:00 to 6:00. >> Gallo: The regional ones are. So how many neighborhood libraries does that leave not open on Sundays? >> 16. >> Gallo: So could you help me with the thought process of -- it just seems like when in the neighborhoods when families are not working and children are out of school that those would be really prime days for the libraries to be okay. Can you help me understand kind of the thought process of closing the 16 neighborhood libraries on Sundays? >> We've never had Sunday hours in the branches. I've been here almost 40 years and throughout that time we've never had it. So it would have been an unmet need that we would have had to consciously ask for. And we've not had a lot of demand for it. >> Gallo: And how would you -- I'm just curious. It seems like I know as -- as stores have moved to being open on Sunday when they never were, there really seems like there is a demand for that. I'm just curious how we would ask and how we would find out, and if there is -- if the budget is not there to be open on Sunday, then it may -- I'm wondering how the conversation would work to say, you know, how would the neighborhood community feel if we were closed on Monday, but open on Sunday instead? Just because we haven't done it, I just wonder whether that question should be asked so that we're encouraging people to stay in their neighborhoods and have the resources available rather than have to go further away to get to a facility? >> Sure. I can tell you that we operate based on community need and demand request. And if that's something that we had heard typically, we probably would have offered that as an unmet need or as an option. [2:04:16 PM] I can tell you over the years I've done many, many surveys, and if you ask the community they would like you to be open from 7:00 in the morning until midnight. They basically -- if you say would you come to the library if we were open on Sunday, they will all say yes. So it's tricky, but I'm open to it. If that's what the community wants, I'm happy to do it either way. Either giving up one day to give them Sunday or part of a day or unmet need sometime in the future. >> Gallo: What do other cities do? >> I think it's all over the place. Empty have Sunday hours, some -- some have Sunday hours, some do not. >> Gallo: Okay, thank you. >> Casar: Mayor, before I forget because of the mayor's comment about enrolling people with library cards I'll just mention very briefly that I know that aid students have an opportunity to sign up for library cards, but if there's ever a conversation in your own department will automatically signing kids up that I think you would probably find a lot of support here on council if you ever need that support. >> Thank you. >> Garza: I have a question about programs. How are -- I notice that -- does it depend on like the facility or need? Because my southeast library has the highest amount of programs, even higher than the central library. How do y'all determine what program would be at a library? >> Based on communicated demand. And we try programs out everywhere. And some places this program doesn't -- nobody comes to it, but then you try it somewhere else and a lot of people come. So it's trial and demand primarily. >> Garza: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. Could you tell me the four regional libraries, please. >> Little walnut, manchaca, Ruiz and Yarborough. [2:06:19 PM] >> Houston: Where? >> Yarborough. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Pool: Mayor, I might have the last question. I just wanted to point out that our libraries are a haven for people. Sometimes they view it as a place to go to just kind of get back in touch with themselves. And the fact that it's a place where a lot of our homeless folks go kind of indicates that it's very open and encompassing and welcoming. And that's just kind of also another way to show how much the community values our libraries. And if I could be queen of the budget for a day, I would make it possible for the libraries to be open super long hours and have just a huge array of materials for checkout or reading on site because literacy is -- literacy programs are really important at the library, and just being around books has a real settling effect on people. I don't know what it is, but I know I always feel more quiet and composed in a room full of books. Thanks for all you do. >> Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. We're picking up speed a little bit, not a lot. [Laughter]. Mr. Van eenoo. >> We'll keep the ball rolling with health and human services, who are coming to the podium now. >> >> Good afternoon. I'm Shannon Jones, director of health and human services for the city of austin- travis county. [2:08:21 PM] And I have the opportunity joining me here today are sis sent director for community services, Ms. Stephanie Heyden, Dr. Rose more real low, and joining me is Kimberly Maddox, our chief financial officer. I was going to start off by thanking you for wishing you a good morning, but now it's good afternoon. So good afternoon. [Laughter]. With that said I'd like to start off by talking about public health versus health care because a lot of times in our community we are confused. And I'd like to emphasize that public health is that preventive part versus health care, which is delivery part. Even though there are delivery parts in public health, our focus is prevention. I think the best way to say this is if we look at what the former surgeon general C Everett Koop would say, and remind you that health care is vital to all of us some of the time, but public health is vital to all of us all of the time. We are engaged in the preventive efforts to ensure that our society's health needs are addressed so public health plays a significant role in terms of what we do. When we look at our mission, our mission in public health is to promote healthy communities that enable people to reach their fullest potential. We do this in three ways. First, we promote. And by promote, we promote community-wide wellness, preparedness and self-sufficiency. So we do it on both the health and social service sides. Secondly, we prevent illness and disease. And therefore we are out there on the front rows looking at disease, preventing them and try to prevent them from impacting our society and our community. And thirdly, we protect the community from infectious disease, environmental hazards and epidemics. [2:10:25 PM] So we have a detective role in addition to the health promotion role. I think that's important as we go through our budget presentation to understand the unique roles that public health and health and human services play. I'd like to highlight some of our accomplishments this year because we feel quite proud of those. The first one is as part of the federal government waiver program we were made available from the federal, state and local governments to transform our health delivery system here. So through the 1115 waiver, which the federal government made available, we were able to incentivize resources. As a result of that, we were able to leverage $2.7 million of city revenue to draw down from the federal government six million dollars to be tablable to provide services. So through the efforts of our -- this waiver, we're able to enhance and increase the level of service we provide in the community. The second accomplishment: The department submitted our official application for accreditation. And this is to the public health accreditation board, and we did that in April. If selected and if accredited, and we look quite positive we're on target to do that, we'll be probably one of the second or third health departments in the entire state to be an accredited department and that's something we're quite proud of. We've been working at this for some time. And also an anecdote, we're the only one in Texas with the public health accreditation in the nation, so when we look at what comes down in terms of expectation those are the things that we expected develop. The third accomplishment is city council per your direction approved a resolution focusing on health equity and economic equality. Per your guidance we worked with the community to develop a series of recommendations to bring forth to the council to begin to address this issue of health inequity in our community. [2:12:27 PM] Two parts of it. One was to look at health inequities, which we've sent to you a copy and we have copies for you here to share with you, which also shows a profile of our community and the data, but we also partner with the community in coming back with recommendations for your consideration to address. The second part is a bigger piece. And that is looking at what it is and what it takes to look at the social determinants, things beyond just health and health care, but poverty, education, access to job opportunities and the like. And so that's going to take a longer period of time and that report will come back next year as part of the budget process. Part of that to develop a tool, an equity tool that can be used as the budget process to address health equity. I'd like to talk a little bit about our performance measures. For the first time in every a decade, we're quite proud to indicate that we're on target to reach our 2.0 restaurant inspection. This is a benchmark expectation of health departments. And we're quite proud of that because we've been working towards that effort. And as a result of resources made available, we believe this year we'll be able to accomplish that. That's very important that as you go to your restaurants to eat you will be comforted in knowing that the food you eat and the place you eat has been inspected in an appropriate way. Whether you send on for you food or eat it at the restaurant that someone is making that and making an effective way to make sure the sanitation systems are in place and the food is healthy. The second one is our social service partners and ourselves. We're going to emphasize this. 75% of the clients that we see, that we case manage ourselves are placed in housing. Now, that's not of all of the homeless population, but 75% of those that we see we're happy to be able to say we are able to place in housing. [2:14:37 PM] Having said that and despite that success, that's only 30%. So that means 70% of the population that's homeless is still out there without those resources. And it is important in a city like Austin for us to begin to look at and enhance our ability to do that, but we're quite proud of the accomplishment of those that we do see that we're seeing -- we are placing them -- we are case managing them through housing. And then thirdly, we'd like to emphasize our anticipated vaccinating an additional 1,000 children as part of our shots for tots program. It's important as we work with our partners as the resources become less and less that we can pick up those. Through the efforts of the independent school districts who are not able to step up to the plate we are able to address those issues. Let's talk a little bit about our use of funds. Our department is a very diverse department, unlike many of the departments we have a variety of different areas we focus in on. We do service provision, we talk about HIV, STD. We talk about those services. We provide those services. But in addition we contract services, we contract with social service providers, we contact with other providers to provide a variety of services. And thirdly, we serve particularly a regulatory function. We are responsible for inspecting restaurants, day cares and others. So as you look at our use of services you see across the board the proposed budget for fy16 is $72.2 million. Of that amount, 55.6 million, is supported by the general fund. 28% of that 22.2 million is grant funded so we're depending almost a third of our budget on the federal state resources. And two percent or 1.3 is derived from expense refunds. [2:16:38 PM] When we look at those in terms of our department the largest portion, 30.7 million funds goes to social service contracts which includes a variety of community services. Including homeless, basic needs, behavioral health and youth and children services. The next largest piece is in the area of service provision, so disease, prevention and health promotion where the department funds community immunizations, tuberculosis elimination, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, the division also promotes its mission to its core public health functions of epidemiology and disease intervention. We have the detectives out there on the frontline on cases such as ebola, measles, bumps, rubella. We are the folks who are out there doing that on a daily basis. And it's important -- that's an important part in terms of the public health role. Thirdly the maternal child and adolescent health is the third largest program in our area. Funding programs such as youth employment, women and infant children's health program, the W.I.C. Program which you're most familiar with, pregnancy prevention and grafitti abatement. And then of course environmental health. We've talked about the regulatory functions, which provides for the inspections of fixed food establishments mobile food vendors and procedures other regulatory functions that totals roughly in the neighborhood of 1.5 million. And last but not least is our community services programs, which we provide for HIV resources, we oversee the contracts for Ryan white to provide services for those who are hiv-positive. Also our African-American quality of life initiative is part of this division as well. Our neighborhood centers which we have throughout the city of Austin are part of this and our contract management which oversees those contracts we talked about earlier. [2:18:44 PM] And that division is roughly 4.5 million. As we look at our budget highlight particularly we're very grateful for the opportunity as we look forward to next year of converting five grant funded chronic disease prevention funds to general fund. And as I said earlier, those funding are depending on the whims of the federal and state government. Here is an example where we're able to use general fund to sustain a very critical program that makes a difference in our community. Our chronic disease programs focuses on education and prevention of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and the like. And so this helps us a long ways in beginning to address those issues. Financial assistance and case management for low income residents. This is the opportunity to provide funding for rental assistance to ensure those individuals who would be without have some assistance in those areas. You've heard a lot about one stop shop, I'm sure. And so here's an opportunity for the health department which plays a particular role particularly in terms of the inspection to provide full time staff to manage and operate those services at one stop. And then two security guards at our neighborhood centers. Most of you are familiar that our centers are located in high risk areas. And particularly those in the south and in the north. So these security guards will give us the opportunity to some level of security for our staff, our client and the community in which they service. When we look at our capital highlights in terms of budget, appropriated 2.6 million and our spending plan is to do just that. So let's look at some of the key areas we're focusing in on. Our campus itself, the Bettie Dunkerley infrastructure improvements. So we're talking about, and you heard earlier from animal services officer, the new kennels there on the campus. But in addition to that, associated parking for that as well as the health and human services campuses. [2:20:49 PM] >> Tovo: I apologize, but we have a question from councilmember kitchen about the information you just presented. [Lapse in audio]. >> >> Kitchen: On the revenues I didn't understand. On the 1115 waivers, are they continuing. >> They are continuing right now. We hope that they will continue over time if that's the nature. >> Kitchen: My question is are they continuing in this next budget cycle? Are we still leveraging those? >> Yes. >> Pool: Question. Mr. Jones, we talked earlier about the health and equities report that you had sent around as a PDF. I know you were bringing some hard copies to my staff. Do you have -- >> I have some copies. I'll be happy to share with you. >> Pool: I think my colleagues would probably like copies of it as well. Thanks. Really appreciate you bringing them. >> On the capital highlights we were talking about the Bettie Dunkerley campus understood to the animal services impact we're also looking at the loop road for those who have had the opportunity to come to the campus building that capacity and fixing that road up for the expansion of the campus. The parking lots at our montopolis and far south center, those centers where we provide services in the community making sure that the adequate and safe parking in those areas. The women's and children's renovation expansion. You're familiar with the women and children's shelter we have. We're talking about renovating to increase capacity to be able to see more women in that facility, so that's built into that. And then the montopolis recreational and community center, this is a joint effort between us and pard to look at and address the design and structure of the new community center and building that includes functions for both departments in its effort. Our rates and revenue -- when we look at our rates and revenue highlights, our vital records increase over the next year the next year will be 200,000 plus for birth certificates. [2:22:57 PM] We anticipate an increase there. In environmental health, we anticipate an increase of 160,000 for fixed food establishment as part of our permitting process. But at the same time we do anticipate a decrease of roughly 420,000 due to fewer temporary food booth permits which resulted from the creation of the farmers markets permit. And this is the changing from the farmers markets fees and the rollback of the temporary fees with that. So these are the impacts that we will be facing however, overall hhsc anticipates a reduction in food permit which is from the offset of the increases from birth certificates for only $50,000. So that's sort of a quick overview of our department's budget. We stand available to answer and entertain any questions you may have about our department's budget. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: One question on the report that you passed out to us on the health and equities. I note that there are a number of recommendations in it with estimated initial cost. Are these included in the proposed budget? >> These recommendations are not in the proposed budgets? >> And if we were to -- if we wanted to pick up any of these particular recommendations, do the estimated initial annual costs that are indicated in the report, would that be an indication of dollars to add to your budget? Or I guess it would depend on the project? >> These would be additional adds on to the budget. They are not part of the current budget. So any parts of them would be an additional item. >> I'm just wondering if the dollar amount that's indicated next to the recommendation would be what we would be looking at in terms of additional dollars for that project. [2:25:00 PM] >> An annual, yes. