City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 05/18/2016 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 5/18/2016 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/18/2016 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:09:27 AM] I am now going to adjourn the special called meeting and will at the same time call to order our budget session. Mr. Van eenoo. >> Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem and members of the council. I'm ed van eenoo, budget officer for the city. Today we're before you for our third of five planned policy work sessions. You can see the calendar in front of you. And I just want to remind everybody that the insent of these policy work sessions was for staff to review for council what we see to be a number of it key policy areas that some decision will need to be made about as part of the fy 2017 budget development process. So the intent of the work sessions is for staff to present the issues to council, seek your feedback and of course we will take that as we move forward with developing a budget recommendation that will be delivered to council on July 27th. You can see the calendar in front of you. On may fourth we were here talking about tax rates, utility rates and how those impact the affordability of the city. We also talked to you about civilian benefits and wages. We were over here, actually in the chambers last week, talking about deferred critical maintenance needs across the city and a funding strategy for addressing some of the deferred maintenance needs as well as the rapidly [9:11:29 AM] growing and changing world of information technology and some of our plans for keeping space with that. Before us today are two policy work sessions, very important topics, we feel. One in regards to zero waste initiatives. This is part of a master plan from Austin resource recovery that was endorsed by previous councils and so we're going to be here before council today highlighting some of our zero waste initiatives for the future and seeking your input and support in regards to those areas. And following that will be a presentation by health and human services about some of their funding needs. And I'd just remind council that in regards to the health and human services presentation, we have at least three, maybe even more resolutions that have been passed by previous councils and this council calling for increased funding in our health and human services area so we wanted to drill down on some of the needs throughout the community in that area and to seek council's policy input in that regard. With that just as a way of introduction I'm going to turn it over to our Austin resource recovery director bob gedert to walk through the zero waste initiatives. And we'll go through a presentation and at points in the presentation have opportunities for policy discussion with the council and of course questions at any time during the presentations as well. Bob? Gratings. -- Greetings. My name is bob gedert, director of Austin resource recovery. I'm here to speak on a zero waste policy discussion as well as presentation of our proposal to expand organics collections citywide. I'd begin -- there we go. I begin noting, as noted to council in a policy workshop last year, our zero waste activities began in 2005 when mayor Wynn signed the urban [9:13:29 AM] environmental accords. And one of those accords included the commitment towards zero waste. In 2009 the city council adopted the Austin zero waste strategic plan, which philosophically adopted zero waste and in 2011 we had a road plan towards zero waste as well as major activities of the department. Part of the resolutions of council in adopting zero waste are noted on this slide here. As we develop the master plan for the department we took to heart the resolution language as a starting point for the development of our zero waste programs. And I highlight two points here. One using a whole system approach to evaluate and manage the flow of resources and waste created by our communities. This point notes that many of our waste streams are resources to be recovered, thus the name change for our department, resource recovery. Also note that the whole system approach that's being referred to here is a materials management approach through zero waste. I also note another point on this from the resolutions. By 2040 reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills and incinerators by 90%. So that has been our council adopted goal on zero waste is to reduce our waste flows to the landfill and incinerators by 90%. What we referred to as diversion is this reference point here that we're moving material away from a landfill, away from incineration and into a useful second life. That's -- when I speak of diversion that's what I mean by diversion. A little bit of timeline here, 2005 and ongoing, we've a bit of zero [9:15:29 AM] waste discussions zero waste advisory commission through the last decade, 2005 through 2016. In 2008, 2009 there was significant amount of public input in the formation of the zero waste strategic that was announced by council in council. We also had a lot of planning input in the foundation of the master plan. In 2015 we had a lot of stakeholders in the universal recycling ordinance, which is a keystone to our zero waste approach towards diversion. And we've had public input throughout all of the last decade, through community meetings, workshops, stakeholder meetings and stakeholder input. I would note that gathered together with us today is members of the community that support our zero waste plan and are here behind me today. Part of reducing the amount of trash to the landfills includes these points here that are noted in the council resolution. So again, I note that this is a Georgetown driven initiative through several different resolutions, and I note three points here, a second life to unwanted materials through reuse, recycling and composting. So we're kind of revisiting the three R's through our approach and giving a second life to materials. Another point is the reduction of greenhouse gases. As we work on the climate action plan, recycling, composting and reuse supports the reduction and climate impacts. And lastly, I note economic department in adoption of policies and programs that stimulate a sustainable green market economy, that is part of our zero waste plan to impact the local [9:17:31 AM] economy in a positive way, not a negative way, not a negative impact, but a positive impact in creating jobs locally through a circular economy. Our vision for the department change understand 2012 based on the adoption of the master plan and our new vision based on the guidance of council and the adoption of the plan is to be the national zero waste leader in the transformation from traditional integrated waste collection to sustainable resource recovery. And Austin is noted in national consequences throughout the nation in the last few years as a model leader. We have not reached zero waste, but we are a model leader in the approach to zero waste and we are quoted in many different conferences. There was a bio conference in San Diego about two months ago where there were 14 references to the city. We are referenced as a model towards zero waste for many communities across the nation. Our mission, our department mission is to achieve zero waste by providing excellent customer service and that is for most in our work prior to engaging in zero waste activities is our customer service that promotes waste reduction, increase recovery and support the city of Austin's sustainability efforts. Some of the major programs to achieve zero waste, what we call key components, are the roadmap to zero waste are noted in the next two slides. And we are fully engaged in some of these activities. We are proposing new programs in some of these activities to work towards our roadmap towards zero waste. Highlighted is the pay as you throw program where you have different rates for different trash cart sizes. That is a key component [9:19:32 AM] towards zero waste because the higher you waste and the more waste you dispose of, the higher rate you pay. That is a unique program, concept that was developed about 20 years ago. Austin was one of the first communities to adopt it. There are more than 5,000 communities across the nation that have adopted pay as you throw. We've also increased our curb side recycling and incorporated single stream. We are proposing at a later date weekly recycling as opposed to every other week as part of our roadmap towards zero waste. We also propose a curb side or annex collection and you will note in the later half of this conversation more about the organics program and how we plan to proceed with that. Reuse collection is an important part of forgotten waste and we have developed a reuse and business center drive in southeast Austin and we plan on opening a second one in 2018 in the northeast sector of the city eventually for reuse centers in the four quadrants of the city. Recycle right campaign is a program that has evolved over time. Initially to educate public on the right way to recycle, but also to work towards eliminating contamination in our recycling stream. In addition to those points, universal recycling ordinance approaches the business community and the apartment complexes and incorporates a road map towards zero waste in the collection of recyclables that are not directly controlled by the city. And captured by the private hauler. So the universal recycling ordinance is a [9:21:35 AM] key program towards the zero waste approach on non-city controlled material. The construction and recycling ordinance adopted by council last fall takes October 1st of this year and also captures several hundred thousand tons a year of potential recyclables. There are three programs in need of expansion or enhancement, and the first of which is the enhanced residential organics collection. We've had a pilot collection. We plan in the future to expand the existing yard watch trimmings collection and add food waste to that collection program so it's an existing program to be enhanced with an additional item of food waste. There is a need for additional trucks, carts and staff, and there's the question of a three- year or five-year expansion with some rate impacts, which I'll discuss at the later part of this powerpoint. There's also a discussion of enhanced residential recycling. A transition from every other week service to weekly service, possibly in 2020. And we've engaged in a lot of public discussion as to which comes first, the organics or the expansion recycling. Some powerpoint will display some of the public input which leads us to expanding the organics program first and then expanding to a weekly format on recycling after that. Establishment of a reuse collection is also in our financial gain plan and I mentioned the first reuse center in 2015, the second in it 2018 and we plan on having four of those reuse centers, developing one every [9:23:35 AM] three years or so in regards to the financial impacts. Our current measurement system for reaching zero waste, the goal of 90% by 2040, it's displayed in the green line on this chart and we have adopted in our master plan five-year goals towards reaching that 90%. We also in our master plan have a road map of activities that support the tonnages that need to be diverted from the landfill to reach these measured goals. The red -- the burgandy line represents where we are right now. And we have strayed from the course. We have not increased our diversion rate as significantly as we need to to reach the council adopted 90% goal. We need a correction in our pathway, a status quo direction will not reach -- will not reach 75% by 2020 and not the 90% goal. So there is a need to change our programming to enhance and increase our programming, thus this policy workshop here. I would also note that we assess our diversion rate every five years through a formal measurement of tonnage, business community, well as single-family households, and we're approximately 43% diversion at this moment in time. To reach our goals, and these are lofty goals, there's a more immediate goal of 2020, of 75% diversion. This chart highlights the tonnages that need to be achieved to reach that goal. And it illustrates that we need to have or reduce our landfill tonnage by 20%. We need to double the tonnage towards [9:25:36 AM] recycling and we need to double towards compostables in order to reach our goal in 2020. This chart is modified to reflect expected growth of the city so the total waste stream has grown from current 2015 Numbers to 2020 in this chart. It also demonstrates that we need to utilize our recycling program more effectively and enhance our composting collection. The environmental impacts of our activity is demonstrated in this chart here. We have a negative effect on the environment through landfilling. It's an increase in carbon footprint through landfilling of the tonnages and you can see the change, the reduction in the amount of environmental impact on landfilling in 2020 in the far right column, if we implement our programs and reach 75%. You will also see in brackets, in parenthesis, the negative carbon footprint impact on the environment of recyclables and organics. We go in a correct and Progressive direction on the carbon footprint through recycling and organics. It reverses that trend of impacting the Earth. And so this is one of the reasons why council previously has adopted zero waste goals and activities is to reduce our impact on the Earth. In achieving some of the Numbers in the previous slides and the goal of 20% in 2020 and eventually 90%, we did a study last year of what's going on the landfill. This is residential waste, single-family household residential waste going to the landfill and we did a composition study and we studied what is in our waste going to the landfill. The blue represents recyclables. And the blue adds up to [9:27:37 AM] 44%. 44% of what's going to the landfill is recyclable in today's program. This is not futuristic recyclables, this is recyclables that can be captured in our blue cart but is actually being disposed of in the landfill. 46% of what we measured going to the landfill was compostable and half of that is food waste and half is yard trimmings. Approximately 24, 25% of what's going to the landfill is non-food waste which is currently not collected for composting, but is likely to be added with your guidance and direction? Have together the costables in our waste stream. If we pull them out of the waste stream and diverted those into the proper carts and not tonight the landfill we would reach our 90% goal. So our programmatic changes that we propose is to capture this material. This material that's going to the landfill. Can moving to the organics collection. That was the primer on this waste and why we're heading down the path and the council direction on the path. The curb side organics program that we propose, we've done a pilot. We've done pilot for about three years, and the concept is to collect yard trimmings, as we do citywide, but in piloted a food waste, food scrap, vegetable, meat and dairy and compostable dairy that cannot be recycled, like pizza boxes. We get a lot of questions about pizza boxes and that's compostable. Paper plates and cups. Takeout containers, napkins, soiled or wet paper. Things that are generally not clean enough for recyclables, but certainly compostable. We've added that to our pilot program. The pilot program started in 2013, 14,000 [9:29:44 AM] households, 10 geographic areas. There are five major service areas through the city, horizontal service areas throughout the city, Monday through Friday, and we have two geographic areas in each of those daily service areas. Weekly curb side service has been provided for yard trimmings and food scraps, extension education, community meetings and so forth. Pilot has been running for about three years. We've had some customer responses and some learned lessons from this pilot. The customer response is they prefer a smaller cart, the 96-gallon is too large. We've heard that message. Allow acceptable costable bags. Our pilot does not allow for any plastic bags. They are permitted to use paper bags, but we've heard from our customers that they Trevor compostable -- they prefer compost away plastic bags. We're doing research on what is compostable and what isn't in the plastic bag world. Contamination rates were high at first and reduced significantly over the time of the pilot. They were reduced when we offered kitchen collectors where residents had a tabletop counter, small bin they would put out waste from their kitchen and carry it out to the container. That reduced contamination significantly. From an operational standpoint we've measured three to five new pounds per week of diversion so it is successful in diversion. The potential is eight to 12 pounds per household of new diversion. We didn't realize full potential, but we're on that track towards increasing the amount collected and diverted from the landfill. [9:31:45 AM] We utilized three different types of vehicles. The preferred type of vehicle is a rear loader and we learned how to handle the material better on the streets and through our vehicles from an operational point of view. The pilot was very helpful. We are now designing our routes for 1300 households per route, and that is a helpful statistic as we generate the cost assessment of going citywide. We've established new service areas geographically and we -- in our proposed expansion we will be looking at different measures or different types of geographic areas for the expansion of the program. And there has been some organic processor challenges with the contamination. We've worked with our composter, a private composter that we deliver the material to, and we have a bid out for new services for composting this material that we do collect. So now into some statistics here. This is a tonnage chart, and instead of reading all the Numbers I just want to highlight the second row, the row labeled household conversion to full organics. Thank you, larger print. The household conversion, 14 households in fiscal year 14. We propose 54,000 no next year. A total of 1,006,000 households serviced the following year, and finally the whole city [9:33:58 AM] at 210,000. This is the five-year rollout. The additional organic tonnage rollout is noted at the bottom so you can see increasing tonnages collected from the powerpoint -- from the program as we expand. In addition, this is the program cost -- the primary coverage versus the cost of this program. There is an estimation of staffing increases each year. Capital expenses, including the vehicles and the organic C.A.R.T. And the projected rate impacts. The idea of presenting a five-year rollout is the impacts are spread over five years as opposed to three years. That is my preference and proposal although I do bring to you the possibility of expanding this program in a three-year format. The cost impact includes all direct expenses as well as indirect expenses, and added in that the -- that the composting, the economics composting is expensed through a private operator, which we have a bid out at the moment. This is the change in direction from a previous slide and the goal of 90%. As we add the tonnage up and as we project what the customer's reaction is to the program and how much we can collect, we believe we can reach 75% diversion by 2020. Only if we add the organics expansion in the next year and we add weekly recycling in [9:35:59 AM] fiscal year 20. It needs the effects of both programs to reach the 75%. The tonnage expansion is more on the organics collection and thus the proposal to do the organics collection first, but there is a bump up in diversion and collection of recyclables when we move to a weekly format on recycling too. Added together you can see the large burgandy arrow towards the 75% goal. We can get back on track towards our zero waste goals. If we do not add either one of these programs, the smaller burgandy projected futuristic arrow is our trending line. Increasing diversion, but at a much, much slower rate. So that's the effects of these two programs. We did a lot of community outreach asking the citizens what they prefer. First of all do they prefer either the weekly recycling or the organics, which one first? Or none of the above? And we've got over 6,600 responses from the citizens. We had community engagement meetings. We had a full month of conversation core activity throughout the city in various portions of the city, a virtual town hall meeting which we engaged I believe about 4,000 people were on the call at one time on the virtual town hall meeting. And we've also had zero waste advisory commission discussions on that. There's a very strong interest in the -- in both programs. As we add up the tally, we find that 61% of those surveyed preferred the weekly recycling and 66% the curb side organics. That adds up to more than 100% because many said yes to both. And so there was a [9:38:01 AM] strong interest -- there are a few no's noted in there, 28% and 22%, but outweighed by the yeses. >> Zimmerman: Mr. Mayor? Before you go on, what was the the price tag connected with that 98. Survey? >> We noted to the residents we would have an increase in fee and we noted an approximation of four dollars for the organics and three dollars for the weekly recycling program. >> Zimmerman: Do I have that survey in the material here? The actual survey that was handed out? >> I believe that's been released. And if you don't have it we can get it to you. >> Zimmerman: Make sure you get it to me. Thank you. >> Yes. We wanted to make sure that 78 was representative of all 10 council districts. This is a number count. This is a percentage of surveys that were received and noted and tallied from each of the districts. There's a -- not an even distribution. It was hard to get an even distribution. It is of note that the council districts are even by general population, but very uneven by our customer count because of the -- we do not service apartment complexes. And some council districts have more apartment complexes than single-family. Councilmember tovo's of note there. And so we have different levels of customer base in each district. >> Tovo: We need to factor that in the next time we have recycling games. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Still a little bitter here. >> We will have a second chance at that. [Laughter]. I think my note on this point is that we tried to get survey results across the city. The results from each district in regards to blue representing the preferred weekly recycling and green [9:40:02 AM] representing the preferred organics, noting that many wanted both, but this was the question of which comes first. And seven districts reported a higher percentage of want for the organics first and three districts represented the weekly recycling as a preference first. >> Kitchen: Mr. Mayor, just a quick question. And I apologize if you've already sent it to us. But in addition to the request that councilmember Zimmerman made, could we see the details of the survey? In other words, I'd be curious whether anybody made comments or things like that? >> There was a lot of comments and I definitely will send that out to the council. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. >> We received thousands of responses. Some in written comment. We did solicit for written comments. We found suggestions on improvements to the program, but we generally found very strong support for the organics program. That seemed to be the star player in this survey. >> Pool: I have a quick question. Mr. Gedert, a really quick question. Would you say that the reason why, for example, district 9 with the large concentration of apartments, their high rating on these is because they would like the recycling or the composting -- subside composting to be available to the larger apartment, condo buildings? >> That's a good question. We do hear from apartment tenants strongly wanting both programs. We tried to as best that we could identify, we were looking for single-family household input. This survey did include some apartment dwellers, but in the demographics we tried to sort that out. >> Pool: Do you generally find support in condo and apartment residents? >> We do. I couldn't peg a number, it's hard without a survey, but anecdotally we see strong support from apartment dwellers to receive the same [9:42:02 AM] service that single-family households receive. And that is the intent of the universal recycling ordinance still being phased in. >> Mayor Adler: Please continue. I think you're almost done. Let's get to the end of it and then we'll have the questions. >> I think I've got three more slides. Toll finish out on the additional outreach to tap public opinion, the virtual town hall, it's noted here 4,000 were connected via phone. People could connect by phone or watch on TV and online with some electronic polling involved. I believe our department was the first to use this type of new technology and transportation department has used this as well since then. We collected the poll information from questions from the attendees that generated the results of these surveys. The conversation corps partnered with us and did a full month about recycling and composting in 16 meetings across the city. That's where we got a lot of the public comments and suggestions for improvements that were very, very useful. The zero waste advisory commission has been apprised of these activities over the last year and a half, and voted in support recently on the organics expansion via a resolution. Preference between the two, the zwac commission desires to expand for food waste beginning next year and to delay the weekly recycling until 2020. We found that that recommendation is consistent with what we saw in the public surveys as well too. So this is my last slide, and this is what I present in this policy workshop as questions to council. I noted earlier that numerous city councils over the last decade have supported zero [9:44:02 AM] waste, but one question to this city council is does this city council support the zero waste master plan goals with the diversion program enhancements that I noted? So that's one basic policy question. We recognize that we have a master plan and we're following past city council guidance and direction, but we seek your guidance and direction from this council. The second question is does council support the full implementation of an organics collection program and if so a five-year or a three-year rollout, which is preferred? So those are the questions that I toss your way. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Mr. Gedert, thank you so much for your very comprehensive information. On page 10 of your powerpoint, with all the public engagement and input that you all have done, what do you attribute to the slowing of the city's diversion? >> That's a good question. When we tried to answer that question, we find there's a confusion in what is recyclable. We find that the yard trimmings program is irregularly used. We get a lot of tonnage in from storm debris and storm collection, but there's an irregular use of the yard trimmings program. And there certainly is no food waste collection so we're not diverting that. On the recyclables, we're collecting 50,000 tons less than desired and that's going to the landfill. And the program, the single stream program can accept that additional material, it's just not ending up in the blue cart. We have 75% of our residents using the blue carts. I desire to bump that number up, but that is a [9:46:05 AM] high number of participation compared to other cities across the nation. I think our problem is not the participation, but the lack of capturing all the recyclables in the household. >> Houston: But I would challenge you that some of it is about participation because as you saw in the games that we just completed, my district is one of the lowest in the city of using recycles or putting anything in the recycle cart. And of course, we have two of the landfills, one is not functioning now, but two landfills in the district. And so that confuses me because if we're giving people the information and they're still not using the blue carts, then what is it that we're missing? >> That is the question on the table for our staff. We are hiring a community engagement coordinator to be out in the communities and to talk to residents and to be at community meetings. We're also looking at changing our literature to reflect the current cultures of the neighborhood. We're looking to be less global in our message and more local neighborhood oriented in our messaging. We're making some changes. We feel that might address that issue. It is -- we live in a city where green is the value. That residents consistently say this is a green city. We believe in recycling. If you ask the residents if they recycle, we get an 86% answer of yes. If we ask them to recycle. But the actual setout rate of blue carts is around 75%. So the desire is there to recycle, but the follow-through is not complete. >> Houston: Thank you. And one last question, or this next question is about instead of percentage of people that you -- that you're being able to connect with in the district, could you give us Numbers? [9:48:05 AM] >> I can get the Numbers for you. >> Houston: Percentages sometimes skew what it is. It says that five percent of the people responded to the survey. I don't know whether -- five percent of what? So if you could get me the Numbers I would appreciate it. I did get a call to participate in the survey. I was out in the district on something else so I didn't have an opportunity to, but again, these broad globalizations that everybody in the city supports recycling as a value, I do, and many people do, but everybody doesn't know about it and that's why we're not using the cans in district 1 because we're not at that kind of education to explain to people why it's important to divert things from the landfill. And I think education is the piece that we've been missing, even though you've done a good job, I think we've missed that in some parts of the community. >> I think -- I totally agree that we need to more work on the -- work more on the education and we need to refine the education to hit the message in the correct manner. And I believe that the residents want to recycle, but there's a lot of confusion there, particularly among plastics. And just as an example, in the bathroom the plastic shampoo bottles generally are not recyclable, and that types of messaging needs to be delivered. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to go back to page 21 of the presentation here. I know you said you promised to send me the more details on the surveys. I think councilmember Houston is asking for that as well. I want to point out something here. Imagine how different the survey would be if it were worded this way. Would you support the expanded service if the city of Austin charged less on each monthly bill? Imagine the shocking results you would get if you advertised that you could actually expand service and charge less money. And we heard at the work session recently that it [9:50:06 AM] is possible that if we would put this bid for this trash collection and recycling out for private bid with an rfp that we could end up getting better service for less money each month. And I think the people after they recovered from shock they would say wow, 10-1 is actually working because we're getting more for less money. And I think this is the way that the city staff continually manipulates the processes and surveys by not including options that people would be very excited to support because they would be very excited to pay less for getting the same or better service when it comes to trash pick up and recycling. That's my remark on this. ING. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Further comment? Ms. Gallo? >> Gallo: Hi. I have a question on the organics. Is there currently an opt in for the organics? >> There isn't. It was 14,000 homes that were selected. Some -- a small percentage is not using the program in a sense, but there wasn't a presented opt-in program. It was distributed to a set number of customers in 10 geographic areas. We find that the economics is very difficult to work out if we did an opt in program. So the proposal is a citywide rollout. >> Gallo: Could we also have a proposal for an opt in program? >> We are calculating these Numbers as we speak. The estimated cost per household is well over $12 a household if we do -- as we try to model the expense. The issue is that we need to drive down every street for -- assuming an opt in program we would have to drive down every street. We would not reduce much expense, but we would have less customers to [9:52:07 AM] have as a billable customer. So the cost per unit goes up dramatically. >> Gallo: I think as we talk about affordability in this community that utility bills are one of the places that impact all of our homeowners, both homeowners and renters, and being able to provide a possible situation for people that were supporting the program could opt in in, but the people were concerned about the cost of their utility bills and they could opt out of the program. And I see people shaking their lets out here, but the reality is with organics people do have the option to handle their organics on their own properties so there is that option available. It's not like they don't have the option to make those disappear, they do. And as you do your composting on your own property and we're starting to see more neighborhood plots that allow that to happen too if you live in an apartment complex, but it does take care of that matter and it takes care of it in a way that deals with it without putting it in a truck and expenses to haul it somewhere else. I think organics are very different from plastics and metal and paper that you can't really handle those within your yard and make them go away. I would be curious and I would really like to see us at least consider an option that would be an opt-out opportunity for this because I think there are a lot of people that take care of that in their own way and do it in their backyard. >> One way that we can approach an opt out is the documentation of backyard composting. So if a resident is actually diverting this material from the landfill through backyard composting, that is our ultimate goal is that diversion. Non-landfilling of that food waste. And if they're doing a backyard composting we can create the mechanics of documenting and opting out of the citywide collection of [9:54:07 AM] organics. Many cities -- I've talked to Seattle, Portland and many other cities that have experimented with backyard composting and they find there's an upward limitation of about 10% of single-family households that will embrace backyard composting. It's a work commitment and there's also a neighborhood issue. Some household associations prohibit backyard composting. There's some limitations that are imposed. So it's not an answer for everybody. It is an answer for some and we can work on an optout program for those who use backyard composting. >> Gallo: I would say as we try to not overregulate people in this community that perhaps an additional suboption to that would be what the costs would be if you were not regulating whether somebody was actually doing it in the backyard. If we could look at that option too. >> I see your point on the cost. I'd redirect this back towards this goal of diversion. Are we diverting the material or not? That's what's driving this proposal is towards the 75% goal. >> Gallo: And I understand that. I think what we all look at is a balance. I think we look at a balance of pricing our community out of our community and doing what's best for environment. And it does become a balance. So I think that's what we always have to think about. And have you and have departments provide us options on. So I appreciate you providing that to us. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool. >> Pool: Thanks again, Mr. Gedert, for coming and talking to us. I wanted to point out in the audience today are a number of folks who are associated with the Texas campaign for the environment as a partner of the city and the community and they help us expand our reach and they support our efforts. And I really appreciate the work that they do in conjunction with the city. Because that is part of [9:56:10 AM] the educational outreach that we have. I guess I'll take a crack at the policy questions that you're asking. And the first one, does council support current zero waste master plan goals with diversion program enhancement. And my answer would be representing district 7 as you can see, my constituents very much support curb side composting and expanded recycling pickup. So my answer would be yes, absolutely. Does council support full implementation of an organics collection program? Again, a yes. If so, is a five or three year rollout preferable. Of course I would like to get there sooner rather than later. I appreciate the fact that you have it targeted for a five-year rollout. So based on what the realities of what our budget will be this year it may be that we need to stick with the five-year. My point being that I would not want to erode either of these goals. I would not want to slow down the five-year. So if we could do it sooner that would be terrific. But for sure I don't want to change that five into any higher number. So again, I thank you and all of your staff. The economic development benefits from our recycling program are enormous. Removing the landfills from east Austin has been a huge effort for this community for decades. And I have supported that for a very long time. It took a long time for that to become a conversation at council in a very public way and we have managed to do that in the last 10 or 12 years, I think maybe longer, but the fact of the matter is that needs -- that process needs to continue. And anything that would add to the landfills would -- I would try to -- I would try to slow that. And this works tremendously in that direction. So thank you again and thanks to all the folks from the community who came out here today to show their strong support, including on our citizen commissions. I see we have Austin of the zero waste advisory commission members here [9:58:10 AM] with us today. So this is a program that the city supports and believes in and I am very happy to lend my voice to that support publicly from the dais. Thank you. >> Thank you. I'll also add that we've received 5,000 letters, more than 5,000 letters from interested residents on the organics program. Gerhart >> Troxclair: So I hear you say that previous councils have supported certain -- have supported zero waste goals and of course you've directed your programs in a way to reach those goals. How do you balance that? I didn't hear a whole lot of discussion in the presentation about the city's affordability goals. And of course this council and previous council have passed affordability goals as well and councilmember Spelman's affordability goals passed by the previous council, unfortunately this council didn't reach it this year but how do you balance the concerns about affordability and rising utility costs with the community goals of zero waste? >> A few answers for that. First of all, we do not believe in zero waste at all cost. There's a value judgment of cost versus benefit in each of these discussions and that's been ongoing for the last few years. Secondly, the master plan that was adopted by city council in December 2011 had a financial chapter in it with some estimated rate increases. Council -- as I presented the document to council, it did not state that that's what our rate increases would be but, rather, an awareness of the impact on the rates, that they would be increasing the [10:00:10 AM] monthly utility rates to implement these programs. The proposed rates that we have last year and this year are well below those target Numbers that are in the master plan. We're below those Numbers that we were estimating. What I did say to council in December 2011 was that each annual budget process will re-- we'll reevaluate the factor of these programs, that we would reevaluate whether we're to proceed or not and whether to enhance or increase this program or go status quo with the program. So the master plan was adopted unanimously by city council, but with the note from me verbally that each and every budget cycle we would be reevaluate evaluating the cost of these programs. >> Troxclair: Speaking about the cost of at least the come poetsing program I know the survey that you mentioned and the number we talked about previously was $4.10, but I see $5.40 in here. Did that change somewhere along the way? >> I have Jessica Frasier, our finance manager, to help answer that question. >> What was your question? The 5.40, the difference. >> Troxclair: The number we've been working with up until this point has been $4.10 and the presentation today mentioned $5.40 so I'm trying to understand where that happened. >> Jessica Frasier, chief financial officer for arr. We were only looking at the direct expenses for operations and the folks that would actually be picking the stuff up and carrying it around. The $5.40, once we looked at five-year forecast, we looked at indirect expenses, all of the allocations we have through all of our budget to support the different administrative functions throughout the city and then within the department. So once we had all of those projections and all those [10:02:10 AM] Numbers, we wrapped all of that into the same way we do a cost of service for our trash or recycling service and so that's the full loaded cost for not only the direct expenses but also the administrative support, the billing and the customer service and H.R. Support for all the ftes that would be added. >> Troxclair: Okay. So that's close to 64 -- about $65 a year additional at that $5.40 a month. >> I can't add in my head but if that's what that -- >> Troxclair: Since you're the financial person, on slide 18, the cost -- so the total cost for the full implementation is $6.5 million. Is that total or is that every year going -- I mean, what is the -- what is the ongoing costs? Are those only -- is it going to be $6.5 million total over the next five years or are there continued ongoing costs after that. >> The 6.5 is the personnel expenses, culmination of it at that point. We would continue to employ those employees going forward so those costs would continue to carry forward with the Normal wage and insurance adjustments and that sort of thing. >> Troxclair: Per year, $6.5 million a year for personnel? >> Yes. Then there's the capital expenses that that number is the cost to purchase the vehicles. We would actually debt finance them so the debt payments for those would extend out for a few years but then those vehicles