City Council Special Called Meeting Transcript – 08/25/2015 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/25/2015 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/25/2015 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:43:05 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Good morning. I think we have a quorum so we are going to go ahead and convene, if I could have your attention, we'll go ahead and convene this special called meeting, Tuesday, August 25th. It is 9:43. We are in the boards and commissions at Austin city council hall, 301 west second street. Colleagues, today,, the primary purpose of today's meeting is to continue with our budget presentations that we have that's the work that the council is focused on. There was the issue of Rainey street which has brought a large part of the community here today. As you recall we pulled that issue up on Thursday of last week so we could talk about it. The question arose as to whether or not there was an agreement that could be reached over the course of the weekend that could come to us quickly for approval so that we could not take time away from the budget session. If we're not at that place then we can't consider Rainey today because we have to get the budget process done. We have councilmember tovo not with us right now. Who will be coming back to us at 10:30 and has asked that we not consider the Rainey matter until 10:30 in her absence and I'm going to go ahead and do that because I know she is also invested and working on this issue. In a second we'll turn our attention gouge and come back to Rainey street at 10:30. As far as guidance with respect to the discussion on Rainey street, I'm going to frame I think the issue that is in front of us so that everybody can have the information that's out and then I'll talk to you about what I'm going to propose happen at 10:30. My understanding is -- and [9:45:05 AM] I've had probably the least amount of contact as anybody here. I think a lot of people have been working on this issue. I met with both sides for the very first time on Thursday. Briefly and I haven't had further meetings with anyone. I did touch base with both sides just a moment ago. The discussion this community has had with respect to Rainey street and the macc has the potential to be resolved today. And if that's possible today, then I'd like to see that happen so that we can focus on other critical elements that are in the quality of life agenda and other things that are happening. But this is my understanding of what is going to be proposed by staff. And that is that the developer of the property is going to pay to stage at the greater of $400,000 or whatever it costs or would have cost to get the permits to do Rainey street. We don't want him, I believe, as a council, to do that work on Rainey street because that would cause them to close down Rainey street. Also if he did his work on Rainey street, the $400,000 or more, whatever the greater of those two Numbers is, would be spent on closing down Rainey street and supervising the closing on Rainey street. We would much rather him not object on Rainey street and that money not be earmarked for that purpose, but in fact go to the macc master plan or investment into lot 64 or 58. So the first element of the deal is the developer will stage his construction at our request not on Rainey street, but on lot 64 and he will pay the greater of $400,000 or what would have [9:47:06 AM] been paid to stage on Rainey street. The second element that goes to the testimony that we got lost week from James that a real important issue was to deal with the alleyway. There's an alleyway that goes behind these properties. There are lots of properties used. Not only this property, but there are other big developments north of this that are using that. My problem with the alley has always been that it enters on to the circle drive in front of the mac, which is an inappropriate place for mask to be entering. Traffic going into the mac should go into the front door so you can put a gate there or welcome there or something there. And then the mac can on own in essence that traffic circle without having people come to it. So at our request again we're going to move the alleyway as it comes between lot 64 and the mac property and swing it around so that it ties in perpendicular to Rainey and it would travel over the north part of 64. So we're moving the alley from the back to the northside of 64 and that way there is now continuous connectivity between lot 64 and the mac. In fact, effectively when it all becomes parkland that lot line goes away around the mac property comes out to Rainey street at lot 64. That is again something else that we are asking for as a city because it's in our interest to move that alleyway over. The developer at our request has agreed to pay for the paving of that road, that new alleyway even though that is not the access that that development takes out to Rainey. That development has its own driveway out to Rainey. But in any event I understand that the staff has negotiated where the developer is willing to pay for the construction of that [9:49:06 AM] and paving of that road. I think that that is pretty much in totality all of the big items associated with this. A lot of big issues were coming up before and I think those issues have all been disconnected and I think we're down to that really simple thing. If that can happen I see that as a homerun for the positions that I was hearing from the community two months ago and four months ago and eight months ago. And if we have the opportunity to grab that I would like to just grab that. So we have a lot of people here who have signed up to speak on Rainey street. We can't do this because we have the budget session that we have to get through today. So I'm going to -- now that everybody knows what the deal is that's being proposed by city staff -- I'm sorry? >> [Inaudible - no mic]. >> Mayor Adler: And we're going to make -- sorry? >> Pool: This is pretty important. >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry, everybody is looking at me going parkland, parkland. Like 40 faces looking at me saying all the same thing. And we are going to dedicate lot 64, 58 and the mac as parkland and it's going to be a present dedication to parkland subject to this deal, but it is a present dedication to parkland which could then after we take the vote only be undone with a vote of the people consistent with law. >> Casar: Mayor, I'm glad it was so obvious to you that it just became common sense. >> Mayor Adler: It did. To me that was always part of the deal. [Laughter]. So this is what's going to happen. We're going to turn gouge right now because we can't take this on until 10:30. My hope is we can call one or maybe two people. Hopefully one. If there's opposition or if there's other issues to take, we can call that up at 10:30. And if in fact it is simple for us to be able to do, then we'll do it and we'll [9:51:06 AM] do it really fast and immediately get right back to the budget. If it is complicated and hairy on this deal, then we're not going to be able to do it. And I think that would be a huge missed opportunity to actually celebrate a resolution to an issue that has had advocates working on this for years. Is that okay? All right. So at about 10:30 we'll call back up Rainey when councilmember tovo is here. All right. Mr. Van eenoo do you want to start us back off with the budget? >> Good morning, mayor and council. Ed van eenoo, deputy cfo. We have three remaining departments to get to today, Austin transportation department, public works and watershed protection. I know Austin transportation is right out in the lobby. We are at exam capacity so they couldn't be in the room and they are elbowing their way into the room right now and will be here shortly. I would also ask while they're getting to the mics you should all been intercepted on the way in. There was a change to the watershed slide. There was some rate changes that they have been working on and some updates. And so I'm looking around and I see most people have that watershed slide and you might want to just go ahead and put that into the proper spot of your binders. And if you don't have a copy of that just raise your hand and a we'll make sure you get one. [9:53:13 AM] >> Mayor and council, Robert spillar, director of Austin transportation department. I'm also joined by Anthony segura, my financial budget officer. And I'm here today to present the Austin transportation department fy 2016 proposed budget. So the slide before you is our department overview. It starts with our mission statement, of course. We're involved in delivering a safe, reliable and sustainable transportation system and I want to stress system that enhances the environment and economic strength for the residents and visitors of the Austin region. So we're very focused on our customers in terms of serving our -- the traveling public and we recognize that it is both citizens as well as travelers coming to and through Austin. That includes everything from freight to pedestrians and so forth. We've had a number of major accomplishments this year. We've had the announcement on I-35 that txdot is gearing up for a project as early as five years from now. I know that sounds like five years away as we think about our daily commute, but given the size of the potential project that is winding its way towards the design process, that's a pretty short time frame to get ready for what could be a major remake of I-35. Of course we also had great success in launching the capital metro rapid bus corridor through town not this past 12 months, but previous to that, but seeing it really come to fruition this year and really gain strength and continue to work with our partners at cap metro to improve the express bus service along the core of our region. In terms of service areas, we have a number of service areas. We do participate in the one-stop shop. We have the right-of-way management program and so that's very key to [9:55:14 AM] maintaining traffic flow. Much of the congestion, especially in the central core and in the radial routes leading to the central core are due to the heavy construction rates that are going on right now, not just public construction, but private construction. So trying to manage and balance that demand for space to work in the right-of-way as well as on the private side is part of our responsibility to the one-top shop. Our parking enterprise continues to grow and strengthen. We'll be talking about parking today a little bit. Traffic management and certainly that project development function of our service area is to develop transportation plans and projects to react to specific cyst needs or mobility needs within our community. We have a range of key performance indicators as shown here and I just want to talk about a couple of them. First of all I want you to note that several of them are new indicators. Part of those, for instance, changing to a percent of school zone indicator signals tested was at the request of the city auditor. We had been keeping a measure of the number so we've been asked to move to a percentage. So as you see there we're going to be on a three-year rotation basis checking every school zone. Now, that's pretty significant because in the last two years we've bun 100% replacement of all our school zone flashers, changing out the technology. So that those are now smart flashers, if you will, that call us when they have a problem. So that routine check we believe -- checking essentially new equipment on a three-year rotating basis, that's best process. So you might think we should check all 100% of them, about they actually call is you when they're broken now, so it's pretty cool. The other measure I want to point out is the last one because it is particularly distressing. The satisfaction survey with the flow of streets. And this traditionally for Austin has been a fairly low percentage, especially when we compare ourselves to other cities. [9:57:14 AM] And there's two points that I want to make out with regards to transportation just to help frame your understanding of that percentage. It's currently at 19% for fy14. That is low by anyone's measure. There's no way to get around it. But that's in contrast to the satisfaction with the signals, which is actually much closer to the national average. It sits at about 48, 44%. So that's relative when you look at cities our size, the satisfaction with signals, we're close to on par with those cities. The two points I want to make out is when you look at the direction finder survey, understand that that is really comparing us to cities from 250,000 all the way up to over a million population. So as with you start topless splice that data or segregate that data and start to look at the cities closer to our population I would tell you that satisfaction with traffic flow on major arterials in those larger cities tends to get closer to us. We're still below those other cities for a variety of reasons, but as you start to compare us to cities instead of Wichita, Kansas, which I think is around 300,000 population, of cities of 800 to a million population, we're much closer to I guess I should say the dissatisfaction rate with flow on other -- in other cities. But what's curious is we had a hunch because signals were relative high, satisfaction with signals were relative high and satisfaction with flow was relative low. As we actually did some follow-up surveys, the question on satisfaction with flow actually is something like this: What's your satisfaction on major streets? So we had a question what is a major street? And when we test our citizenry what we find is when they're asked that question they're thinking about streets like I-35 and U.S. 183 and mopac. Roadways we really have very its control over. However, we've been partnering with txdot and ctrma to improve those roadways so one of the other factors here is all those roadways that people tend to [9:59:17 AM] say they're dissatisfied with have been under construction and will tend to be under -- continue to be under construction. It wouldn't surprise me if it is continue to maintain even the low rating of satisfaction -- in this category for the next few years as much of our freeway system starts to go under construction. People think about the delay they had yesterday or the delay they're facing tomorrow and that's how they're answering this question largely. Just wanted to put that in perspective. >> Troxclair: Can you go back to the previous slide? >> Yes, I will. There you go. Yes. >> Troxclair: The percentage of fatality studies completed, what does that mean, 100%? What does that mean? I know we've had a lot of -- >> No, that's okay. Great question. So every time we have a fatality on the roadway we evaluate it and what we're evaluating is for is to understand what the causes of that fatality were. Obviously we're always looking in my department for is there an engineering fix that we can do something about at that location. For instance, right now, we're in the process of ranking the top 100 intersections that have safety concerns. It's not just fatalities. It's the number of incidents and the incidents and severity and we have a calculation that ranks the intersections as to how severe those intersections are. It pains me to tell you that some intersections, specifically intersection incidents can't be solved by engineering if it's due to high speed there's very little we can do. Sometimes we find even with the best engineering possible there are adjustments we need to make to intersections. We have a intersection at manchaca and slaughter right now we need to address. We have a high t-bone and right angle accidents and we know how to fix that. We need to make a tough decision and close off or significantly limit a movement out of one of the retail locations there. [10:01:17 AM] So we're gearing up to do that. >> Troxclair: So when it says 100% for fy15 estimated -- >> We looked at 100% of the fatalities, absolutely. We can flex this year. This year we've got a big job ahead of us we understand because the rates are high but we will look at 100% of them. One thing that keeps us sometimes from meeting that annual fiscal year so sometimes at the end of the year you'll hear we're at 95% only because we haven't gotten the data for the other 5% so it can lag up to three months and that's just the Normal process. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Zimmerman: Quick follow-up question before you go on. So txdot, this policy drives budget, priorities. I talked with a number of txdot people who say actually traffic fatalities take priority over traffic congestion. So when they look at their statistics and crowded areas, if they have a spot where a lot of people are being killed, they'll put budget priority towards that first before they consider the congestion. But what do we do on that? How do we weigh, right, congestion versus Danker and the number of fatalities? >> Right. I'm not sure they really compete with each other in terms of our approach. Most of the time when we're dealing with safety it tends to be operational budget, sir. Most of our new capacity or congestion tends to be bond-related and so one is capital dollars, typically, and the other is operational dollars. However, one thing that we are trying to do is, for instance, with signals, because they can often be the solution to safety issue, is move those more into an operational budget, and so you'll see this year I'm moving money both from parking management as well Normal operations to find a number of signals each year based on how many we can build. And with signals, which again are often safety-related [10:03:17 AM] issues, we rank the signals every year and try to within the budget handle the highest most critical intersections first. So that prioritization can change in any given year. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. >> Renteria: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria. >> Renteria: I know y'all had looked into the Michigan turn. >> Yes. >> Renteria: You know, it seems like that would be a solution so people won't be making the left-hand turns. >> Right. Well, you're talking about a specific design, councilmember Renteria. We have actually opened our first one out at the Y. I had the fortune to have somebody say we thought you were crazy when you first designed it but it just works, you know, so I call them crazy Ivan intersections because you end up at the wrong side of the road but you're barrier protected but it just works but that doesn't work everywhere. We're certainly open to innovative intersection where's they work and we are building those can and we balance that with the other financial needs, but, yes, sir, we look at those everywhere we can. Mm-hmm. Sources of funds -- I have to put on my glasses because the screen here is smaller than I'm used to. First of all, I want to point out that the sources of funs for the transportation department are all self-generated. We have an enterprise fund. We get about half the revenue, and this is a full department look, not just one fund. We get about half our revenue from the transportation user fee, and the half are generated from other fees, whether they be parking or right-of- way or permit-type fees. We do have a small general fund, less than a million dollars, that goes into our fund and that really is to replace typically, excuse me, fees that have been waived. So we have special events and when fees get waived that's how we estimate how much the [10:05:18 AM] next year's general fund repayment should be. The other thing that that general fund tends to pay for is specific activities that cannot be funded by one or the other sources and so often transportation planning, in terms of developing the projects for future bond programs or developing new capacity projects we pay for those initial studies with general fund dollars, but I want to that it's a very -- stress it's a small sliver of overall budget and really is about replacement. You'll see one other thing from this. We are asking, we're projecting some significant innocences, both in transportation user fee -- and I'll get into that specifically, as well parking fee. This really focuses on a trend that we've been hearing from constituents, as well as from the surveys, as well as direct outreach, is that we need to spend more money on operations and bring our current transfer management systems up to state of the art and so that's really what you will see as a theme throughout my budget this year, is to start building a concept for spending more on operations. You'll see that we predicting -- starting to see a leveling off or little reduction in transportation permits. Those are everything from right-of-way to the various permits. We have to project that the current development boom will level off at some point. We're being very cautious. We certainly haven't seen a development boom last this long, in terms of right-of-way costs or right-of-way experiences and so we're predicting a fairly flat projection. I don't want to scare the development community. I'm not an economist, but for budgeting purposes, we're projecting a flat development. I will tell you that those type fees we have to be very careful with because we collect the fees at the beginning of the development process for right-of-way use but we have costs long after the development is being [10:07:18 AM] built. And so we have to collect early and then hold some budget to carry those activities, like inspection, after