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. >> Houston: Thank you for being here this afternoon. There was a council resolution last year that I think I got a copy of it from echo that it was a way to increase the amount of general avenue funding. Can you help me with that? And where are we in getting to that projected increase in funds for the health department, health and human services? And I didn't explain it very well. >> I understand what you were talking about. This was a resolution from the previous council. They passed a resolution that asked staff on an annual basis to report back on a number of benchmarking indices for health and human services and social services contracts. Essentially they wanted to know what it would cost to index the health and human services budget to account for population growth and they wanted to know what it would cost to index the social security social contracts budget -- the social service contacts budget by the cpi index. And those were over and above any built in cost drivers for wages and insurance. Those are additional benchmarks on top of that. And then there was a second be it resolved that talked about in addition to those two -- in addition to the built-in cost drivers, in addition to these metrics, these benchmarks, it established a goal of over the next three to five years increasing funding to those areas in the neighborhood of $28 million. So staff did that analysis, we provided a memo to council. I think it roughly came out to about a million dollars of additional needs for health and human services and social service contracts for those two indices. And then $5.7 million would be a five- year path to getting to this additional $20.87 million. [2:27:07 PM] This budget does include $740,000 of additional general fund support for the rental relocation assistance programs, which is something brand new. That will be a social service contract. And it does include I think in the neighborhood of 400 some thousand dollars of general fund commitment for positions that had previously been grant funded that Shannon already talked about. So, you know, in regards to that one-million-dollar aspect, I think that component of the resolution was met through those two items, the $5.7 million is not in this budget. That additional amount that was needed to get to a goal of 28 plus million dollars over five years is not in this budget. >> Houston: So we're not tracking very well for the long range plan. We made some short strides just because of the 750,000 for rental registration and for converting the grant positions to general fund. But those are -- to me those are in addition to, not in place of what the prior resolution asked for. So how do we track to make sure that we keep going up in getting the health department. Because the health department to me is even more critical than libraries. And we're trying to say in our peer cities, we're trying to get them up to a level where we're providing -- as we're growing so fast, we're trying to get them up to a level where we can be assured that the health and safety well-being of all our citizens is not being compromised. And what I'm hearing is that we're kind of falling behind on that, have fallen behind on that. So how do you suggest that we start incrementally moving up over the next five years? >> I think one thing would be that is if you saw my powerpoint presentation, that $6.7 million from that resolution is on that list of funding requests so it's currently on the list for council to consider as we go between now and adopting a budget on September 8th. [2:29:19 PM] And in future years staff will continue to report to council what those metrics are, what would need to be added to the health budget in order to continue to, you know, meet that goal over time. >> Pool: Mayor, I'm glad you talked about that 6.7 million because I looked at that and was wondering if that was the piece that responded to the council vote from last year. >> It is. That's the 6.7 I was just describing. A million dollars for >> So I guess that would be part of the work that we do here is decide if we're going to expand existing ones or fund them at current levels or have any new programs, I did just want to mention mention one of the interesting facts, health and human services about 2% of the total city budget. In comparison with our peer cities, Denver invests over $1.5 billion, shy of 10% ofits budget and San Antonio 6.6 of its budget, about 152 million. I can tell you about San Francisco and settle but that's enough for now. I read the resolution from the previous council, to me it read we're going to tie the cpa, the consumer price index, and that was -- that was to be used to increase existing social contracts, that says existing social service contracts. [2:31:34 PM] So I -- I'm concerned about saying the rental assistance program to me is a new program, that's not an existing one. It's important to increase funding to existing programs because their cost goes up every year. If we're giving the same amount to the same program. There was a budget question that I forgot. Somebody asked specifically about a certain program and it's the same amount we've been giving every year, but the people we've been able to serve in that program has gone down every year because the cost of providing that program has gone up. Getting our health and human services funding to where it's supposed to be is a really, really big priority of mine and so the question, you kind of got to it, was councilmember pool, how do we compare take other cities? Have you -- Mr. Jones, have you done comparisons to other cities? >> All cities are different as always. We do not have health care services, so we don't provide the primary care services as many of the cities that you indicated. Our costs obviously would not be at the same level. However, when you compare ourselves to other cities you have public health dollars. The percentage that goes from grants, our grant support is a little higher. When you look at particular cities in Dallas, I mean Texas, Dallas, Houston, Sanantonio to a degree. In terms of looking at just public health services we are a little -- the amount of money coming from grants, federal and state grants. The support of the public health system through grants is a little higher here compared to Houston and Dallas. >> Garza: Okay. I had a question -- thank you for the presentation that you gave to the health and human services committee last week. I think that's what you passed out. One of the statistics that was really shocking to me was the teen pregnancy Numbers here, especially to -- to teens under 14 that just broke my heart. Because it just sets, you know, you can get pregnant when you are under 14, that's a life changing thing. [2:33:40 PM] I just experienced that life changing thing, frankly. >> As a mature person. >> Garza: As a -- I won't say my age. [Laughter] >> We all know. [Laughter]. >> It's true. >> Garza: It's in the bulldog. Colorado, I just read an article in Colorado how they have funded like iud's and kind of birth control and that's like reduced teen pregnancy by like 40% and it's used abortions by like over 40%. Has there ever been the desire or the -- the thought to do something like that here? And what that would take and what it would cost to implement a program like that here? >> Well, a couple of things. One remind you that the clinical part of our services in Travis county, in the city of Austin and Travis county has been deferred to central health. To central health is the taxing authority responsible for providing health care in the community. Some of the procedures that you have mentioned like norplant or iud's or other kinds of patches to prevent teen pregnancy is a clinical procedure. The services are available, the question that is missing is the education piece, referral piece, counseling piece that's necessary to ensure, one, the parent, the children and others who are engaging in those practices understand that one that they are available how effective they are and to get them into service. That piece would be very beneficial from a public health model and those are the kinds of things that we could do with resources to focus in on that. As you've indicated, I think there was in the neighborhood of about 355 teens. Hispanic teens who were pregnant between the ages of think 17 to 18 years of age. Obviously, those are teens that with intervention could reduce those Numbers. >> Garza: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anyone else on this? Ms. Troxclair? >> Troxclair: I just want to make sure that I understand the Numbers that were quoted in that resolution because I saw the same Numbers and thought they were surprising but it sounds like because our budget or our health care our public health and health care services are set up differently in Austin it's not an apples and apples comparison to compare the person in diversity budget being spent on health and human services because the city doesn't directly provide health care, we do that through a separate texasing entity. [2:36:09 PM] >> We do not -- taxing entity. >> We do not provide primary care services, withdy provide public health services, that's correct. >> Troxclair: If we are looking at the Numbers outlined in that resolution, it doesn't sound like an apples to apples comparison. >> The resolution, we would have to identify those particularly, but I don't think that is apple to apple, that's correct. >> Troxclair: Thank you. >> Kitchen: This is a question I wouldn't expect you to be able to answer right now, but you did have a conversation just previously with the code department and they were proposing adding another position to help with what and to me to be social service types of activities. So I would just ask the -- ask your department to -- to talk about that. You know, maybe that's something for you, Mr. Lumbreras, to look at that. It appears to me that rather than fragmenting social service types of activities across different departments in the city, it might make more sense to approximate you the that expertise all in one place. So -- >> Councilmember, we'll be happy to take a look at it. The benefit of that is that it gives that position the ability to -- to expand based on the need in addressing additional clients. Because as you know, social workers work on a per client basis and a caseload. If there's ever an ability to add more clients within that person or within a slew of other social workers, which we currently do have in health and human services, we'll be happy to do that. But we'll be happy to work with code and take a look at that. >> It just makes sense. Also, people don't isolate themselves. So they end up having more than one social worker. And we end end up just fragmenting the services and spending more money than we need to to help that person. [2:38:15 PM] >> I did have the opportunity to speak briefly with Carl as he left. We do agree that the coordination as (indiscernible) Just indicated. I do want to emphasize they do somewhat different. We do more intense social service and social work in our departments where they do more of the high level or referral type of mechanism. But certainly the coordination effort is important in doing so. I just want you all to be aware that there's a difference in terms of the types of work we do. We do the one-on-one, the social, psychosocial aspect as well. They do more if you need services, this is where you need to go. I just wants to make sure that you are aware of that. >> I'm also thinking some of the agencies that we contract with do that type of referral service as opposed to the, you know, the more intense counseling that you may be talking about. Will so anyway just something for you all to examine because my -- overall I'm not -- not my role to tell you where the person should be. I'm just asking to keep in mind that I think it may not be the most efficient if we fragment those services. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: Yeah, I didn't have an opportunity to say before, but I appreciate councilmember kitchen your questions on that. There is a relocation plan that the code and other departments worked on and I'm going to go back and look at it because I don't recall there being a discussion about adding new staff, especially in code. I guess that I would agree with you that it seems like it's more appropriate in health and human services and that work was really envisioned as connecting with aid and all of the various partners. The apartment association, other groups that stepped up and said in the case of, you know, in the fortunately not terribly often, not terribly frequent circumstance where people have to be relocated from an entire complex, they would step in and assist with that. So I hope we can continue that conversation because I think it makes a lot of sense to me. [2:40:19 PM] On a similar note, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about graffiti abatement is in health and human services and not in code. >> When I first got here I asked that question myself. The goal is to ensure those youth are rid a training component as will W part of the youth development is to train these folks as well. Not just to have an activity that is done, train them to be responsible to have leadership to address their developmental activities. So here's the function that's we trained them to do, we give them employment, we help in terms of their social needs and provides wrap around services as part of the graffiti abatement program. Not just delivery of the graffiti abatement, but the support services for youth as well. >> Tovo: Thank you, that sounds vaguely familiar. I apologize, you've probably answered that question a half a dozen times and I probably heard the answer at least a couple of them. Thanks for reminding us what that program is. I just want to, I think that's my last question. I just want to also echo that I think it's really a high priority, regardless of whether -- how we're comparing ours to other cities, I think we've over the last couple of years had a lot of evidence from the social service providers in this city that there is a tremendous need that is not being met and I think we should look closer at our budget to see if there's a way to fund these needs at a higher level. I think we should all be creative to see about identifying some funds in our budget to increae those, that investment. That really important investment which isn't just an investment in these organizations and these programs, but I also see it as important to our other goals like public safety goals and other things when we're meeting these kinds of basic needs. >> Ms. Pool, then Ms. Houston. >> Pool: (Indiscernible). >> Mayor Adler: I have hands that go up, I have people that I need to be trained to look at the light. [2:42:25 PM] [Laughter]. (Indiscernible). >> I'm going to defer to Mr. Renteria, then I'll go after him. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, are you sure you don't want to go after Ms. Houston. Pio? >> Renteria: I just have a question. I have noticed in the past that you all have a sustainability fund that it's zeroed out. What is that? >> The sustainability fund is something that we -- that we transitioned away from over a couple of years. It's not in our current budget. These are dollars that used to get transferred as a percent of revenue from our Austin water utility and a couple other enterprises, I believe the transportation fund and drainage fund used to contribute to the sustainability fund as well. And then those dollars were used from neighborhood housing program, health and human services programs and we felt that given the nature of those services, given the nature of the neighborhood housing services, given the nature of health and human services, services, those things really made more sense to be funded out of the general fund as opposed to essentially being funded out of the water utility and other enterprise operations. So we've transitioned those fully into the general fund. We didn't make any reductions to any of those programs or services. We just moved the source of funding from the utilities into the general fund. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor, I've got two questions. One is I think that I heard you say that you are getting more revenues and fees from vital records. >> Correct. >> Than you are from this temporary food permits. Or did you -- >> Comparison, our (indiscernible) Records is up in our fixed food establishments are up. I didn't say we are getting necessarily more. >> Houston: Can you talk to me about the temporary food permits that I was trying to reference last time where they were going to go up and then we held them in abeyance, they stay at the same rate. [2:44:33 PM] Is there any need to look at increasing temporary food permits. >> I'm going to ask Kimberly to speak more specifically. But they are still where they were when they rolled back. So Kim if you want to speak to -- >> The revenue projection for '15 was based on those new higher fees, so rolling them back, that has not been addressed yet to whether they go back to the new fees or stay at the historical lower fees. We are probably seeing in the neighborhood of 2 to $300,000 in reduced revenue because the fees are lower than what we had originally projected. >> Houston: Thank you. Mr. Budget man. [Laughter]. >> Good thing that you have 10 heads turning your direction. >> Houston: Could we put that on the list to reinstitute -- >> That's what I was writing. [Laughter]. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool? >> Pool: So I would like to ask if staff would in fact do the apples to apples comparison so if indeed some of the health services are pulled out from our budget because integral care is taking care of them, if we could look at the Numbers to show our comparative position in spending with the cities that were listed in the resolution. It makes me think that this was a resolution from the previous council and they would have been clear that the moneys that are spent through integral care shouldn't also be included in this number for the city because it wouldn't be an exact comparison, but I would just like to make sure that the Numbers are updated if they're not accurate. >> Well, let me hasten to say I said primary care, not integral care. [2:46:39 PM] That would be functions provided by central health. >> Pool: I apologize I'm using the wrong term but back to what the conversation was that you said that some of these services that are done by San Antonio are done by our health care -- central health and not by the city. So if the Numbers that were in the resolution from last year aren't apples to apples comparison, if you could please separate out the additional costs that shouldn't be in there and then tell us if we're at 2.2% versus 9.7 or 6.6. >> Yes, we can do that. I'm going to ask Stephanie (indiscernible) Our assistant director to talk a little bit about the resolution, because she worked with the group in developing that. Assisting them. >> So when we worked on the resolution we did research on peer cities. When we made the presentation, we did basically state that there were several differences in the composition of those health departments. Some of them are health and human services departments. Some of those are health departments. Some of them receive like the health department here, federal and local state funds. In addition to that information, we provided, we also shared that some of those states have like California has first five, which is the tobacco levy where they are able to use those monies towards education. So we've laid out that there are different taxing scenarios that are happening in those areas and we provided all of that information during the presentation. [2:48:39 PM] But we would be glad to, you know, pull that together so we can provide it to you in that detail that was provided before. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor, it came back to me. Social service contracts. We didn't talk much about those. With parkland and other events in Austin, we talk about legacy events. Based on the information that I have reviewed we talk about legacy social service contracts going to almost as old as I am, we've been funding for them. Can you tell me, has there ever been -- that's one piece of that. The other piece, there appears to be a lot of duplication. Has there ever been an effort to look at who we're funding, for how long, how many of those entities do we fund that are duplicate? So we give it to a and then a contracts with B, we also give something to B who contracts with C. Has there ever been an effort to look at that in a broader term so that we're making sure that we're only funding the gaps and not the primary care? If that makes any sense at all. >> Yeah, I'm going to let Stephanie speak to specifics, but one of the things that we do plan to do is to do more of an evaluative process of how we not only contract our services, but services that we do provide ourselves. I think there is an opportunity for us to evaluate the service that's we provide. The duplication that you talk about. Where the gaps are. And where there's the opportunity for synergy of effort and that we have not done and I think we need to -- we will be looking at doing that. But Stephanie can speak more specifically to what we have done in the past and how we got to where we are with that. >> During the last solicitation process, before -- before staff actually released the -- the request for application, staff worked with all of the funding providers to determine, you know, establish a relationship but determine what they were paying for and we were able to also go back to fy '99-2000, and look at 14 years worth of funding. [2:51:07 PM] And we provided that to the health and human services committee to take a look at the agencies that we could track as far as, you know, as far as 14 years worth of funding. During that time, we were able to determine that, you know, some agencies are funded by other partners besides the city of Austin. So that work is underway as Shannon has stated. >> Okay. Then another part of that is we provide a lot of supports to the Austin independent school district. But do we know how much and where those -- it seems like it comes from a variety of pots. And so do we have a way of saying this is how much dollars the city provides to the district or is it that we -- does anybody keep that altogether. >> For health or all services. >> Everything that we would do under a health and human services contract. >> So for health and human services, yes, ma'am. We do track those programs as well as where those services are being provided. In addition to knowing if there is one-time critical one-time funding versus ongoing funding. So, yes, ma'am, we do track that within health and human services. >> Houston: Okay. So when we have a one-time funding like we did last year for the district, do we put that in writing that this is one-time only? Because they've come back this and asked what it is plus additional money? >> Gallo: For the school districts? >> Houston: For the school districts. >> That was specifically identified by the previous council when the budget was adopted as one-time funding. >> Houston: So they understood that. >> The council? The school district? >> Houston: Did the district understand that was one-time funding? >> So in our contract with them, we let them know that this is a one-year contract with no renewal options. >> Houston: Okay, thank you. [2:53:10 PM] 1. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston, one comment with the question to legacy programs that are within the departments. One of the things that we've talked about, I think in this meeting, is the concept of having, as we have a full year to work on the budget, to take a look at the kind of departmental reviews. I think in some areas it's called a sunset review, doesn't have to be that at all. But just a way for us to pick a certain number of departments that we would familiarize ours with, maybe a third of the departments each year. Then every third year. But my hope is that -- we've asked the auditor to take a look at how the other cities are doing that, so we should be getting a report back. My hope is as a council we do something like that so that we're actually focusing on budget items, department wide, not just in the rush of the budget season, but we actually have a longer period of time to look at those things. >> And I appreciate that. Because I think this gives some of our funding partners some opportunity to start looking for grants as we begin to move forward. Because I'm not sure that historically we've asked things like demographic, what does your board look like demographically, what does your staff look like demographically, what do the volunteers look like demographically. That has to do with some -- not most but some of the social service contracts are being used in parts of the city where it's important that there is somebody there that looks, talks and has some kind of similar experiences that they do. And so those things are important when we look at who's providing the services. >> Mayor Adler: I understand. Anything further for this group? Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: Yeah, just with the -- with regard to the aid support that the council provided last year, I think it's important to note that they had lost a grant and so one of the -- they lost 21st century grant, right. And so the city stepped in with one-time funds to help those programs remain open, those after-school programs remain open through this fiscal year. [2:55:16 PM] So it was, I would say it was an ongoing need, but we only had one-time funds available. So at our last joint subcommittee meeting, there was a discussion about that assistance and whether the city and the county would consider providing, helping aid with that need and with also the need of parent-teacher support specialists, which again was another ongoing need that was funded through one-time funds last year because that's what we had available. We didn't have ongoing operational funds. I would just invite our assistant city manager, Mr. Lumbreras, to correct me if I'm misremembering that. >> No. You're exactly correct. Those were the two areas that they were -- that they have been asking and seeking funding beyond the one time. And I think those are items that were listed in the -- ed can correct me, there's that running list of items that council could consider along with some of the other things that we talked about should the council want to consider those. But you are correct that those were the two primary areas that were for one-time. >> Tovo: Thank you, I would say those are high priorities for me. Those are ongoing needs. I think there's tremendous value that -- that comes from those programs and so I will -- I will certainly be supporting the addition of those into our budget and I'm actively looking for -- to find funding so that we can accommodate those. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool. >> Pool: Thanks for bringing up the prime-time after school. I am supportive of continuing that funding as well. There's also the new high school youth leadership development program internships that I would like to also look at. I know that the staff might be looking at having the internships at the airport, I would expand that to the convention center. These are both areas where the moneys that are -- the enterprise areas, the money is raised by the airport, stay at the airport. [2:57:16 PM] If you could use some of that funding to pay for these internships for students if it's possible if they're doing work at the airport that might fit into the definition of how we can spend those monies, I would like to look at that and also for the convention center. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Although education is very high on my priorities, it comes to my attention that we're taxing the citizens of Austin by Austin independent school district, my bill was like 3,000 plus dollars this past year. And we're also property taxing them for the city. And the city is supporting that and maybe the city should consider filing a chapter -- is it 42? Robinhood complaint. Because the school district doesn't seem to be getting very far with it to be able to have some of that recapture money put back into aid because of how much we're spending and I -- as soon as we get that information, I'd like to know how much it is we're in fact supporting the district. It's not just that, but it's -- I've got some poor districts in my district, I mean, del valle and manor and pflugerville. So I think we need to look larger than yes, we all support education. Of course, most of the prime time programs were in my district and so I need to be thinking about that. But it's a larger picture than me, to me, is that we're taxing peopletwice. >> Mayor Adler: Not only do I want to be thinking bigger, but really creatively and innovatively, when we get through this budget process and we have a whole year to work, my hope is Mr. Van eenoo that we will look at some creative strategies. For example, as Ms. Houston mentioned, that would be a huge recapture on the last few pennies that the school district taxes its citizens. [2:59:19 PM] And it would be possible for the city to provide the same wraparound services that school districts provide that are not mainly education services, but the wraparound services. And if we worked out something with the school districts, plural, where they were to drop their tax rate by a certain amount and if we were to increase our tax rate by that corresponding amount so that it was again revenue neutral for the school districts, we would generate almost twice as much money because we would be taxing that and being able to -- the the money we raise for wraparound services, social services, wouldn't be subject to recapture, through theirs is. And I think there's precedent in this city. If you look back historically where we've done similar kinds of cooperative work with other taxing jurisdictions, the city and the county, so I hope that as soon as we get through this budget season and we have a full year as a new council to be really creative and stuff that we take a look at those kinds of strategies because I think they would be helpful for the taxpayers. Mr. Renteria? >> Renteria: And I agree with you because when del valle is paying more to their teachers than Austin ISD can afford to pay and we've gotten to that point where if we were to divide east Austin in half then we would qualify as a poor school district here in Austin. And people don't seem to understand that. We're really hurting and we have to come up with some creative way because I don't see the solution coming from the state. [3:01:19 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Further conversation? Ms. Pool and then Ms. Tovo? >> Pool: I think that aid is doing the best they can with the hand their being dealt, including trying to change the formulas and the indices that the state uses to determine how much money they collect. I think that one thing that the school district did earlier this year was ask us to pass an ordinance to allow them to ticket and fine people to speed past the school buses. That was done specifically to try to raise revenue for the school district. To the extent that I'm entirely supportive of helping aid, it's because my daughter went all the way from Kinder through high school at aid. I was neared a teacher. They do great work at our public schools here in Austin and it's not on them that the state is taking such a huge chunk of their revenue of our tax dollars and sending it to other parts of the state. And I do hope my suggesting for the youth leadership development program internships that we use funds that are raised at the airport or at the convention center that that would be crude viewed as a creative way to find the funds to pay for these students to earn some money, get a stipend while they learn the jobs. And it also feeds into the graduation and then they have a job when they graduate. So it's a huge helping hand. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Tovo, do you want to talk before we go to housing? >> I had a question. >> Mayor Adler: I recognized you first and then I'll come back to Ms. Garza. >> Tovo:isted to say I'm very supportive of looking at those tax exchanges and when we pick up some of those programs, are the taxpayers for the city of Austin are getting more from their money because it's not subject to recapture. [3:03:30 PM] So instead of paying it through their school taxes, they're paying it through their property taxes, but it goes further because Austin is not -- because Austin does send so much of it back to the state. But again I think there are a lot of other good reasons to support it, one of which is that the programs are really critical. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Garza? >> Garza: Is there a place to find all our social contracts? >> Yes. We'll be happy to provide that to you. >> Garza: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I think the whole council would like to see that. That would be good. Anything else before we go to housing? Thank you very much. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council, Betsy Spencer, director of neighborhood housing and community development. I'm here with Rebecca giello, oracies tent director. -- Our assistant director. So the mission of neighborhood housing and community development is to provide housing, community development and small business development services to benefit eligible residents so they can have access to liveable neighborhoods and increase their opportunities for self- sufficiency. Some of our major accomplishments this last year, capital studios is a project that was completed last year. It is on 11th street catty-corner from the capitol. It an excellent opportunity for housing for very low income families and individuals smack downtown, central business district. We exceeded our goal of 350 units of permanent supportive housing. The goal was between 2009 and 2014. We did such a good job we got another goal for another 400. Half of that will be for the chronically homeless hardest to serve so we were able to exceed that goal. [3:05:37 PM] And then this last week we actually celebrated the -- our community land trust. This was an opportunity, thank you, councilmember Renteria, for attending our barbecue. We have seven homes behind our office on juniper and olive street. We talked about this for several years. This was a project long time coming for us. The Guadalupe neighborhood development corporation already has two of these homes. These were our first seven where the finance corporation will maintain title to the property. The home buyers actually receive a mortgage just for the improvements alone. On the improvements as you know the value of the land often exceeds the value of the improvements and it is really one of the best tools we've got for housing opportunities all across Austin. Our biggest barrier always has been finding a lender that wouldn't dog walking improvement only mortgage lending. We had to go to California to find that lender, but we now have that. So I anticipate this will be a tremendous tool for us in our efforts to provide housing all over Austin. Some of our key performance indicators, we have total Numbers of households served. You'll notice that from our estimate of 15, fiscal year '15 and projected number for fiscal year '16 there's about a 500 unit difference. Often what you'll see for a lot of our housing programs the development cycle can be about a three to five-year average time. So a lot of times what we project and what we realize may be different things because just when things were able to come online. So the total number of households that difference we're anticipating because of smart housing. We anticipate an additional roughly 700 smart housing units to come online so that's why that number is significantly higher than what we estimated in '15. Same thing for the number of houses and persons azested through our housing services, the developer assistance programs. That's also due to smart housing or the development cycle. There's very little difference for households assisted with our repair services. [3:07:39 PM] We're contributing about the same amount of money and so we anticipate the same number of households. You will see a decrease in the rental units created. Again, that's the development cycle. We can look forward and see when we think the units will come online and so this is us looking back a couple of years and what we expect will come online in 16. You will often see those differences in what is actual and what we project just based on the development cycle. Uses of funds. We currently have 54 full-time employees. Our budget is roughly the same, about -- this year we're expecting $17.4 million. About nine and a half million of that is grant funds. We have the entitle meant funds, which you all approved the action plan for last week, so we have 9.5 million of our federal entitlement funds, home funds and the community development block grant funds. And the rest of it is local funds. We utilize those funds in four basic different categories, community development. This year we anticipate 2.4 million. That's our financial empowerment programs, homeless and special needs, neighborhood and community revitalization, rentalry tense and small business assistance. Housing is the biggest component of our budget. For fiscal year '16 we expect 8.4 million, a minor increase there. Those are our home buyer assistance program, home buyer and rental assistance. Support services includes our staff and rent we pay each year and the transfers and other requirements the bulk is debt payment services on the section 208 loans. Budget highlights, we have a slight increase to our housing trust fund expenditure. The 401,000 that you see, roughly 50,000 of that is actual new money, the rest is carried forward from this last year. And then the reduction in support services and ctm allocation. So that puts us at a slight decrease in our general fund contribution for the department. Capital highlights, these are our general obligation bond funds. [3:09:43 PM] Every year we appropriate roughly 15 this will dollars. -- $10 million. Our spending plan is about 11 millions. The rent all housing -- this is how we expect to spend the money. A little less than six million dollars on our rental housing developer assistance, garden terrace and Aldridge 51 are just two examples of projects that we anticipate will we'll finance. Our home ownership program is what we call acquisition and development. We often invest money in entities like habitat for humanity, and their home ownership programs. The go repair program is a -- we will soon in the next few weeks be put outing a notice of fund availability. We complete those funds every year with the go repair contractors and we put half a million dollars in the architectural barrier removal program for renters. That's a separate one from our ownership. Rate and revenue highlights. For the entitlement funds, the home investment partnership act funds, we are seeing a decrease of $250,000, but there was an increase of cdbg of 95, so it's an increase overall in the entitle meant funds of 157,000 and again the general fund transfer to the housing trust fund went up $55,000 roughly for the year. And we are available for questions. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. Cached thank you very much. We appreciate having you here. I know we've talked in our housing committee about the development of a long range plan and I know y'all have been working on that. So I expect that talk with me about the alignment of our budget with that plan. I think if I'm understanding correctly we're not far enough along in the plan yet to necessarily reflect that in this year's budget. Can you tell me what your thinking is about that? [3:11:46 PM] >> Sure. What we tried -- what we've tried real hard to do in our long-term strategic planning is to keep those categories within our seven investment categories that we have. So that our budget isn't going to took too terribly different. We're already lining up a lot of those things. Any creation of newer preservation is typically funded through the rental housing developer assistance or acquisition development program. So we're trying to keep them as lined up as our investment strategy is already. Some of the things on that long-term goal also are projects that we don't fund directly. So we're also looking to see how we're going to be able to track production that other entities are achieving, like preservation. Our goal for preservation is a thousand units a year. There's no way that we can finance that ourselves. So we have started -- we have created an inventory where we're tracking not only what we provide or produce, but what other entities are as well so we can be able to track that. You'll notice in some of our key performance indicators we've made some new ones this year. Permanent supportive housing is a good example where the overall community goal is 400. Our department will likely only finance a certain percentage of those. So we want to be able to track both, right, the overall goal and then what we as a department do. So I don't know if you have any other insights on structure, what it looks likes. >> So we are due back to you all in September to talk a little bit more about our targets and goals overall related to housing. So for those of you who missed our presentation, what we presented to the housing committee is all income categories to include preservation ownership opportunities as well as single- family and multi-family. A 10-year goal that would be somewhat robust in terms of where we would hope to project a community goal, it was important to note for us that some of our performance measures include those that just nhcd is able to produce with our funding, but then also include community goals because we have seen with the model around permanent supportive housing that we can track large goals like 400 units of permanent supportive housing with more than 20 partners if putting dedicated resources on those tracking mechanisms was done. [3:14:26 PM] This will be the community goal and then our data will reflect what we want to achieve. One of the things we've spent time on is the data work group internally to our department to do exactly what Betsy has just said, to put together an affordable housing inventory that tracks a number of things to tell a richer story to community. We are utilizing many things and using the tools that we haven't talked about too much publicly like the issuance of private activity bonds. We haven't necessarily tracked those in the past in an affordable housing inventory because we haven't dedicated necessarily capital cash to that. So that's in there. And I will say with the emphasis on open data it is one of the open portal of data. So for the first time you're able to go on there and look at everything comprehensively and begin to make your own charts and a lot of other things with that data. So finally with the specific question you asked about what we presented we can did go back to external partners, data partners like the real estate community as well as a bor and a number of different individuals, we invited them to the table to ask them "Poke holes in the data. ". If there is a methodology that we did not consider tell us how you would do it. Utilizing census data, if there's other datasets that we should be, what is it? So when we come back to housing committee that exercise will have been done with housing works and a number of individuals who are willing to come to the table. And so we hope to have a conversation to build on what we presented. And then certainly we're still open to identifying what that housing plan should look like with council. [3:16:28 PM] >> Kitchen: Yes, because one of the goals behind the housing plan was to -- to really align better what we're going to attempt to do with what the need is. Understanding, of course, that like in other areas there's a big gap, you know. So I know some of the feedback from the committee last time was just that, you know, set the goals a little higher -- not a little higher, a lot higher. Set the goals closer to what the need is and then we'll have to have a frank discussion about where we might find those dollars across the community. So I just wanted to, I guess, point out to my colleagues that we are in the process through the committee to try to look at a more comprehensive plan that actually gets closer to identifying what the need is in the community and how we might get closer to meeting those needs, understanding that we're not going to do that with this budget because we're just -- the need is too great to completely fill it with this budget. Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: And then I'll pass it over to Mr. Renteria. Two things. The first one is that at the time that we were doing the homestead exemption, this council recognized that the homestead exemption was not directly targeting everyone who lived in this city. And Mr. Casar made a proposal at the time to do the emergency rental relief fund. And at the time that he did that he said that it was intended at that point on what a good program, but to be a place holder, and during the budget process we would take a look at whether or not there was a better program, a higher priority program that targeted that same group of people. So I noticed that as part of the deal or the arrangement or the agreement that the council made we wanted to make sure that we were putting money aside that targeted that group and I also want us to pause for a second, and I don't know if you can speak to this now or if you want to think about it, but if we were to take that $740,000 for that targeted group, is that the best way to use it or is there an alternate way or a way to prioritize before that again that hit that same targeted population? [3:19:01 PM] >> Mayor, I can try to address that. If you recall under the budget highlights for health and human services, that was the $740,000 that we covered a little while ago. And what staff would recommend and I think we provided information to the council, but I will make sure that if we hadn't, we will. I think initially it was talked about the tenant-based rental assistance program and we felt like that was too narrow in terms of what we would want to achieve with that. So we would probably recommend a different source and it was something that we call best single source. That it's a collaborative that we fund in health and human services. Essentially what that does is that it provides what we believe the type of wraparound services and the ability to transition folks from a particular point to a point where we hope they would be self sustaining over a period of time. So that's why we were suggesting that versus just an emergency payment of lease payments for a short time and instead of just paying that is to do it a little differently. So that's the reason we wanted to have that flexibility and I think in talking to staff we felt the best single source may be the better approach. >> It would be helpful if you could send us a real short memo that outlines two different programs with the recommendation. I feel like I made a commitment to the community at the time to make sure that we were targeting that population. We had left it open at the time to take a look at priorities. If we're going to move from where we were I permanently want to understand both those programs better than what we are. And second, Ms. Spencer, the work being done by my offices, the other council offices, to try to think outside the box with respect to funding. [3:21:12 PM] If there's a scale that we might be to attract using different kinds of vehicles than we're using right now. And you're familiar with those conversations. Does it make sense for us to put any amount of money in the budget at all. This is a question not necessarily for you to answer right now. But if there's any money that should be put in the budget by way of study or things to put in the budget to to actually see if we could better realize that initiative I'd want us at this point to think about whether or not it made sense for us to do anything. Because the upside potential with the things that the -- our staffs and your staff and the stakeholders are talking about could be significant and real material. And I want to make sure that we've thought about that in the context of this budget. >> Very good. >> Mayor Adler: I'm not talking about actual budgeting for the execution of those, but setting that up. >> Renteria: We were discussing about the housing strike fund and whether we would be able to -- I didn't see any kind of budget in there. So I was wondering if there was any money to continue that study. I also want to ask is -- I know the holly good neighbor program, we still have 2.1. Is that not in this budget? >> The reason it's not in the budget is it's carryover funds. It's going to represent new money. That's money being transferred by Austin energy but they are no longer providing any new additional funds. So that's why you no longer see new in here because there's no new things coming in the department. >> And that money is -- I think the last week or two we are recommending that the northwests that currently do go to repair in the neighborhood, those are the ones that I anticipate will submit applications for, to be able to provide the services in the holly neighborhood. [3:23:37 PM] >> Renteria: And if -- I know that area is getting gentrified very quickly. And do you plan to use that funding for other programs or expanding it? >> No. I would come back to -- that would not be a recommendation I would make on my own. There have been other folks that have suggested the money go to other places, but I feel that that would be -- that would be more of a policy decision. >> Renteria: Okay. I would really start looking at maybe expanding some of it to other areas because it's getting to the point where we have been sitting on this fund for quite awhile and we have basically kind of almost ran out of houses to do repairs in that area. I'll be coming up with -- to the council and get my colleagues, see if we can make a recommendation for expanding it to other areas. >> Tovo: Thanks, mayor, for raising the question about the 740,000. I look forward to seeing a little more about those two programs as well. I wondered too about some of the other programs that we have, whether they could use an influx of additional money. One was the architectural barrier -- the barrier removal program. I think it's funded, proposed for funding at 500,000. Is that typically a fund for which we have more requests than can be met? >> The bulk of the money that we use for the abr program comes out of our community development block grant, cdbg. I think that program is funded a little over a million dollars a year. So this is just for -- what's hard with the federal funds is doing the renters. So when you use federal funds on rental property has very strict requirements in working with the landlords and things like that. [3:25:37 PM] It can just be very difficult. So we always like to set aside some local money for renters because actually, more folks who are disabled are renters. And so we do use the federal funds for both home ownership and renter, but we like to maintain the flexibility when we just have a hard time on -- with the federal side for the renter, but I think that we are adequately resourced for the abr program. >> Tovo: Okay. That's good to hear. And the other program that came to mind were opportunities to help property owners of stubbed housing who -- substandard housing who might want to upgrade their property or fix those health and safety has as they become apparent, but may not have the funds to do so. And it's never been clear to me whether we have low cost loans and things like that to offer to property owners, but I know as we were looking at some of the -- some of the efforts to increase our code enforcement and make sure that we were taking really strong enforcement actions against property owners of substandard multi-family housing especially that we have something to offer those property owners who would like to do the right thing, but may not have the funds to do so because otherwise their alternative might be to put it up for sale and then we lose the housing altogether. Could you speak to what programs we have currently and whether some additional funds from that 740,000 might be worth considering. >> There's two different subjects there. There's the 740 and the rental housing assistance program. So the bulk of our capital funds, the G.O. Bonds goes to the renting a housing assistance program. It is generally a zero interest, but sometimes there's interest attached. Loan program for developers to apply for, to assist. Often times those developers, the folks who get applications from are from multi-family projects. [3:27:37 PM] They can also do single-family, often those are going to be non-profits that are used to utilizing our services or system. And so -- but the rental housing developer assistance program can be used for single- family or multi-family. So when we bring board actions before you that's what we're doing is those loans that we execute which can be perceived like a grant, but they are loans. They are just a deferred payment loan. That is the barrier that some folks see in that program is that because there are legal instruments attached to it and they don't really want to deal with that and/or the restrictions. We look for long-term affordability. So we already have the program in place. It may be perceived by some folks to have barriers, the affordability. >> Tovo: But isn't that primarily used for new construction? >> No, ma'am. >> Tovo: So those are also used for upgrading? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: Okay. The I'm more familiar with the other. And do you feel that we are adequately meeting the need that's there in terms of the number of qualified applications that you're receiving or would it make sense to consider in this budget cycle using some of that 740,000 to supplement the rental assistance developer program? >> The 740,000 -- so when you first introduced the idea, the terminology that was used was tenant based rental assistance program because we currently administer with our federal stands the rental assistance program that is a relationship that we have with the salvation Army and the rental authority. So we had recommended actually what would be better served is the bss plus program through the health department because they administer a rapid rehousing program and what was described is you were looking for a way to get money to folks who are being displaced or needed relocation and needed rapid rehousing. The tenet based rah because it's federally funded is a more tedious program so I think you're well served with the funds in the bss plus because they are masters at the rabid rehousing model and it would also be wrapped around the so that I see, just as a different initiative. [3:29:56 PM] Are we adequately resourced for substandard housing? I think there's a lot of substandard housing out there. So, I mean -- >> Tovo: I guess I really meant in terms of the qualified applications that you're receiving and how well we're matching that need. >> So we have -- are you talking about renters or owners? I apologize. >> Tovo: I was talking about those who you were just describing, who were applying for G. O. Begunked folded -- >> We always receive requests for more money than we have, so we receive a fair few applications. They still tend to be either non-profit developers or some for-profit developers that are used to us. What there's not a lot of is maybe an individual who owns a handful of properties, looking for assistance. We're not receiving a lot of applications in that regard. When it comes to homeowners, I think we have an adequate number of applications coming in for an individual who's income eligible and wants their home repaired. But if you're strictly talking about rental property, maybe single-family, I would not say we're receiving a lot of those applications. >> Tovo: Okay. Thanks. >> Did that answer your question? >> Tovo: More or less, yes. I'd like to see -- I'd like to work with you to get some more information about the ways in which we've used those grants. The ones I'm familiar with are non-profits, we've purchased, are complex, and I can't think of any, though there certainly may be some, of a property owner under a code enforcement action, seeking a resource to help them upgrade that property and hold onto that property. >> We have reached out to folks. We have worked closely with the code department, and we've certainly reached out to owners of apartments that were in distress, but they often do not -- are not interested no in our services. >> Tovo: Interesting. Okay. Thanks. >> Casar: Mayor, just a brief mine, I had to step out for a moment, but the final resolution that the council did pass -- and I appreciate y'all's help with this -- did list best single source as the best program that we determined that could fulfill this need, and those little stories that I read before we passed that resolution, I think, were from our own work in that program. [3:32:13 PM] And so I know that there are several of them, but I think that's the one that we landed ons a functioning the best. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> I just wanted to make sure we were pausing long enough to make sure in the budget process that's where we wanted to go, and that's good. Anything further? Ms. Garza? >> Garza: Councilmember kitchen was talking about goals -- I'm sorry if this is repetition. On slide 2, where it has the total number of households, the Numbers there, it says household, slash, persons, and that could be totally different Numbers if you're counting the people in the household versus just a household. So which did you use to -- >> It depends upon the service. So we have a wide variety of public services that we fund, as well as housing programs. Sometimes it is just an individual recipient, and/or sometimes it is a household. Different -- actually, different services count different things. >> Garza: Okay. So then the next three columns, they don't add up to that 6,000, so I'm assuming it's other services that aren't listed here. >> These are just some of our key performance indicators. This is not cumulative. They don't all roll up to the 6200. >> Garza: Then the smart -- is there a way to know, of the big number, how much of the services were -- and I realize there's different services, but how much were for, like, 80% mf-I to 60% mf-I, 16% below -- is there a way to know how you allot your funds to those different groups? >> For our federal funds, definitely, because we have to report that to the federal government. I'm not sure if on every single program -- we can go back and -- >> One of the things that smart housing, is that threshold is 80%. But I understand you're saying to know if it's 60, 40, 30, that kind of thing. >> All services. >> All services? >> All services. >> We would have to take a look at the sub set of data that we have. [3:34:16 PM] We could probably get a little more granular. >> Whenever we hear about smart housing, this might be not pertinent to budget but maybe it is. We hear about it in the rental, like it's a multifamily rental, is there a way also to know how much -- how many times the smart has been used for houses, as opposed to, like, apartments, rental apartments? >> We would have that. We can get that data for you. The different between single-family -- >> Yes. >> -- And multifamily, we can get that. And we can also get you -- each year, we definitely report to the federal government, called our caper. It is our end of year action plan, and it'll detail the subrecipients or individuals who receive the service and what income level, so we can definitely get you that information very easily. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Ms. -- >> I've got a question. Excuse me as I shuffle this paperwork aside, knock everything over. We've been talking a little bit about a discussion of eliminating the fee in lieu on affordable -- on the affordable housing component, and where does that show up in what we've gotten for the last budget cycle? >> We don't budget for that. You won't see that in the budget. >> Gallo: So if you do receive income from fee in lieu, where does that go. >> That is generally receipted under the Austin housing finance corporation. There's a place that we receive that there. >> Gallo: So if we moved in a direction of eliminating that, would that affect that budget this year? This next year? >> Yes and no, in the sense we don't budget for the fee in lieu because we never know when we're going to get it. That's one of the reasons we don't budget for it, we're just not sure when we're going to realize that. So it would affect our ability to utilize those funds if we eliminate that as a possible source. [3:36:18 PM] The benefit of eliminating the fee in lulu is if require on site, then you get on-site. >> I guess part of the policy discussion or the thought process is that depending on where you're building, in certain parts of Austin, would be less expensive for a developer to do the fee in lieu than to actually put those affordable units on site. So if, as a way to make the same thing happen from the standpoint of a fiscal impact, that developer were to come in and ask for certain fees to be waived -- I'm just trying to understand from a budget standpoint, how that would affect the budget, and would those fees being waived come out of your budget or would they be coming out of other department budgets? And of course we don't know which fees we're asking to be waived. This is kind of one of those hypothetical situations as we move in the direction of trying to equally spread out affordable housing in the community, there's obviously more of an expense in certain areas of doing it on site as doing the fee in lieu, so to encourage the development on site in those more expensive areas, we may be looking at fee waivers on certain things to accomplish that. And I'm just trying to understand what impact that would have on the budget and whose budget it would impact. >> It would not have an impact on the budget because we don't budget for it here. It's not the same as for like pdr. They will budget for a certain amount of fees not being -- revenue not being realized. We do not, with the fee in lieu, on the pud's. You're not going to see that on this budget. So if you were to make a policy decision that eliminated the fee in lieu on the puds, it would not have an impact on this budget. It's not the same as with the fees paid for permits and inspections. >> And may I add, it would decrease the amount of money available in those funds that we typically would use, for example, for financing projects. [3:38:21 PM] So, for example, if a particular ordinance had it codified that the revenue or fee contribution would go to the housing trust fund, it would decrease potential or have foregone revenue, potentially, in that particular fund. The other thing that I would say is, so all of the density bonuses oftentimes are codified differently. So if you take, for example, the downtown density bonus, previous councilmembers have indicated a policy priority around ensuring that those revenues which would be receipted in the housing trust fund, fund low barrier housing, so permanent supportive housing. So there would be two potential impacts. You would decrease the amount of money if you were, for example, to just eliminate that fee in lieu, available in the housing trust fund for those particular programs. >> And one thing I'll tell you, when we receive fee, we often have to do a budget amount, since we don't budget ahead of time for the fee, when we realize that fee, then we have to go back and do a budget amendment so that the funds are appropriated. Without the funds being appropriated, we can't spend them. That's how we track them. And so, but we -- since we can't guarantee when they're going to come in, we don't budget for them. >> Gallo: So if you're looking at developments that have the potential of beginning and incurring expenses or waivers within the budget cycle, do you not -- do the departments as a whole not deal with that up front and do it as budget amendments, typically, as that process begins to happen? I'm just trying to understand how the development process works from a budgeting standpoint. >> Ours is very different than pdr. And so they, I believe, actually budget for a certain amount of foregone revenue. For us, it's not foregone revenue. We have several transactions where there's a pud in their agreement. At some point in time, we'll pay part of the fee in lieu. [3:40:23 PM] We have no idea when we're going to realize that, so whenever -- I mean, honestly, the check will just come in sometimes, and then we've got to receipt it, do a budget amendment, in order to be able to expend it. We don't budget for it because we really don't know -- there's not a lot of value in us carrying on fees here that we may never realize. Sometimes those projects never even materialize. So it's not -- it's not foregone revenue in our regard, unlike the fee waivers at planning and development review. >> Gallo: Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria. >> Renteria: I just have one quick question. I know that, you know, we have districts like south area, it's a transportation-oriented district, and that money -- you know, some of these buildings basically are just office buildings, and they are required to, you know, build like 10% housing on office, and, basically, they just say, we don't want housing in our office building. We'll give you, you know, the fee in lieu, requiring us to build these units. And I notice that some of these, they specify that they should be only spent in a certain area, surrounding area there when they give that fee. And we make those decisions, whether we wanted to use that money in that area, or we could expand the boundary. Have you run into those kind of situations? >> So if it's -- so we always go back to the ordinance. So if the ordinance specifies a boundary and I believe there are two currently -- there could be more -- but, for example, the east Riverside corridor density bonus specifies a boundary, the downtown density bonus specifies a boundary, so you are correct. [3:42:25 PM] Council designates whether or not the specific density bonus revenues would go back to a specific location. >> Renteria: Okay. I just wanted to find that out, how you operate, how that happens, you know, because I know there's going to be some opportunities in the future where we're going to run into that, so ... >> Mayor Adler: Anything else there? Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Yes. Thank you, mayor, and thank you all for being here. I wanted to ask -- councilmember Garza asked for some specific data. Could you give that to all of us by district, please? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Houston: Okay. Then the second thing is, after you approve a request for proposal, do you ever go back after the project is built and look at the cost effectiveness of what they said they were going to build and how it actually turned out? Because people can come back to you over and over again. So what is the cost effectiveness factors? >> Are you -- is your question specific to either single-family or multifamily -- >> Multifamily. >> Yeah. >> Both. >> We monitor, so we definitely have a long-term monitoring component to the work that we do. So, generally, we're looking at -- to ensure that they are renting to the folks they said they would rent to, and then the overall maintenance of the property. Cost effectiveness, I would want to be careful not to classify it in a way -- I'm not sure that I would say that we're looking at it that closely. >> Houston: When projects come in and they're built at a lower -- lower rate per unit -- >> Yes. >> Houston: -- Than other projects who have basically the same kinds -- we give them the same kinds of gifts, if you will. >> Uh-huh. >> Houston: Yet they come at a much lower rate, so how do we determine whether or not project a is building a project and they come in below rate and able to rent or have people -- have ownership at a lower rate, and then some projects come in at a much higher rate, which causes the rent and the home ownership opportunity to skyrocket up to market rate? [3:44:42 PM] Because we're both -- we're giving them both taxpayer dollars to help. >> That's an interesting concept. I'll say that we -- I believe that we, in our underwriting process on the front end, it's not necessarily the per-unit investment is not the only thing that we look at. One general observation, sometimes a project that may have a high per-unit investment may also have very high leveraging, and other amenities and things that go with it. Our projects are all very different. I appreciate your observation, it's something I definitely want to take a look at. We are definitely going, though, towards a model where we are going to start to look at things other than per-unit cost, number of households. I want us to be able to really demonstrate outcomes, much more measurable outcomes on the benefit and effects of what we do. That's going to take us some time, because in order to do that we've got to have some really good baseline data that we can trend. We've been counting people and Numbers and units for a long time, and we really need to get to a model where we have much more measurable outcomes on the effect of what we're doing. So I certainly want to keep that in mind as far as are we -- are we getting the biggest bang for our buck, all the way around for the families that we're serving. >> Houston: Okay. And one last question. Again, this is to the budget man. [Laughter] Colony park created a master plan about two years ago, and part of that had housing in it. And where is that on the list of what we're going to be able to move forward on? Colony park master plan. >> You want me to do that? So, the master plan was approved December 2014. We are just finalizing a financial analysis on how it would be best -- how we'd be best served on financing that project. [3:46:47 PM] It's wonderful a hundred-million-dollar project. We will be rolling out to this council a memorandum in short order that lays out a financial strategy for us to be able to finance the project had most importantly, the infrastructure attached to that project that we get going. We've employed someone to help us with the template for the competitive request for proposal for developer. It is our desire and expectation that a master developer be solicited, just like the Miller project. So you should, in short order, though, be getting a memorandum from us with the results of the financial analysis on how to finance that. And so a tif is probably one of the best ways to do that. >> Notice we're not putting things on this list that we're compiling just because they're in a master plan. It would require it has to be an item from council had directed staff to do that, or anything we hear in these meetings, but just being in a master plan doesn't mean we're going to put it on this list. >> Houston: Right. That's why I brought it up in this meeting. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I have two housecleaning matters before we go to parks & recreation. It is 10 till 4:00. Our agenda has us stopping at 4:30. My question for the council is, we have parks & recreation -- we're halfway through, we have five left. We have parks & recreation -- that's right -- then we have ems, municipal court, fire and police. They've been here all day. My question is, are we going to continue working and then call them up? Should we let staff go, is the question. You'll recall that we're meeting today and we're meeting Wednesday, and then on Wednesday we'll talk about whether we want to meet next Monday and Wednesday morning, or we could conceivably pick up some of these that we don't get to. But that's the first question that I have. [3:48:48 PM] What's everybody's pleasure with respect to how late we're willing to work now? >> Mr. Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Some of us have a pretty hard stop because we have campo tonight at 6 o'clock, and I don't know that we want to work till 15 till 6:00, you know, or anything like that. I just bring that out, not that -- others may have things, too, but, you know, if you're talking about going later, I don't know if -- >> Mayor Adler: Well, if we wanted to, we could, if we wanted to do these, since these folks have been here, but trying to limit the questions that we ask, recognizing that we can pull back any of these departments, or we could let some of them go. >> My suggestion would be let some of them go and plan on next Monday and next Wednesday, because I don't want to -- I mean, they're going to have to come back twice either way, but I don't want to be limited to the questions I can ask. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Is that how people feel? Seems to be, with the nods. So then we're going to have parks & recreation now. Do we want to hit any one of the four that are left beyond parks & recreation, or do we let them all go at this point? I hear the suggestion to let them all go. Is that where people are? >> Houston: Well, I don't know how much -- municipal court, that may be one we could get done quickly, but the others, I know, will take time. >> Mayor Adler: I think they will, too. So let's do that then. And I apologize on behalf of the council to the staff that has been here all day. But, ed, if it's okay, if it's still orderly, we'll wick up with the other times -- we'll do municipal court when we're done with parks, and then we will have the ems and fire and police on a different day. [3:50:52 PM] And, ed, you can tell us whether it's better to bring back those three starting off on Wednesday, the 12th, or whether it's better to bring them back next Monday, but I'll let you make that call based on their schedules and the like. Okay? To the guys I know that are sitting out there, again, we apologize. But municipal court we're going to pick up after parks, then we're going to stop. All right? There was an additional housecleaning deal, but I can't find it now. When I do, I'll bring it up. Why don't you go ahead and start. >> Okay. Thank you. I'm Sarah Hensley. I'm the director of parks & recreation, and I have with me Angela means, our financial manager, and we anticipate other questions you might have. Before you on the screen, you have our department overview. I'm not going to read our mission. It's there, but only to say that we are, as a department, currently in super strategic planning internally and will be taking that externally to review our mission and actually review our key performance data. I would like to just give you a little bit of our accomplishments. We're very proud of our accomplishments. Some of those being openings like the southern walnut creek trail grand opening that we held there at govalle park. We have completed a new Ada, which is the Americans with disabilities act, accessible dock at Camacho activity center right at fiesta gardens, and recently we entertained friends from saltillo, Mexico, with -- that had disabilities to enjoy a game that we also have with some of our kids there at the camp. Zilker park recently opened its new golf, renovated, and I'd like to say our friends in watershed helped us there in creating a more environmentally friendly, less mowing disk golf area. [3:52:55 PM] The juneteenth memorial monument, if you have not had the opportunity to go by that it is one of the most engaging, even if you're there by yourself, and educating memorials that I've seen in a long time, and I took the time to spend 30 minutes over there one day just to walk through it, and kudos to the staff for pulling that off. Keep Austin plain, was a new program we started this program that brought together over 1200 young people and families. Many of our campers and all of our different camps, but many of them were just citizens that decided to drop by our online