would eventually need to be replaced and the same way our trash and recycling vehicles. >> Troxclair: Okay. So I guess when we're talking about the three years versus the five-year rollout it's just whether or not we charge people an extra $5.40 by the end of the five-year rollout or by the end of the three-year rollout? >> That's correct. >> Do you have -- I know you mentioned -- I think the results that you put in the [10:04:12 AM] presentation were for the online survey. Do you have the results of the town hall survey or did those include the town hall survey results? >> Jessica? Jessica king can answer that question. >> My microphone, okay, sorry. Jessica king, Austin resource recovery. My team oversees the outreach and education efforts. With regards to the virtual town hall it's actually a much more inner depth document so couldn't be put into a spreadsheet but I think we can provide and I think we might have provided a lot of that detail and information to your office previously after the zero waste advisory commission meeting. The surveys are two separate documents so you have an online survey that went out to the public at large and then the virtual town hall. In the virtual town hall people called in or participated online and because of the way the town hall meeting was structured, they could come and go as they pleased just like any meeting. So in the survey what would happen is a question would be asked and the person would answer through their poll. They could add comments online and it would be posted online. However, if they left prior to the second answer being posted or being asked, they may not have participated this that part. So the answers aren't as consistent as what you would see on the survey online. Is there any particular question you're asking about the survey for the virtual town fiscal. >> Troxclair: It sounds like -- my staff just texted me and says 69 people from that town hall said she would not pay more for come posting so I'm wondering if there was a significant difference in the online versus town hall survey. >> Sure. There were about 500 that responded to one or two of the answers in the town hall. Weekly recycling there was a 30% yes breaking down the answer there was a yes, no, or unsure option. For weekly recycling it was [10:06:14 AM] 340 for no and unsure 45. For/side organics the answer for yes was 50 and then the answer for no was 154. Unsure was 19. So the 22% was yes on the organics. >> Troxclair: Okay. So it sounds like those results are significantly different from the online survey. >> They are. >> Troxclair: Almost two-thirds of the people -- or almost 70% of the people said they wouldn't support weekly recycling or composing if it meant an additional charge. >> Yes. However, to clarify in the virtual town hall there's no guarantee that people stayed on the call so the answers will be a little bit different, yes. >> Troxclair: I guess it would have been helpful -- considering the significant difference in responses it would have been helpful to include that information in our presentation so that we have the full picture. And I know -- I mean, I appreciate that y'all did the outreach that you did and it's nice to have the feedback. Just so you know for next time, although I know that there are a lot of people in my district who support the -- weekly recycling and composting and are willing to pay an additional $5.40, I did receive several comments back from the invasive people that the questions were skewed to receive a specific answer or they didn't have the opportunity to express their opposition so I just wanted to pass along that feedback to you. Maybe the way that the questions were asked on the survey -- on the online survey versus the town hall survey maybe had an impact on the responses that you received. >> We can supply the survey with the questions that were asked to all of council and you can make that judgment on your own there. >> Troxclair: Great. Then my last question is I think you -- director Gerhart, I had brought this up last budget cycle and we talked about -- it was idea from one of my constituents who is a supporter of come posting but [10:08:16 AM] also is very in tune -- also struggling to stay in her home and pay bills and watch the city council really closely and she had the idea, because there are a lot of people who already have the smallest garbage can size to not penalize -- basically if you're charging an additional $5.40, the option that you often suggest about someone who has a larger trash can sizing down and making up the cost of the composting that's not an option for people already at the lowest trash can size and in fact the city is in one way penalizing them for already having as little waste as possible by charging them the same amount and not having the option of them removing that $5.40 from their bill. So -- and you were going to look at it and get back to me. I think her suggestion was to not charge the -- to maybe -- to not charge -- to maybe do a scaled rate, to not charge the smallest trash can more but to gradually charge every can size up to 96-gallon size more so people would have an incentive to size down their trash can, reduce their rate, cover the cost of the additional can composting but the people already at that lowest level wouldn't be penalized. What happened to that patrol? I know you were going to look 23450 it and get back to us with some details. >> We took that comment to heart. We've done various rate modeling. We haven't been able to find a rate model that is fair to all customer bases. If we reduce -- the concept is to graduate the rates on the new organics program to model off the trash cart sizes. There's a couple of problems there, but we took that concept and tried to create a four-stage level of rates for the organics expansion and the [10:10:16 AM] 64-gallon and 96-gallon would receive a much higher rate, higher than preferred in order to compensate for the lower rates in the 32 and 42-gallon. That's a natural effect of segregating the rates into four different classes but we found as we tried to model the expense it's was very, very difficult to make it reasonable at the 64-gallon cart level that is 60% of our customer base. So it's -- if we had 25% of the customer base in each of the rate classes it would be easier but because we have 60% of our customers at the 64-gallon level, the brunt of the add expense is right there to most of our customers. And we couldn't find a rate model that would work. And a second point is food waste generation is part -- you got the yard trimmings and the food waste cocollected in this program. The yard trimmings is the -- the volume is more based on yard space and not based on trash cart size. The food waste can correlate to the size of the family or the trash can size. So there's some correlation but not 100% correlation. In addition to maintain the program we need to drive down every street every week so there's -- some of the program expenses really are borne by all rate classes. It's only a small portion of that expense that is variable. And so we found it very difficult to create a rate scenario that would be reasonable to present. >> Troxclair: Since it sounds like you have looked into it, do you have those Numbers that at least you can send me so I can tell -- I can see what you think is unreasonable? >> I think we could. We're far enough along, right, Jessica? Yeah, we could. >> Troxclair: I guess to the overall policy question, I am really concerned that -- about [10:12:16 AM] the additional cost of living that this is going to put on our -- on our -- everybody citywide and especially following the presentation that we had at the public utilities meeting the other day where we had private provider -- trash providers telling us that they could provide the same service as -- psalm or better service than arr already does for potentially half the cost and they already do that in surrendering communities. It's a hard pill for me to swallow to continually say that of all the pressing needs that we have in our city that spending -- allocating such a huge portion of a potential cost increase to one specific program and not really having -- not really giving people the option to opt in or opt out or -- is concerning to me. >> I hear you, and it's a value judgment. It's a adjustment of council whether the program is worth the expense. I wouldous note to councilmembers that weren't at the Monday meeting that it was an apples to Oranges to bananas rate comparison and not an apples to apples comparison. >> Mayor Adler: Hang on a second. We're working our way across the table. Yes, I think it was mayor pro tem was next and then Mr. Renteria. >> Tovo: I had a couple questions and then I wanted to answer the questions that you posed. The first was, I think, director Gerhart, you said that you'd be providing us Numbers for the three-year. Should we ask for that through the q&a? >> Three year? Yeah, we can -- >> Tovo: That would be great to have through the q&a. >> We don't have it in the powerpoint but we can present that to you. >> Tovo: I'll try to remember to request that. I wanted to talk a bit about the weekly recycling and how that is assumed to increase our diversion rates. Do you have a sense of whether doing it every other week is really reducing our recycling amounts? What is it about that? It seems like most people who [10:14:17 AM] are in the habit of recycling figure out ways of dealing with their recyclables if they've filled up their can so why does going to an every week format bump that rate up? >> Right. >> Tovo: Or does it? I guess what's your evidence for thinking that it would? >> Yes, the every other week recycling does create affordability and cost efficiencies. We service half the city one week and half the city another week and using the trucks and the employees for half the city each week. So there's a cost efficiency there to continue that program. Residents that have overflowing recycling bins for the two-week period, that includes myself. I have an overflowing bin. They can request a second blue cart at no extra charge. That's our current answer to residents is you can have a second recycling cart at no extra charge and still have the every other week. There are communities around the nation that have moved from every other week to weekly recycling service, including cities in Texas. And what they have experienced is a bump up in the collection tonnage. Part of the reason why there is a bump up is that residents are constantly confused which week it is. We send out calendars. We have an electronic reminder system, which I really like. I get a notice every Tuesday that my recycling is set out on Wednesday. The -- we have different ways to communicate which week it is for recycling, but there is really strong confusion. I see it in my own neighborhood. And if it was weekly you eliminate that problem. The second point is the overflow. Many residents don't want that extra cart. We tell them you can have an extra blue cart. Many residents are saying, no, I don't have room to store another cart. [10:16:17 AM] So there is that desire to increase diversion through weekly recycling. We believe -- it's hard to peg an exact number but the approximate number I have in mind is about 20,000 tons of additional diversion. That helps bump us up on the diversion. It's lost recyclables that are going to landfill that could be captured. It is a cost increase because we would have to service every household every week rather than every other week. >> Tovo: Thank you. Those explanations make better sense now. I understand that. I'm not sure the extent to which you promote that you can have a second can, but I didn't know it myself until a few weeks ago so I appreciate that you make that available, that information available to customers but you might think about -- >> Expanding the education? >> Tovo: Making sure they get that message. >> Yes. >> Tovo: And then I think that was my last question. I want wanted to answer the questions you had possessed. In answer to your first one does council support zero waste master plan goals. I do and would continue moving toward those goals. And I do support full implementation of the organics collection program. I along forward to seeing the three years to get a sense of where I would fall on that question and I would just say, you know, we have a somewhat similar discussion when we talk about energy efficiency programs. It seems to me we don't always talk about the costs -- the saved costs of not having to continue to invest in landfill space and I think that is a real cost. And so, you know, it is not just that it's helping us meet our community values and getting us toward the zero waste master plan goals but it is also that down the line I would assume we're also saving on the cost of landfill space. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria. >> Renteria:. >> Tovo: I would say thank you for all your work and all of your staff's work. >> Thank you. >> Renteria:. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria. >> Renteria: On the contest, did y'all see an increased in [10:18:20 AM] the percentage of reconcilables? >> Yes, citywide we saw a 6% increase in the amount of recyclables collected across the city. We believe it was the increased attention to recycling due to the games. >> Renteria: Did that put you close to 49%? >> No. It's 6% increase of existing collection but not 6% diversion bump up. I'd have to calculate it out, but I would guess around 1% diversion bump up. >> Renteria: 1%? >> Yeah. >> Renteria: So you need to do that more often then. >> I've found the recycle games to be fun. It gave a way to engage residents and created more environmental awareness. And I'd like to -- we don't have direct plans yet but I'd like to have a second event of that nature in the future. >> Renteria: Okay. And, you know, the -- I want to ask you a question about the kitchen container. My wife asked me to ask you this, are there -- she would like to see two size because the one that you have is a little too large for the kitchen counter that you use and basically what we're using now, it's a little quart or half a gallon container that -- it fits on the counter and it doesn't take up as much room. Also, I really enjoyed the restroom container. That came in really handy. And we're being able to use two containers. So we really -- we really like that one. So I I want wondered if you can look into that and see if you can come up with a smaller container than the one that you have because it is a little too large and we're not using that one. >> We definitely will note that in our future purchases. >> Renteria: And I also -- my office received a lot of letters and I was wondering if we -- we did scan them into our system in support of the -- of the zero waste and the -- so we wondered should we forward these letters is now because we did receive [10:20:21 AM] quite a few in support. >> Yes. We may have a duplicate copy, we may not. Please do. I am sending a letter to each person that we have received a letter from. >> Renteria: Okay. >> I believe they deserve a response. >> Renteria: I think there was a lot of classrooms teachers might have had their students do -- >> Yes. >> Renteria: An assignment to send letters to me. So, you know, we really enjoyed reading those letters and I really want to thank the schools that encouraged their students to get involved. With zero waste. Because they're the ones that are going to be growing up and being our leaders in the future and they're really concerned about this -- about it so they really want to encourage us to really look into, you know, doing the zero waste program. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to go back to the public utility commission that councilmember troxclair I believe briefly referred to because I was there as well and also the remark about the apples to Oranges and bananas when trying to compare costs. My constituents in district 6 are probably the most fiscally conservative. They're very, very cost conscious and your remark about how we couldn't compare private service to the city service being apples to Oranges, bananas, you know, if we were building a super collider and subatomic particle research that comment would be true but we're talking about trash collection so the comment is false. We can figure out what we're paying for what we're getting when it comes to trash collection and we could do an rfp and put out to private bid the same or better service that's we have today and probably get a significantly [10:22:22 AM] lower cost and improve our affordability situation by having an rfp. And your position, you told us at arr, is that you're just absolutely opposed to the idea. And I think that underscores the problem we have here. If the agenda of staff is to prevent the opportunity for us to know fully what we're getting and what we're paying for it such that we could contract it out to see if it would save money underscores my allegation that the city is not -- it's not interested in affordability. It's primary goal is a political agenda of zero waste for whatever -- or whatever it is. This is typical in all of our departments. We saw this in the survey with the water utility about. >> Mayor Adler: In fairness, though, you asked them for their professional advice. They gave their professional advice and it's certainly something as a disagree we can disagree with. >> Zimmerman: I want professional advice from another advice, the private collection trash country. We deserve to have that advice. >> Mayor Adler: We have our paid staff that give us their professional advice and we have the stakeholder opportunities for those companies to participate and I think they did participate and had the opportunity to give their advice as well. >> Zimmerman: I'm sorry but those surveys are skewed in the same way they were skewed with the water survey, they are skewed here. All the information coming from staff points people to one decision point. That's not a fair survey. It's not a fair stakeholder process. >> Mayor Adler: I think the survey results get reported. We have a stakeholder process, and I think there was at the committee meeting for those companies to participate as well. Ms. Gaza. >> Garza: You know, as we have these discussions about affordability, I think it's -- we have to understand that, you know, affordability is not just a black and white issue of -- we have to say no to everything that could possibly cost more. We have to look at it in the -- under a lens of how much -- of what we're talking about at this instant affects people's monthly bills. And I go back to slide eight [10:24:23 AM] from one of our first budget work sessions that is one of my private slides thus far and it talks about the percentage of how all these things affect our monthly bills. And the major city of Austin fees, which includes your water bill, your electricity bill, and Austin resource recovery is 3.4% of our bowls and so if - - of our bills and so if we want to talk about -- absolutely all of us are concerned about how affordability affects all of us but when this is a topic that affects 3.4%, I think there's bigger conversations to be had about other issues that really affect people's bottom line. And, also, look at these discussions through the lens of how zero waste affects other parts of our lives. If we don't implement policies like this and instead seek to just have a blanket we just want Austin to be affordability for everybody, if that's a picture of Austin that has ten dumps in my district and three more gas plants, you know, spewing pollutions in districts -- because my districts are the ones that these gas plants and these dumps and in councilmember Houston and councilmember Renteria's is where these dumps end up and if that's the picture of how we make Austin more affordable but we have these unsustainable practices of, you know, irresponsible energy use and irresponsible waste, we have to rethink the way that we think about how we -- what we do with our waste. And so, you know, my family was able to move to a smaller bin and we compose at home. I do have concerns about how this affects those in our community that are struggling and a couple dollars a month could affect them. I hope we can continue this conversation about ways to weigh that, ways to weigh these fees and how they can [10:26:24 AM] affect our family, our working families, especially those in lower-income districts which is what I represent. The discussion at public utilities, it's hard to compare privatization with -- we talked about how do you compare pensions? Do those companies provide pensions? Do they provide the same wages? Do they provide the same jobs? I think it's hard to have those conversations and say it's just one way or the other. And, councilmember Zimmerman, you always talk about how your district is the most fiscally conservative and I often think -- I would say my district is and councilmember Casar and councilmember Renteria's is because we have families that live on much less and are able to survive and stay in Austin without subsidized help. I would say those families are the most fiscally conservative. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you, again. I wanted to say that we really appreciate and are looking forward to the reuse collection center. >> Yes. >> Houston: That is going to appear on Johnny Morris road so people don't have to drive all the way to south Austin to be able to reuse -- dispose of their reusable items. The other thing that I have to say is that in when this policy was put in place, the whole city was not a part of that conversation. There were specific advocacy groups that held fuel that so sometimes we have to honor that and acknowledge that this didn't come from the whole community. This came from special interest groups that got rolled out and now it's a part of the values conversation that Austin is a green city. Education is really important to me and also is modeling. And I said this last year, and I'm going to say it again. We waste -- we take more trash to the landfill that could be diverted from city hall on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays than anyplace else in the city yet we do not compost. Do we? [10:28:24 AM] >> We have composting in plans and they have not been implemented but they will be implemented by the end of this year. >> Houston: By the end of this year. So at least somebody heard me because I have to take mine home with me because I do believe in composting but here we have a building, we're saying to everybody else you have to pay to compost whether you know what it is or not, you're going to have to pay for that and here we sit taking all of our disposal stuff, organics, that could be put in a compost piling, we're taking them to the landfill. As long as we're going to have that happen, I'm going to answer this first question, that I do support the zero waste master plan goals. My problem is, again, how do we educate the populace if they have not figured out what recycling is? Now we're going to add another cart to our conversation about what do I put out on Friday, plus we're going to add a if any to that and if they're not composting they're paying a regressive tax so where's the education? When is the jealousness is it before we roll out the tax? I mean the fee? Or is it after they get charged and then we start telling them? >> Yeah I'll start in answering but I'll have Jessica kin answer in more detail. In my experience in my career, rolling out a new program either a minor or major program, offers the opportunity of education and people perk their ears up whether they see a new program. So there's an opportunity for extensive public education when you're rolling out a new program. And we believe that that has a ripple effect on existing programs. So if you roll out the organics collection with new education, the recycling program will benefit as well, from my field experience, there's that ripple effect of catching the public's attention on the programs. But Jessica, our game plan on public education? >> We actually plan to request additional assistance from [10:30:25 AM] private and nonprofit entities. So the long-term plan is that staff will not be the only education element out there, and we are looking at a variety of ways to contract out for assistance to do more ground work. Education for us is a multifast settled approach and admittedly just as a city of Austin employee myself, looking at how communication is shared with the public isn't all encompassing so the survey, for example, was the first time I think the city has ever done a survey where we've done four different languages because we really tried to reach out to every single different base that was out there. So the direction that I've given my staff and the direction that we plan to proceed with is really trying to incorporate education across the entire community, utilizing people who are on the ground and in the community. Our community engagement consultant that we plan on bringing on very soon, their effort will be targeted towards making strong advertise is and relationships in the community with a long-term goal of being invited or recruiting volunteers in the community who want to bring zero waste to their neighborhood rather than us trying to reach out all the time. So we want to look for people who are ambassadors of zero waste and who want to bring that to their own community, their own neighborhood, and who can help us improve recycling rates and organic rates. Just the diversion rate as a whole in their own neighborhood because we know that means the -- needs to be a grass roots effort. We understand people do not come to meetings on their own and aren't able to listen to council meetings all day so we're definitely invested in doing education at a grass roots level. >> Houston: So the question was -- thank you for that information. The question was are we going to educate -- you're saying that it's your professional opinion that you roll it out with the $5 a month charge and then we educate them at the same time and they pay more attention. My feeling from the people who live in my district is they need to be ramped up if there's going to be a roll out before they get charged for [10:32:25 AM] any kind of service that they didn't ask for and don't know what to do with. So you need to really think about doing it at the same time. Some communities might be able to do that but there are many other communities that won't know and they'll see an additional $5.40 and they will be calling my office saying where did this come from? And I'll say, well, we're rolling it out and somebody is going to knock on your door soon. >> Councilmember Houston, prior to launch of the pilot programs we engaged in about a six-month in advance education effort to all of the participants that led up to neighborhood association meetings in the area. Especially at the second phase of the rollout, instead of issuing carts and just trying to do everything through direct mail we actually had public meetings in the neighborhoods and encouraged residents to come to the area that were part of the pilot and when they came we gave them freebies and the kitchen collectors and more information so we could actually face- to-face with them. Our goal would be to do something very similar, where we would be able to actually have more face-to-face interaction with them prior to them receiving the cart. Because you're absolutely right. Recycling is very different than actors and it's critical that they understand those differences and how to separate those materials and how to make it easy in their lives too because ease and convenience is the most important way to get people to participate. If we make it too difficult they won't participate. So that is our objective. We do plan to get in front of the community prior to the service actually starting in their neighborhood. So timing is going to be critical for us. Absolutely. >> Houston: Thank you. It is critical. And y'all have been to at least one of my town hall meetings. You're welcome to come to any of the ones that we have to just have a table there so that you can begin to have conversations with the people who are there. And then the last thing is that Houston Tillotson university is extremely engaged in these kinds of endeavors and so it's always helpful to have people who look like the people we're going to talk to going to talk to people rather than other people going to talk to them. [10:34:25 AM] Sometimes we won't open the door. I know us really well. So it may be good to talk with the folks at Houston Tillotson to see if you can get support to be ambassadors in at least the parts of district 1. >> Will do. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: I want wanted to respond to the staff. I appreciate the way you've all set this up and asking our policy questions so I'd like to give you some feedback. I would say that I do support continued goals, you know, for our zero waste master plan goals. I do want to let you know that I do support that and I would be looking at a five-year roll-out rather than a three-year out. I also hear many of the opinions that people have expressed in terms of concerns about cost. So I appreciate you looking into the opt in program or opt out. I think it was an opt out program. And I also share the standards that councilmember Garza said, of course this is a relatively small part of the bill and we have to bear that in mind when we look at overall costs to people. I do think of course that we all -- all of us are interested in look at our overall cost and reducing them as much as possible but I also think it's important for people to have choices because of their individual circumstances and, where possible, to be able to control the costs that they have to pay in terms of their fees. So I appreciate you looking into the various issues that people have so -- >> And I appreciate the compliments and the thoughts there. I would like to comment on affordability and cost control. Our department over the last five, six years, has engaged in a lot of cost efficiencies and cost reductions of that supported some of the zero waste programming so implementing and enlarging the recycle and reuse center on [10:36:26 AM] business center drive did not require a rate increase because we have offsetting cost savings that we implemented. An example is that we reduced the miles of -- truck miles on the road throughout all of our programming by several hundred thousand miles through more advanced routing of our trucks and more detailed routing. And each year we're trying to work on cost efficiencies. >> Kitchen: Yeah. I appreciate that. You know, our budget process is a process of weighing all the things that we have to look at and what their impact is on people's pocketbooks. >> Yeah. >> Kitchen: And we have to weigh the positive and the -- in the larger term, as councilmember Garza was talking about, it's not just about the particular bill but we also have to pay attention to the bill. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Van eenoo, when did you your forecast, were you forecasting these -- the increases associated with this program? >> I think we forecasted range so the low end of that range would have been reflective of this program not being in place and the high end of the range would have been if this program were in place. It was expressed as a percentage. I can go back through my files and look. Maybe in the range of 2-5% annually depending upon if we did this program or not. I'll look up the actual percents. I think those might be a little low. >> Mayor Adler: I think you had five to 10%. That explains that range for me. When we're talking about an additional fee charge of $1 in the first year, getting to $5.40 after five years, is that a decision that we make each year or the decision that we make one that then puts us on a path where we're effectively making the invoice I notice in year one, this year's choice, is a dollar. Are we making a dollar choice this year or a $5.40 this [10:38:28 AM] year? >> It's a mixture of both. The decision is for an annual budget and there's no request for a five- year set of rate increases. However, in order for us to proceed citywide I need general consensus of the council to proceed on a five-year plan. And so I try to present the economics so that you can make a fair judgment of whether you approve proceeding or not. However, the financial decision this year is just on the first year rate. >> Mayor Adler: Help me understand that a little bit better. >> In terms of the program you've been talking about, the capital investment that you have to make. >> Yes. >> Extends itself to a longer term commitment. >> That is correct, yes. So that's why we need the guidance of council and the value judgment of council whether to proceed on the five-year plan or not. >> Mayor Adler: When I look at the capital expenses, $16.7 million expense over a five-year period of time and are we making the decision today to commit to the $6.7 million or are we making the decision this year to commit to something less than the $16.7 million. >> The physical budget that will be before you will be the $3.1 million capital expense. However, in -- as we pursue a commitment towards a five-year roll-out it is a commitment towards the 16.7 over five years, not in the first year but over five years. There is the interest in either closing down the pilot and not using -- not collecting food waste or pursuing a five-year roll-out to the entire city and if that commitment is to the five-year roll-out it would be a $16.7 million commitment. >> Mayor Adler: Or for three year the rate of -- you know, the rate of spend on the capital side will be faster. >> That's correct. >> Mayor Adler: But that's -- so my question is -- and I'm supportive of the program but I'm just trying to find -- I'm [10:40:29 AM] asking more budget questions than anything else. >> Yeah. >> Mayor Adler: So if we vote for the $3.1 million in capital expenses this year but the council next year decided that there wasn't the money to be able to do that or they wanted to go to a seven year program, will the 3.1 be wasted? Will you be coming next year saying you have to spend another 2 million not because of additional stuff but because of the decision you made last year requires us to make the second payment on the car you bought last year? You understand? I'm trying to figure out if they're attached decisions or if they're separate decisions. >> The five-year program is more of a policy commitment. The financial commitment is year to year. We can take -- turn course any given year. So if the economy goes sour next year and there is a desire to slow this program down to a seven-year rollout or ten-year or maybe a one or two year hiatus in the decision can be made any annual budget process. It can be done. >> Mayor Adler: I understand the longer policy issue. That then gets me back to -- for me, I like the point that councilmember Garza made, that table 8, page 8 of the may 4 presentation to me is real significant page as well on lots of levels because it said that homeownership for the median family income was 21.6%. Transportation was at 14.9% but these fees were down at 3.4%. I understand the fees add up. What we're talking about here is a dollar addition to that fee. So I calculate -- so it's a dollar fee over the -- what? The $219 in total fees? [10:42:30 AM] So tell me, ed, if I'm doing this correctly. If I take a $1 increase across the $2 -- $219, which is that element on page 8 of the may 4 report, I'm talking about a -- an increase that is 4,000 -- if I multiply that by the 3.4 number I'm talking about increasing that by 15 thousandths? Is that right. >> That sounds about right. I mean, you're talking about $219 a month for the typical customer's utility bill going up to $220 a month. The percentages, very, very small percentages. >> Mayor Adler: It's important. I know that the fees add up but as a council I hope that the amount of time that we spend talking about that $1 proportionality when we're asked to make decisions -- and I think we will be on looking at things coming from the transportation committee that's coming up or if the housing committee that's coming up, we'll actually be dealing with things that impact affordability in this city well beyond 14 thousandths just in terms of the time we'll spend on this issue. Further discussion on this? >> Houston: And, Mr. Mayor, I don't understand what four thousandths is but I do want to remind in some districts the median income is not $77,000. >> Mayor Adler: One of the things we've asked the auditor to tell us is what this page 8 looks like for different families, families that's half that income as well families that are twice that income. My guess is, without knowing, that probably we'll find that [10:44:30 AM] the cost of housing and the cost of transportation are still the biggest components of household expense and that when someone says they can't afford to live in this city, while different people mean different things, my gut tells me that what they'll be saying mostly is it's housing costs and transportation costs across family income, but we'll see that when the auditor comes back with those Numbers. Further discussion? Ms. Gallo. >> Gallo: So I've got a question, but first I want to make a comment to the references back to the fees that we're talking about are only 3.4% of the budget but the reality is those are the fees that we have the ability to control and impact. So it may be a small percentage, but we are responsible for charging those fees and those are the only fees we have control over. A homeownership cost, you know, what type of loan, how long the loan is on a home, what the loan amount is, what the purchase price is, we have no control over that. That's the person that buys the home. Transportation, you know, what gas prices do, what the person chooses to finance on their car, we don't have any control over those. Child care, what child care costs, you know, those are done by providers. The city doesn't have any control over that. Food, grocery prices, you know, those are external markets that control that. Health care the same thing. So I don't want to discount in our conversation the fact that we're only talking about something that impacts 3.4% of somebody's budget. It's the part of the budget that we can make a difference on that we control. So as we talk about the low percentage, I want want to remind us of us we have control over that. We don't have control over the rest of it. A couple of questions because I want to make sure, back to 18 if you don't mind please. Thank you so much for the information and all the responses to everything. So how many customers do you have that you would be able to [10:46:33 AM] charge the fee for the curbside to? >> Currently, approximately 190,000 customers. Within five years that number grows I believe to 210,000. >> Gallo: Okay. In five years, 210. And of those, are any of those multi-family customers or have they already been deleted from -- because they do their own private -- >> Exactly. This is single family up to fourplex. >> So I'm trying to understand the difference between income that would be coming in on what you charge for the organics to the expenses going out. And I'm having a little bit of trouble with the chart just kind of wrapping my mind around it. So let's just talk about the first year. So first year, for the year '17 we're look at a total cost of the 1.1 million plus the 3.1. Is that correct? Am I reading that correctly? >> The vehicles are actually going to be debt financed so that's the purchase expense, but the went debt payment is -- >> Gallo: Part of the 3.1. >> Spread over seven years. >> Gallo: At that point, thank you for bringing that up, I think the question the mayor was asking was that if you purchase the vehicles and we put debt financing on those -- >> Seven year commitment on those particular vehicles. >> Gallo: So that obligation does continue forward even if we determine we would not want to participate in the program and I think that was one of the questions. >> For each vehicle purchase. >> Gallo: For each vehicle. So the obligation of this program particularly for the purchase of the vehicles would be a multiyear obligation? >> And that's why we've zhanged the vehicle purchases in -- staged the vehicle purchases in different years so the expansion is based upon new vehicles being delivered. We're not purchasing all the vehicles up front at this stage. >> Coupled with your optimizing the utilization of those vehicles and other aspects of your operation. Is that not correct? >> Yes. That's an important point. Our storm relief with the [10:48:34 AM] frequent storms that we've had is benefited by the purchase of these vehicles. This expands our yard waste and our storm relief collection. >> Gallo: Okay. >> So there's an immediate benefit in the first year of these 1-year vehicles. >> Gallo: That's an important function, the storm debris, so thank you for that. We're looking at a total of 4.2 million. Am I understanding that the first year charge to be many this program is $1? Will be an extra dollar? >> Yes. >> Gallo: Okay. So if I take a dollar and multiply it times 12, that's 12, and if I do the math, if somebody -- if you multiply $12 a year to participate in this program times 190,000 customers, what's the dollar amount? Do you have that? >> 2.2 million. >> 2.2 million in income, we're talking about 4.2 million in expenses. Where does the -- I mean, it was my understanding that we were looking at a process where this program would pay for itself, but I'm missing $2 million. >> So the first thing is when we implement new rates it talks a couple months to get those implemented into the billing system so we wouldn't get a full 12 months' worth of the revenue so it would be a little less than that. >> Gallo: So there would be more of a difference between revenue and expenses? >> Again, the vehicles are debt financed. When they debt finance vehicles -- when they sell debt they don't do it -- it's not immediate. They wait -- the first year we only pay half of the debt because of when the payments hit. I don't know the technical language. I don't know, ed, if you can help me. It's not October 1 we have to start making the payments. >> The first payment I believe is March 1. But the -- because they're debt financed we're showing full capital costs when there's a 1/7 expense plus capital borrowing that is experienced each year so it's not the 3.1. That 3.1 represents the capital expense. [10:50:34 AM] >> Right. Purchase. Not the payment. So we can do a more detailed cash flow. This isn't intended to be a cash flow. >> Gallo: I think this is very confusing because when I look at it there's a very large almost 100% gap between symptom and expenses. >> I think we can can be. >> Gallo: Not in a good way. >> I think we can show a cash flow chart that might answer that question. >> Gallo: If you can do that that would be