the projects get started. Use of funds, and as I alluded to in the previous slide, we're asking for additional budget in most -- and most of that is -- >> Mayor Adler: I guess the answer is no. [ Laughter ] >> What did I do? Now you see it, now you don't. No. We are projecting to push most of those new funds into traffic management. The big items that we are talking about are activating our traffic management center full-time. We would like to go to a contract to move the benefits of our traffic management center up earlier. We're having significant discussions with txdot right now about combining the management of the freeway system with the arterial system so that we can respond to accidents more quickly. I don't know if you've noticed but the radio stations are starting to broadcast more traffic accidents on I-35. I don't know that the rate has increased, but I think they are helping us get the word out as to when there are mobility blockages along major arterials including the freeway system. So the monies we would invest in expanding the use and accelerating the use of our traffic management center to actively manage the traffic stream during the peak periods we think would provide some significant improvements. The other things that we are proposing to expand is certainly our vehicles for hire management of our tncs. We are winding our way through recommendations -- to unanimous through the mobility committee to get ready to more [10:09:19 AM] substantially manage the whole tnc taxi vehicle for hire environment, as we know more tncs are interested in coming in Austin there's discussion on how best to respond to those. Certainly transportation planning, developing the vacancy program that would include plans for converting to a development fee for transportation, making -- we've heard loud and leer that if there's a desire that development pay its fair share of the transportation program, and so, again, that takes effort to get ready for that. The parking enterprise, we are looking to expand the parking enterprise as well. We have banded into east Austin and Miller this year. The dominance forrance forcement continue to increase as we expand those areas and management of off-street parking. This facility, the parking garage here at city hall has become one of the busiest in downtown Austin being able 24 hours a day and highly used, getting good turnover now, we've actually increased the number of spaces available for the public, especially afterhours. We're asking for a total increase of 22 individuals. That's a lot of fte to contemplate and request given current environments. I would point out that eight of those are transfers from public works that are not currently being used by public works, that they were giving them up so we're actually transferring them within the same fund from one department to the other, and so that reduces our total new need. And I would also point out in parking that many of the positions we're asking for in parking management are actually being filled by temps right now. It has been our practice, is that as our need expands, that we put on temps to help handle the enforcement. [10:11:19 AM] The enforcement does double shift or double duty, if you think about it. One, they help make sure people pay at the meters, which that's our benefit. But they also generate ticket fees that go through the courts to general funds. That's not the primary use we promote, we'd much rather have folks pay at the meter and we have a very high, positive performance rate on people wanting to pay through the meters so that's what that does. Some budget highlights. You know, we -- >> Mayor Adler: Excuse me, one moment. Ms. Houston. >> I'm sorry. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Houston: The two positions that are transferring from public works, do they bring money with them? >> They're actually eight positions and they do not. They're unfunded positions and so as they come over, we're adding funds to pay for those positions. They were recombustible positions, I believe, in public works -- reimbursable positions, I believe. Yes, ma'am. Sorry I didn't see you. In terms of any budget we're proposing a number of contracts, including a hazardous cargo routing study, which we know we need to do. We're partially funding that through monies in the balance of our budget plus new monies. We're also doing the mobility studies to develop the fees, as well as a rewrite of the Austin metropolitan transportation plan, which is really our basis for identifying what roads should look like throughout our community if has not been updated in 15 years. It is the legal basis for asking development to help pay for improvements on our major arterial system. That's $4.9 million. That collection of mobility improvements. Increased transfers to the [10:13:20 AM] cip, these are largely parking monies and transfers within our department between budgets but we are moving parking money to build six new signals and pedestrian hybrid beacon's. This is using operations money and moving away from the bond money. This is a long-term strategy that I would say both the public works director and myself believe in that we need to reserve the bond opportunities for transformative projects and so signals aren't often transformative and are often base on the emerging needs from year to year so we're moving that to an operations base. We're looking for 12 new additional positions to support mobility programs, and so that goes directly into traffic management, neighborhood traffic calming and traffic engineering and ten additional positions for parking activities. And you can see the funds that we've identified there. We also want to increase transfer to the cip, hazmat, I mentioned that, and off-peak traffic signal studies. We know that people are somewhat forgiving when they're stuck at a light during the rush hour, but late at night or in off-hours they're absolutely not forgiving when they're stuck at a signal and so we want to spend more money there in terms of operations to give the signals more reactivity and more detection. And then active transportation contracts, those are flushing out our pedestrian and bicycle programs to make sure we continue to reach out to communities and -- that help folks find ways other than an automobile to use to get to work and get around their travel, not only to help a healthy community but to get them out of the way of folks that can't use other alternatives. Cip highlights, we have a range of projects that we're the sponsors for. Certainly the corridor mobility improvements, we have [10:15:21 AM] monies that we invest through public works to develop our traffic management programs and our major corridors, Lamar, burnet, as well the I-35 corridor, where we partner with txdot. We also have monies for local area traffic management programs and I know many of you know of neighborhoods within your districts that have traffic management speed mitigation requests out there and we're looking at new technologies that would allow us to more nimble. Signals and intersection improvements, you asked us how we deal with fatalities and largely it has to do with the intersectionfuls where those crashes are occurring so we deal with that. Vehicles and equipment, we have a small budget identified for replacing existing vehicles that we need to conduct our business. Our policy is to buy the smallest vehicle that meets the business need and so we're trying to get away from the larger vehicles so that we get better gas mileage and better air quality benefits. That is sometimes hard because you still need to pick -- a pickup truck in some cases so that's where our struggle is but we try to replace equipment on a regular basis so that we're always getting, again, the smallest vehicle that meets the business need. And then parking initiatives in west campus parking area, there is about a half a million identified where we partner with west campus, through a parking benefit district, to identify projects within west campus to improve based on the monies generated there from west campus so that's in our cip program. I pushed the wrong button. Got excited. >> Mayor Adler: Hold on one second. >> Gallo: On the slide you just finished, I see two headings. One is 2016 appropriation at 13.8 and spending at 15.1 million. Could you explain the [10:17:22 AM] difference and why those are important? >> So the difference is carryover from previous bonds. And so it could be projects that have not yet been completed but they've already been fully appropriated in previous years and so that carries on and so that's why the spending plan might be higher than what is being appropriated in the next year. >> If I can build on that a little bit, what council approves on an annual basis is the appropriation so in improving this budget for fiscal year '16 you would be approving an additional $13.8 million of spending authority for fiscal year '16. The 15.1 spending plan is a combination of that 13.8 million of new appropriation plus perhaps previous appropriations that have been approved in previous years for projects that haven't yet finished. The reason we'll do that is because council needs to fully appropriate the funding for a project before we actually enter into a contract to deliver it. So if it's a significant project, $10 million project, we will appropriate the full amount of the funds at the time we let the contract, even though the project might continue on for two, three, four years. >> Gallo: So the spending plan difference increase is not an unfunded met -- >> It is not unfunded. >> Gallo: And it's not funded with the 2016 appropriations? It would be previous? >> That's correct. >> Councilmember, that's not uncommon with transportation projects because many of them are large enough that they take multiple years to construct. Thank you for asking that. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: So for councilmember Gallo, I think maybe the point you were getting at and the point I've been making for many, many months, is the council should -- it does and it should have more authority over the spending priorities when it comes do some of these bond funds that have not yet been encumbered for specific projects. So, yeah, there's still -- [10:19:22 AM] when we looked last there was around $100 million potentially of bond money from 2012. There could be that much that I think we, as a council, should be deliberating on as to how that money is prioritized and that's not happening. So. . . >> Gallo: Actually that wasn't the intention. It was just to understand the difference, but it's a good commercial introduction to the fact that we just implemented, again, the bond oversight committee and we've already submit aid name so I would encourage all the other councilmembers to do their appointments for that as quickly as possible so that that committee can actually -- that board can actually start working on doing all of this. So thank you for that introduction and reminder. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Please proceed. >> So a few rate and revenue highlights, just to go over what we are asking for in terms of new revenue. Total revenue proposed to increase by a little over $9 million over the 2015 amended budget. Transportation user fee, we're asking for $6.6 million increase. That is one point -- $1.11 monthly increase for residential and approximately $5.56 for commercial properties. We understand that is a big ask but we are hoping that is avoid as an investment in our mobility as mobility is one of the key items that we know from the community that we need to continue to invest in. We're also proposing this year an hourly parking rate increase in downtown to $1.20 per hour. What we're asking of y'all today is simply to recognize the potential for that revenue in our budget. We plan to start a public outreach process in October to have that discussion with the downtown businesses. What we've found is many of [10:21:23 AM] the outlying parking benefit districts have gone straight to the late-night five nights a week and that that has proven very successful for those businesses and restaurants in those areas. And so with downtown, since it represents such a large footprint of our night life activity and so forth, we want to take that one step at a time. And so in October we'll begin that public outreach process, looking for a January time frame to potentially increase that. But we do want to take advantage of that additional revenue and invest it into transportation, and the only way we can do that would be to have the budget discussion with y'all today. And so that would be moving forward in October. Parking management districts, we are showing an increase in the revenue simply recognizing the revenue. East Austin and Miller are actually already established and so this would be the first year that we would start to recognize the revenue from those locations. And then there's a small increase from a variety of other fees that are just collected for permits fees, non-core parking, et cetera. >> Gallo: I have one more question. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Gallo: I'm sorry. So our parking garage, how often do we analyzed -- analyze how our rates compare to other garage rates? They just strike me as being less than other parking opportunities, but I don't park in other garages but it just seems like they're really inexpensive. Is that a budget conversation or is that something that your department has the ability to analyze and make changes to without council action? >> Let me make sure I have the right answer for you. >> Speaker2: Also as part of the conversation saying, too, that people that actually come here for business are able to comp their parking so I'm not [10:23:24 AM] talking about going up on the costs for people that are coming here to do business, but other parkers. >> No. I understand, councilmember. And so there's two parts to this answer. First of all, as a publicly owned garage we need to set rates based on the cost of the service being provided. And so our parking program as part of overall traffic management, making sure that parking lots don't back up and affect the streets, and the other rest of the traffic system. So that's part of our analysis of rates. And the other is that market demand and the services that we're providing within the parking lot. Previous councils have given the city administration the ability to raise rates based on market analysis and so forth. We've taken the tact to try to make sure this garage is well-used. We are one of the busier garages in town. Many other garages are highly reserved for specific users and so I would tell you it should not be a surprise that any given garage downtown is likely 20% empty or more at any given time. And so this lot is pretty heavily used. I would say we are very competitive, which is another way of saying we are probably just a little behind the market by sort of strategy to make sure that people feel like they have a public place to come to. We also work with low-wage -- lower-wage job workers in the downtown area, service and bands and so forth to make sure that those activities, which are important to our economy downtown, have options to park at. So we use this facility, one Texas center, and hopefully in the near future waller street to provide those access points for people to have affordable parking. I don't know if I answered your question directly. I tried. It's complicated. Yes, we analyze the market. >> Gallo: And so how often is that done? [10:25:25 AM] And are we do for another analysis of it? >> So we just raised rates here, just within the last couple of months, and I would tell you we do that on a six month to annual basis. >> Gallo: You have the ability to do that internally within your department some. >> Yes, absolutely we do. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. I have questions about parking meters. >> Sure. >> Tovo: When the parking meters were add to the evenings a few years ago in 2011, if I recall it was after some public process and there was very significant concerns about it and these concerns came from the music community, from the service industry downtown. There were a lot of people who I think rightly pointed out that if they work late hours there is often not late-night bus service, if they are downtown, so they have to drive. And then when they're downtown, that's a direct hit on their wages. And so I'm quite concerned about the two elements of this proposal that we're increasing the rate, the hourly rate, and extending it to Wednesday night. Wednesday night is my guess would be not -- if you're in the service industry and you're working in a restaurant, probably the tips on a Wednesday night are not going to compare to a Friday night and now that's going to be $1.20 per hour hit on those workers who have to drive downtown. So I would say that I'm -- there are two elements of this proposal that are going to have a direct impact potentially on people who work downtown and need to take their car and it concerns me we're making this in advance of the public process and that the public process is happening after we would authorize these changes. So I wonder if you could address the timing and what our possibilities are here. >> Yes, councilmember. First of all, we're not asking you to authorize the extension of the hours. We're asking to you recognize the budget is the first thing. But I would like to put you at ease with regards to the impacts to low-wage earners. Service industries downtown. [10:27:25 AM] We don't plan to launch this in a vacuum. We want to time this along with the opening of waller street garage, waller creek garage, up near the water department, to make it available to -- at a significant discount for people who do need to drive downtown. The other reason that is driving this desire to move to late nights on Wednesdays as well as increase the costs or the request to do that is we know that parking is now -- way exceeding 85% on Wednesday through Saturday nights. Actually I would argue that even on Tuesday nights. 85% is significant because that means the facilities are full or the on- street parking is full. We're actually hitting rates as high as 95% on the key nights, including Wednesday, I believe. What we know from the last time we extended hours is that actually sales -- the information we have on it unfortunately is liquor so I'm not sure that is necessarily something we want to promote but we know that that sales went up 15% so we know that business is strong on -- every night Wednesday through Saturday nights and we know that when we make more spaces available for customers, in fact more people and more business gets done. But we're not blind to the need for service industry folks to have parking and so that's why we want to partner with this with the opening of the waller creek garage. Cap metro added more late-night access to downtown so that's our plan. It is sort of a catch 22. We either do the public process and then come and ask for the revenue to be recognized this year so we can invest that back in the transportation system, which would require a budget amendment in January /February time frame, or we ask you to recognize the budget now and if we're unsuccessful convincing the community to [10:29:26 AM] move forward with this, we come back for a budget amendment to reduce that. Either way, I would tell you that we have to then put some of our investments on hold until we can be guaranteed that we have that budget revenue to invest against it. >> Tovo: Let me ask you a question. You said we're not approving the Wednesday -- the extension to Wednesday. Can you help me understand why not I thought that was a council action last time that extended or added parking hours in those evenings. >> It is my understanding the city traffic engineer is authorized to manage the parking and has the authority to establish hours of management outside the purview of council. We came to council because it was such a dramatic change to make sure that there was concurrence with a policy move towards late-night enforcement or late-night management. And so by coming to you as part of the budget, I guess the proposal is that we get your concurrence that that budget is warranted to go into our process and that we would then go out and do the heavy lifting that we know needs to happy with the community to brief the community. >> Tovo: I guess now I'm remembering it a little bit. I mean, it was quite a public outcry, frankly, about the parking meters, and I believe it was passed by the council back in the spring of 2011 and then was -- and I wasn't on the council at that time opinion but there was such a significant outcry that I believe there were two resolution that's came forward from different councilmembers. I was on one of them and then we adopted a modified plan later that summer. So I'll just say, again, and I don't know whether it concerns any of my colleagues but a public process aft change has already been agreed to seems to me like we're just informing the community about the change, not that we're asking for feedback or really trying to balance what the impact is going to be and acknowledge it in our plans. [10:31:26 AM] I would like more information, I guess, I'll submit some additional questions through the q&a process. I'd like more information about waller creek garage and the extent to which it will be available and to whom it will be available and the extra bus lines you spoke about. And, again, I think the increase per hour of fee is significant for