registration finally kicked off this year, which has been a great help. We are getting ready to kick off next month the Americans with disabilities architect work that we're going to be doing in facility park and trail accessibility and really looking at what is accessible and what is not. We have received many awards and many recognitions, and it goes from programs to the national recreation parks association, to awards for the dove springs playground, the the excellence in swimming pool and Texas parks and wildlife grant we received that will help us do more at colony park in relation to the master plan that we were engaged with housing. We also were a part of that, and will be able to build more as part of the park. I won't go through our measures, but I'm happy to answer questions. We always try to up it a little bit and we've stayed fairly consistent. We're very proud of the fact that we have consistently, over the last couple years, exceeded our amount in capital improvement spending, and our satisfaction with the appearance of parks grounds has stayed fairly consistent. We are seeing some decline, as we see the population grow and the parks, we're having trouble keeping up with that. Our percent of satisfied customers and community members has always been fairly high, around 73 to 75. [3:54:55 PM] The one new one there that you'll see is the trust for public land which is a rating. It's a comprehensive rating system that was developed to see how well the top 75 largest U.S. Cities in the country are meeting the public's needs in regards to parks. We have some work to do there, as you can see, that's 57.5 out of 100. In regards to our total budget and uses of funds, it too is pretty self-explanatory. We're staying consistent. Parks planning and operations we go up a little bit. Support services, we're internally moving staff, we haven't added new staff. The community services areas, we've seen a jump and that's what's recommend in the current program for some help with recreation specialists. Like any other department, the transfer and other requirements, which is your transfer out of that department into others. The one thing I might add is, we are transferring five positions. We did that there are, urban force repositions, when we worked side-by-side with our friends in planning, development, and review at the time, it was planning development and review, we looked at economies of scale and how we could better function at a city. When we looked at for city services, and we have combined there, through some recommendations through the previous council, we sent five urban forrestery positions over to working in a planning department, and -- well, now it's under Rodney's area, under the urban forester. Our job is to deal with maintenance of trees, city park trees. It's recommended in the budget to receive eight positions for recreation specialists that would go to various recreation centers and one to the Asian American resource center. We've had many of our programs this summer have waiting lists, there were only a few spots available at some camps, only one week. We also received two positions or we've asked for two positions to help take care of our assets. [3:56:58 PM] We've been able and fortunate to acquire some other parkland across the city. One is a ranger supervisor and another one is a maintenance worker, too, to help us maintain those parks better. Another one is pay back where we used a position that we partnered with the Asian American resource center board to fund a new position there at the Asian American resource center, and this is just to pay us back for that position that we used. Under our capital highlights, we are planning to appropriate $34.2 million, but our spending plan is 47.6. The reason that is is we have some carry-over funds -- I'll give you a perfect example. Work with the montopolis center and helping community services, we did a little more engagement through public -- extended out just a little bit longer, therefore, we have to carry funds over to be able to complete that. So the spending plan is just a little higher than what we are getting appropriated. Key projects, you'll find that are going to be happening this year, we're currently in final mode for montopolis community and recreation center. The design will start January of 2016. Dove springs and that expansion starts October of this month and will go through October of '16. And the cemetery improvements, the Austin memorial park, we're doing work with the caretakers cottage. We're doing work on the chapel, and evergreen cemetery, we're doing work as the entryway. Park improvements throughout the system, we have three or four neighborhood pocket parks that we're working on, St. John's, Ricky Guerrero, comal, and neighborhood parks, little staysy, rose Duncan, and pool renovations at govalle and Shipe to renovate and rebuild those pools, and one important to us that we have to stay in top of on a regular basis, our playscapes. [3:59:08 PM] We're looking at doing significant renovations or complete redevelopment, battle bend, stony register, gillies, little station, pillow, and throughout the city, playground on surface replacement at multiple sites. In regards to revenue and highlights, there's not a whole lot of increases this year other than a few in regards to facility rentals. We have incorporated through the previous council the non-are not fee for any individual that comes into deep Eddie and barn springs, Barton springs, as we have instituted in some of our programs for non-residents. Our golf enterprise fees are going to go up a little bit. Golf rentals, the range balls, food and concessions, which happens either every year or every other year, based on the economy. That is it. >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Houston. >> Houston: May I ask a question right quick? Can you tell me the cost of the Starkey park community building? Sparky park is not big as this room so -- >> Sparky park. I forgot sparky park. >> Houston: You said it. What is the community building? A facility there? >> Actually, this is a partnership with Austin energy. Why they named it sparky park is the substation, and the substation is a building that we're going to turn into a then very small community building for the neighborhood the use. We've been working with them for quite some time to get that underway so we're glad to say it's getting ready -- >> Houston: What's the cost of it? I'm sorry. >> 450,000. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Casar. >> Casar: Mayor, I just want to make mention to my colleagues, then also to director Hensley, how important that park maintenance positions and how important that work is for us, especially as we acquire new parkland. In my own district, the Georgia acres neighborhood, one of the densest areas in the -- those most densely housed yours and most dense of children areas in the city, we just acquired some fantastic parkland there, but I'm going to pass around a photograph, we've got a couple of constituents who are the people that regularly mow that site and you can see on one side the height of the grass at over six feet, and then on the other side where it's mowed, so that's why it's so important that we resource our department enough to do the mowing. [4:01:31 PM] Is this picture on the back? Yeah, the picture of my constituent is on the back side. He sent that to us recently, with his head up to some razor wire with nearby apartment complexes. It goes to show for folks, you know, that while we may want to acquire parkland, we also need to do our best to make it usable by folks. The other thing I wanted to alert the parks department to, and I think other departments, I've submitted a question on having to do with temporary staff and how long temporary staff have been at the city, because while we have an issue figuring out how we can get temporary staff up to or below living wage up to a living wage, that has a pretty big price tag to it, I was interested in seeing how many have been at the city for over a year. If we can't get all our temporary staff up to a living wage, at least those working-ish longer than maybe many full-time staff have been could be a good start. En the parks department has many temporary staff, and so between lifeguards and parks maintenance people, so director Hensley, we'll keep in touch. I just wanted to make sure that's a constant conversation the council is aware we're having. My preference would be to get our temporary staff up to that level, but if we can't get them all up up to that level, at least the ones who have been here for years, I think that could be a good place for us to begin. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Pool? >> Pool: Dr. Hensley, could you send all of the councilmembers a list of each specific park and the funding increase? I think that's probably going to be in the backup in here, but the parks, particularly, that are in their areas so that they have that at the ready. >> Yes. >> Pool: I'm curious on the slide 2, where you were talking about the park score, trust for public land rating for park quality, and you mentioned did you do pointed out that while we're up a number of percentage points from where we were in fiscal '14, we're still fairly low. [4:03:36 PM] Can you give us a quick explanation of what the rating metrics are and what can we do -- what's needed to improve that score? >> I'm going to let assistant director Cora white -- she's been monitoring this one and staying on top of it for us. >> Good afternoon, Cora white, assistant director for the parks department. Thank you for the question. We're really excited, really, about this measure because for the first time, we're using a measure that's used across the country through the trust for public lands, and those of you who are familiar with it, this is an entity who's well-known for measuring park excellence. And so when you see that measure, the park score, remember, we're being compared across the country with 74 other cities. So when we compare ourselves with 74 other cities, then we -- our ranking is 31 out of 75. But with respect to the rating, the rating actually measures three major areas. One, it measures our acreage. There are two subindicators for that, that is looking at the mediaian park size. When we talk about park size, in that case we're talking about neighborhood size parks. Then also the percent of parkland as part of the city's entire area. And when we look at that measure, we rank 16 out of 40. And then, in other words, 16 points out of a total of 40 points that could be gained. Our park across the country is about five acres. >> Let me follow up on the second one, the percent of parkland as a city to a whole, getting only 16 points out of 40, is that because we don't have nearly enough open space or parkland? >> Generally speaking, we have quite a bit of parkland as a part of the city. But in looking at the access to that parkland, we don't always have it in the right places. [4:05:40 PM] So it's sort of a weighted score. So the median park size, they look at when we do a park, a neighborhood park, what size is it and how do we compare. So the average is about five acres, so we do better than the average in that regard in that it's 10.1, for Austin. In terms of the percent of parkland within the city, then the average -- the median is 9.1%, and we're -- our score for that particular line item is 15 out of 20 points, so we have some opportunities to acquire more land. And it's probably very directly related to our population growth. So then the other area that we look at is spending. That looks at the amount of spending per capita. We scored 9 out of 20. And when you look at that score, the average -- it sort of ranges all over the map here across the country, but what you'll see is that the spending per resident can range from $83 mary83 per resident to about $343. The city of Austin averages about $83, which means we're right at the bottom of that floor. We're making improvement though because when you compare our overall park score with last year, we're getting better. In terms of facilities, it compares our access for urban park systems that offer playgrounds, that offer recreation and senior centers and off-leash areas of dog parks, then basketball hoops, the thinking being that in urban community, there needs to be places for young people to go without having to pay and have a good time. So we score 9 out of 20 in that particular area. And I can give you the breakdown in that regard. [4:07:42 PM] The park score also looks at access to parks in terms of how close you live to a park. So the intent is to measure whether you can get to a park from your home within ten minutes and I think the city of Austin has set some good standards in that the prior council set a goal for us to have access within the urban core at a quarter mile, within the urban core, and then a half mile. So we could give you more information but I've been told to keep it short. Thank you. >> Pool: Okay. Two more questions, northwest rec wasn't in the list of parks that you were talking about, Ms. Hensley, about -- that are on the list. Can you get me information on the timing for repairs at northwest park? And then I would like some information -- you may have it in here, but I don't see it -- on aquatics. One of the prime -- so we have old pools in town. >> Yes. >> Pool: A lot of them are about 50 years old so theory attendant problems. And I understand there may be a bond discussed for new facilities, specifically for pools, but the more immediate concern is simply having sufficient chemicals for the pools so that they're not closed because we don't have enough chlorine. So maybe you could speak a little to that. I see -- >> I'll let assistant director Kimberly mcneilic talk. >> Kimberly mcneily, assistant director. I need a little more explanation on -- I am not aware of a chemical shortage, so I'm a little confused by the questions. >> Pool: Well, there are pools that are delayed being opened in the mornings of a week because there's not enough chlorine, or at least that's what folks are told. [4:09:45 PM] >> Okay. So that -- that situation is not about a lack of chemical, but it's about a lack of the infrastructure of the filtration system to work appropriately to allow the chemical feed to feed at the right amounts to have the water quality be appropriate. So the chemical is available, but the pump system or the filtration system that feeds the chemical into the water that makes the pool -- so it's more about the infrastructure and the engineering, it's not about the availability of the chemical. >> Pool: That's really good to know, and maybe we could be clearer with the residents because they actually think that it's because we don't have the chlorine tablets. >> Absolutely. We can have -- >> Pool: Which is really different from what you were talking about. >> We can absolutely help educate our team members to provide a better explanation. >> Pool: That would be great. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Gallo. >> Gallo: It's all in communications. Right? We find that out all the time. A couple of questions, and thank you for being here and thank you for taking care of our parks, and hopefully we can get you a lot more money to be able to take care of them even more. I've got two questions. One is, it seems like, from what we've heard, that a lot of the fees that are collected within the park function don't go back into the park department, and that [lapse in audio] Disadvantage to go back into the department because it would be an incentive for the park department to work efficiently and aggressively. I'm just curious why that is. Would that be a budget decision that we would make to change that? >> I was just looking up my parks budget, but the revenues that are generated by the parks department do get posted. You could look into the budget pages and see the revenues generated by the parks department, presented as part of their budget. The issue at hand, though, is that the revenues are nowhere near what the cost of the function is, and so like most departments in the general fund, it's a tax-supported function. [4:11:59 PM] But the revenues associated with their services do get posted into that department. It is part of their budget. >> Gallo: So I guess I'm confused then. I'm not quite sure where I heard otherwise, but my impression was that there are fees that the parks collect, or that are fees that happen at the parks that actually go into the general fund instead of going specifically into the parks department budget. And so I don't expect them to be self-sufficient, I'm just saying it seems like it would make sense for the fees that are generated by the parks to go back into the park budget. >> The park department has a budget, it's one of ten general fund budgets. The budget is 73 opinion $6 million. Through their fees and activities, you know, swimming fees, rec program fees, they're estimated to generate 10.6 million of revenue. So the revenue associated with what they're doing is part of their budget. It's just, again, it's, you know, far below what the cost of the service is. >> Gallo: Okay. So I'm trying to end this overworked, overencumbered brain at this point. I can't remember what somebody had asked us about, because it was a constituent. Maybe it was concession fees, could it be concession fees that don't go specifically back to -- >> For example, golf is set up as a non-general fund activity, so golf isn't set up as an enterprise function, and their revenues are accounted separate from the general fund in a separate fund. But the rest of the park -- park's activities are all recorded as a general fund function. >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Tovo: I hear that request sometimes from people who are talking about special events and when there are events held in parks, the funds collected don't -- the comment is that the funds don't go directly to the parks budget, but as Mr. Van eenoo explained, they really do; they go into the general fund. [4:14:02 PM] You keep track of the revenues coming in that are credited to parks and rec, but they couldn't -- they don't run like -- they don't run like an enterprise fund where all the revenues are supporting their costs. So I suppose -- I mean, we did ask -- I think we did ask the parkland task force to take a look at that issue, but then I think we'd have a policy question about what we do next because the fees that are coming in, instead of going to the general fund, might go directly to the parks department, but the parks department [lapse in audio] Revenue, so in effect -- >> Thank you for helping -- >> Tovo: I'm starting to sound like an argument -- >> Thank you for helping us remember what that was. Are the fees that are -- the expenses -- so let's use the events. So the fees that are associated with event cleanup, event preparation, event cleanup, are those park fees? If they are, then it would be helpful, as we start the conversation of perhaps working in a direction that festivals and events begin to at least pay for the costs that the citizens incur in holding those events, that if the revenues went into