really helpful. >> My intent was on showing capital expenses as a total as opposed to debt payment is to show the true total cost of the program as opposed to if we just put the debt payment it would be much lower. >> Gallo: And I appreciate that. Thank you for doing that. >> It's difficult to show the rate increase on the same -- because it's not a cash flow. It's a kind of summary. >> Gallo: But I think what we look at from a budgeting standpoint is cash flow. >> Yes. >> Gallo: Because we need to look at what a program is actually going to cost in the budgeting process. So doing a chart that will more accurately show that so we can make sure -- I think we are all very sensitive to implementing new programs that all of a sudden at the end of the first year we realize it actually cost us more than the revenues coming in to do and that's not a situation I think any of us want to be in. So another chart that would reference that more clearly I think would be really helpful. I just want to say, I want to make sure people don't misinterpret that recycling is not important to me or my district and I probably speak for councilmember troxclair too because I wand to resigned and point out that our two districts were the top two districts in the amount of recycling and that was important to both of us. I know in our weekly newsletter we put out that information and encouraged all of our -- weekend with all of our homeowner and neighborhood associations to also put the message out so I just want to make sure that my questions about financial accountability and affordability in this community are not perceived as being against recycling because since we almost won the recycling challenging. [ Laughter ] -- We look forward to the next one. You know, I think it's very clear that recycling is [10:52:35 AM] important to both of us. So thank you. >> Thank you for those comments. >> Mayor Adler: Before we leave those two topics, just real fast, because maybe the chart is a little -- has caused some confusion here. The dollar that's being charged in fiscal year '17 is continued through Anne, '19, 20, '21 so those are shown. All the things we would be agreeing to in this year, that first dollar show up in year two. In addition if we vote again it would be an additional $1.85 so it really is a dollar we're deciding and only a dollar even though some of the expenses would be paid in year two, three, four, five, it's only a dollar that we would be deciding that would be added. Just real quickly I believe and I hope that we can control housing costs in the city by making the macro decisions that we make with respect to supply, the decisions we made on codenext I think will fundamentally impact housing costs in the city on codenext. On the permitting process will fundamentally control that. The decisions that we make with respect to transportation, do we build out the corridor plans on Lamar and burnet road and on airport and east mlk out to 969, on Riverside and the land use choices that are made associated with that and providing housing along those ways and increased density so that we have transportation, housing, I think, and we'll get the professional advice. I don't know. I think are things that actually are within our control. And my hope is that, as a council, we can actually start focusing on those really big Mac crow things that we do -- macro things we do that will have a substantial impact on the things that are the biggest cost drivers. We have to pay attention to these fees too because they're also absolutely within our control and more directly within our control. [10:54:36 AM] So they're easier to control but I'm real hopeful we can also hit the real big things too. Yes. >> Troxclair: I just wanted to I guess respond to your point, and I'm glad that you clarified it a little bit because the way that you explained it earlier made it sound like, you know, we're just going to -- this is such a small piece of everybody's budget that we should abdicate our responsibility to look at that 4.8% that we do have direct control over. And as far as the math that you to get to, oh, this is only one -- four to your knowledge%, you can make that argument for almost every decision we make at the city. We're going to expand library hours, it's only going to be a tiny fraction, couple cents cents, we're going to increase the police, the number of police officers, it's only going to be a fraction. But of course all of those fractions add up to something, to something substantial. And I also just wanted to respond to councilmember Garza's questions earlier -- unless you're an anarchist I think we believe there's a role of government here and we don't say no to everything but at the same time there -- this council hasn't been put in a position to say no to very much so far. We've pretty much said yes to everything that has come before us. We want to spend -- yes, recycling and zero waste is important, but so is -- so is affordable housing. So is -- to this council. So is increasing the minimum wage. So is spending more money so we can invest in solar. So is expanding health care benefits for our employees so our -- building -- maintaining our pools. There's a lot of things that are important to all of us, and it seems like so far, even though we were -- even when we were probably possibly going to be put in the position last year to try to make value decisions we had a huge wind fall come in after the [10:56:37 AM] property tax rolls were certified and we were able to spend money on pretty much everything that anybody -- that anybody wanted to. So it puts me in the difficult position of thinking, well, I would -- I would have been okay -- I do think that this particular -- the thing X would have been a -- something that I would have supported a cost of living increase for because I think it's that important but I never -- if -- if we're able to cut something in another area or if we're able to make a true value decision but I haven't been -- I don't think this council yet and I haven't been put -- been given the opportunity to kind of -- to make those serious value decisions because we're always just adding more instead of -- instead of looking at efficiency. So that's -- that would just be my response to prioritizing our expenses. >> Mayor Adler: Do you wanting to first? I mean -- you want to change topics I'll respond -- >> Tovo: No. I have a comment on the same topic. I just think it's important. I appreciate -- I hear what you're saying, but I just -- I think that we have had multiple comments even just here today about not having an opportunity to make value judgments and not having an opportunity to prioritize and I just think we always -- I understand what you're saying about last year we had more money than we had anticipated and so some of those -- you know, we didn't have some of those hard conversations. We certainly had the ability to do that. I mean, it's -- it is our -- one of our primary functions is to set the budget and so identify priorities. And, you know, if there's a will among council, I hope there wouldn't be, but if there's a will to overturn the zero waste master plan goals that's something that this council could do. Again, I hope we won't. It was set in place. I think the community has got a lot of value but I think that we really owe it to the public to be accountable for the work that we -- and the decisions that we can make and not to sit up here and say, staff, I have a particular [10:58:38 AM] agenda -- or we're not -- we're not in a place to make these decisions. That is our role and we always have that responsibility and ability. And so, you know, I just feel like that really has to be said. >> Kitchen: I would also say that we are making the hard decisions and have been making the hard decisions in the way that things are done in the way they were done in the past on the values and how our dollars are allocated. And in some ways we are thinking about changing some of those policy decisions that were made in the past. When I think of what councilmember Garza brought forward last year in terms of putting additional dollars into health and human services, that's a value judgment and that's a value judgment that we made at that time that we changed perhaps the balance between how we spend our money and ways that we've done in the past. So I think we are constantly making very hard decisions, and in every budget that we adopt we're making very hard decisions. So I appreciate how you might feel about that and I can see that about individual one item as they come to us. When we vote on a budget we're making hard decisions and what's coming to us, even if we don't change it, that's making a value judgment about, you know, where our money should go. I also think from a cost perspective I really do share and I appreciate all the questions that people are bringing up in terms of how we can control costs because we're all in this together trying to make things more affordable for people. But I just think that we have to look at the whole cost, you know, which is -- because every time we pay for something and we raise a fee, it has consequences in other parts of our districts and to that person. [11:00:39 AM] So, for example, on health insurance, if we don't pay for providing health insurance, that costs all of us in terms of people ending up in the emergency room. Not just costing that individual, but it costs all of us. So when I look at the cost to us of providing more health insurance which we did last year, I wasn't just looking at the cost in our budget. I was looking at the cost to our whole community, which does cost us. So I just think that we have to look at the impact. And that's similar to what councilmember Garza said just a few minutes ago in terms of looking at the impact of recycling. So I think we have to have -- these are very complex, very difficult discussions. I think we're having them and that's our job, and I think from my perspective, I have to look at the whole impact. >> Mayor Adler: Are we ready to move on? Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I have to push back against the idea that we're a council that just says yes, yes, yes, yes and says no to -- we've said yes to the things that rose to the top of our priority list, but behind those things were probably 5 Hupp more things that each of our offices has gotten asks for. The hispanic quality of life list was 40 things and we maybe believe able to push two or three of those. The Asian American quality of life list was so many things, the African-American quality of life list was so many things. So I don't want anyone to have the impression that we're just a spend, spend, yes, yes council. We have supported things that have risen to the top of the priority list that there has been a majority support for and there are many more things that we haven't been able to say yes to. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Did you want to talk? All right. I think we're done. Great presentation, great discussion. Thank you. [11:02:40 AM] Mr. Van eenoo. We have health and human services, which we have one other presentation for today -- >> Tovo: Beyond health and human services. >> Mayor Adler: I think that's all we have today. Let's see if we can get this done before we break for lunch and then we don't have to come back. >> Houston: Could we take a break -- >> Mayor Adler: Want to take a quick break? >> Houston: To walk a minute. >> Mayor Adler: Let's do that. We'll be back here at 11:10. 10 after 11. [11:18:13 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Hello, sir. Mr. Van eenoo. >> Welcome back, mayor, mayor pro tem, I'm ed van eenoo, budget officer for the city. Our next policy discussion for today is very important one. One about our city's health and human services department and our social service contracts that we support in our city. The programs provided by the health and human services department, some of the challenges we're facing in this area across the community and some of the funding way. I'm joined by our director of health and human services, Shannon Jones and assistant director Kimberly Maddox and assistant director Stephanie Heyden. They are going to do all of the presenting here, but I wanted to start this presentation off with just a little bit of an acknowledgment that we as staff are 100% aware that this is a high priority for the city council. We know that because we have at least three. I think actually four different resolutions that have been passed over the years from this council and earlier councils indicating a desire to increase funding in these areas. And we also witnessed last year as part of the budget adoption this city council made significant increases in the funding for health and human services and social service contracts over and above increases that city staff had already proposed in the proposed budget. So again, we're well aware that this is an important topic and so 9 policy discussion here for us is does council feel that these services are important, but you've seen a lot of the dynamic here that in any budget we end up with priorities that are beyond our ability to fund all of them. I think really the policy question here is about the degree is these are our priority relative to perhaps desires to see tax rates be held low or desire to see homestead exemptions be increased, senior exemptions [11:20:14 AM] to be increased. You saw last week we had presentations about facilities needs and I.T. And maintenance, so we want to hear from council to help us prioritize the desire to increase funding in these areas. I mentioned these various resolutions, prioritize increases in these areas against all these other needs and I mentioned those resolutions. We sent out a memo a month or two ago indicating if we were to stay on track with all the different funding goals that were established in the resolutions we would need to increase funding in fiscal year 17 for health and human services and social service contracts by $8.3 million over and above any built in cost drivers for wages and health insurance. We would need to increase $8.3 million over and above that amount in order for us to keep pace with these goals that have been laid out by council, vis-a-vis these various resolutions. I wanted to introduce this topic in that way and I don't know if there are any questions about that. If not I'll pass it over to Shannon to take you through the presentation. >> Good morning. I'm Shannon Jones as ed says, director of austin-travis county health and human services department. I'm joined here also by deputy director Stephanie Heyden and our assistant director Kimberly Maddox. I would like to start off by saying that Austin and Travis county is one of the healthiest, fittiest and wealthiest communities in this state and in this nation. And that's important to understand as we talk about the role of health and human services in addressing the issues that we face in our community. Today we'll give you a road map that outlines and overviews some of the issues and challenges we face in our community despite falling in those categories. We have significant areas that we have to work on so [11:22:14 AM] we will talk about those as we look at and address the issues we face. I will define the social determinants of health will play a critical impact in terms of conditions that we find in our area. We will focus on despite being one of the healthiest, wealthiest and fittest significant disparities in our community, there are significant stark differences within our community despite the overall health of our community. We will look at chronic disease epidemics among populations of color. We will look at our role in public health preparedness, threats such as ebola, chicken gun, zika, and we'll talk about efforts to address key issues that we face in the budget process regarding current funding and council resolutions that have been put forth. When we look at Austin and Travis county and particularly Austin, we look at it primarily in terms of demographics. And if you look at the slide here what we see is what our city demographer provided for us. In 2000 roughly the Asian American landscape in terms of population was primarily north and west in our community. We've seen over time that migration, as in all population, further in, and certainly on the northside of our community. When we look at the total share of population by district,, district 6 has a significant number of the Asian American population, close to 15%. District 7 and 9 are close at 10%. When we look at our changing population we look at the changing demographics from 2000 to 2010. If you look at that very clearly we see particularly in the inner city core of [11:24:15 AM] Austin a diminution of that population moving further to the east and northeast as well as south within the city of Austin. We look at this by share by district, what we clearly see is district 2 had the largest percentage of hispanic population followed closely by district 4 and district 3 and followed by district 1 and yet throughout all of our districts we see the hispanic population has a significant population number in terms of those districts. When we look at the African-American population we see clear diminution of the African-American population within the center core of Austin between 20 -- the year 2000 and 2010. Basically that population has significantly been moved outside of the central core and more to the east and northeast part of the county. When we look at population clearly we see that district 1 has by far the largest population of African-Americans, however, district 4, drew district 2 district 3 and district 7 both have large Numbers of African-Americans in those districts as well. The health and human services department provide services throughout the city of Austin and Travis county, however if you look at historically the service model what you see are that most of the services historically have been provided on a line roughly 600 yards off of I-35 corridor. So as a result over time we've had to expand and look at other areas to do that. Towards this effort we provide services in various community settings including churches, recreational centers, schools and at [11:26:15 AM] local shopping centers such as Walmart and H.E.B. As an effort to reach out to the changing demographics and changing locations of communities. Health and human services is partnering with our sister department, parks and recreation, and community care, to deliver services both in colony park, rundberg, dove springs and Santa Barbara in the eastern part of the county. In an effort to provide those services in the new areas that we've identified with the changing demographics. It's identifying future facility needs as we go forth with developing our capital plan for our expanding services for these changing demographics. I'd like to spend a little bit talking about the social determinants of health. It is important to recognize that many factors affect the health in terms of our community. Not just health care. The environment, lifestyle, behavior, genes and other factors play significant roles in terms of that. Poverty and unemployment or employment where it exists also plays a significant role in terms of the health outcomes of our community. An example, an adult 25 or older without a high school diploma are primarily located in certain parts of our community. We look at by districts we see district 1, 2, 3 and 4 have significant populations that do not have a minimum of a college degree. Look at districts 2, 1, 28% has. Look at district 22, 24% has. 24, 22% has. District 5, 43% has. So we see there are significant differences in terms of educational levels. When we look at poverty, [11:28:19 AM] particularly district 3 has a significant -- district 4 has a significant burden as well as district 3 in terms of poverty. One in four children in Travis county live in poverty. One in four in this county. One of the wealthiest counties we see. And children under the age of six are the fastest growing living in poverty. One-third of Travis county residents are low income. That means they're 200% of poverty or below. That includes for the definition if you may not be familiar, a family of four with an income of less than 24,000 living in poverty in our community. In this community of affordability that's a real challenge for our community. When we look at the median family income by district in our community, over the last 10 years rents have risen 50% while the median income rose roughly nine percent. The median family income is lowest in districts 1, 2, 3 and 4, primarily those on the eastern part of the county, which means the average income in these districts are below the poverty level. When we look at our investments in terms of trying to address some of these, we see clearly that the department over many years are currently focusing in on those areas, basic needs, funding in a neighborhood of over eight million dollars. Behavioral health, three million. Children and youth, six million. HIV, Travis county has the third highest rates of HIV in our state as we'll talk about in a few moments. We have an investment of 603,000 in that. Workforce three million. So there are significant investments in these [11:30:20 AM] areas. National studies have indicated at demonstrated investments in these areas have significant return on those investments. Every dollar invested in workforce program returns, $2.74 over 10 years. Every dollar invested in pre-k returns roughly $17 per participant. Substance abuse treatment returns over four dollars to seven dollars for every investment made in those areas. Permanent supportive housing has saved roughly 1.1 million over time. So these investments go' a long way to addressing the issue we face, but they're a start toward that area. When we look at the question of affordability and affordability, Austin overall crisis -- affordability crisis and overall funding for social service has not kept up with the demand for these services that we face. So as we talk about the investments that have been made, the challenges continue. Quality childcare for low income working families, funding is not sufficient for full day and year-round care. 22% of adults in Travis county report mental health outcomes. Emergency shelters are beyond their capacity. We hear a lot about homelessness. What we've identified with our homeless count was a 17 point increase so we have seen that increase over time, over last year. The arch was built over for over 100 beds. Currently we have 220 people who stay there every night. Homeless case management for chronic homelessness is critical to housing. Right now we have a goal of 30% and we're working towards achieving that [11:32:21 AM] goal. That means 70% of the population is still going unserved. Rapid rehousing and rental assistance for funding is not able to meet knees needs. The number of people served has decreased even though funding has increased. Primarily because of housing affordability, increasing rental in the career. So though we are trying to make headway, we are sort of running backwards in terms of the resources availability and the availability of sources. Food assistance. 