some people to go from one hour -- $1 rather to $1.20 per hour, we will hear about it and we'll hear about it not just from those who rely on their cars to get to their jobs but other people going downtown and that's a big shift. >> If I can just say we're sort of hampered by the technology and our previous policy of charging by 15-minute increments so we had to choose an increment to increase that was disable by four as well consist divisible by five because we collect down to the nickel and so -- >> Tovo: So you had to -- if you were going to increase -- >> It was the closest number both would work for. >> Tovo: I see. Just to be clear on Wednesday evening, I think I understood from what you were saying, though was regarded as a policy action by council before, this is not being regarded as a policy action though we're giving our implicit approval to it by approving the budget and the budgetary items associated with it? >> Yes. >> Tovo: Okay. >> With respect to parking. >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: The technology is now arriving to be able to demand managed parking so that somebody arriving in a downtown area in a city can look at their phone or have gone to a computer ahead of time, if they have that capability, to see where parking spaces are open in the city, to marshal that inventory. >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: So people can add their 1-off parking space photos a system where they can pay as they're going to [10:33:28 AM] downtown, find parking spaces where are we on that kind of technology. >> Right now we have a smartphone app called park me that we actually launched and helped develop here with our pay stations or on-street parking, which through a predictive model tells you where parking is likely available on street so it's red, yellow, green, gives you some predictive capability as you're headed towards downtown. It doesn't allow you to buy parking in advance but heads you to the location. We are in the process of making a three-year investment from the transportation fund from the parking management fund to pay for what's called parking way finding so we will be instrumenting our primary public garages and then we believe that will be attractive to private garages to do what is done in many other cities, basically measure the number of cars going in, coming out. That gives us a number of parking spaces available. And so on the outside of buildings there will be a digital sign that says 25 parking spaces available, 100 parking spaces available. As soon as you have that data that can feed to the digital market and we know park me has been interested in gathering that data and adding that same information to your smartphones. Another real invasion coming is cell phone payment for parking spaces has really come a long way, meaning instead of having to put a sticker on your car you will look for the number of your space, type it into your phone, and it will automatically be paid for. The way that works is that we have realtime handheld computers that when someone pays for their parking it fits in the location into that thing and so when that car is scanned to see if they're in compliance, it pops up as in compliance. I would think that this -- at some point in the near future will spell the end of parking meters as we know it. We will be able to remove parking meters in the next ten years or so and simply go to [10:35:29 AM] pay by cell phone over the long-term. That's sort of where the industry is headed. >> Mayor Adler: How far off do you think we are for being able to drive to downtown and have the inventory of parking spaces that are available readily seable and reservable? >> -- See-able and reservable? >> So Steve graphfield, my parking manager, tells me that the first garages will be instrument by the first of the year, we believe. You'll start to see on city garages like city hall, waller creek, the information starting to broadcast out so those would be the first ones. The technology is pretty simple and so we're disciplining to our private partners out there that if you can produce -- we don't care what equipment you buy but if you'll produce this traffic stream, we'll allow to you put that information on the outside of your building and then feed that to the -- we'll be aggregators, if you will, of that information. >> Mayor Adler: Understood. Further comments? Ms. Kitchen and then Ms. Pool. >> Kitchen: Not to put you on the spot but I'm sure you can do this off the top of my head, this was -- park me is a very interesting discussion of the innovations coming. >> Yes. >> Kitchen: If you had to say three, four, five, exciting innovations we might look forward to over the next year or so, two, three, what would you say those would be? >> I think the continued expansion of park me, big data is going to be really exciting. Everyone should know by now there are Google cars operating within our city. We're the first major city outside of -- is it mountain home, California? And I explained to them Austin is a little bigger than that so automated cars I think are coming. I don't think that they will be the fully automated cars quite yet but I think a number of technologies in terms of [10:37:30 AM] that. That will help make our system more efficient. It will not replace the need for traffic management and transit because there still is a capacity limit for how many vehicles, even if they're automated, we can get into the area. But that is fundamentally change our think about parking because I think in the near feature, say, ten years out, the concept of storing cars in your most valuable land areas, whether they be up at the domain or here, will not be part of the private equation, if you will. People will think about how to use those parking spaces differently. Improved technology, in terms of realtime traffic times along major arterials, there are a number of apps coming out that will help people make better travel decisions, whether it is change modes or change routes or change times. I think that's pretty exciting. I think the investment this community is making in high-speed wireless is pretty incredible. I view Google fiber and AT&T Google fibers and all the other fibers you can imagine as a transportation investment because as traveling across the internet becomes faster and you can have realtime conversations with someone over a video conference, I think the need to travel will change and so I think that will change our fundamental abilities or need to travel. I think there will still be a lot of travel for entertainment so, again, I think the use of our roadways will dramatically change. Yes? Thank you. My arterial management person remind me of two major projects we're working on. On our radial corridors coming into our central activity areas, burnet, Lamar, north, south, I-35, frontage roads, we are doing adoptive signal management or moving towards adaptive signal management, [10:39:30 AM] where the signals will actually be turned lose to loose to think for themselves and analyze congestion and delay. That is real cutting-edge in terms of the technology so those corridors will become very much smarter. As we get our feet wet on those corridors, I'm assuming it's going to work. There's no technical reason it shouldn't work but assuming it works we'll be able to spread that to other manager radial corridors coming in and out of downtown or other major activity centers. The reason we picked the corridors we did is because those are the heaviest corridors for moving traffic in and out. The last thing I'd put forward and I've probably gone way past five but there's a lot of exciting things here so I'm sorry. >> Kitchen: That's all right. >> Is the joint management of the freeways and arterials here in Austin and that I can't say how critical it is. Previous councils have heard me say that we know exactly what happens to south Lamar or north Lamar when mopac shuts down, we know exactly what happens to airport boulevard when some of these major parallel routes break down. In this community, there is a strong interest between both txdot and the city to move towards a combined management so that we're sharing data across that jurisdictional boundary and making joint decisions as to how best to operate. That effort actually is underway right now. We have a contract that is already in motion on I-35 to look at opportunities to combine those activities. And we've been implementing big data capability into our signal system so that we can share data across with txdot. So I think it will be exciting. We're doing it in preparation for the I-35 construction. Excuse me. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. [10:41:30 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool. >> Pool: I'm fine. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Troxclair. >> Troxclair: First I wanted to ask about the percent of residents satisfied or very satisfied with the traffic flow on major streets. >> Yes. >> Troxclair: Yes, those are all very low and I know you're saying that's because the average person thinks of major streets as the ways that you don't have control over or the city doesn't have as much control over. >> Right. >> Troxclair: It seems like that's a really key indicator, and it also seems like that's not necessarily the same thing as satisfaction with signal timing. >> Right. >> Troxclair: So why -- would it make sense to just add a question that is more clear about how satisfied you are with congestion on city streets or on streets such as -- >> That would make a great idea. Unfortunately, it's a national survey and so we're locked into -- they compare us by, I think, 30 other cities and so they've -- the question is locked in. We don't have the ability. So what we've done in the past is we then use a survey tool through Austin energy to go back and resurvey. So we ask the same question of actually a larger pool of citizens, how do you feel about flow on major streets, and we can mimic the same answer we get on the direction finder but then we go back and say so what street were you thinking of. Of the five top streets the only two that are arterials are Lamar and congress, both of which during the time frame of those surveys have largely been under construction and so -- or had construction, whether public or private on it. So that's why we got the idea. But it's also -- helps to justify why we have taken such an active role in partnering with txdot to get the major projects on mopac and I-35 and 183 headed towards construction because ultimately that's the solution. We have very old roadways that [10:43:30 AM] need to be addressed. >> Troxclair: If you're going back and asking in a later survey what streets were you thinking of, can't you also ask another question? >> We ask a whole lot of questions. I'm just saying those are the two questions that we focus onto get a better understanding of what that -- what are citizens thinking about. We also ask what would they like investment in and oftentimes it's alternative modes, as well specific traffic investments. >> Troxclair: Okay. I guess I would just say from the -- from my district's perspective, I think that if you asked that question about non--- about other city streets, I think that the rate of satisfaction would also be -- rate of satisfaction would be very low. So I just thought I would point that out. >> We're not backing away from the fact we have congestion. We understand that loud and clear. >> Troxclair: Okay. >> Many of our city streets are hemmed in by private developments and property already and so the ability to change the dynamics on some of the streets is pretty limited. I will tell you over the last seven years the satisfaction with signals, which is on arterials has gone up or stayed pretty level even as the satisfaction with flow has fallen. And so that gives us part of our understanding of what the difference is. >> Troxclair: Okay. I just wanted to make sure that the -- I mean, I could -- >> We know folks are -- >> Troxclair: There's lots of other cities. >> We know folks are dissatisfied with the limited ability we have to improve those arterials, yes. >> Troxclair: Okay. Then, sorry, two more questions. On the transportation user fees -- >> Yes, ma'am. >> Troxclair: What is the reasoning -- I'm sorry if I missed this. What is the reasoning for the difference in the increases? And what were they before? So $1.11 per month for residential and $5.56 per month for commercial? [10:45:31 AM] >> We are simply trying to show what the proposed increase was -- or that we're asking for. So there's two departments that are funded through the transportation user fee, both us and public works. And so what we're trying to do is for our department show what our requested increase is. I don't have the exact number right now. So right now the residential monthly fee is $8.25, so we'd be adding $1.11 to it for the needs of Austin transportation. >> Troxclair: Okay. And do you know what the commercial rate is? >> The commercial rate right now is $41.27 per month. The two rates are calculated differently. The residential is per unit, and the commercial is I think based on a square footage basis. >> Troxclair: Okay. And then one more follow-up question to mayor pro tem tovo's questions about parking meters. Can you clarify for us what the current times -- specifically kind of overnight/weekend times are for parking meters downtown for those people who maybe drive -- do drive downtown but then aren't safe to drive home and take a cab or Uber or something else home? >> Right. So if a -- well, I think you're asking two questions. So we go to midnight on -- with management on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. We do not charge on Sunday. If a person has made a good choice to not drive and has left their car downtown, if they -- and gotten a ticket, if they call us, we can pull [10:47:34 AM] that ticket if they can show us they have a receipt or whatever and waive that ticket in a sense, not turn it in, basically. Again, going back to the concept that we'd rather that a person make a good choice and have to deal with the ticket than get in their car and drive home. And with that -- that has been consistent since we extended to late night. >> Troxclair: And what is -- >> So there's no charge. They don't pay for it as long as they get their car the next morning. >> Troxclair: When do the meters start again in the morning? >> On Saturday, 11 am. Again, there's that morning grace period that they can get their car. >> Troxclair: And what about -- okay. So I guess -- what about -- >> The workdays are 8:00 A.M. Typically, yeah. >> Troxclair: I mean, I guess, yeah, I think the public awareness of a reimbursement program is pretty low so -- >> You know, we have a really good website resource for people needing to plan head as to how they might get home and that's certainly one of the resources. There's a range of other resources. We would much rear people make plans before they bring their car downtown so that they're not having to face -- I think a lot of people unfortunately don't get ahead and get to the end of the night and realize they shouldn't be driving and then they're not necessarily in the best frame of mind to be making a good decision. >> Troxclair: But somebody can leave their car downtown until 11:00 A.M. -- Friday night until 11:00 A.M. Saturday morning and so any time on Sunday morning? >> That's right. >> Troxclair: Okay. >> It -- right. They can also buy yellow button, if they want to buy extended time but, again, we can deal with -- if somebody did get a ticket because they left their car downtown and like I said if they made a good decision, we'll honor that good decision. >> Troxclair: Okay, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria. >> Renteria: They just answered my question. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. [10:49:35 AM] Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you. Thank you, mayor. I've got three questions, Mr. Spillar. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Houston: I too had a question about the flow on major streets because the question is where, how widely is the survey distributed because the people in my district know Cameron road, five first street, Springdale, martin Luther king, I'm not sure how widely this is dispersed. >> It's dispersed city- wide and the details of the actual geographic location of the respondents are mapped out in the full survey results that are online but it is throughout the entire city. >> And it's sent electronically. >> It's electronically. >> Houston: You're saying no -- >> It's available -- >> Houston: No. I'm saying are the surveys sent out electronically. >> The surveys are sent out in paper and then there are follow-ups with phone calls available in Spanish and English. >> Houston: Okay. So the next time you get trod do that if you'll let me know I'll make sure and let my community know that the surveys are coming out and then they need to fill them out because obviously if Lamar and whatever that other street was was the major concern, we're not getting our information in because we have major congestion that's not being counted so I'd appreciate you letting me know next time. >> We'd be happy to do that. The survey we'll be doing this year will be the first survey we've done that we'll be able to report the results at a district level. >> Houston: Thank you. The second question is about bee cycles, how many do we have and who owns them. >> The city does not own the bee cycle program. That is owned by a nonprofit, paid for by grants. The city did buy just recently a number of memberships and we are turning around and giving that to our employees after they complete a safety program so that has been very popular and we're getting a number of employees on to bikes for the [10:51:35 AM] first time here at the city. I would be reluctant to give you a number but the number 300 sort of sticks in my head in terms of number of B cycle bikes out there but, again, that's a private nonprofit that we partnered with from the very beginning and so that no direct city funding went into those deployment. >> Houston: Thank you. Last question is about cart to go. Now that east Austin has become so gentrified I'm getting comments about the fact that there's a limited range for car to go, and what are we going to increase the range so people with utilize that resource. >> Yes, ma'am. So, again, car to go is a private entity, a for-profit company, happened to be owned by dymler. The city helped them the first two years to launch the concept but that is a totally private entity. They pay us for access to the streets in terms of the number of parking spaces that they use on a given basis. There's a formula to determine how many spaces whether they're metered or not metered but they simply reimburse us. And so I can get you the information for the contacts at car to go but that is really a private entity. >> Houston: I'd appreciate that so people can complain to them. >> Mm-hmm. [ Laughter ] >> Mayor Adler: Anything else before we move off this item? Mr. Casar. >> Casar: You mentioned that there's several temp to fte conversions in the parking management division. How many of those are there? And are you asking in this budget for the increment of change from temp to fte or are you asking for the full tfe funding. >> It's for the full fte funding and -- six positions are currently filled by temps that would obviously have first shot at those positions 37 we'd go through the [10:53:35 AM] municipal civil service approach to hire those positions. And the reason we do that is reflective of the business, we generate all the funds for those staff, from parking and through vehicle for hire. So that's a fully funded system that then spins off money to invest in the traffic management and transportation system. And so as we have needs in the year, instead of coming for small budget adjustments, we simply hire the temps, cover it within our budget, and then correct it on an annual basis. >> Kitchen: So you plan to keep six temps positions on the ground and add six -- I guess the question is it's going to be 12 more or just six more and eventually you will expect them throughout the year that it will actually be more than six, you'll do six and then you might bring on two or three more temps -- >> This part of the portfolio is fairly fluid so, no, the idea that we would replace all ourers and then as a business need arises during the year we'd make a justified decision and then come back and justify it. >> Casar: Great. >> We're very careful about that. >> Casar: I'll follow up, thanks. Then the $700,000 in increased revenue we're going to see from the Miller parking meters and east Austin that were authorized this year, do those go back into capital improvements like in west campus, back into that specific area? >> So the agreement with both of those parking districts is a portion. We share that revenue with the community sponsor in that area. What that means is they help determine what the capital projects are. They go -- that go back into that community. So it's about a 50/50 split, roughly. And so that -- what we do is they still go into things like sidewalks and traffic improvements and maintenance of the transportation system but that allows that community helping to raise that piece of the revenue have a little more say over what the investments in that parking benefit district area is. >> Casar: So who gets the other 50? [10:55:36 AM] >> That goes into our operations at the transportation department so that it gets