the parks budget and the expenses came out of the parks budget, and those could be tied together, we could see where the disconnect was. >> And ankle landmarks I think, can answer that, too. >> Hi. My name is Angela means. I will clarify, all of the fees that the parks & recreation department collects do go into our general fund revenue. Some of our constituents are asking for that revenue to be available for expenses. So, for example, when we have events, and some of the revenue goes into the general fund revenue, we also collect fees, the dollar per ticket and other maintenance and utility and staff and utility fees that do go back to the parks & recreation department to offset the cost of those events. So we have a combination of both. But our stakeholders are wanting all of those revenues to come back into the department to be used for maintenance of the park grounds. [4:16:08 PM] >> Gallo: Uh-huh. Thank you. Thank you. It's confusing, I think as the task force moves into trying to come up with these, it's helpful to see if there's an imbalance between what it's costing us and what we're collecting, how easily we can determine that, and if this is the point and place to help make budget changes to help us do that, it seems like this would be the place for conversation. So that was my first question. And the same is -- could you just -- where in your budget is the neighborhood partnering program from the standpoint -- I know you're doing an a to Z manual, and it's -- this public/private partnership, I think for some of the districts that are fortunate enough to have the resources to be able to really do this, it does a couple of things. It gets projects done, but it also frees up money for other areas of town that perhaps don't have those resources, and I think we've got a lot of the public that's willing to step in and do this, we just -- we want to keep that conversation going and that direction going so we can -- we can keep working on these ideas. So we'll get that the in the budget and get that finished up -- >> Well, the neighborhood partnering program is actually out of public works. What we do, and I serve on the executive committee to the neighborhood partnering where we look at the recommended allocations, and it's a good thing that Howard invited me to serve on it because what we do is, most of the projects are at a park or on a trail or something like that, so what I try to do then is match up -- we sit in a room and we see, they're asking public works through the program for 1$00,000 and it happens to be over here where we have parkland dedication fees. So I immediately say, well, what if we worked and combined the funds to make it whole, make the project whole, or if he's lacking funding, we can come in with either money from parkland dedication or other means, even with our capital improvements, time, we're able to make it a whole project. So what we have in our planning area is a staff member who sort of is what we call a community -- he's a community liaison. [4:18:10 PM] And we have Brian block, who works with the neighborhood partnering program and the staff, who helped those neighborhood partners with all the questions they might have about, well, how do I do this, how do I go about this? And then we have the staff, whether it's a landscape architect or just even a parks division manager that can talk about what the maintenance is and make recommendations, you know, whether you use a poured substance for a playground or engineered poohed fireworks all those kinds of things. So that's how it's set up now. Obviously -- and I think you and I briefly talked about this there's more projects that the neighborhoods want to do than we have the ability to meet, and we have to try to prioritize those. But it is -- we're leaning more towards that because we need more help from citizen groups and from neighborhood associations, and from non-profit groups who are helping us renovate parks and trails and greenbelts. And so it is a great program. And I think it's one that doesn't get as much recognition as it deserves, and the kudos to public works for that as well because it builds such good community feeling and take ownership in their parks. We saw it at Ramsey. We've seen it at other places. And there's a real good sense of awareness that helps there with the public. >> So do you have enough in the budget to assume that we're going to expand that process and make it more available from a staffing standpoint? >> Not at this time. >> Okay. >> No. >> It seems like it's such a good return on investment. Because you have -- >> It is a good return on investment. >> You have the public willing to participate in funds, so that would require more staff, more staffing -- >> Well, we did ask for another position, and you know, I will say that when we were looking at the limited resources that we had, one of the big priorities for us, obviously, we've been able to put some money in parks and forestry in the past. Our recreation centers and staffing was just so low, compared to the number of people, we prioritize that as a higher priority. [4:20:11 PM] We asked for another position to help with community initiated projects, that's with a we call it. At this time we just weren't able to fund it. It doesn't mean we won't continue to do what we're doing. We're continuing to look at creative ways of making it happen, even not point of working with the Austin parks foundation and them helping us be that bridge between. So would it help us? Yes. But we won't stop doing what we're doing, we'll just create new ways of making it happen. >> Thank you. It is just such a good program that has such potential. It really, really does. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I think it would be helpful to add onto that concept menu, what the cost would be to fund that position. Hopefully, together with the parks group, see what -- let's see what that would be. With respect to -- you talked about the park score, and you gave us some of the Numbers on that. If you could send us something that would give us the detail on that, so that we could see all the different criteria and where we rank -- >> Be happy to. >> Mayor Adler: That would be helpful. Pools are something that just seems to be a recurrent, every spring, we have another pool crisis, and I'm trying to figure out what it would take to get us out of that -- out of that loop. And I have a couple questions. One is just the general question, how do we get out of that loop? And then I'd also point out that, you know, I was in another city here recently and they had kind of a different concept to the pool, where they had these -- a little bit different than bar tholamew park, it was more than a slash pad, it was an area teaming with kids and in some ways, seemed to be a lot more interactive and more fun than sometimes what you see with a pool. And so is there -- I think you had done an overall strategic plan with respect to pools. [4:22:16 PM] >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: What was the overall strategic goal associated with that, and how are we doing on that path? >> Well, let me say it is an issue, and we're almost through this season, and we -- we have an average age of our swimming pool is about 50 years old, so if you combine them all, our pools are about 50 years old and they're starting to show it. The issue with the pumps that was talked about earlier, montopolis pump just went down. With the major rain we had, we lost several pumps to the silt that goes through there. What this study has done for us the first phase was a complete assessment of the infrastructure of our pools. What it told us is, we have a very big road ahead of us. We have issues related to electrical pump systems, overflow areas, structural, meaning walls that are going to fail, we have five pools right now that we anticipate may fail between now and five years. The next phase that we're currently in is Dr. Laura Cortez is working with a team of people to visibly get out into the pools and talk to folks about what would they envision pools looking like, whether it's a current pool that we have -- obviously, we built bartholamue, which was a big one for us. Your larger, all encompassing, you have a splash pad, you have a slide, swimming area, lanes, diving area, but it's able to hold more people and it has more things to it than just your typical square or rectangular pool. The next phase, which will pick up here in the fall, will be the consultant that you all just recently approved to come on and do -- take the work that Dr. Cortez's -- from early walking the neighborhoods into their work of what the citizens are saying the next types of pools need to look like. The discussion will have to involve, and the question has to be asked, do we want to continue to have 50 aquatic facilities, which that's splash pads, that's pools, and, you know, of all sizes, or is there a strategy of more standard iced -- not standardized, but strategically located pools to have more amenities and can reach more people. [4:24:35 PM] For us, it's a matter of to repair the pools that we have now, it's in the range of $40 million -- 41 million, and to completely do what needs to be done, and that's just replacing what's currently in the ground, is about $70 million. And so it's -- it's right for a great discussion, and that's what we'll be bringing is a good discussion of here's what we found, here's what we're hearing, and this is what it would look like. It's not -- it's not a pretty picture. It is just pools that -- I mean we have some pools that were built in the 1930s, so everything is antiquated, and it's cost more money to run it. It is not environmentally friendly, it is not fiscally responsible, and it is certainly not the way we want to operate. And that is why, even though it was very painful to recommend the closing of a couple of pools because of the loss of the water, we're experiencing still a loss of water, and our city manager has scheduled a time for us to sit down and have a discussion with him on where we are with pools, current reality, then where we look at for future trends, and I think this is a perfect opportunity, when we have that discussion with the city manager then, to certainly tea that up with council. >> Mayor Adler: I'm looking forward though that conversation. My sense is that if all that you're doing is taking away a pool, it's a big problem. If you're saying this is what we're proposing that's new in its place, it might be a little different conversation. Before I recognize the next speaker, a housekeeping thing. The first is, I want to repeat as we did at the city council meeting last week, we now have a computer that is set up in the council chamber so that if anybody is either in this room or in the counsel chamber when a presentation comes up on the screen, if they want to be able to access a computer so that they can see the -- the closed captioning, it's set up to do that. [4:26:42 PM] We recognize that that is a temporary solution till we figure out how to get closed captioning up when we have slides. But at least we have an interim step, and I want to make sure again that the community is aware of that. And then, second, so that the staff can know -- because I know I'll forget -- it's been suggested that when we reconvene with this budget session, that there's perhaps more room, if we're sitting they dais, than people have at their desks, and it's been requested by Ms. Gallo that we consider convening on Wednesday in our chambers, as opposed to this location. Does anybody have a preference? >> Gallo: And I think the other part of it is, most of the day it has been very crowded back there for staff, the city staff and our office staff and visitors, it gives them a little bit more room, and I think we finally got that working, as far as the TV, but it took a while to get that going, too, so thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Does anyone prefer this location? >> I kind of do, because it's a little more intimate and it's easier to have a less formal conversation. >> Renteria: I wouldn't mind moving back to the chamber because this place is cold. [Laughter] >> Tovo: But there's no lock on that thermostat so we can actually adjust it. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I'm going to let everybody think about this one. I'm going to post on the bulletin board this question, urge everybody to go on the bulletin board and cast a vote, and -- what? >> You can't do it on the bulletin board. >> Something about a room location, that doesn't sound -- >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I will make that call. I will make that call, but on the bulletin board if you will let me know kind of what your preference is so I have that when I make that call, I would appreciate it. [4:28:42 PM] So if you go on the board I'm going to post that question. If people want to comment, you're certainly welcome to do that. And I will proceed back to -- >> Can I give you one more housekeeping question, just because I was looking at our agenda for Wednesday. >> Mayor Adler: Right. >> We actually have more departments scheduled than we did today. Would we want to go ahead and talk about what the schedule is for Wednesday so that departments can know ahead of time -- I mean, we -- >> Mayor Adler: We will -- ed, why don't you take a look at that too, and if we could post that. We have, I think, a consensus that we're going to meet in the mornings next Monday and Wednesday, so if you would do a schedule for us Monday, Wednesday, based on that. Monday will be a full day, Monday and Wednesday of next week will be half days. Okay? >> Houston: And, mayor, one quick thing, if somebody -- knowing how our practice is now, if they're not till the afternoon, tell them don't come until we get real close to them. They don't have to be here at 8 o'clock in the morning because we're rarely going to skip and go down to something like police and fire, rather than start with animal services, so they don't have to sit here all day. >> We appreciate that. We can work with that. It's not always been the case, that's why everybody is here but if we're going to stick to the agenda as listed, we can be more efficient. >> Mayor Adler: I think no one will be called without a half an hour notice so they can get here from wherever they are. Are we ready? Ms. Pool? >> Pool: This may be the last point. I wanted to just comment that splash pads and the variety of different ways kids interact with water are really important, but we can't do away with our -- the actual swimming. Adults need the lap pools. Our swim teams need the larger pools in order to practice. And I wouldn't want to -- us to go the direction of eliminating our conventional pools for splash pads for the type of exercise and the uses of them. [4:30:52 PM] >> Yeah, I absolutely agree. >> Pool: Great, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Garza? >> Garza: So there's an aquatics master plan. Is that separate from the Dr. Cortez thing? >> I tell you what, we will send you the link to it. Actually, we'll send it to everybody. There's an aquatics assessment. I didn't bring it, but it's about two notebooks full of things. It talks about each pool and each issue with the pool. We'll make sure you get that link. >> Garza: I'm talking about in our big budget notebook under aquatics it says that the division began the contract solicitation process for a consultant in June 2015. What is that? >> Okay. Dr. Cortez is doing an intermediate connect to people while the pools are open. We felt like we're going to miss everybody if we get the contract and they start in September or October. We need to talk to people while they're out at the pools. So Dr. Cortez is going to be doing that physical contact with people at the pools and then the consultant firm comes in working with Dr. Cortez to meld that information with what they will gather through surveys and other things to get a good pulse for how each different area sees their pool. What do they think about it? Is it functional? Does it work? Other things. Really do a very inclusive engagement process. >> Garza: I understand it's a large number of -- I think 70 million to repair all the pools, but the issue that came before us a couple of months ago was just three pools. Is there a way to fund the repairs of those pools either in the cip budget or the budget stabilization? Is it a one-time on cost? >> There are. There is an opportunity through a bond program to do it in sections. I believe -- I will step out because Kimberly has that and I'd rather let her give that information to you. [4:32:54 PM] >> So the basic answer to the question is we don't have enough funding to make major repairs to any swimming pools. The reason why we're able to repair shine and govalle pool is because the council provided us with $3.6 million, 2.1 million for each of the pools. When we're look take broader perspective, the capital funding for swimming pools is on its last leg so it doesn't have enough funds to do major repairs to any of the pools that are existing. So we can do some small repairs, but for the pools that are failing, for example, those five pools that are failing, we wouldn't even be able to make a dent in repairing that for a longer period of time. So I don't want to make it sound so dire that there's nothing that we can do, but we do have limited capital improvement funding and we have so many needs that we would be doing small repairs to just -- it's the same situation we do small repairs to keep us going for the next year, to keep us going for the next two years, but it would not be a substantial improvement to allow for a long-term repair. It was only through the generosity of the last council of the 6.2 million that we're able to do a full renovation of two pools that will give us confidence that those will last longer than just a couple of years. I hope that answers your question. >> Garza: It does, but for example, what were the pools that were recommended to close this last time? Was it govalle and what was the other pool? >> It was metz and Mabel Davis. >> Garza: So what I'm saying is there a short-term way to fund just those pools? Like you said last council -- >> This year we did some short-term repairs and we're finding that there's still, for example, at Mabel Davis there's still some major leaks that are happening and so what we've done is set up a system where the pool water that's leaking is being pumped into a particular basin and that basin is then repumping the pool water back into the filtration system to be filtered. [4:35:08 PM] So we've come up with a creative way to be more responsible environmentally so that that pool water doesn't go to waste, but the leaks are still -- even though we thought we fixed some leaks, there are still some leaks that exist. So when we're taking a look and having to repair that pool, it's a major investment to go underground, type R. Find all of the typing so that creates a major repair which is a major approach renovation. So we did do some repairs but it's not going to necessarily fix the situation. It will get us for the next couple of years. >> Garza: Okay. I guess it would just