18 percent of individuals live in household with limited, consistent food access and many factors play in that. Where food is, access into services and the light. We do have many areas that address this, though. Our W.I.C. Program which provides services in many of our facilities. The snap enrollment program provides certification management services. We also provide services in our neighborhood centers which focuses on emergency food pantry. February foods for -- fresh foods for families. It is focused in on availing people guesting those services in the community. And healthy options for elderly are just some of the services that we currently provide. That sort of gives you a profile of our social service perspective. Let's look briefly at health and health disparities in our community. When we start off looking at our prevalence rate for H.E.B. As we said earlier, Travis county has the third highest rates of HIV in the state. When we look at race and ethnicity we see that African-Americans have a significant disparity over other populations. In our area. Look at teen pregnancy rate. Though we've made success over the last [11:34:22 AM] few years, which is good news to report, percent of Travis county births to teens are high particularly in our hispanic community. We look at in particular our next slide 81% of the births that occur in this county are going to primarily the hispanic population in our community. If we look at that by Numbers, particularly the hispanic year 2013, our most current data available at this time, we see that of total births, the hispanic population represented 265 of these 320 births between 17 and 18. But 512 of the 733 births in the county overall. These Numbers are continuing to occur in the population, so the role of teen pregnancy prevention is a critical area for our area. Look at infant mortality. And though not unique to Austin, this is a continuing problem in terms of our community. The African-American population, though coming down in good Numbers, still have a significant disparity in terms of the outcomes for teens -- for children born in that first year of life, significant disparities. Towards this effort we do have programs focus in on family health. We have peer to peer adolescent education which we work with teens about teen pregnancy within the parameters that we have. You are all aware we're in Texas and there are certain limitations in terms of teen pregnancy challenges that we face, but we work with others that work with school districts as well as ourselves and engaging with young teens in that [11:36:22 AM] program. We have comprehensive sexual education programs in which we talk about pregnancy and the impact it has not only in terms of the youth, but also in terms of the child. We've talked about teen pregnancy intervention in which we actually have classes in our neighborhood centers and neighborhoods to talk about the importance of reducing teen pregnancies and teen births before time. And our HIV STD programs, particularly we focus in on HIV treatment and reducing viral loads and potential for spread of disease. We particularly have disparities within the African-American, but also within population, men who have sex with men are obviously the highest number, but that transmission also occurred into other populations. So when we look at the African-American population and we look at the hispanic population among females those Numbers are gradually creeping up. So efforts to focus in on those are critical as we begin to focus on those areas. Medical case management to ensure that the person with HIV gets treatment. One of the things we see here in Austin and other communities is that people now assume that because there are options for treatment of HIV, ie prep, that they can assume that their behavior can change. The reality is prep is a behavior of prevention, not a behavior of treatment. So educating people and making sure they get into case management is critical in understanding that. Maternal and child health program, outreach programs to achieve hellly outcomes. As we said, infant mortality is a critical issue in our community so as a result of the funding you mated last year through our quality of life program we began to work and focus in on some of these areas, particularly on maternal and child health issue, family planning just counseling, community health workers. We're going out and talking with young ladies and educating them about the issues of prenatal care, making sure they get in early. [11:38:22 AM] A public health nursing program does things related to chronic disease. Reducing blood pressure. Blood sugar and screening and referral. Getting into those populations that we're talking about that historically have not had that access or those access were limited in terms of that. Despite that we do have our quality of life mobile van is out providing screening to the areas, but we only have one nurse to cover all of Travis county. So we're talking about how do we expand and build on that service so that we can cover all of the city of Austin and parts of Travis county. Let's talk a little bit about chronic disease. Chronic disease in our community unfortunately is a serious epidemic among populations of color. Chronic disease account for three to out of four deaths in our community. When we talk about that, this is the leading cause of death in our community. If you look at our slides at the leading causes of death in our community what you clearly see is that unlike other communities where heart disease is the leading cause, cancer is by far the leading cause in Travis county. However we look at that by race and ethnicity what we see is that African-Americans have higher rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke and hispanics are very close behind in terms of those same areas. So it's important to look at how do we address these chronic disease from a community perspective. Your investment last time helped us begin to turn -- to begin to invest in those efforts, but I remind you that those are just the beginning points because as we said earlier we have significant areas that we have to address. We go over to chronic disease, tobacco, use, [11:40:23 AM] diabetes we see the same trends, African-Americans and hispanics having the highest rates. Cardiovascular disease, smoking prevalence, obesity, and so these are the same population. We're not talking about one population who has diabetes, one population who has cancer, one population who have -- who smoke. Basically for the most part these are the same populations, the same families, communities that we're targeting. So these efforts are synergistic in trying to educate our outreach efforts. The Asian American resource center conducted a health assessment survey and focus group along following subpopulations began to assess the issues we find particularly in our asian-american community. And some of the things we found is that of the 116 respondents prioritize the health outcomes, they identified some of the same chronic diseases, diabetes, hypertension, mental health, cancer and arthritis. Chronic disease conditions account for three out of four deaths in the area of Austin as we've said. And that is replicated for most of the population for the most part. Over 230,000 Travis county residents, most of them are in Austin, adults are considered to be clinically obese or overweight. And if you take a population of any, including this room, we would see that same kind of replication in terms of our community. In 2012 Travis county chronic disease hospitalization cost total over $471 million. And to the question that councilmember troxclair asked earlier, these costs are being transferred to the district because we're not being able to intervene and reduce the burden of cost to [11:42:23 AM] hospitalization in our community. Intervention through public health and prevention helps reduce those costs. Heart disease is the leading cause of death among African-Americans and cancer for hispanics. So as we look at the efforts we look at, we need to specifically focus in on culture, communities and others which our efforts are doing. Gaps, still, diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in Travis county. Overall the fourth read leading cause of death for African-Americans and of hispanics. It is a significant factor. Diabetes is also a contributing factor to heart disease and cancer and stroke as well. Chronic disease prevention control has been identified as top priority for the community health improvement plan and imagine Austin comprehensive plan. So our efforts are combined with not only what we as a community are doing, but also what imagine Austin overall is looking at the needs for the Austin area. Grant funding losses has reduced our ability for programming. So therefore for behaviors across multiple sectors. So we are challenged to look at working with communities and schools, work site, health care, and media, those efforts we need to tend to focus on because of funding from the feds and the state are being reduced or eliminated. Free diabetes education targeting medicare and medicaid and medically indigent populations of color. We are reaching out to try and address some of these efforts, with resources that we currently have. Over 150 individuals with diabetes, we have identified and we worked with per year. Free tobacco cessation efforts. Outreach targeting 18 to 24-year-old population because we see that's where the greatest [11:44:24 AM] number of users are. Nutrition counseling through our W.I.C. Clinics are part of the efforts we're trying to build in terms of addressing these issues. Free community exercise programs, so we're working through our neighborhood centers and other community groups to focus in on that. Two health educators to provide year-round exercise classes, our efforts were beginning for implement towards addressing these issues. Public health nursing, as we mentioned, chronic disease, blood pressure and blood sugar screening and referral so when people in, whether they're in the Walmart or the neighborhood center or the church, are being referred to be able to get ahold of those populations we alluded to earlier. Our quality of life mobile van focuses on chronic disease screening and that van through the resources made available last year we're beginning to reach out to the other communities, asian-american, hispanic community and other communities that are disenfranchised to be able to provide services. The screening services, education services and the like. One mobile van with one nurse to provide outreach services throughout Travis county reaching some 3400 individuals per year through education, screening and testing. So that's sort of an overview of our chronic disease services, but beyond that we also are part of the responding core for preparedness. Public health preparedness is a core function of public health. There are 15 public health emergency capabilities we have to prepare to respond to. As you are familiar with zika. Last year it was ebola. Before that west nile. So we're constantly part of that public health response force. So the resources necessary to do that are part of what we use. Public health emergencies response planning to effective response are areas that we said infectious diseases, E bow la, chicken gun, zika, [11:46:28 AM] H1N1. We have here in Travis county two cases of zika. It is prevalent in our community and we need to be prepared should the situation get more involved. Natural disaster, we go beyond the health issue. We're very involved in response to the flooding here in Travis county and here in Austin. We're very involved in that. Biological, chemical and nuclear radiation, we are always on guard to monitor and make sure we are not at risk for any of these hazards that exist in our community. So your public agency is very involved in all of these activities. Federal and state budget cuts continue to threaten our ability to do that. Over the last decade significant reductions have occurred. Since 2004 funding to support public has decreased from over one million to 683,000 with the loss of roughly 14.5 ftes our ability to do those things we talked about have been impacted. Having said all of this we acknowledge that council have been supportive of this. The resolution in 2014 requested an additional one million in funding for the fy16-17 proposed budget for social service contracts. Council made significant new investment in public health and human services in 15-16 as a result of the council resolution and we thank you for that. We have as a result of that began and I emphasize began the building of the public health infrastructure. We've been able to add several new positions in chronic disease, infectious diseases, in preparedness, in HIV in the areas we've talked about. So we've begun that process. Our health equity and quality of life initiatives, council made available a little over a million dollars to begin that effort and we've talked about the things we've done, particularly as it [11:48:29 AM] relates to building our capacity to go out to the community to screen, to test, to educate. To be able to have an impact on our community in terms of health and in terms of costs. The social service contracts of $1.8 million we've let those contracts, we're in the process now of moving forward on those activities and those contracts have resulted in being able to have some significant impact in terms of increasing social service contracts by six percent for the most part and increase solicitation to be able to build capacity to new agencies. One of the things we heard here from this council, particularly councilmember Houston, was the need to be able to identify other agencies to be able to reach out to communities, to be able to provide social services in a unique way. So we're looking at capacity building with some of these dollars, be able to enhance and bring on board new agencies to be able to be part of our response. Resolution 2016 put forth by this council, it's looking at adopting a formal policy and goal of adding over the next two to four years investing $12 million for social service contracts and investing 10.3 million for health and human services department. These dollars if invested would be able to move on us towards being able to reach the goals that we have set to addressing the issues that we've identified. Public health has not always been a priority and as a result of these investments these help move us towards these efforts in our community overall. These dollars would go a long ways towards addressing those efforts. Our investment in public health once again just to recap, in chronic disease, disease surveillance, epidemiology. HIV and STD, neighborhood services, quality of life, [11:50:32 AM] reducing teen pregnancies, helping us with our social service contracts, our health equity contracts. Those are the things that we're committed to do and we're on the road to doing. We need the continued support of this council to be able to do that. So our next step is, as we promised and as we've begun, is to come back to you and share with you what we have done towards those efforts. And we are -- we've started with the health and human services subcommittee and we'll be doing it with council as well to let you know where those investments and our progress towards those efforts. So we end in basically asking the question how should enhancement if these service areas be prioritized relative to other funding needs? As we made the efforts, where is the prioritization for council? And does council want to stay on track with the current investments that have been put forth and that we look forward to over the next several years for our community? With that said, I will stop and entertain any questions. >> Mayor Adler: So, one, there's tremendous work being done across a broad range and I'm proud to be part of a city that is addressing so many issues and giving so much support. What I would like to know is what your priorities are, your professional advice with respect to priorities. I mean, these are all real important things. And I don't know if the overview page on 38, how we prioritize that. And I'm mindful of the memo that came from ed that said that if we were to keep doing the things that we've expressed a desire to be able to do, we're eight million dollars beyond the rollback rate effectively or [11:52:32 AM] very close to that. I'm trying to figure out what happens if we don't do that, what does that mean if we don't go beyond the rollback rate and we don't do that? Those are the two questions I have, priorities within which the agenda and then second what happens to potentially different degrees, but what happens if we don't go beyond the rollback rate? In other words, if that last eight million dollars is not available this year. >> I'll try with the first question. In terms of priorities, particularly for the efforts that have been made, it's full of [indiscernible] To the type of question, which one of these areas would we focus in on. All of them are needed. All of them are areas which focus in on basically the same populations, whether they be chronic disease, infectious disease, teen pregnancy or the like. What we've attempted to do is prioritize and based upon the needs, the data that has shared with us. And as obviously if we look at the leading causes of death are chronic disease areas. Having said that, though, the same folks who have chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, are the mothers and fathers and grandparents of the teenagers who are getting pregnant, who are contributing to our factors in terms of that. So our approach would be is that we would still focus in on the areas we've identified, but we would do them in such a way that we would prioritize based upon what the data tells us, which would be the chronic disease. However, we are still feeling that the approaches we've used, that council has put forth across the board, are the areas that we need to focus in on. So we need to focus in on those areas, chronic disease, infectious disease, [11:54:34 AM] teen pregnancy. We would hope that council would continue that level of funding that would allow us to do that. >> Mayor Adler: Is the level of funding the eight million dollars that was identified in the forecast as being outside of the rollback rate? Or is the level of funding what was included inside the rollback rate and the additional money was additional money that is not level funding, but desired funding. >> The forecast was only looking at the fy16 budget that council approved and projecting out those costs, taking into account anticipated age increases, health insurance increases, things of that nature. That's all we included in the forecast. And you're right that our forecast indicated that because of all the cost drivers we had in budget for fy16 that in fy 2017 we were forecasting that we would need to be right near the rollback tax rate in order to keep our budget in balance with all the cost drivers. I don't need to go through the whole list again, but you recall there was libraries, there was fire stations being added. There was a lot of decisions that council has already made that has cost implications for fiscal year '17. This 8.3 million wasn't part of this consideration. This is one of many resolutions we have from council expressing desire for additional funding in the future years so yes, to try to keep on pace with all the different resolutions for health and human services you would be looking at perhaps a minimum investment of perhaps $8.3 million that would push us above the rollback rate. I think one of the key decisions for council is to help us interpret the resolutions that's set over two to four years. We would like to see an [11:56:37 AM] additional $22 million for contracts and social service contracts. As