mixed in with the other requirements. So it's split between capital improvements, operations improvement, so forth. >> Casar: My last question is the tnc enforcement positions and perhaps I can get some -- it sounds like councilmember kitchen is going to interrupt me -- >> Kitchen: No, no. >> Casar: Which is fine, which I would welcome because I'm not as familiar with this. If we just on the taxicabs -- taxicab enforcement do we pay for any of that with franchise fees or other methods of funding because it seems the fees are coming from public works that that's property tax fund enforcement of just a handful of private businesses and just wanted to know or understand, considering the size of tnc companies, if they could pick up as much of the tab on enforcement of the rules that they would be breaking. >> There's two pieces to that. First of all there's no funding that comes with the position that's move over from public works so they're just the vacant positions, we're funding with the fees the users propose to generate. We have not implemented a fee on tncs yet, that's not calculated into this budget. We're paying for the enforcement out of the overall parking management and vehicle for hire fees that we collect there. The other piece that I would tell you is that the four positions that we're asking for are actually filled by temps right now. And those temps, depending on who you talk to, they're enforcing very few enforcement rules right now on the tncs. They're just keeping up with the data collection and the data management. If through the council we change those management needs or capabilities, there's a little bit more ability within those four employees to flex, but we may have to talk to you at that time, depending on what the outcome of the management is. [10:57:38 AM] >> Kitchen: Let me speak to the timing real quickly and then you can finish. At our last mobility committee meeting, the staff put forward the recommendations for additional items of regulation of tncs to make them more comparable with taxi regulation. September meeting, which is next week, we'll have a public hearing on those. And then in October, we would vote on those recommendations and bring them to the council sometime in October and they include a list of regulations that are comparable to taxes that are not -- that are not in place currently for tncs, including the fee. There is no fee currently for tncs and including things like background checks and insurance and some other items like that. >> Casar: So do we fund enforcement of taxicab regulations with the franchise fees? Are those -- is that also -- >> No. The fees do not come to the enforcement so we charge a small fee for licensing the drivers with the chauffeurs license and so forth. I would tell you generally we've probably underfund costs for taxis and so we pay for some of that out of the parking enforcement. >> Casar: Okay. Helpful, thank you. I think as a broader policy question in the future we can consider how much of the costs should be taken up by the private businesses and then also on the parking management district, do I want to compare how it is that we're funding the west campus improvements versus east Austin and Miller ones but we'll follow up later. >> The one point I would tell you there -- >> The one point I would tell you is it's how much they're generating. West campus has been there a lot longer and so it has a little more cash flow somewhat it is. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Zimmerman? >> Zimmerman: Quick follow-up on the tncs. So to be clear there's no anticipation of any revenue [10:59:40 AM] coming in from tncs for the next budget year? >> I had no way to predict it at this time. >> Zimmerman: So there is nothing in here anticipating tnc revenue. >> That is correct. >> Zimmerman: Thank you. And the other quick question because this is coming up and an important policy decision. I was in San Antonio last weekend, we had relatives in town, and we picked up our Uber application. It said Uber is suspended in the San Antonio area due to a disagreement with the government about fees or whatever. Are you familiar with what had happened down in San Antonio and why now Uber is not working there? >> The last communication we've had from San Antonio is that they just passed some recent regulation and my understanding is that it was compliant with or -- it was concurrent with the tnc thinking. So I don't know if you had an older form that hadn't been updated because there was a period of time when they were suspended. And now I don't know the answer to that. >> Zimmerman: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: By the way, I was with the mayor of San Antonio last week and she wanted to work with us on that issue and was hoping that welding figuring something out that they might be able to use. And I think that the city manager has been in contact with Ann and the mobility committee. Do you want to address that? >> Kitchen: I just wanted to speak to the fees. We could propose fees as part of this budget, but the timeline is -- the timeline is parallel. And my thinking was to go ahead and go through the committee process because then we'll be talking about fees in the context of the other regulations that are being considered for tncs. And it just seemed to me to make more sense rather than separating out those items, you know, it's the will of the council if you want to go ahead and put on our concept menu tnc fees, but to me I was thinking that people might want to consider that all together, the regulations and the fee. [11:01:42 AM] So -- >> Zimmerman: That's fair, but how do I put on no fees? I want to leave them alone and not collect fees. >> Kitchen: We don't need to have a tnc discussion here. The last council voted to charge fees, they just hadn't set the amount. So it's already in the ordinances with the city to charge tnc fees. >> Mayor Adler: But that issue is something that your committee is intending to look at. Ms. Kitchen we will talk about all those issues in the council committee and then see what the committee wants to recommend to the full council. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else before we go to Rainey street? Ms. Houston? >> Houston: One last question. I submitted a request regarding a pedestrian hybrid beacon across from the swimming pool and so I would like it to be added. >> Councilmember, let me take a look and see where that request is and I will respond directly to you. >> Houston: Want to make sure I'm not crazy here. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: Just one last question about the tnc fees. So if the council votes to sign -- the previous council voted to assign fees. If this council votes to set a a particular amount you would return to the council with a budget amendment midyear? >> That is one possibility. The other possibility is to wait until next year and recognize the revenue and put that revenue to the bottom line of that account, if you will, so that's the other option. I don't know which one we would do. >> Tovo: Okay. I look forward to following the discussion at transportation. I think it's important as has been said in part of that committee to treat our vehicles for hire in similar fashion and I think there should be a fee assigned. I look forward to having that discussion. And I would say once there is a fee assigned it should happen midyear. >> We can do that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? Thank you very much. Ed, I will need for you, Mr. Van eenoo, to step aside [11:03:43 AM] for a second. Maybe you can stay there if you want to so you don't have to reset up. I will recall up the Rainey issue. We have two issues. The first one is the agreement with the adjacent developer. The second is the parkland dedication issue. Staff, do you want to come and hit this? I think people are generally familiar with the issue. We're trying to move through this as quick wills as we can, assuming we can move through it quickly. Were there elements of the agreement that I left out or stated inaccurately? >> No, mayor, you've presented it correctly. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Then do we have one on each side to work with us? Is that what worked best? Two? That would be fine. Both of you can come up. Why don't you come up and talk to us and then if we need we'll call the developer. >> Mayor and mayor pro tem and members of the council, thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak to you. My name is Dr. Jane Herrera and I am speaking today on behalf of rasa round table of Austin. I want to state that since I've been reelected the chair of the parks board, the current parks board has not taken any action on either of these items. It did not go through us, but the previous parks board did vote unanimously in support of what is on your agenda as item 2. So just so you know, both of my hats. I want to read into the record as fast as I can our letter that we sent to you dated yesterday. We the members of the rasa [11:05:43 AM] round table of Austin are concerned that several issues remain with the agreement created by city staff and the developer for the use of 64 Rainey by the developer of the project at 70 Rainey and need to be addressed at the time of approval. During the entire period of negotiation, including those with members of the previous Emma S. Barrientos macc board, the staff and developer disregarded the mexican-american community of Austin by failing to consult with it as a stakeholder in the plans that will affect the esb mac. Number two, we recommend that you direct staff to begin work immediately to complete a new master plan for the esb Mac to include both current and phases 2 and 3, plus the new properties 58 and 64 Rainey in one final buildout. We understand that in order to keep the funds allocated to the esb mac and scary Rainey that are being offered by the developer you must specify that the funds are to be used -- offered for use of 64 Rainey as a staging area that they must be dedicated to the mac master plan, 64 Rainey to the buildout. If you don't do the dedication this they automatically go to the general fund. We recommend that you specify that any use beyond the initial two years for $400,000 be calculated at the then current market -- fair market value. The parkland dedication fee of 126,000 that was collected from the previous 70 Rainey street developer should be added to those funds for the esb mac buildout. Number four, we recommend that you convert all three properties immediately to dedicated parkland as stated in your second agenda item and not be contingent or delayed for use of 64 Rainey for construction staging. Five, we recommend that you execute a license agreement with the developer to use 64 Rainey for his construction staging and for the developer to assume fiscal responsibility for the new configuration of the alley [11:07:44 AM] according to his desired time frame. The developer had planned to expand and construct the original configuration and the new one allows him the same benefits. It can serve as additional ingress and egress from his parking garage and it provides the setback that he requires to do the building enhancements he desires. Number 6, we recommend that you task the developer only with returning 64 Rainey to its native state, that is leveling the property and planting grass, upon completion of the project rather than developing it as a park, and I might add also rather than his having to do the maintenance every year. Number 7, finally, the proposed agreement may trigger M.B.E., W.B.E. Requirements and we just recommend that that be checked out and vetted. Thank you for considering our recommendations and thank you to those of you who talked with us to hear our concerns and recommendations about this proposal. Now, in addition to putting the letter on record I would like to go on record, rasa round table, please stand. There may be others here in spirit who are not officially members. We want to go on record that we support the agreement as outlined by the mayor at the beginning of this meeting. It meets our concerns about the traffic going in to the macc circle drive, it. Takes care of our concern of the mac potentially being sold out from underneath us by a future city council and it really does take into account our need to develop the new macc master plan. So thank you for the agreement. >> Zimmerman: I just have a question about fair market [11:09:45 AM] value. We've heard this team used and we've asked for an appraisal of fair market value. But there was a resolution passed in October of 2012 where the council said we want this property taken off the market. Tech flick the property has zero market value, it has no market value because it's been removed from the market. It has recreational value as a potential park, but it has zero market value. >> Well, my understanding is that that terminology came from the city of Austin real estate and so we didn't make it up, we simply accepted that and believed that that would be the appropriate way to go. >> Mayor Adler: And we think that's okay. We know how that's going to work. Ms. Tovo, do you have something? >> Tovo: I have a couple of points of clarification and maybe Mr. Saldana is going to address some of these as well. Number three, Ms. Rivera, is the funds you're requesting that we specify that the funds from this proposal be specifically for the use of Rainey -- of the master plan and any potential build out, not just the master plan. >> That is correct. >> Tovo: Hopefully we'll get past the master plan and do some work. >> Hopefully. >> Tovo: And item number 4 and I'll ask our staff to address this as well. Your preference would be for these parcels to be immediately dedicated as parkland and then some kind of agreement reached on some kind of legal mechanism for using 64 Rainey parkland as staging. >> That is also correct. >> Tovo: I'll ask staff. I know there are those two different options. One is having the dedication take effect at the end of the agreement and the other is having it dedicated neutron have some other arrangement to be used. We'll ask staff on those two different options. >> Ms. Tovo, our objection to centering it wait is there are people on the city [11:11:45 AM] council right now whose terms may have expired by the time this is all over with and we don't want to go through this with another city council at sometime in the future. >> Tovo: I completely understand. >> We don't want to any more than you do. >> Tovo: It is a goal of mine that by the end of the day we'll have resolved -- that those are made parkland even if it has to go into effect in two years we don't want it undone. So thank you for that point. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Saldana -- I'm sorry. >> Tovo: Number 5 -- so 5 is sort of the second point of four. >> That is correct. >> Tovo: Very good. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Saldana, welcome back to our chamber. >> Thank you for allowing us to speak this morning. Just to follow the presentation by Dr. Rivera, I would also ask that the letter that we presented to each of you be actually be part of the documents that you record today as additional conditions of the agreement. We talked about the concerns over safety and all the issues associated with redevelopment that's occurring in the downtown area. So by default allowing the developer to go forward to utilize 64 Rainey street, it's a community benefit, but we believe that the issues that we presented also are community benefit and we would like for that to be formally part of the record. I also do want to clarify and get clarification today, the agreement would be that he would use the property as a staging area for two years. Yesterday we heard two years, nine months to 12 months, another three years. I would like to get a definitive clarification on -- >> Mayor Adler: My understanding is it's two years and any time after two years would be at market price. >> Okay. So assuming it's beyond the two years we need to make sure we also put in the record that there be an absolute deadline or target date that the developer should notify the city if he's going to need it beyond the two years and then that fair market value be not at today's fair market value, but whenever that extension, if that is needed that it be executed at fair market value two years down the [11:13:46 AM] road assuming that's what it is. >> I'm not going to go beyond what Dr. Rivera has presented. Those are the two main points. The other thing where there's some uncertainty for us is regarding the status of the site plan today. I know that's separate and apart from what we have posted for conversation, but it it is related to our ongoing concerns and that is that part of the development that there's a proposal that some of the development might exceed his property line and either hover over 64 Rainey street or any future public right-of-way. And I think that's an important issue for us to look at. We don't want to come back and find other surprises. That's something we want to make sure that that's addressed and looked at. If there's any part of the proposed do development that's going to exceed their property line, that we make sure we capitalize on the opportunity to collect the market value of any air rights that -- for the use of any structure going above the 64 Rainey street property that we're actually collecting the market value of that air space. So with that I really want to thank you all for again dealing with this issue. I know you have a lot of other issues to take dare of. And one final point is we all came before the council four years ago when the council back then voted to not still sel this property and direct the city's manager and staff to convert it to parkland. So we're hoping this time the agreement will stick. And thank you very much for your time. >> Mayor Adler: And again, thank you for the time you've spent on this for years as well. Questions? >> I'm Katherine Mcmahon and I'm representing the Rainey neighborhood association and the neighborhood stakeholders in the area. We support this proposal. [11:15:51 AM] It's not perfect and we do support the mac and the dedication of the land to become dedicated parkland absolutely. I don't know the details of whether it should happen before or the discussions that were going on between -- about that issue, but basically we're in absolute agreement on the dedication. We also agree with Ms. Rivera the money should be dedicated specifically to the update of the master plan for the mac as well as any other monies towards maintenance of the -- development of the park and the mac facilities. We're in absolute agreement there. The staging was the issue that we were most concerned about and that looks like it's probably a done deal. The change of the right-of-way of the alley is the only thing that is of any concern to us. It looks like it puts more traffic out on to Rainey street, but if it comes down to does this agreement go or not go, we think it should go. Traffic issues in Rainey neighborhood is an important issue and we want the council to understand that this proposed solution is not ideal because of that specific thing, but we want to see this to move forward. If the staff can be working on how to deal with the traffic issues in the neighborhood, we just want that to be -- you to be aware of that. We appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Just to repeat what I think the deal points are as we go through this, we're going to -- we'll bring staff back up, but we're authorizing -- the item would be to authorize the staff to execute an agreement with the developer that would allow him to stage at a cost of the greater $400,000 or whatever it would have cost to stage on Rainey street. [11:17:53 AM] But you will be staging on lot 64. If it extends over your period of time it will do it at market value as then exists. The money that you're spending for this would be going to first the mac master plan and if there's money left over from that it would be spent on the mac property itself consistent with that mac master plan. It would not take lot 64 from the macc, but run down lot 64 as far north on that lot as is possible given the turning radiuses that are required for the alley as it -- as it makes its turn. And the developer will pave that alleyway attention or out to Rainey and the old alley will be hopefully vacate fire department that needs to be -- whatever we need to do in order to be able to incorporate that into the macc area. And that when we have taken this vote we will then be taking lot 64 Bexar and the mac and doing what we need to do to turn that into parkland, but we need the to speak to the issue that the mayor pro tem raised, which is what's the best way for us to word that to effect the result that it goes into park now so that any future use would require a vote of the people, but yet it allows for the -- for this agreement to happen as has been described. Other than that the other questions with respect to development potential or leaving the site plan or whatever, everything else is not being decided here today and will be decided if it arises at some point in the future. [11:19:54 AM] This has been a long, very emotional issue. I want to thank my colleagues on the council. I've been the one who talked most today, but I was not the western who take the laboring -- I was not the one who took the laboring on this and I thank those who did for the rest of us. Do you want to speak to the park issue or correct anything I just