be -- maybe you have this. Like what it would cost to fix Mabel Davis, the final cost in the -- >> Yeah. We have that in the aquatic assessment, every single pool is laid out, every single structural and/or engineering item that needs to be repaired and then the full cost of repairing that pool is laid out in the aquatic assessment. >> Councilmember, we'll pull that information out and I think your specific question is what would it cost to fix those similarly to what we did with those previous two pools, what would it cost to repair those pools to get them up in shape and extend the life? So we'll go back and pull that information and we'll provide that to the whole council. >> Garza: Okay. >> My apologies for giving you a bunch of information you didn't want. >> Garza: One more question. There's a funded position for zilker botanical gardens conservancy executive director. Is it -- my understanding is that's a non-profit. Is the parks department asking for funding to fund a position -- a non-profit's position? >> Yes and no. The not for profit zilker botanical garden conservancy has just formed, and it -- as a group they came and spoke to several individuals who are part of the council and requested that in similar situations the council has granted seed money to help a non-profit for profit get itself going because in the end the great work that this executive director could do could ultimately help fund the zilker botanical garden outside of the general fund of the parks and recreation department. [4:37:36 PM] So while the department again found that to be an important ask, it wasn't one that we put on the top of our list, but it's certainly one that that conservancy lobbied councilmembers and that it was decided that it could be a very excellent potential for us to fund something of that nature because in the end the return on investment could be this executive director could help independently fund through not for profit organization, independently fund the zilker botanical garden. So it's an important position because in the end the return on investment could be less of a strain on the general fund. >> Is the goal to just do that as this first year or two years and then the conservancy would start to pay for that position? >> Right. Ultimately the idea would be that over a number of years -- we don't see this happening over a tawny year or two years. It would be over a number of years putting together a very specific agreement that would have very specific benchmarks and very specific time lines. You would rather each a benchmark or a timeline that would allow the transition of the current positions that are being funded by the city of Austin to be funded over to the zilker botanical garden. So one of the positions is an executive director because they will be helping put together the strategic plan, the financial plan, getting the sponsors on board. As they are able to raise money they will be able to say we're ready to assume a certain portion of the operations so therefore we're now assuming X percent of the operations and that will no longer have a strain on the general fund budget. The parks and recreation department ideally theoretically would take those positions back and reallocate them throughout the park system and the zilker botanical garden conservancy would assume that portion of the operation. For example, if it was programming and admissions they would hire all the folks they need for programming and admissions and any of the individuals we had in programs and admission admissions would then be reallocated throughout the parks system to perhaps help with special events or provide programming. [4:39:46 PM] But now they would no longer be relying on the general fund for that portion of the operation. And it would go over a number of years. Maybe in five years they would take over a certain amount of the gardening. Maybe in 10 years it's a complete transition, but it would be over a number of years. We have not had a chance to sit down and actually -- we've had many, many conversations, but we have no completed agreement. We're still in negotiation. >> My understanding is that other conservancy and raised the money themselves. Does that 95,000 include the benefits for that executive director so the city -- the benefits of a non-profit -- the benefits for a non-profit ed would be city of Austin -- would be getting city of Austin benefits? >> Yes, that person would be a city of Austin employee and that would have to be part of the transition phase. So in the beginning that person would be a city of Austin employee and there has been a precedent that the boy Boyton -- the Barton springs conservancy did receive $30,000 in funding of seed money. I beg your pardon, I was just told we're just giving them the money. I thought we were doing it differently. So my apologies. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston and then Ms. Tovo? >> Houston: Well, people did come and talk to us about that, but it wasn't in the way you just described it. So will they repair us for this money after we -- I don't understand what the community benefit -- I understand the benefit to the general fund, but there's no community benefit to us hiring this person. And I don't want to get into it, but I have some real concerns about -- I say we've done it before, but sometimes we always do things before and then we set a precedent. And so just because we did it before for 30,000, now we're doing it again for 90. [4:41:52 PM] So that's a different kind of thing. But we'll talk later. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: I have a question about that too. I had a question about the budget process. I want to say I think the people associated with this effort, I have a lot of respect for them. This is this is in no way to say I'm not going to support this proposal, but I might. I have some questions about the process by which this ended up in the proposed budget because it does seem to me pretty unusual that we would have a line item for $95,000 without a council resolution to pursue it we haven't received any information through our city staff looking at some of the information you've mentioned, Ms. Mcneily about cost projection, funding expectations over the next several years as you've indicated in your response to councilmember Garza or fund-raising expectations, et cetera. So I wonder if our city manager could tell us there was no council resolution, I'm not sure that I saw this. >> The whole idea, let's call it a executive director. Really one of the main functions was supposed to be fund-raising. Fund-raising to the point where it would not only pay for the position, but then also pay for the staffing positions that are at the botanical gardens. [4:43:56 PM] So the whole idea was to transition what is now a city operation and in an area that requires -- has a need for a lot of investment to transfer that over to a non-profit over a period of time and we didn't specify a particular time. As Ms. Mcneely mentioned we haven't worked out all of the specific of the detail, but we plan to. To transition that over to the non-profit and let them fund the whole operations and let them do to the investment that the community certainly wants to do as far as the overall improvements. So that was a request that did go to the city manager, city manager felt very strongly about something that was a good investment and he's bringing it forward as a part of the proposed budget. >> Tovo: And when you say it was a request that came to the city manager, it was a request that came from the community to the city manager? >> That's correct. We met with community leaders and some folks that were involved in that effort and it was something he felt very strongly about. >> Tovo: It sounds like based on the question I submitted and the questions that councilmember Garza just raised that we'll get some additional information through the budget Q and a about the cost projections, fund-raising expectations, things of that sort, so that we can also evaluate the financial benefit. And again, I know my staff also met with some individuals and received some information. I'll go back and look. I don't think it was sort of in that level of detail, but it may indeed be a great investment and I appreciate the community members who have been thinking creatively about it, but I did need to ask those questions about process because this is a little different. >> Mayor Adler: I'm not sure that I got briefed on this from people coming in. Maybe my staff got briefed. I haven't. And I haven't had any conversations with either parks or the city manager on this. But there's not enough money in the city budget to be able to fund all the things that we need to have done in this city. [4:45:57 PM] And I don't think it's going to require us as a city to think more creatively to think about how we tap into our funding streams in order to get things done. Not just with parks, but with other things as well. So the concept of having a position in the city that we could do for $100,000, that would save us having a call on our general fund for several hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars, is a concept that I like because I think there are economies that we could help drive in the city by getting stakeholder groups and non-profit groups together to be -- to agree on focused projects and move things forward. I think there's a way for us to leverage money that's not city money to do some of the things that people ultimately ask the city to do. I want to learn more about this too. I haven't seen any of the specifics on it. But I would say just generally the concept of having the city done in the past and is something I want to see. More comments? More comments, Ms. Pool? Anything else for parks? That gets us to municipal court. [4:48:28 PM] He. >> Mayor, this will be under the public safety tab of your binders. I think it's the second department under that tab. That would be the municipal court presentation. >> Thank you so much for having us this afternoon. We really appreciate it. I'm Yolanda Mcknight, the the acting -- acting court clerk of the municipal court. And with me I have Pete Valdez who is the downtown Austin community court administrator, and David Coleman, who is the financial manager for the Austin municipal court. So we'll keep it short and brief. We don't have a whole lot, but thank you so much for having us again this afternoon. So the municipal court and downtown Austin community court constitutes the judicial branch of the city of Austin municipal government, which consists of the judiciary, which is overseen by our presiding judge, which is Sheri statistic ton, who is here, -- statston, who is here, seven associate judges, one judge of the community court and 11 substitute judges and three legal secretaries. We also have the downtown community court, downtown Austin community court with judge Michael Coffey as the judge for that court. And then the operations and support forms the bulk of the Austin municipal court. So as you can see here on the department overview you will see our mission. I'd like to go right into our accomplishments. We just recently migrated the downtown community court to the current case management system, which is going to allow them to have more capabilities, become paper light, and also allow them to receive e-citations. We've implemented new electronic process to request jail credit. [4:50:29 PM] >> Public information and to check the validity of community service documentations through an automated process. We've also updated the court's website for easier navigation, a redesign of the navigation page made it easier and friendlier for our customers. It also made the instructions and options more clear. We also added more information, lots of information, and some fillable forms so folks could just fill out a form and print it out instead of printing it out and filling it and then sending it in. We also added a new more reliable skip tracing cool called clear, it -- tool called clear that allows us to find some of our folks who are missing in action. We just completed our statement of work for the courts new case management system and hope to have that real soon. And we work with the prosecutors to pilot a new walk -- to expand our walk-in process with the new discovery docket. As you can see from our performance measures, everything has remained relatively steady over the last three years and Pete will discuss his measures. >> The community court key indicator, key performance measures, that one associated with frequent offenders, toward the bottom of those measures. And we started collecting this information about four years ago when we decided that we were going to focus all of our resources on the frequent offender and these are individuals that have 25 or more cases with our court who have in many cases been involved with the community court since its inception back in October of 1999. So all of our case management activities, all of our resources that you all provide for us are all focused on helping that population specifically. So that is what that key measure is down toward the bottom of those measures. [4:52:33 PM] >> Mayor Adler: How do you get to 143%. >> So the reason that that happened -- because it's -- one thing is it's a new number. So we started collecting this key measure back in '13. And what happens is when -- it's a rolling number. So when you have people referred to a service at the end of a fiscal year, they will be completed in the -- they will show a completion in the new fiscal year because they started the service, say, in August, but didn't complete until, say, November. So that year we had a lot of people that were finishing -- the 143% was the year that we had a lot of people finishing that service in that year, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that that same year we had more housing opportunities for more individuals. So the completion rates were going to be higher. >> Mayor Adler: And why is that? Why is there more completions when there's more housing opportunities? >> Because when the full continuum is available to them. Currently we have fewer housing opportunities. At that time we had access to 20 permanent supportive housing specifically for this population. So we had direct access. At this time we don't have access to that because those units have been taken over by Echols coordinated assessment process. >> Mayor Adler: So what happens here is this measures the total number of completions divided by those that were initiated in that calendar year. >> That's correct. >> Mayor Adler: So if I had 50 of last year's people that completed this year, and I initiated for 50 people this year and they all completed, I would be at 200 percent because I would have had 50 plus 50. And over time then that number should be predictive because I would expect then to have that even out as I do my pipeline over time. [4:54:40 PM] You were just starting at that time. So that makes sense to me. Thank you. Further questions on -- I didn't mean to interrupt. >> That's okay. All right. So the department's uses of funds. There's an increase this next year of 1.6 million, which is the same as most folks. It's a citywide cost drivers. We're adding a downtown community -- downtown Austin community court case manager. And a contract increase for the road to recovery. >> So on the next slide I'll go into detail on those positions. The 150,000-dollar increase will allow us to add more beds to a 180 day program again specific to the frequent offender population. Because we find the longer they're in treatment, in a structured environment and the more supported, the more successful they're going to be. So currently we only have access to 28 beds and that will bring us to 40 beds annually. The second addition of a new case manager is to add a triage or oncall crisis case manager to our team. Currently all our case managers rotate that responsibility and it takes them away from being able to address the people on their permanent caseloads. So we want somebody to do this full time and will only address crisis situations and walk-ins from 8:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I just have another question about the contracting for -- the road recovery program. I'm just not as familiar with it. Are you contracting for detox beds or what beds are you talking? [4:56:40 PM] >> These are treatment beds. >> Kitchen: Detox for substance Tuesday. >> It's recovery treatment. It's called road to recovery. >> Kitchen: And how much do you contract currently. >> 28 currently. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? >> Renteria: The case manager, is that a full-time employee that's going to continue working year after year. >> That's what we would hope for, yes, sir. >> Renteria: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool? >> Pool: I have a question on the fees that are levied and collected on the court cases. Are you going to dig into that when you get to it? I would like to see what our collection rate is over time and how that works with the penalties that may or may not be assessed by the judges. And how many of them we collect. >> Okay, do you want -- I'll finish this and then we'll come back. >> I'll look and see what we have. >> For the revenue highlights we -- we expect an increase of revenue of .2 million from penalties associated with traffic fines, warrant fees, deferral fees and special event -- special expense fees and service fees and misdemeanors from city ordinances. And that is all we expect. So you're asking about the fines and fees that are -- >> The collection rate. >> Could you clarify your question, I'm sorry? [4:58:41 PM] >> Pool: I'm curious, and it may be something that I submit as a question and answer, but I'd like to know about penalties assessed and what our collections rate is. >> So basically you would like to know the number of penalties as far as traffic and parking and all those different categories? Okay. And the rate. Let's see here. What we have -- let me see if I can pull that real quick here. Our collection rate is normally about, I believe, about 75%. And we have the different categories, I have a report that I can -- if you ask the question I can probably give you the average time to collect each type of penalty, each type of case, and that way you can see what we use to calculate that collection rate. >> Pool: That would be great. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? Thank you very much. Those are all the presentations we're going to have today. Ed, you're going to suggest to us a reworked calendar so that folks can know what to prepare for? >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: That would be great. Remember, I posted on the bulletin board two things today, the first one was the procedure that I'll follow absent getting an indication we don't want to do that. That has everybody being that has everybody being able to to make requests for costing out by yourself through the end of this week, but then with each passing week it means you need somebody else to join you, so consider that. [5:00:43 PM] That's it. We stand recessed. Or stand adjourned.