said about the deal? >> Absolutely. Nick Goodling, assistant city attorney. And to address mayor pro tem's questions about the parkland and how that works, the second item on the agenda was intentionally structured to accomplish that. So what it would do would actually be to dedicate the 64 Rainey, 58 and the mac, but really what we're looking at in terms of question about use are 64 Rainey as dedicated parkland subject to three different things. And that's any existing infrastructure by the city already going across any of those parcels, we know that there are Austin energy power lines that may not be in easement area. So to address any uses that we don't have sort of already dedicated, a portion would be pulled out along the northside that you can see for right-of-way dedication. So that would become right-of-way. And then we have the use by the developer for the staging area. And so when that staging area -- when that use burns off it would become fully dedicated parkland, but any legal rights, any sort of fee temperature rights in the property would already be dedicated as parkland. So this item is structured so it becomes parkland immediately subject to these three uses so we don't have to come back and rededicate it or the dedication happens later. And it's consistent with what we've done in the past and other properties where they have some other city use. We've done that around town lake in the 80's where there were other city uses and we said as soon as those uses go away that it's fully [11:21:54 AM] parkland. >> Mayor Adler: So it would be a present dedication today. If it was any other use other than parkland, other than what is being made subject to today, as that is limited, they would have to be a vote of the people and it would be part of that ordinance. >> Right. Our charter would apply and any sale, lease, conveyance, mortgage, other alienation of this property would require a vote and also just sort of to touch upon mayor pro tem's other questions, sort of dedicating it all as parkland, not something to anything that would create issues with the standpoint that the staging would be a private use of parkland and we wouldn't even be able to license that without some sort of greater public purpose. Park purpose. >> Casar: Mayor, just to be really clear, the yes or no question is I think if we take this vote as it was structured by the weekend, could any future city council in the next year or two with a majority vote take away the parkland dedication or is it set as parkland and could not be taken away by any city council? >> It would be parkland and be subject to our provisions. >> Casar: So the answer is it could not. >> No, it could not. >> Mayor Adler: Did you want to follow up? >> Tovo: I want to thank staff for bringing forward the dedication. I know there was some discussion on having us vote on the proposal and the dedication at some other point. I think it's critical and for the community and probably for some of us here on the dais to have these actions happen at the same time and in the same meeting. So I appreciate you doing that. So my question then I think gets down to -- I have some questions and follow-up questions based upon the questions that I submitted to the Q and a process. The second condition that you mentioned was the portion of it will all be parkland except the piece that is being sectioned off for right-of-way use. Is that -- is that more or less what you're saying? >> That is correct. [11:23:55 AM] There's a northern portion that would potentially, depending on what the action is, be dedicated for right-of-way use. And that would extend from the property line all the way to I think 32 feet below the property line. >> So I thought I had heard that that was -- I thought we were talking about a swath that was 25 feet wide. It appears we're talking about a swath that is 30 feet wide. >> And staff can speak to the actual size of it. >> Sue Edwards, assistant city manager. Initially we were talking about a 25-foot set back. After the engineers looked at the turning radius for trucks we found out on Monday morning that it needed to be expanded to the 32 feet. >> Tovo: So it's not the 30 feet noted in the question and answer. It's 32 feet now. >> I think it's an average of 30 feet. We don't have it exact yet, but it won't be more than the 32 feet. We don't know yet. >> In your estimation will there still be sufficient room on 64 Rainey to accommodate a variety of uses, for example, there's an interest in moving and having a structure there. That the lot would still be broad enough to accommodate that. >> Yes. And I'll talk about value on that, but there may be some other questions about the legal term. I had asked about the encroachment. There was a discussion about a potential later request of council to allow an aerial encroachment. I want to be crystal clear that that is not in the proposal today. We are not allowing for any kind of aerial encroachment over that right-of-way. And the way I read the answer, it probably wouldn't be possible once we [11:25:56 AM] dedicated as parkland, which I hope we will do here in a little bit. >> Mayor pro tem, let me answer it this way: In order to encroach into the right-of-way there's a specific process that requires a design and a submittal. We don't have that. So that is not on the table as of today. If the property is dedicated as right-of-way, the applicant could come back in at some point and apply for it, but there is a process that he would have to follow and it requires council approval. And it is based on a fair market value of whatever the request is at the time. But that is not on the table today at all and it would require a rigorous approval process and council action at a future date. >> Tovo: Thank you. And I guess it would be possible after the actions that were contemplating today because it's not going to be dedicated parkland, that strip is going to be right of of way. >> That is correct. >> Tovo: Already, thank you. >> Casar: Mayor, I was going to move approval and -- >> Mayor Adler: Why don't you do that and I'll come back to you. >> Casar: I wanted to move approval and say out what I wanted to move approval on and if there are any amendments. >> Mayor Adler: Let's make a motion, get it seconded and I'll let Ms. Houston have a chance to speak and back to Ms. Tovo. >> Houston: I wanted to know if you were going to hear from the developer. You brought them up here and they didn't say anything. >> Mayor Adler: When he came up here I was trying to get through this thing as quickly as he could. I didn't want to deny you the chance. He's okay with not speaking. I want to get back to the budget. We have two more departments to go through. And Cameron road to get through, which hopefully we'll do here real fast too like this one is real fast. >> Zimmerman: If you will make that motion I will second it. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar, why don't you make that motion. >> Casar: I'll make that motion, thank you for the second, to dedicate the parkland subject to the terms as described on all [11:27:57 AM] three lots so that it can't ever get taken away by a future council, only by the voters as laid out in our charter. That the money -- >> Mayor Adler: Did you need those broken into two different votes? >> I think we do. >> Mayor Adler: Let's do the agreement first and then I'll recognize you for the motion. I'm going to vote for the first one, but if we don't pass the second one I'll move to reconsider the first one and change my vote, lest anyone be concerned. >> Casar: I'll move on that one, in the use of the land, that the money be dedicated to the -- for improvements and/or master plan for the mexican-american cultural center. And any improvements to the other two lots that we'll potentially dedicate to the vote for 64 Rainey and that we ensure that this vote does not have anything to do with exceeding the property line or any sort of encroachment and that the staff will incorporate fair market value for any extensions and that the maximum extension is what it allowed and is currently on the agenda. >> Mayor Adler: It's been moved. Is there a second? Do you want to second that motion? Okay. I'm going to let Ms. Garza second that motion. Did you want to comment on it before we -- >> This is just on the Rainey street. >> On the deal. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Gather a is a, did you want to comment? >> Garza: I have a general comment and then a question. I've said all along that my concern was the best community benefits for the mac. That is what my number one goal was. And when this came up Thursday I spoke about being amazed how controversial this lot has become. And that was in no way to [11:30:00 AM] trivialialize the history of this lot and the history of this land and the history of the Mac. That was no way to do that because I understand the frustration that the hispanic community has had with this process and the years that it's taken to get to where we are. There were promises made that assurances made, there were memos written and there was no follow through. And so I understand their frustration. While I'm glad -- hopefully to depend on this vote, come to a deal on this, it's important to co-exist with our growing community and how things are changing. It's also important for our city to keep promises and to follow through with those promises. And the mayor's right, this has been an emotional thing. And I was at a cap metro board meeting yesterday and there were workers defense hispanic construction workers there asking for fair wages and safe working conditions. And I thought, you know, for our community, and I've had this thought several times in situations like this, when does it end? When do we get to a point when we get to stop fighting about these things and have to stop fighting about these things? The city hall is on a street named after a man who was fighting for fair wages and safe working conditions 50 years ago. And we're still doing it. I have to say this too, the leading candidate on one of the major political parties for president of the united States has openly disrespected the hispanic community and he is number one for that party. And this -- so I recognize that fighting over this lot is just a small symbol of the hispanic community having to continually fight for things like this. I hope we can move forward. I'm very happy that this is going to be dedicated parkland. And I am -- I am dedicated [11:32:01 AM] to making sure that the Mac is built out regardless if I'm on this council or not because that is a huge priority of mine. And maybe one day my daughter can have her quinceanera there or something. [Laughter]. >> As long as we're invited. >> Garza: Thank you for everybody who worked on this. There's been a lot of input and I hope we can get -- come to this agreement. My question is regarding the previous developer paid I think it was 100 -- a little over 100,000 to dedicate -- for parkland use. So can we include this in this motion or is that something that needs to come as an ifc because that wasn't posted for today's meeting? >> Mayor Adler: What was the question, to include what? >> The previous developer paid like $127,000 for dedication of parkland for this lot, and I would like that to be part of the 400,000 that's going to be used for the mac. Can we do that now or does that need to come later as an ifc from one of us? >> Mayor Adler: You're saying there was $127,000 that has already been paid somewhere and we want to make that money devoted to the park too. Let's look at that separately. >> Pool: I think we need to have staff bring information back on that. We did talk about that at the urban space committee about what money might be in that fund or still in that fund. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie, will you take a look at that and come back -- >> A quick answer, we're not posted to do that right now, but we could always bring it back separately. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool, if you would find out about that and bring it back. And Ms. Garza, that would be great. Do you want to talk to us? >> Just based on something councilmember Garza said, I just want to say that this parkland dedication that through this 15 months working on this proposal, working with the community, [11:34:03 AM] the mac advisory board, the Rainey neighborhood association, the rbc and a lot of the mexican- american community, I want to say it's been a long time coming. I've heard in our discussions the priority of protecting this land and the iconic structure that it is. So I'm happy -- I think today is a good day. I know there's a lot of elements of this proposal that may not be to everyone's satisfaction entirely, but I just wanted to say over these 15 months with the community, with the city, this has been a great learning experience for me in terms of the community coming together to try to find a compromise to solutions that, you know, hadn't existed there. And I just wanted to thank everyone who has been a part of this. I've learned a lot about the community. I'm relative new to Austin and I want to say this is a great representation of things that can be achieved by coming together to the table and compromising. So I just wanted to thank everyone for their hard efforts over the last year. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you state your name for the record. >> Cj Sackman. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. It's been moved by Mr. Casar. We have a second both from Mr. Zimmerman and Ms. Garza and I want the record to reflect both. All in favor -- >> Tovo: Mayor, sorry, I still had those questions. Just to get back to -- then I had a couple of comments I wanted to make too. I think maybe I don't have any amendments because I think we may have covered them. I had asked the question of can you provide us with a value for the 25-foot portion of 64 Rainey that would be assigned as right-of-way in essence? And I understand now it's 32 feet, but the answer that came back was that there was not an approval -- that it had not been appraised or calculated, but in looking back at the memo there was a calculated impact on the value of a 25-foot perpetual [11:36:04 AM] negative restrictive covenant. I'm not sure why that number would be -- why that number wouldn't provide you with guidance for what the value of losing 32 feet of 64 Rainey could be. >> Mayor pro tem, Lorraine riser, office of real estate. I tried to do a really quick look at it, but it becomes a bit more complicated because it's based on density and we are also adding a piece on to Rainey as part of that. And so whoa just didn't have time to look and see the development difference in this proposal rather than the previous proposal. So therefore we just don't have an answer to that. >> Tovo: Okay. Just for the record I want to say that the number that was cited as a calculated impact on the value of a 25-foot negative restrictive covenant was a million 65. And then with some other things it went up to 1.1 million. So you know, we've had a lot of discussion about this. One of the -- I will say, and Mr. Sackman said, you know, maybe not everybody is happy with every element of it, but overall it's a good proposal. I would say one of the Numbers that gives me a little pause is the 400,000. When we're looking at something that we have some information suggests should be valued a whole lot higher. But in the mean. So were there a will on council I would suggest that we try to increase that to something that is a little more commensurate with the value of that land. [Applause]. But again, I can tell I have at least one colleague who disagrees with me and I probably have some others too. I'll just put that out there if somebody wants to pick it up. I would say I have also heard -- I represent district 9. I've heard from a lot of the Rainey neighbors and Rainey business owners. I understand all the ways in which this is a benefit by taking construction off that road and putting it on to a lot. I understand it vastly improved the situation, the safety for those who go down [11:38:07 AM] and shop and live and spend time down there. And it is a community benefit that has to be factored into it. I want you to understand because I've gotten questions over the last days of why I expressed any hesitation over this proposal and I'll tell you why. This is a public asset. This is a piece of public land that is owned by the taxpayers and we have a responsibility when we're contemplating allowing a private developer to use it. We have absolute responsibility to the taxpayers to make sure that we're getting a sufficient benefit for the community and that may be a financial benefit, it may be other community benefits, it may be as in this case a combination. So that is -- I just regard that as an utmost priority. I heard all the support and I listened to it. But I have a responsibility again to assess it careful will you. And again, I do want to say another thank you to real estate staff because I think it was the real estate staff who noticed as they were saying with 64 Rainey and the other parcel that the mac had never been zoned as parkland. So this was something probably the community members remembered, but I think that it had just kind of escaped the discussion. I was asked a few times in the last couple of weeks did we have a conversation about this back when we were talking about 64 Rainey and it never came up. I never realized until a couple of weeks ago that the mac was not zoned as parkland. Thank you for bringing that up so we can honor the commitment made to the community. So with that I am thankful to all of you who worked so hard on achieving an agreement that I think overall represents the best proposal for the community. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria and then Mr. Zimmerman. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. Working on this project for over 35 years, when we first went out there and asked the city to give us this piece of property there, the past city manager was saying that we were crazy to think that the city of Austin was going to give us such a valuable [11:40:07 AM] piece of property for the mac. And here I am 35 years later able to say, hey, not only that, but we're going to make sure it's going to stay in the hands of the city by converting into parkland. I'm just really happy that the staff was able to do the amazing work of listening to the community and come up with a solution and I want to thank them for that. I will be supporting this issue. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Again for the record since we talked about market value of a property that has no market value I need to emphasize the fact that I don't think the city and some of the constituents understand the gravity of some of these fiscal decisions. Once that valuable piece of property is dedicated a parkland it was taken off the market. It was taken off the market so it has no market value. It's off the market. So not only did the taxpayers lose the 2.3 million or whatever it might bring in the market, it also loses the potential property tax revenue and the other economic benefit that that property might bring. So the property was converted to having a market value to having recreational value. So it has recreational value. It is not market value. So when we talk about the park space now and we'll cut a piece of it off for an alleyway or whatever we do that would potentially reduce its recreational value, but it has no market value. You need to emphasize that. Not only that it will cost taxpayers money in the dead cades and generations to follow to maintain the property, but whatever is put on there it's going to cost us to maintain it. So the property was given away, the taxpayers lost 2.3 million and for decades and generations to follow now we have a financial obligation to continue paying out money to maintain the property. So I just have to make that point and emphasize it that the property has no market value and we're going to be [11:42:09 AM] charged additional taxes to maintain it as a recreational asset. >> Mayor Adler: I want to say I'm really proud to be part of this council that's about to take this vote. To me this is the epitome of what the 10-1 council is supposed to do. The 10-1 has voices from lots of different communities around the city. This council has voices that have not traditionally been on this council from both sides and all sides, but these are voices that are in our community around the -- and having these conversations all over our city and I think it's great the conversations come here. I am excited about being part of this council because we are able to take long simmering disputes and resolve them. We began with the fire department union issue. We were able to work through taxicab franchise agreements and now we're taking yet another four-year simmering deal and this council is resolving it in its first little over half year and I'm really proud to be part of that. And I think what is guiding us here today is focusing on what it is that the city needs, what it is that the city wants and we're not focusing on how much we can make our enemies pay. We are focusing most on what it is that we want to achieve and it is in that vain that this is something that feels really good to me. Ms. Tovo, did you want to say something -- I'm sorry, Ms. Pool? Ms. Pool first? >> Really as an especially log or benediction to everything that has transpired here today and then the months that I spent working on this issue which pale in comparison to the 35 plus years that our hispanic community has been working pretty much tirelessly and vocally as possible and to those who would listen and often times people would not listen. I want imjust really glad to [11:44:10 AM] be a part of this group here today. Everyone in this room has contributed in their thinking about how we should respond to this request. And more importantly beyond the 70 Rainey and the big tall building that Mr. Sackman and his family will build there is the fact that we will be preserving for posterity and for heritage legacy reasons 64 Rainey, it 58 Rainey and the land that the mac sits on. I look forward to working through master plan conversations. I may even still be on council when that might come to a committee. I appreciate all the efforts that have been brought to bear and in particular as the mayor pro tem mentioned our office of real estate services, heavy lifting and I very much appreciate your good humor and tenacity and willingness and go to the Matt on trying to find a way to resolve and find a compromise for all of us here. So I thank you all. I think we're only voting on the first one right now. >> Mayor Adler: That's right. >> Pool: And I thank everybody. >> Mayor Adler: Any further discussion? Ms. Garza? >> I appreciate mayor pro tem bringing up the concern about the value. And I wish that we would do that -- I really do, I wish that we could get $10 million for this lot. I guess my the votes would support it, but I would hate for this deal to fall apart when we're so close to and especially rasa round table and the support on this I think is huge. So that's -- I guess I just -- I want us to be able to walk out of here with this deal. I want us to be able to [11:46:10 AM] support this deal and I'll be supporting it as proposed. >> Mayor Adler: Further comments? >> Tovo: I concur, councilmember Garza. Because the mayor talked about this not being about getting as much money as possible from our enemies, I want to be very clear I don't regard you, Mr. Sackman as one, as I preferenced in my comments, this is about making sure that at the end of the day we're assessing an appropriate value for our public land when we're converting it to other uses. So again, as we consider the totality of the agreement, I agree with my colleagues that it's in the best interest as it's been proposed. >> Zimmerman: Can I call the question? >> Mayor Adler: Your motion. Do you want to close, Mr. Casar? >> Casar: Very briefly. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead and close and then we'll take the vote. >> Casar: I think it's clear that it wasn't by magic that we are seeing a very different deal on Tuesday than we were on Thursday and that's because of the really hard work that the community the put in, but I think also the very powerful message that even though there was more money on the table, that it wasn't worth taking more money to come -- if we weren't sure and not to be on somebody else's timeline, but to be on the timeline for those that care so much about the mac and care about doing this diplomatic actively. So -- deliberatively. So I think the message coming through on this on what the compromise was is really there was no real compromise on that issue. It was more that we decided that instead of taking more money for park that those funds could then be -- we would take less money, but decide, do you know, this money is now -- the ball is now in our court. We get to decide what to do with this. This is the community's park, this is the macc's park and that is why the deal is different. And as a matter of fact, I think we're actually getting significantly more for the public because we aren't giving up any of that land. We're not giving up an inch of 64 Rainey. I was fine with just taking money for the staging and [11:48:11 AM] calling it a day, but when we heard from the community last Thursday that they wanted to swing the alley over to the other side and that's something we would have paid for, but in this particular instance the -- it was also convenient for the developer, we said instead of us paying for it, since it's convenient for you, we'll swing it on over there, but if you want it on your timeline you have to pay for it. And I'm glad that is part of this deal. I wouldn't have supported it because I didn't want to be on anybody else's timeline. So in this case it really is we are getting the money for the staging and we are doing that alleyway exactly the way we wanted it to be. And in this particular situation if the developer wants it in Ms. Timeline he's got to foot that bill for something that was for the community and we're not giving up an inch of that land. And I think that kind of powerful message coming from the community is what was necessary for our staff to be able to work together with city staff to leverage this sort of agreement that I could vote for. So thanks to you all for your hard work and special thanks to councilmember Garza's staff who I know has been totally underwater working on this for so long and councilmember pool. Thanks to you all. >> Mayor Adler: You said that much more beautifully than I did. [Laughter]. All in favor of this motion please raise your hand? Those opposed? It passes. [Applause]. 11-0. It passes on the council 11 U.N. 0. We now have the second item to take up, which is the dedication of the parkland that would be the mac. It would be 70 -- it would be the parkland 58 and that part of 64 that is not the northern moss 32 approximately feet for the right-of-way. Is there a motion in this regard? Ms. Tovo makes this motion, seconded by Ms. Pool. Any discussion on this? Further? Those in favor of this motion please raise your hand. Those opposed? It also passes 11-nothing. [11:50:16 AM] [Applause]. It's an 11-nothing vote. It was unanimous. What a wonderful day. Mr. Casar, I will recognize you briefly to make a negotiation on Cameron road. -- To make a motion on Cameron road. >> Casar: I move for approval on third reading. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar has moved on third reading of the Cameron road issue. Is there a second to that? It's already been -- >> Mayor and council, Greg Guernsey, planning and zoning department. >> Mayor Adler: The question is we have a motion. It's to roadway prove on third reading this issue with the -- to approve on third reading this issue with the amendments or the changes in the ordinance that's been passed out. >> That's correct, but I want to make one notation. At first reading it also included auto repair as a prohibited use. So I would just note on the yellow ordinance before you to add one additional use, auto repair under part 2, paragraph C on page 2 of 2 and with that you can go forward and approve this on third reading. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for that. It's been moved by Mr. Casar. Is there a second to that? >> Houston: Second. It's in my district, I would like to second it. >> Mayor Adler: Did you want to say something. >> Houston: No, I was trying to second. >> Mayor Adler: Good. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Those in favor, please raise your hand. Those opposed? It also is unanimous on the dais. >> Thank you, mayor and council. >> Mayor Adler: Good job. I think that's all our extra businesses. One thing that we do have on the agenda is the ability to be able to talk about the budget hearing while we're all here together. It is my intent on Thursday that after we conclude with the public hearing if we have additional time, I'm going to start introducing for us to talk about those things that are at this point appearing on the concept menu. It's my intent to call those [11:52:18 AM] by category so that we can talk about categories and different ways that people are approaching them. A category on like employee salary and benefits, a category on economic development, a category on public safety. So that we are grouping together those things that appear on the concept menu just as a vehicle for us to begin to discuss them. But I would urge everybody that while you are certainly not precluded from bringing something up by not having it on the concept menu, if you have an idea or a suggestion that you're thinking about, I would go ahead and put it on the concept menu so that it more easily gets incorporated into the conversation that we're going to have on Thursday, assuming that we have a little extra time after the public hearing. Ms. Gallo? >> This would probably be a good time to talk about the Austin energy agenda also so that people that are watching that may be interested in particular items. It's a pretty full agenda. We have a hard stop at 11:00. So we will go through the agenda in the order that the items have been posted. And just to let people know that if we get to 11:00 and we haven't gotten through the entire agenda, then those items would be postponed to September. So people are watching thinking they would come down here to listen or whatever just so we have advanced notice to people that we do have a hard stop at 11 so we can move into the budget. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: Mayor, what are your intentions? After our hard stop at 11 we'll move into the budget work session? And do we have an end time in mind for that on Thursday? >> Mayor Adler: Well, we have a public hearing at that point that's been noticed to begin at 11:00. And if we have a lot of people that are coming, I would anticipate we'll just move right into it. If we have no one here, we may take a break and then just reconvene after lunch so that we can have our budget work session. But I think that's dependent on the number of people that show up. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: [11:54:18 AM] Ms. Houston, did you have something? Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: I think it would be important if we can do it to begin the discussion of the concept menu items and perhaps if others have items they want to bring up. So I don't know if it's possible at all to indicate a time, you know, but to my mind I would be prepared to be there the whole day to a reasonable time, 6:00 or 7:00, something like that, that may just be me, in order to allow time for the public testimony and allow time for all of us to begin some conversations about the budget categories. In other words, my expectation would not be to end at 4:00. I would want to add enough time to talk about it. So I don't know how everybody else feels. >> Mayor Adler: My sense is similar to yours. We have very limited time to really talk through the agenda items. It's a Thursday so I think we should probably -- we're not going to do a 9:00 or 10:00 one on ourselves, but I think in that 6:00 to 7:00 range I think as well. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: I remembered. How many co-sponsors does it take to put something on the concept menu today? >> Mayor Adler: At this point that still takes two, but that is changing this week. Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: I think I need to go back and try to clarify again. It was my understanding that we only needed sponsors for things on the concept menu if it actually required staff time and work to calculate those for us. If we're simply putting forward an amendment for the group to consider I thought we had the ability do that as one. We had that lengthy discussion about it on that first day and haven't really addressed it since. And I think there's a lot of confusion. So if I'm proposing eliminating one of the positions that I see, it was my understanding I could put that on. [11:56:18 AM] We've got the number for it. It's in budget. I'm simply putting it forward as a potential amendment. >> I think it's fine. That would be fine as well. >> Mayor Adler: Any further conversation? Ms. Troxclair? >> Troxclair: I just wanted to ask about the airport item that we have. Don't we have that set on the agenda on Thursday? So I thought it would be good to let the stakeholders know when we plan on taking that. >> Mayor Adler: I would anticipate that we would pick that up at 11:00. We will go from one to the other so we can handle and resolve that issue. We would do that before the public hearing. And my understanding is that when it comes back hopefully that will be a short one as well, but we'll see. Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: On that question, has audit and finance is tomorrow. >> Mayor Adler: Audit and finance has a hearing tomorrow. Anything else? Okay. Mr. Van eenoo, your floor. >> All right. I think our next department up is public works, and they are here and ready to go. They immediately followed the Austin transportation department presentation in the infrastructure tab, infrastructure transportation tab of your binders. >> Houston: Hold on just a minute. There's a press conference with one voice, and some of us are supposed to be there. So I think that's why the mass exodus. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Go ahead. Do we want to hold this for the next five minutes while we do the press conference, while people do that? I think we're losing most of the council. Let's go into recess for five minutes and we'll come back as soon as the press conference is over. >> Zimmerman: Does it probably need to be 15 minutes? Are they going to be done in five minutes? >> Mayor Adler: Let's try 10 minutes. Let's try 12:10. And everybody should go get [11:58:18 AM] their lunch and bring it back here. [12:18:05 PM] [Short recess] [12:31:13 PM] >> Mayor adler:I'm going to go ahead and start us up, but, he had, before you -- ed, before you talk -- no, no. Keep going where you were going. Rodney, I want you to call up -- we had set on the agenda to hear a quick update on the permitting question, setting the goals and the metrics. And that way I can have you, you can talk about that and then you and Greg can go and don't have to sit and wait. And, again, this is an issue that, you know, a lot of the community is interested in. We're trying to handle this in a different way, by setting, you know, goals that everybody signs off on. The Zucker report had indicated one of the things we could do better was set metrics for what outcomes were. You had told us at the last meeting that as part of the Zucker contract, the first couple weeks of that he was going to spend trying to advance this conversation for us on what would be a reasonable sit of success metrics. On hearing that I then stopped and pulled back from what we were doing, thinking, you know, really that answer comes from Mr. Zucker and then we have something that as it goes -- y'all can look at, we can look at and agree on something. So when do you think the Zucker contract will be signed, this consulting contract? Do you have a feel for that? >> Mayor, council, Rodney Gonzalez, acting director for the city's development services department. As you recall, you had approved the Zucker contract, what we call Zucker part two on Thursday of last week. And we will be executing that contract within the next two days. We plan to execute it by August 27. I personally talked to Mr. Zucker yesterday and his team, and we went over the scope of work, what the expectation is. We sent him the success metrics for both development [12:33:14 PM] services services and planning and zoning and we've discussed the success metrics in the context that we've discussed them here. So he's very clear on his charge with regard to reviewing the success metrics and providing recommendations. I've also asked him to confirm because I feel that these are outcome - based success metrics and I've asked him to look at that as well to confirm that they are indeed outcome -based metrics. >> Mayor Adler: In your conversation with him he doesn't feel limited by that work? He knows he could come one an equal number that are not represented there that he thinks should be? >> Yes, he does. He's also of course looking at that time in the context of his recommendations that he had provided to us back in may with concern to wait times, quality reviews, et cetera. I know there's some early comments that he or his staff have made with regard to staffing levels. I think this is an important piece that he may clarify in his information to us. In some regards his staffing levels were predicated on efficiencies that would be created within the department and that's really important, in -- that's an important aspect of the two-year plan we put forward that, we do intend to create various efficiencies within the department and his staffing levels were based on those efficiencies being created. So in some cases he does understand the wait times we've put Ford, why they're such, because those efficiencies have yet to be created but they are programmed within the action plan. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. I look forward to getting that work back. You say you thought that he -- we would get that back in, like, the first 15 days of his contract. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: He's working on that right away? >> Yes, sir, we put in the contract that he has 15 calendar days to respond with his review and recommendations. Additionally, did I want to let the council know we also have sent over the success metrics to stakeholders. We looked at the list of two -- that we had from 2013 of stakeholders, and we've sent that out to stakeholders, and we've asked them to provide us feedback by Wednesday. >> Mayor Adler: That sounds [12:35:15 PM] good. If that's the case, then, then I'm not going to put this on the work agenda for the next week or so, so that we have the report back when -- and we'll discuss that. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: So when that report comes back and you're reviewing that, if you could also share that with us so that we can be reviewing it as you are. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: So that we can move through this quickly, that would be great. >> All right. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Any questions for staff on permitting? Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. >> Mr. Van eenoo, back to you again, then. >> So we're going to get started with our public works director, Howard Lazarus to take you through his presentation. >> Good afternoon, mayor, councilmembers. It is about this time every year in the process where I remind Mr. Van eenoo next year we're going to change the name of the tripped to aaa road repair so that we don't wind up in this location. [ Laughter ] Also, it's perfectly okay at this point to start requesting questions about the fy17 budget. Public works department is exiting a year of some pretty high achievement but with an eye for the future. So next year will be sort of a year of a transition for us. We've completed many big projects this year, and as we've already talked about, we're going to be kind of in between major bond programs so we've adapted our staff to go that. As a waive preview of what -- way of preview, we're going to show you a budget that reduces our staffing likely 12 ftes, [12:37:16 PM] one that shows decrease by one and a half million dollars, one that has a structurally balanced budget, meaning after the increase this year we have balanced or sources and uses through '17 and '18 with no planned fee increase. Doesn't mean we won't look for one to meet some compelling needs but we don't need one to balance the books over the next couple years. We're also going to look at realignment of staff. I'm joined today by some members of our executive team to my right is Mr. James snow, who is the assistant director for over-- over all of our business finance and information operations. Seated in our front row behind rust Mr. Robert H., over our operations branch and Mr. Chad Crager, manager of community services division, urban trails, safe routes to school and urban neighborhood program. The mission is clear and straightforward. Public works delivers and maintains our infrastructure to support the challenge of maintaining the quality of life and environmentally sustainable way in a growing and I. We want to be good stewards of our environment as well as proper stewards of the public trust. The major issues address our transportation infrastructure, delivery of new and renovated facilities, working with standards for work in the public right-of-way, providing the personnel, administrative, financial, safety, and information systems support necessary for us to be an exceptional organization. Over the current year, you can see that it was another year of high achievement. We've met our goal of sustaining 80% of our pavments as satisfactory or better. This compares very well with our peer cities who have similar goes but are generally in the 70% range. The citizen satisfaction survey for this year showed greater than 16% of our citizens were satisfied with [12:39:17 PM] the conditions of their neighborhood streets. We had a very high satisfaction rating for sidewalks and trails as well. We've completed projects from very small, such as jerry creek community gardens to large projects, including water treatment plant and street rehabilitations. We're responsive to weather- related emergencies, and continue to get our children to and from school safely. The department received more than eight major awards and are working through our first green road certification. Finally, we undertook the challenge of booking accredited by the American public works association as a way to document what we do, capture excellence and make sure we can preserve it for the future. All 211 of our business practices have been documented, reviewed, and been deemed to be fully compliant with the best standards in the country and seven were identified as model practices for others to emulate. Many times council asks how does your mission support the comp plan, the imagine Austin plan so we put together what we used to call a meat ball chart. You can see all the meat balls that show how our main management and asset programs align with the core principles of imagine Austin. I'm going to take a couple minutes and go through an asset review and talk about the assets that we're responsible for, again, starting with pavments. We set the goal with a 2009 budget to get to 80% of our pavments as fair or better. At the time we were about 72%. And the goal was to get there by 2019. We achieved that several years early and we are now sustaining that level of excellence and high customer satisfaction. You can see that the majorities of our roads are in fact in the middle or B category, which is good, and it is an endless battle against the laws of thermo dynamics to keep these at a [12:41:18 PM] sustainable level but we do that I think quite well and we've been very innovative in how we've gotten there, applying new techniques and new strategies. On the sidewalk side, we are missing about half the sidewalks when you look at both sides of the street throughout the city and there are over 97,000 daze we maintain as well. The 2009 master plan council adopted identifies priority ratings based upon use factors and you can see that based upon where we are, the missing sidewalks are prioritized into very low, low-medium, high, very high categories. We start from an asset condition and piece together projects that address those areas of greatest need. This summer we are undertaking an asset condition pilot where we'll be able to put all of our sidewalks on the same letter a through letter F rating that we have our pavments on. So you'll be able to see from a condition standpoint where the need is at its greatest. >> Gallo: May I ask you a question about sidewalks before you move on? You mentioned sidewalks on both sides of the street. >> That's correct. >> Gallo: Would we be able to put more sidewalks in more areas if we focused on at least getting sidewalks on one side of the street versus delaying the implementation of sidewalks into areas because we are also focusing on putting sidewalks on both sides of the street? >> We could. We could do that. The way we approach work, some of the sidewalks are done pursuant to capital projects so we'll do it then. But really what we're doing is looking at providing connected and safe routes. Very often we will only address one side of the street to provide that primary connectivity and plan to come back later. The estimate is base, though, upon sidewalks both sides of the street city-wide. Just because that's the need it doesn't mean that's the way we work. >> Gallo: But I guess my question was what is the Normal policy for implementing sidewalks into neighbors and [12:43:18 PM] neighborhoods on streets that don't currently have sidewalks? Is it a policy that says we wait until we have funding to do both sides of the street, or is it a policy that says at the very least let's get as much one side of the street sidewalks done throughout our communities as we can and then as we have funds we can come back and do the other side of the street? >> Our separatist to establish connectivity so we will focus on one side of the street initially to get -- address the pedestrian safety issue as much as we can. >> Gallo: Okay, thank you. >> Within the city, we have 447 rated bridges, and you can see that 98% of them are rated as fair or better. The 2% that are in the poor category are not in any imminent danger of collapse. Bridges can be rated poor because of a variety of factors, mostly dealing with things like pedestrian safety and capacity. So those 2% get all -- all the bridges get inspected on a biannual basis, they're all structurally sound so there's no imminent safety hazard but there are bridges that underperform because they don't have the capacity. Some of our key performance measures. And I would preface this by saying that we have over 140 metrics in the department that we monitor. Some of them are internal metrics that deal with process multiply some them are external that report to the public how well we're doing. These are the ones that are in the budget books for this year. You can see that we have met our metrics for the year. There were -- what's not shown are three important measures that we take great pride in. One is that we respond to 311 calls within 48 hours and emergency calls from 311 within 24 hours at about 100% of the time. The other one that we're particularly proud San Francisco over the last seven years on our safe routes to school program we've had no incidents involving any of our [12:45:20 PM] children. I wanted to map out the sources and uses of funds for the department. Because it can be a little by the confusing. We essentially have three main sources, our transportation fund, which receives the transportation user fee and some enforcement from work we do from other departments, the capital management projects fund, reimbursement for work we do for other sponsor departments on capital improvement projects then we have a child safety fund, which receives vehicle registration fees as well violations for moving -- fines from moving violations in school Zones. So you can follow the color mapping. You can see where the different funds go to and which percentage of our budget is spent on those functions. Looking at the sources of funds for this year, as we go through, they are increase in revenue for the department, which is about $2 million, is split between some -- some comes from growth, some comes from a requested transportation user fee increase. And it's about 60% that comes with the transportation user fee and about 40% that comes through growth. So you can see that's where the main increase on the transportation user fee is. We do have a slight increase in capital project management fees as well. And a lot of that is due to cost increases that we pass along through our overhead rate. Utility cover repairs what we do on message the the water utility, they'll go in, do a temporary repair and we'll come back later with a permanent restoration. The area where there's the biggest difference are expense refunds, where we get rebolussed. A lot of that has to do with the capital program. As we come to the close of the capital projects we have, more of the work we're doing comes out of the operating budget so you can see that that's indicated in the expense [12:47:21 PM] refunds. Child safety fund is pretty stable for the year and the increase in other really reflects the fact we're going to be doing some reviews for both the water utility and planning and zoning on-site plans to help them to deal with the fluctuations with their workload. On the uses side, as I start -- stated up front, we have expenditures that are about a million and a half dollars less in if, 16 than they are in '17. Our goal for this year was to look forward and to have a balanced budget from our revenue projections so to get there this year we had to cut back some contract work, as well as eliminate some vacant pcms. We're going to utilize temporary staff until there's sustained workload as workload picking up and then we can convert those back to full-time equivalents. You can see throughout the department there's a net reduction of 12 fez. Ftes -- I mentioned that's spaces, we're not affecting anybody individually but we knew when we ramped up a couple years ago to execute our capital program we would have to ramp it back down so we've managed or vacant positions to achieve that goal. Some of the budget highlights. As I said before we're going to reduce the department staff by 12 full-time positions. We are moving some people between the two funds so we're going to move ten -- net addition of ten ftes into transportation fund and eliminate 22 from the capital projects management fund the only equipment we're going to buy this year are replacement for existing vehicles and there is a added requirement on us to address Ada improvements as they relate to pavement maintenance. I think I mentioned before there are some department of justice and federal highway administration rulings that now clarify certain maintenance treatments as enhancements which require us [12:49:22 PM] to address ramps and other Ada accessibility so that ties into our maintenance program. C.I.p. Highlights, this is only the public works capital improvement plan. You can see we will get the remainder of our appropriation this year of 25 million so that translates into a final spending plan of 45.7 million. Projects include street reconstruction, rehabilitation, urban trails and sidewalks, some of our neighborhood partnering projects. There is money in Mr. For improvement to public works and transportation facilities and we do have money to set aside to design new projects so that when we come back and ask for a future bonds, those projects can move straight into construction. The key projects completed in '15, Harris ranch parkway is something for a long time was the worst rated street in the city and we've done that in-house. We also rehabilitated south Lamar, during the evening hours to mitigating impacts on traffic. You'll see third street construction conclude. And then there are some Ada and sidewalk ramp improvements to about $9 million, which will completely expand the remaining sidewalk monies that we have and then there are some trail projects as well. Next year, the mopac mobility bridge should be completed, which is primarily funded through state monies but there is some city money in that. We're working on the shoal creek gap and violet crown trails. As I say we have sidewalk and neighborhood reconstruction projects. On the rate revenue side we do have $4 million in additional revenue from the tough increasing. So overall the combined transportation user fee for a single family home will increase to $9.77 per month. 41 cents of that increase is due to public works need, as rob talked about before, $1.11 is for Austin transportation. Then we do have a half million [12:51:23 PM] dollarness for fees and public improvements, commercial improvements and subdivisions. On the capital side there's a $900,000 decrease due do reduction in reimbursable position and increase due to franchise feeds, fiber revenues and other new revenue so it all sets itself off. Finally, the child safety fund remains pretty flat from last year. So with that we'd love to entertain any questions you may have. >> I got one. >> Houston: Thank you so much for the information. On the meatball slide, I just need to ask a question about neighborhood partnering. Tained a couple of years ago it was -- I understand a couple of years ago it was done differently, that the neighborhood or contact team had to agree but now it can be done street by street. Would you help me understand that. >> The program has always been formulated to where a neighborhood group can bring a project forward and a neighborhood group is loosely defined. It can be a bunch of neighbors. It can be a civic organization. It's really -- we wanted to make it as inclusive as possible so it doesn't have to go through the contact team. The big burden that they have to achieve is they have to get 60% of their residents in the impacted area to sign off ton so -- >> Afterso 60% of a street -- >> Houston: So 60% of a street could request a neighborhood partnering grant? >> Generally, that's correct, mm-hmm. >> Houston: That causes some problems? >> It does. >> Houston: In communities, and so I was at a neighborhood group a couple of months back where they said before it used to be a -- larger section of that and wondered why it was decided -- I don't know. That's why I asked. [12:53:23 PM] They thought that before you had to have the neighborhood association sign off on it because now it looks like any street can go and ask for a grant, which may impact another street to the east or to the west. >> The application review process, it looks at those who are impacted by the project. So, generally, if you're in a -- and we don't do major projects using the neighborhood partnering program so it does have limited impact, limited scope. So it is -- a lot of times drawing the area who is impacted is more art than science but we do have, I think, some great outreach to address concerns that come up. We have department outreach staff. We also have relied on the use of volunteers from vista to help us as well. Inevitably, whenever do you an improvement there are going to be some case where's there's some conflicting opinions and we always try and work those out. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool. >> Pool: Thanks for being here today. I was curious if when we are looking at installing sidewalks or replacing old -- sidewalks that are in repair, would it be possible for us also to look at the vertical infrastructure along those lines, the utility lines and [indiscernible], what would that take? >> Burn utility lines is really belong to Austin energy and the poles belong to Austin energy but they are many user ons there it telecoms on on there as well, there's a city network. To put those underground, if we were to implement, that we would be responsible for that cost because it's not anything that Austin energy wants to do. Or needs to do. So we would have to bear the cost of relocating the lines. [12:55:24 PM] Then there's the question, if you have your service connection, if your business or your home up here and needs to go down here, we'd probably have to bear that cost as well. I think the best way to do that is when we undertake a capital improvement project and put it in the cost of the reconstruction or rehabilitation of the street. >> Pool: So maybe this would be a question for the chair of the mobility committee, maybe we could look at certain corridors around the city where removing the clutter of the utility lines and the poles and such, and also for safety reasons. Some of the sidewalks are narrow and are also interrupted by the utility infrastructure. Maybe there might be an effort that we could -- not that I'm looking for additional work for your committee, councilmember kitchen, but it might be something to look at going forward , including in a run-up to a bond package, where we could have a program phased in specific areas around town, imagine south Lamar, north Lamar, around some of the parks we have and those areas where as you're coming into downtown you can see the new skyline that seems to change every week with the high rises and such. This would also be the case east and west of town as well. >> Utility costs, generally speaking, are probably the largest effort at any time -- cost component any time we rehabilitate or reconstruct a street. So I think, again, it's really location specific to relocate the overhead power lines. Depends on what's on them and what's underred ground but we can look at it as part of the design process and then I guess an option or alternative as we look at the projects as to whether it's cost-effective to do it or not. >> Pool: That sounds great. Then that would be a specific item for us to consider at the time, either do or decide not to. >> Yes. >> Pool: Great, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Further oxygens Mr. Renteria. >> Renteria: Yes. [12:57:24 PM] I've been hearing -- getting some complaints from my neighborhood in east Austin about the bike lanes, that you are pouring out dividers that -- I don't know if it's -- there's no warning and there's no markers there and people are running over them, causing alignment problems. Is there a way that y'all, when y'all do those kind of bike lanes/separation, that they could put warnings out there? Because a lot of the -- a lot of my people are saying, hey, you know, there are no warnings, they just pour this concrete, they say they just poured one on Cesar Chavez and no one even knew about it, especially when it gets dark no, one sees it and runs right into it and they're complaining about their -- you know, they're causing some kind after lineament programs and stuff. >> Councilmember, we can certainly always do a better job of our outreach in contacting and we'll do that. I'll also talk to rob about what kind of signage we can put out both temporarily and permanently to caution drivers that there's a raise there. >> Renteria: I would really appreciate that. >> Sure.. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Ms. Troxclair? >> Troxclair: The 12 ftes that are being transferred or -- 12 ftes, right, that you're losing from your department. >> There's a net 12 reduction, that's correct. >> Troxclair: Is that just typical -- a typical reduction with our bond cycle? >> I can't really speak towards what's typical because my experience doesn't go back that far. But I can give you the -- kind of the background of how we got to where we are. In 2008 and 2009 as a way to accelerate delivery of street reduction and a local stums, the city manager challenged us for street [12:59:25 PM] reconstruction that took on the name of accelerate Austin. I went and talked to Mr. Goode about some additional staff and his caveat to me is if you hire additional staff you need to be able to address them when you're completed with the program. So we managed vacancies, we look at succession planning and retirement and we were able to bring that number back down. The goal and the reason why we do have a centralized project delivery mechanism in the city is so we can deal with the variations. So I think the answer to the question is we did it because we knew we were going to have to ramp back down, but I don't know that it would be typical. I just think it's good management. >> Troxclair: Really I appreciate I'm sure the transportation department, appreciates having -- and we appreciate them having not to find new money to fund positions and the other departments where those ftes are going to. So I appreciate your responsible management of the work load and managing the ftes appropriately. >> Well, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Ed, do you want this? >> I was assured this is the last department, but certainly not the least. [Laughter] We'll have Victoria go through ward's presentation. [1:01:25 PM] >> I'm Victoria Lee, director of watershed protection department. And good afternoon. >> Mayor Adler: Before you begin, I just wanted to thank you for your service to the city. It's not going to be the same without you here. We have come to rely on you so much in this area. And I just wanted to say as you begin. >> That's very kind. Thank you. >> Pool: I'd like to chime in as well. Ms. Lee, you and your staff have been really helpful to me as I learned my way around the open space committee. And I really appreciate all of your good efforts. I'm sorry to see you go, but I understand retirement can be very attractive. And best of luck to you. I hope we can continue to rely on you as a resource should the need arise. >> Definitely my heart will always be here. >> Kitchen: And I have to say we're really, really going to miss you. You were wonderful through the whole drainage fee discussion with all the back and forth and everything. We're sorry to see you good. >> Houston: And I'm going to be sorry to see you go because you are one of the few department heads that reached out years ago about equity and cultural competency in your department. So I really appreciate you doing that. Not only for the citizens that we serve, but for the staff. So thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Now come all the tough questions. [Laughter]. >> Thank you for this opportunity to provide an overview of our fiscal year 16's proposed budget. First, very quick department overview and along with some performance measures. Our department's mission is to protect lives, properties and the environment of our community by reducing the impact of [1:03:26 PM] flooding, erosion and water pollution. And the first measure here on the table is the number of structures and roadways with increased flood hazard protection, which is dependent on the nature and complexity of projects we are working on. This measure does not include property buyouts. We have some other measure for it. In fiscal year 16's number here is particularly high at 63. And that has been updated so that we can include the additional 42 structures and 10 roads impacted by the completion of waller creek tunnel. The second one, the linear feet of storm drain infrastructure installed or replaced that reflects the majority of work performed in fiscal year 14 by our pipe construction crews and TV inspection crews. And staff have had delays in the field due to complexity of the projects and also the rocky conditions of the roads. It is predicted that staff will continue to have encounters of such restraint so the speed may not be as fast as we have from before. We are on track with our other performance measures, and as previous mentioned, the gallons of pollutants recovered is a result of business inspections and spill response, which is a demand driven performance measure and we always hope for a number less than we quoted here. Here's our major accomplishments for the past year. For fiscal year 2015 our department successful fly removed 126 homes [1:05:27 PM] from flood risk. And all of these 126 is through buyouts in the onion creek area mostly, and three homes were located in the 25-year floodplain of the Williamson creek. And for the month of may and June we provided 24/7 kind of a storm monitoring for 20 storm events. And we received 2 million views, over 2 million views of our atxfloods.com website. And one other important project that's mentioned is the drainage fee restructuring project. And we used very detailed engineering analysis, geographic information analysis and used the monitoring data and created a new fee structure using the precise square footage of impervious cover and impervious cover percentage to calculate the drainage fee. This new structure is deemed to be more equitable and reasonable. The didn't has also completed -- the department has also completed the green infrastructure working group stakeholder process. This group examines how the code can encourage the broader vision of green infrastructure established by imagine Austin. And that is an interconnected system of parks, water, waterways, open space trails, green streets, tree canopy, agriculture and storm water management features that mimic the natural hydrology such as the rain gardens. [1:07:29 PM] So here is the source of funds. 98% of the department's revenue is from the drainage utility fee and a very small amounts comes from development reviews and the interests. Around here's how we use the funds. Our department expenditure reflects for the proposed budget for 2016 an increase of 2.7 million and the increase is primary for the base cost drivers in addition of two ftes, and other programs including the policy planning, stream restoration and support services and the details in the next slides. Here's our budget highlights. We are proposing to so a budget -- the major part is the increases for temporary staff. And the temporary staff, a big change chunk is for the finance division so that temporary staff can help with the implementation of the new drainage charge structure. They will need to respond to customer calls, complaints, and inquiries. And we are also proposing to increase temporary staff for flood safety group so we can evaluate the structural solutions by supporting the development of feasibility studies and designs and reports and we also want to add some temporary staff to assist with the pond safety program and dam safety field [1:09:29 PM] inspections. We are also including in the budget increase of legal services related to the waller creek tunnel and increase to transfer the drainage utility fund about 350,000 to our capital improvement program. And the two positions, one is to help with the buyout program which is going to be over 150- million-dollar program. And also another administrative position to help -- to act as the liaison between the departments and city executive council committees and various requested inquiries because of storm events and deteriorated infrastructure. And other than the operating program we have a very vigorous capital improvement program. Our 48 million spending plan includes 12.6 million for erosion control, 22.9 million for flood control improvement for creek flood events, and .7 million for master planning, 1.6 million for vehicles and equipment and 6.4 million for waller creek, 3.8 million for water quality protection. And one thing I would like to mention is our projects include a concerted efforts to incorporateman priority program goals -- imagine Austin incorporation priority goals into the design of our projects, and internal protocol includes a step to evaluate the potential of each project to [1:11:30 PM] incorporate neighborhood plan action items and to evaluate project potential for aligning with theman priority program goals. >> Renteria: Mayor, are you doing anything about shoal creek and the flooding there? Do you have any kind of master plan? What -- how are you addressing the issue that we just experienced? >> We do have a master plan that we prioritize based on the risk of flooding and also the number of families that we can help. So we have a priority list. And shoal creek area is on our priority list. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: I know that you all have been studying the upper onion creek area. Could you just help me remember what the status of that study is, where it is in the process? >> Right now we are doing modeling analysis so that we can assess the kind of engineering solutions that will be applicable for the upper onion area. And then if the cost and benefit calculation turn out to be indefatigable for these -- infeasible for those type of solutions then we will propose some type of buyout program for the area. Ms. Kitchen what's the time -- >> Kitchen: What's the timeline? Do you have some sort of target? >> Mid 2016. >> Kitchen: Mid 2016? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Proceed. >> Here's a rate and revenue highlights. Watershed is proposing an increase in revenue of about six million dollars over the fiscal year 2015's budget. The monthly drainage [1:13:32 PM] utility fee is restructured so we can enhance the equity and the reasonableness of the -- using improved data and technology. The increase of about six million in drainage utility fee reflects the growth patterns in keeping up with the city demographer's projections and also slight increase to cover the basic cost drivers. And here's the drainage utility fee schedule. The drainage fee charge methodology has been approved by council and the base rate is calculated to achieve total revenue of 83 million. The fee is calculated a based on how much concrete, that is, impervious cover, and also the impervious cover percentage. And when the property is more dense than the city's average percentage, then the fee is adjusted up and vice versa. If a piece of [indiscernible] Density is less than the city's average then the fee for that parcel is adjusted down. So with council's guidance in previous meetings, staff is proposing a 50% fee increase cap in this proposed budget which will increase the base rate to about half a penny instead of less than half a penny. And here are some examples of the drainage utility fees. Right now the current equivalent to residential unit methods, the way we [1:15:33 PM] charge right now is every month each resident is charged $9.80. In vertical construction that is seven story or above, they get charged $4.90 per unit. And commercial has always been based on their impervious cover. And it's $242 per acre of impervious cover. And the proposed monthly fee, as I stated before, is based on the precise square footage of the impervious cover and also the impervious cover percentage. So here the first one is for a typical single-family with a partial area of 8300 square feet and impervious cover area is about 3100. And the percent impervious cover calculated to be 37%. So the monthly fee would be $11.34 with the cap of 50% increase than for a typical single-family of this size, the monthly fee would be $10.86. And then for a median density hi-rise apartment that has about 184 units, the parcel area is about 5.3 acres. Impervious area 3.3 areas. And percent of impervious is 62%. And the monthly fee is R. Is calculated to be $778 for the whole property. And that would translate into about $4.22 for each unit. And using the cap for the fee increase, then the monthly fee for the [1:17:37 PM] median density hi-rise apartment type of structures will be $817, and that would translate to about $4.44, about a 20-cent increase, because of the fee reduction for the single-families will have to be reallocated to other units. And a large size commercial, the parcel area is about 180-acre. Impervious is 100-acre. The percentage is 55%. Monthly fee calculated to be $21,000 and $319. And with the fee cap it will be 22394. So these are the examples that we calculated for you to give you a rough concept of how the fee is going to go. And the individual fees will be different based on their own impervious cover and percentage of the impervious cover. >> Casar: Can you remind me what on that median density hi- rise apartment the typical fee is currently to one user? Not obviously we bill an individual tenant. >> It would be nine dollars. $9.80. >> Casar: That's helpful, thanks. >> So that concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to try to answer any questions. >> Mayor Adler: Anyone have any questions? Ms. Lee, thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Pool: Mayor, I have a thought. [1:19:38 PM] [Laughter] >> Mayor Adler: What's your thought. >> Pool: Next year when we do budget we'll start with the W's. Laugh L. >> Mayor Adler: We'll work our way through backwards. >> Gallo: And start in February. >> Mayor Adler: Ed, thank you and your staff for the work you're doing with the concept menu. Thank you for getting that to us every evening so we can stay current with that. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor Adler: We have -- yesterday I was standing next to maria and she indicated that the certified tax roll had more property value than what she had anticipated it would have have at this point. I imagine you need to get those Numbers as well as the Numbers about where the median home value is so that you could take another look at the budget, but that would be helpful when you get those Numbers to let us know how that would -- might rejigger things. I would also be interested in knowing -- I saw a newspaper article about the aid budget and what was being proposed to them. The article that I read was unclear as to the -- whether the tax change was a tax rate change or a taxes change. It said that it was being lowered. And I'm interested if you could take a look at the other taxing entities and give us a feel for what it looks like they're doing by their forecast or by their superintendent proposal just so that we could have that in the back of our heads. >> In addition to the school district, the county, health care district? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. It gave rise to that question just to get a feel for what the overall impact is potentially going to be. >> Right. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Zimmerman: I have a question based on what [1:21:38 PM] you just said. So that comparison would be if aid or other school districts -- right, we have a lot of school districts, not just aisd, but if those school districts were eliminated from consideration for the impervious cover, what would the rest of us have to pick up in terms of the tab? Right, it's not just aisd? >> Mayor Adler: I was moving pretty far afield from the drainage fee. But it was a drainage fee question about maintaining -- it was maintaining their exemption from the drainage fee, I think. I think that's currently in place. The question I was asking was outside of water and wastewater as we're setting our rate and setting our taxes I just wanted to have a feel for what it looked like those other taxing entities are doing just so we would have that. On Thursday we'll start with the Austin energy meeting. We'll have a hard stop at 11:00. At 11:00 we have the airport thing to take up, assuming that all of the controversial questions are handled in the audit and finance committee tomorrow, and it's really quick. Then we'll be able to blow through that Thursday morning. At 11:00 there are a couple -- we'll have the public hearing where everyone has the full opportunity to be able to speak for however long that takes. At the end of that we will then start the next step of our budget process. We need to inform our constituents as to the highest tax rate that we would be allowed to do, considered to do. What we do is we identify that as being the rollback rate. So on Thursday, absent council indication otherwise, we'll cap ourselves out at whatever that roll back rate is, not that we'll go up to the rollback [1:23:39 PM] rate, but just so that we can send out those notices as kind of a not to exceed number. So we have a couple of small things like that that we'll take care of. And then after the public hearing, assuming that we have time, we're going to start working our way through the concept menu by categories. It will be the first time that we're here talking among ourselves and getting a feel for priorities and where people are and pushes. I would point out that Ann told me this morning that it is in fact legal for us to charge health -- to apportion the health benefit costs among city staff as a percentage of salary as opposed to a flat rate amount. So I have sent in a budget question and a concept menu question consistent with that because that might impact some of my thoughts on salary issues. Ms. Pool? >> Pool: So just to describe that a little bit for people who might be listening, but not know what you mean, does that mean that someone who makes a lower salary would pay a lower dollar figure for the insurance and someone who makes more would pay a higher because it would be a percentage of their income. >> >> Mayor Adler: That's what it seems to me to be. And when we've asked that question, but it appears as if that's within our toolbox to do. >> Pool: Sounds very Progressive. Are there any other cities that do that? >> Mayor Adler: I don't know the answer to that. >> Pool: That is terrific. >> Public programs do it constantly. I mean, that's how the exchange operates. The health exchange operates that way. Other kinds of public programs, the map program, other kinds of public programs do that. >> Pool: Thanks for bringing the concept forward. >> Kitchen: We could talk about this later, but I'm curious did you put on the menu with [1:25:40 PM] regard to employee only or employee and family or did you distinguish when you put it on the concept menu? >> Mayor Adler: I didn't distinguish but I'll follow up now and ask them to list those options? >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Tovo? >> Tovo: As part of that will they also be providing us with information -- I think that's a really interesting idea. Will the staff also be providing us with information about how many -- how many employees might fall into those different categories so we can get a sense if we made a shift like that, how many employees would realize a decrease, how many might realize an increase just so we can get a sense of what that in fact would be like? >> Mayor Adler: That question I did ask so the interrelation about what they would be paid. And I think the way I asked that question, so we would have a about benchmark, was to say if we assume someone got a three percent raise, what would their net position be when the -- when it was applied. And I also asked the question if we did one and a half at the beginning of the year and one and a half halfway through the year again what would be the relative position of people. So I asked that question. But the question I asked will be posted here momentarily, which will give everybody a chance to pile on and ask for variations. Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Concept kind of question on the concept menu. There are a couple of things on there right now that I'm in support of from councilmembers troxclair, Gallo. I thought that I already made that clear, but there's a version of it now that doesn't show me in support of some of the items they put on. Is that not important right now? Are we just going to go ahead and review the list on Thursday and update it at that time? >> Mayor Adler: Yeah. My sense is that we can do that. It was ready to put the idea out. My hope is that by category we'll work our way through most, if not all of the proposals, not necessarily specifically on any one, but my hope is that for this weekend's work before we get back on [1:27:40 PM] the first and where we're really actually doing some heavy lifting, everybody will be able to go into the weekend with a much better idea of where sentiment is on the dais. >> Zimmerman: So that document will be updated based on our Thursday results and we'll be able to look at it and see which members are supporting which items? >> Mayor Adler: We haven't asked people to go -- there hasn't been a requirement so far that people have to go on to indicate their support. It would be additional information. So if anyone wanted to do it, anyone could. My hope hope is that orally kind of around the table will get a feel for where people are. Certainly if we get to a proposal that everybody is against or it only has one or two supporters and it's real clear that it's not going to go any further maybe we can discover that on some of those issues so that they're not being owe the main topic of conversation. The way we had envisioned this was not to start doing horse trading or that level of detail work this coming Thursday. Our policy had us really not taking anything out of the field of conversation. I think if there were eight people that wanted to keep it -- no, no. If there were three people who wanted to keep it in play, then it was still being kept in play. But we're not going to be taking specific votes. We're going to do a much rougher, broader cut than that. It's going to be a much more conversational than that. >> Gallo: A question of budget, please. So still on our concept menus we have some to be determined amounts. Do we feel like we will get those by Thursday or before Thursday? >> Our hope is to get them done by Thursday. I don't know that we'll be able to, but that's what we're striving to do and striving to get council -- you know how much we love find binders. To get council a concept binder on Thursday complete with backup information. There may be a few [1:29:41 PM] blanks in there, though, to be determines in there. >> Gallo: Y'all have been great in that. But I ask if you're grouping them into discussion areas it may be worth grouping the ones that don't have any to be determined dollar amounts if that's possible in taking those first? >> We can do that. My hope is depending on the staff support, how much time we have, my hope is to be able to list everything that is listed and to be able to hand that out. So you will have the master list, but then a list that I'll hand out that will have just everything in that topic area both to be determined and not to be determined, but all in one page or one and a half pages that will represent so far the universe of things that impact there. And then the conversation we have I think will be where we want to go ons a group. My hope is just to take us through enough of a conversation that people are beginning to have a feel for where everybody else is. >> Great, thank you. >> Troxclair: So our meeting on the first, on Tuesday to adopt the maximum tax rate, do we have the option of adopting a tax rate that is lower than the rollback rate? >> Yes, we can adopt a tax rate anywhere we want to. >> Troxclair: Great. And then the concept -- >> Mayor Adler: And it's adopting a maximum tax rate anywhere we want to. >> Troxclair: I wanted to ask what the concept menu and the point that mayor pro tem tovo brought up earlier. I'm just a little confused as to what -- where you need -- you need co-sponsors if the measure is whether or not it requires staff time? Because if you look at the concept menu a lot of the things, you know, if you're adding ftes or whether it's one or whether it's three or if you're reducing the [1:31:41 PM] amount of appropriations to a certain program, a lot of the things on the concept menu I think we already have the information of what the fiscal impact was, but I also? That the concept menu was so that we could get on the table earlier and see what the feel was group was and try to narrow our options as we move forward. I guess I don't know what the -- what the defining -- I think we just need to be really clear if we're going to do the concept menu thing what the requirements are because I don't want -- it's not a huge deal right now. You only need two or three other councilmembers, but once we get closer in the number of votes or the number of co-sponsors goes up, it might be a big deal whether or not something that you're wanting to put on there you feel like you already know the dollar amount or whether it requires staff time. >> Mayor Adler: My sense is that this is a new process and we'll kind of figure it out as we go. There was a concern about this process precluding people from being able to bring an idea forward even if it's an idea that they think of while they're sitting at the dais on the last day. And it was real clear that the intent of this is not to preclude somebody from being able to do that. At the same time, it is the goal of all of us sitting here to try and have meaningful conversations as early in the process as we can so that we can figure things out. So I want everybody to kind of run with me here on a line that's kind of gray just because to try and make the black and white line I think will cause more problems than having that line will solve. Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: I think it adds transparency for the public, which is a good thing. I would just urge everyone to put their items on here and also to go ahead and get two other folks -- it's not that hard to get two other folks. And it helps all of us start the conversation so I really think it's helpful at this point in time to put items up [1:33:43 PM] here and also not just put them by ourselves. >> Mayor Adler: And I would concur with that too. This tool will only help us to the degree that people try to use the tool even though there's no, you know, axe that's going to fall if you don't. The tool will only help us to the degree to which we all try to use it. Anything else? Then we are adjourned until Thursday.