Shannon mentioned the Numbers, you can interpret that differently. You can kick the can down the road and say four years from now we'll do it all. That's probably not realistic if you want to get to that level of investment you probably need to do it over some sustained annual level of increases. The 8.3 million that we calculated was assuming that we would do it on just a flat basis over four years. And it's not just those increases, there's other resolutions that call for additional increases based upon cpi, additional increases based upon population growth, so that's how we came up with 8.3 million. >> Mayor Adler: I'm trying to find the intersection between what you did and the presentation we just heard. So in the programs that you set out and you wanted to be able to maintain the funding that we had, does that include the -- am I just to understand it correctly, does that include the 8.3 or is the -- or are you anticipating the 8.3 in order to be able to deliver the programs that you had on the page? You have made mention to -- in what you've said, you were focusing here, approximate but the additional money that was approved in April enabled you to do these things and you would like to be able to continue doing these things, continuing doing these things does not require the 8.3, is that right? If we're doing more than these things, that's what the 8.3 -- I'm trying to find the intersection between those two -- the two presentations. Does that make sense? >> Well, the proposal we put forth represents what our current -- what we're currently doing. As we go forth through the next budget process our expectation is that there will be -- augment to what -- to what our current funding level is. Those will speak to additional dollars that we've talked about the additional dollars over the next two to four years. They are the base of what we currently have. They are not currently [11:58:37 AM] involved in what we have put forth as a policy discussion. >> Mayor Adler: So you can maintain the existing programs that you're doing now? Including the enlarged scope that we authorized last year in the budget process, without having the additional $8.3 million that was not within the role-back rate as presented by Mr. Van eenoo, is that correct? >> The 8 million was not. >> Mayor Adler: I understand the 8 million was not. I want to understand the work we expanded last year continued on into the future does not require the spending of the 8.3. >> The answer is yes. >> Mayor Adler: If we were to then do the 8.3 or some components of the 8.3 we would be doing things that go beyond what our expanded scope was last year to additional things that -- that you would still like to see done if we were able to get that additional funding? >> Two things. One, yes to the question, but a caveat. One is that that would allow us to maintain at our current level. So if we're going to expand it would not. The second thing is that it was a $000,000 for social service contracts that were not part of what is -- last year that will have to go forth next year, in the '17 budget. So I want to make sure we're clear about that. We're just talking about health services originally but there is a million dollar short fall that was proposed as part of the previous council I believe carry forth with fy '17, that is not embedded into what we're currently looking at. >> Mayor Adler: That additional is in the 8.3 that you say is outside of the [12:00:39 PM] rollback rate. >> That's correct. >> Mayor Adler: So I think it would be helpful to know if you got the 8.3 how the 8.3 would be extent and how you would prioritize the elements of that 8.3? I don't need for you to answer that as you sit here now, but that would be helpful information to have. >> But to that -- I won't answer but I want to emphasize earlier when we talked about our priorities, those were our health services. One of the other components we spent a lot of time in our presentation impact the social services have on health services. So one of the things we would prioritize is -- certainly is the million dollars for social service contract and additional source to help support that social service effort. >> Mayor Adler: And my understanding was that the $8.3 million was both health -- human services as well as social services. >> That's correct. >> Mayor Adler: So the 1.3 was a combined number. I can't confirm that but I'm pretty sure that's right. >> That's correct. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So tolled be helpful to know what would be the additional components of the 8.3 and how you would prioritize those 8.3. >> Internally we've done some of that. We'll be happy to share it. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mr. Renteria. >> Renteria: And I also would like to have the work from the -- I know that there was some one-time costs that we did, but we funded it for four years. I'm not saying it's under your health program, but I know that we -- we funded a couple of these projects that for one-time costs but we added four years of money on it. And I kind of lost track of which programs we did that. >> I can give you a list of those. I don't have it people memorized but there were four or five programs. >> If you could, I would appreciate that. [12:02:45 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Garza. >> Garza: I'm confused about 8.3. Are we talking about the may 2 memo. >> The memo on may 2 said 1.3 because the previous resolution -- remember I said there was about four resolutions we were working under. The one that led to 7.3 was the resolution that said that council wanted to see an annual increase based upon population, I believe, for health and human services and annual increase for social service contract based upon cpi and over and above those increases they wanted to see an additional $12 million for social services and $10.3 million for health and human services over two to four years. Do the math you get to 7.3. There's another resolution that Shannon mentioned, which was a 2014 resolution, that said in fiscal year '17 we want to see another million dollars for social service contracts so that's nothing this council approved but it's another resolution from a previous council that directed as part of the fy'17 budget an additional million dollars for service contracts. Again, if we were to do all these different resolution it's would be 8.3 million. >> Garza: But I thought the most recent one in January kind of revised that old -- the 2014. >> The one that revised was not the 2014 one. I think it was a 2015 one that it revised. >> Garza: Okay. And I guess I just -- for the policy discussion, everyone is aware that I am a big supporter of our health and human services funding but I absolutely am aware that we're going to have a heard budget cycle this year. So, you know, we need to weigh that. If I knew I had five other people to vote for that 8.3, absolutely. But, you know, I understand that we have some tough decisions to make. So as close as we can get to [12:04:45 PM] that funding and to keep in line with the previous resolution because, you know, as I've said before, our other departments have seen significant increases in their budget while our health and human services have not seen those significant increases and the goal of this resolution -- the resolutions that I've sponsored as well as previous councils, they started the work and I was simply working off those policy goals to get our health and human services funding up to where it should be. I would also add that I -- it's such a big issue for me because I didn't grow up with a lot of, you know, money, but we never needed anything. We had enough. And, you know, I never saw -- it wasn't until I started working as an ag in the child support division that I saw a level of poverty that I had never even been aware of or seen. And so I also recently went to a communities and schools presentation, and I'd encourage all my colleagues, if you can go to one of those presentations to see these children speak about their situations. People -- children in Austin who go to their teachers and ask their teachers, can you help my mom get a job, and when they leave school on Friday that's their last meal until Monday. So we are such a -- you know, a prosperous city but there are so many people in our city who are struggling and I just feel it's really important that we place a big priority on funding these programs. And I just use communities and schools as one example because of the amazing work that they do and they are part of one of the groups funded through our health and human services. In fact I think they were initially solely or primarily funded through the city and have since been able to get other funding through other areas and I believe it was gust Garcia, mayor Gus Garcia and I believe Jackie Goodman who I'm soy to have in my office now who was one of the [12:06:46 PM] big advocates for those programs. So I certainly hope we can continue this push to increase the funding, but at the same time I certainly recognize we have hard decisions to make. So thank you for all the work that you continue to do to support our most vulnerable population, who usually don't really have the biggest voice because they're busy doing other things and trying to make ends meet. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool and then Ms. Gallo. >> Pool: Thanks for the presentation. I had a question on page 11, poverty rates by council district and it shows district 9 as the one that has highest 35.3%. Is that due -- what is the basis for district 9 having the highest poverty rate? Is it student population that's below the midline? Or is it homeless? What -- >> Primarily it's university of Texas. It also has part of several Austin historically so that has been the underlying factors is student obviously poverty rates is going to bring down the overall population. That's the single biggest factor. There are other parts of district 9 also but that's the single biggest factor. >> Pool: It's an income issue based on the fact that they're in school? >> Right. >> Pool: Okay. >> Not reflective -- and homeless. >> Tovo: That's the largest percentage of homeless of any district. >> When you draw the line, yes, you have the homeless population, both on the campus and also close to downtown area. >> Pool: Yeah, district 7 has some homelessness in it too but I don't think we're at the level that district 9 is at all. Yeah. When welast year we sent significant funds to health and human services and we had a number of new programs. How has the ramping up of [12:08:47 PM] those new programs and roll-out of the additional effort gone? >> You're talking about in the investments made in the first part of this year. >> Pool: Right. >> Just quickly I'm going to does staff to join in. Significant investments in terms of our public health infrastructure. So we've had 37 new positions. We've hired 35 of those folks. Remind you those folks were only able to be hired since October or our staff -- I mean, January. Thank you. So our is staff has been busy hiring and getting on board and they're beginning the process of doing their particular areas, whether it's being health equity and preparedness and environmental health or the like. The second part is that our significant investments were in health equity was a million dollars so we've already, since October, proceeded to contract and begin to process -- the process of contracting those out. A million eight was in funding for social services. We talked a little bit about the dollars that we made available through contracts to be able to, again, the social service efforts. So we've been engaged primarily in gearing up because, one, most of those dollars came as a result of January 1. This is may. So we've been busy with that. Then the other ones we've been contracting, going through purchasing, hunting the bids out. We've been engaged in a lot of those. Having said that we've been doing some things in the community. We've done educational efforts in terms of outreach, work particularly with our partners, agencies and the like. So we've been engaged in a lot of those. Stephanie, did you want to add anything? Those are the kinds of things we've been doing with investments we've made, most of which I remind are as of January of this year. >> Pool: Where my question was going was, if we did a $7 million investment beginning in -- the beginning of fiscal '16 then we won't have spent all of it by the [12:10:48 PM] end of fiscal '16 likely because the ramp-up for hiring the staff takes -- and it sounds like you've done it fairly quickly. >> Well, two, it was budgeted at -- most of the staff was budgeted on nine months and now they're 12 months so that will not be -- that will not affect that. >> Pool: Okay. That's a good piece of information. And so the gap that councilmember Garza was talking about, how are we doing on erasing the gap in funding? In getting health and human services programs up to being on par with other departments? The historic gap in funding? >> Well, this was the first year so I'd say it was a great start. It truly was. As I said I've been in public health 41 years now and it is the single biggest investment. So we're gearing up to look at how do we compete or how do -- not compete but how do we work and come up to other departments. Our peer departments around the state, around the country. We're building units or programs within our departments that historically we've never had that other have, health equity being one, preparedness being another, increasing our environmental health efforts. Some of the focus we've done particularly on accountability, making sure we can account for our dollars in terms of building our infrastructure from the budget office as well as accounting office. All of those things are things we're doing. We believe that certainly within the next two to three years we will be in a position clearly to say we are on par or certainly equal to our peer departments in terms of we're going through accreditation, part of that is helping identify what are those benchmarks, what are the things specifically we should be doing. We're waiting to hear for the national health accreditation board whether we're accredited as of this year. Hopefully we'll hear any day now. If we do that is a critical benchmark to say, yes, we have the tools in place. Now we need the resources to continue to maintain those things. So we believe that certainly by next year we'll be able to give you a better picture of [12:12:48 PM] where we are in terms of those investments towards our peer departments and what our accreditation efforts have indicated we are. >> Pool: That sounds great. As far as the policy questions for consideration, how should enhancements offend these service areas be prioritized relative to other funding needs. For me it's a look expensively at all of our efforts at the city and lifting up people who have the largest need, I would support continuing to help with that effort. Does council want to stay on track with the fiscal year '16 -- or '17 budget with adopted funding goals? Again, in the larger picture, I think this is how I answered the question on the 3-5 year adoption rate for our recycling goals, I want to see how it fits in with everything else but I don't want to necessarily slow down our progress so I'd like to continue to sustain. And I thank you all so much for the efforts that you've put forward. I think that the work that you do in social services is probably some of the hardest emotionally to manage but possibly also maybe with the biggest rewards. When you see people being lifted out of poverty, especially some really chronic poverty and homelessness and you've been able to find homes for them and healthy food and you have kids that are going to school consistently and graduating and getting a job. I mean, that -- I think those kinds of human success stories are the things that certainly feed my soul and lift me up, and I hope that you see enough of the successes in your work. I understand that work in the areas that you're in can be very emotionally taxing so I thank you. >> Thank you. >> Gallo: Thank you. And I wanted to thank councilmember Garza for continuing to remind all of us that we live in a economically vibrate community but we also have a large portion of our community that lives in poverty. And it's sad when all of us [12:14:51 PM] can feed and cloth and house our families but we have people in our community that can't do that. But we are also very fortunate in this community that we have a -- an incredible community, a nonprofit organizations that exist here that do a lot to assist us in providing for the less fortunate in our community and a lot of times I think it's a matter of maybe supporting them and getting out of their way and letting them do what they do really well. One that comes to mind immediately is we continue to talk about the homeless, communities first village, and that is a project that will eventually house almost 500 exponential they are doing that with no public money. So there are really good organizations in our community that use private money to be able to provide services. So as we can, let's hope that we can collaborate as much as possible with those organizations. The -- a couple of questions that I had on the presentation. And I really appreciate your comment about -- when asked about prioritizing the need is focusing on the areas that are based on data because I think that's a really good way, when we don't have enough money to provide for everything, to be able to figure out where our focus should be. But I have a couple of questions about the presentation and a couple of asks, if I may, please. Most of the graphs talk about Travis county instead of Austin so I would like to see if we could get the graphs that you supplied based on Austin statistics and not just Travis county. And so if we could be provided with that, I think that would be very helpful because then we would know the metrics and the data for Austin, not encompassing all of Travis county too. And then -- >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to respond to that briefly. >> Gallo: I'm sorry, I just assumed you can do that. I apologize. >> I was going to say most of the data, particularly the epidemiological data is countywide and the problem is because most of it comes from birth and death certificates so the data is collected based [12:16:53 PM] on where one's county residents are. Certain data we can get and we will go back and vee we can deaggregate it but for the most part the epidemiological data particularly as well as some of the births as well as deaths are going to be countywide level. And so I just want you to be mindful of that. Where possible we will certainly identify that but not all of it is able to be separated out. Couple of reasons for that being one is birth at a certain time when it occurred and the death when it occurred, later on that geographical boundary may change so the question is what data source are you trying to get? It's why states and national data is usually collected at that source level. We have been able to go in and deaggregate and look by zip codes. That's takes a lot more detail and work and those resources are not available. That's why we use primarily state and federal data to be able to get that aggregation but we will particularly go in and see if we can find just within the city of Austin's area and give you the data based on that. >> Gallo: And I think -- I'm sorry to hear that the county or the state or the federal government doesn't set up the ability to do that in city limit areas because I think that would be helpful to us as we're talking about policy and spending to actually see where Austin statistics are. And I was looking at even the chronic disease and tobacco use is a Travis county graph also. Thank you for that. If we can get more detailed information specifically about Austin I think that would help us substantially. I notice a lot of these graphs only go to 2013. Do we have the ability to get more current information. >> That's a great question and one of the challenges we've been working with the state on. The way data is collected primarily it's collected at the local level, sent to the state. It deaggregates it based on a variety of factors, which means it will go back and provide with us the data so [12:18:55 PM] the data we collect we give to the state the state in turn gives it back to us after it -- it's called washing the data. Unfortunately the lag time from the time they have it and the time we get it will account for the time. So 2013 is the most current data that we had at this time that covers that. We are working with them, them meaning the state, department of health services, to try and get more current data and to get it more frequently. The data that we can get and some of it you'll see is a little more current, is the data that we collect that we can sift out that will not necessarily need the state to review before it's published. So that's the challenge with the lag in terms of that. >> Gallo: Openly. I'm sorry we have that - - okay. I'm sorry we have that challenge. I know it's not your doing but it certainly helps us as we address policy areas to understand what the current information -- because things change, and to be able to direct limited resources to targeted areas I think that's really important. The other thing I was wanting to see some information on, if you would, please, since a lot of the data is for Travis county, do we have something -- can you provide something that shows what Travis county funds so that we can see how -- and we are talking about the different focus areas that there's funding coming from other governmental agencies also? I think that would be important to see kind of where their funding is and the strength of their funding and perhaps that would make some difference in how and what we fund as we pick our priorities. >> And to that point, yes, councilmember, certainly. We have our interlocal with Travis county and we provide their public health activities in the unincorporated area of the county. Not the other municipalities, but the unincorporated areas, and interlocal spells out specifically things we do, the performance measures related to those. We'll be happy to get that to you. >> Gallo: Just because the charts are on Travis county it would be helpful to see where the funding for Travis county comes from from both the unincorporated areas and also the municipal areas. [12:20:56 PM] >> The latest data indicates -- and correct me if I'm wrong me on this -- is that 72% of the population is city of Austin and the roughly 28 is unincorporated and other parts of Travis county. So our formula is based upon funding for those activities based upon that -- most of it, not all of it, but most of based upon that so 78% is focused on the city of Austin with the other 28 or some odd% on unincorporated Travis county. >> Gallo: I just wonder sometimes if the data from the county and includes the county residents doesn't necessarily skew the data that we're looking at in determining how we're spending Austin tax dollars to support Austin programs and Austin population. >> I hear you exactly, yes. >> Gallo: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: And I apologize, I had to step out for a minute, if you already answered this. What would be helpful to me is also if you can provide us with information that helps me drill down in my district. You know, district 5 shows more in the middle in terms of levels of poverty but I know there are pockets of poverty throughout the district and so it would be helpful for me to understand, you know, I have anecdotal information in what I can see but it would be helpful for me if there was data that I could use to help me identify particular neighborhoods that are of particular concern. Is that something you can help us with? >> Yes. One of the things goes back to the question that councilmember pool asked earlier, is that what we've been doing with our dollars, we've been able to enhance part of our planning effort. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Part of the planning effort is to look at data, not just at the mortality, morbidity rates but also look at some of the social demographic data, unemployment by zip codes and where possible by consensus tracts and that will be able to help us identify within each of those particular areas what they look like. We do see in all of the districts, we see pockets of [12:22:56 PM] poverty, we see pockets of other things. So the question is being able to get a profile and part of the effort in hiring staff is to be able to have a unit that focuses in on that so yes. >> Kitchen: Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Garza. >> Houston: I've had my light on. >> Mayor Adler: No, no. Ms. Houston you're next. >> Houston: Thank you so much, Mr. Jones, for the presentation. On page 32, we talk about free tobacco cessation. I was at gibbons park Saturday for an exercise program and you have information about ecigarettes. Can you talk a little about how you're going to roll that out to help young people understand that ecigarettes are as dangerous as cigarettes? >> Yeah. Actually I'll ask our health authority medical director to come and talk a little bit about that. Dr. Wong? >> Sure, I'm D Phil Wong, health authority and medical director for atchhsd. Okay. Regarding ecigarettes we certainly have been looking at and producing fact sheets regarding the burden with ecigarettes. You know, there's been an exponential increase among middle school and high school use. There's more data regarding some of the constituents in ecigarettes. It was just I think a couple weeks ago the fda finally came out with rules approving the regulation of those products so there's just more increasing evidence with that so we're participating in providing that information out, disseminating it. We have fact sheets on our website regarding the problem. You know, the concern is that there's now a whole new generation of kids that are getting addicted to nicotine and some of the evidence -- the concern, if it were just that current tobacco users were using them for cessation [12:24:59 PM] that would be one thing but the concern is they're then using both products there's dual use so we're trying to get that information out regarding some of those population health effects regarding ecigarettes, those sorts of information. >> Houston: Thank you. Isn't it illegal for someone under the age of 18 to purchase an ecigarette? >> Yes. Council passed a resolution -- or actually -- >> Houston: I mean, I think it's a state law, isn't it? >> The state subsequently passed that also. Now, yeah there's restrictions. >> Houston: Are you working with the police department about enforcement of those places where people are allowing folks under the age of 18 to purchase ecigarettes? >> You know, the enforcement, it has sort of been rolled into current enforcement regarding conventional tobacco products. At the state level they do conduct sting operations. We don't do the sting operations specifically but the state does have some and I imagine with the new state laws they'll be including ecigarettes in that but we have not been doing that. >> Houston: I think the city does -- the A.P.D. Does some stings too as well for cigarettes. >> Certainly with -- also enforcement of the smoking in public places ordinance, enforcing violations with that. I know we've gone out in the past with A.P.D. On some of those activities. >> Houston: Okay. Then I have one other question. Some of the money that you got last year was to encourage not those legacy social service contracts to continue to do what they've always done but to allow opportunities for some cultural sensitive community focus groups to be able to get into that and be able to provide that -- provide services to communities that they're aware of, so is that going -- has that started yet? Are we still in the process of finding out who those people might. >> Stephanie will. . . [12:27:00 PM] >> Stephanie Hayden, gut director. Yes, to answer your question, those contracts have been executed, and so the agencies have begun their work in the various communities and they are getting ramped up. We had council action in April and so they are moving forward with that process. >> Houston: So does that include -- is that included in the 8 million that we've been talking about or is that -- was that funding for just this fiscal year? >> That was funding that's a part of this fiscal year. So during the budget process, when we look at the base budget, it will be a part of that conversation. So that's not included in the 8 million. >> That's not included in the 8 million. >> No, ma'am. >> Houston: Thanks. I want wanted to make sure. >> Mayor Adler: There was a statistic that you gave us when you were looking at page 12. You said that -- I think you said rent has gone up by 50% and family income has only gone up by 9% but I'm not sure I got the quote right and I didn't get the time period. >> I'm sorry, what was the question? >> Mayor Adler: When you were introducing page 12, I think, you made a comment about -- I think it was rent has gone up by 50% while median family income has gone up by 9%. I want to know if I got that right. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: And what was the appropriate time period? >> Over the last ten years. >> Mayor Adler: Over the last ten years. Rent up by 50% and median family income by 9% over the last ten years? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ms. Garza. >> Garza: Did you say 50 or 15? >> 50. >> Garza: Five, zero. >> Five, zero. >> Garza: I have another question about -- the mayor asked for a priority list, I'm also interested in that. [12:29:01 PM] But there was another resolution that I sponsored that was about the continuing child care because there's that gap when somebody loses their job and federal funding allows a certain amount of coverage and then it stops and then if they're outside of that gap they lose their child care so there was a request from our early childhood commission to see what the city could do to fund that gap period, to get them past that gap so once they get their job they can continue having that child care. I was wondering -- and the resolution was to direct the city manager to come back with funding options and I was wondering if in your priority list if you could let us know where that could be in your priority list? Instead of me pushing for let's try to get $7 million and then also this, I'm wonder if that could be in whatever level of funding that you believe is appropriate for the next year. >> Our direction has come back and give response to the question and part of that calculation will be looking at prioritization, incorporating that request as well as in terms of our overall prioritization, whether that fits. >> Garza: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Ms. Houston. >> Houston: One more thing. And I do appreciate all that you do and all of the work that your staff does. I was a public child welfare worker for many years before I moved to the department of mental health, mental retardation, and I've seen some abject poverty, people living in fiscal limited situations and they have a roof over their head but dirt floors to go out and try to rescue children who had been abused, not through any fault of the families, because they didn't know any better and they didn't know where the resources were to get help. But we've also gotten a lot of information about the homeless population on the streets of Austin. Downtown. [12:31:01 PM] But all over. People are all over. And so where is the intersection between what you do and what the homeless community does to make sure that the people who are on the street get the kinds of -- are able to make the applications for ssdi, social security, other kinds of federal or state funding so that it would reduce some of the burden on the city and transfer it over to another entity? Where does that intersection happen? After this is over, Ms. Hayden, we're going to give you a test on how to -- >> I need a one-on-one. [ Laughter ] I would say our case management really, really addresses that. So our staff at the neighborhood centers have case managers, and they are transitioning households out of poverty. And so with that transition process, they are assisting them with employment as well as if there's a disability and they assist them with, you know, applying for disability and getting that disability, as well as housing. In addition to that, the social service array investment as well. There's a case management component there. And then, lastly, the city does have an investment in homeless services. We have a general fund investment but we also get state and federal funds to address the homeless community. And our office is working with the innovations office to put together a communitywide strategy to address homelessness in our community. You know, especially kind of targeting the area around the arch and then having conversations with the homeless providers at west [12:33:04 PM] campus. So it's a concentrated effort when we are, you know, working with the community at large, not just, you know, the health department as an individual, but we're partnering with several entities to do that. >> Houston: Don't forget the housing around the library as well. People have started living there now P so we've got a larger area that we need to focus on. Thank you. Because it was interesting because if you're homeless you've got to have an address. >> Absolutely. >> Houston: And if you don't have an address then you don't get the benefits. But in order to get the benefits you need to make an application. And then maybe you could get into some housing or some other kind of support services. So it's all very much connected. >> Yes. >> Houston: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Empties kitchen. >> Kitchen: Oh, I just want to add -- and I know this is on y'all's radar screen. I just want to add as we work towards additional services and solutions for homeless individuals, that we've got this -- you know, we've got people throughout the city that are experiencing homelessness and so whatever we can do in districts outside the center of the city I'd like to be helpful on that too because frankly I feel like a city where we have individuals experiencing homelessness is just not acceptable. You know? I know we're all working very hard to address it but it's just not the place that we want to be so -- >> If I may just add, one of the points we'res addressing is -- with our data collection is a profile, what does the city look like. As it changes over the last five, citizen years, what it looked like then is not the same. Where are those pockets occurring? People are finding -- so we'll have a better profile once we do that that we can share and gives us a road map of what it looks like and where our interventions are needed. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Tovo. >> Tovo: And I assume that you do that work in conjunction with echo ending community [12:35:04 PM] homeless organization as well as our downtown that has caseworkers that go out in the field as well. That work is all coordinated? >> You're data would be based upon information we're getting from our partners as well as data we may collect ourselves. >> Tovo: Great, thanks. >> Our partners, we do work together, the partners that you've listed on the permanent supportive housing strategy, along with neighborhood housing within the city. So that is a key strategy that we are working on, is the permanent supportive housing. >> Tovo: Can you say just a few words about the coordinated assessment piece? Because that is something that all of these organizations are directing people through and that's one of the ways that individuals who are experiencing homelessness are prioritized for housing, as I understand it, but it's a really critical piece of getting those services. >> The coordinated assessment is a component of echo, ending community homelessness nonprofit, and basically the coordinated assessment, what it does is that there are case managers that currently work at nonprofit organizations throughout our community, for example, front steps, community court, actually within the health department as well, but the key case managers are strategically throughout the community and they are able to conduct an assessment. This assessment does a vulnerability index and that allows us to make a determination of where that individual will fall and connect them with the appropriate services. So, tax, some individuals - - for example, some individuals may need permanent supportive housing which is supportive services and housing. Some individuals may need diversion. What diversion is they may just need assistance their utility. They may have a large utility bill and so they need to pay that and then they can move into an apartment or a rental, [12:37:06 PM] another rental unit. So the coordinated assessment does bring everyone into one system and then connect them to a particular support that will end homeless sentence the -- homelessness is the goal. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Pool? >> Pool: I just have one question. I had a meeting with Ann Howard and Joe Katherine Quinn from echo, and we were talking about delivery of services and the case management model and the number of units available for people who are homeless that we need to get them into permanent supportive housing really quickly, and they pointed out that another area where shoring up is needed is in a number of staff who are actually doing the connecting of the work and the actual case managers. How are we doing with the additional staff that you have bring -- being brought on and where are we with regard to being staffed up at the levels that we knead to be for our case managers? >> So currently, we have a performance measure that at least 30% of people that are homeless will be case managed. We're at about 22% of that. So we are still, you know, behind as far as that goal is concerned. But that is 30% of the total homeless population. So, you know, ideally you would want that to be more and that's what they were sharing with you because we're only touching about 22% of the homeless population with case management. >> Pool: And how many folks do we have working in case management? >> I would have to get back with you with that exact number because, you know, we're funding nonprofits that have case managers but, you know, internally the city has eight case managers. >> Pool: Okay. And how many case do's they handle monthly? [12:39:06 PM] Do you have kind of a rough estimate? >> It depends on the type of case. >> Pool: Mm-hmm. >> Because there's an intensity. So if you are providing really high-level and it's a very intense case, ideally best practice says that you don't want to have more than 23-25 cases. If it's a case where it's a lower priority and not a lot of quality of life issues going on, then the caseload can be a little higher, about 40 individuals. And you would like to -- it depends on intensity, with the smaller caseload, you would have sometimes daily contact with them. >> Pool: Right. >> And there is some case managers that are on call 24/7, 365. >> Pool: Do you have your more experienced caseworkers and managers working the more complex cases? >> We typically do. >> Pool: Yeah. And are you able to rotate the -- among them to give people a mental break? Like recognizing the toll that the work can take? >> Absolutely, absolutely. We understand that there has to be a balance, and you have to have self-care. So we encourage that, encourage staff to take vacations, as well as having a system like if someone is out, someone will cover for that individual so we can ensure that the client is taken care of as well. >> Pool: Some of our first responders have access to mental health services, given the kind of work that they do. And it -- you know, it can be a really useful bridge. Do we have the same sort of access, either through our health benefits or specifically for the work that -- >> Through our eap, our staff are able to access those services. But we also work closely with [12:41:10 PM] Austin Travis integral care just to really provide additional training on mental health services so we are better equipped to, you know, provide those service to our clients as well. But we do encourage our staff to do what they need to do to take care of themselves. >> Pool: That's good to hear. Then my last question just goes to -- I'm sorry, did you want to say -- and then I was just wondering the education and training pipeline we've got our Dell medical school, school of social work at UT and we have various other strong educational colleges around town. Do we have a direct line to bring up and coming students and graduates into our system here? >> Absolutely. We have internships and we are -- field instructors, for example, with school social work as well as school of public health, Houston Tillotson so we have ACC, absolutely. So we are partnering with local colleges as well as colleges that are not in the area. But we are always looking to, you know, help young people to kind of continue that pipeline, absolutely. >> Pool: Yes, Mr. Jones? >> I was going to add, I want to emphasize to council what Stephanie was talking about is the 30% goal that we're getting working towards with the synergistic of all of these will address the 30%. That means 70% -- >> Pool: Not the hundred%. >> Therefore, when we start talking about, well, what are you doing? I still see this issue. Is we're really talking about the 70% because I think of the 23-30% we're doing, we're doing a pretty good job but it's the bigger group that is still out there very visible, very -- that -- the questions are coming about. So I just want everyone to see that in perspective of why we [12:43:11 PM] still have some of the challenges we face. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Pool: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: My last -- my last comment is that, first of all, I'd like to tell the Austin downtown alliance how much I appreciate the fact that they have in fact and continue to hire people who call the streets of Austin home and authenticator -- and they're the guys and ladies is it Orange or yellow? >> Orange. >> Houston: Orange, in the Orange that you see -- sorry? The ambassadors, is that what they're called? Okay. So I think that we need more kind of creative options like that. There was a TV program on Sunday morning a couple months back where some city in Arizona sent out city trucks and people said we'll work for whatever and they would pick them up, give them an opportunity, but we can't -- we haven't been able to think outside of the box about how we do some different things. We're doing the same kinds of things, and I would like us to be a little bit more creative about how we can help people get some money so that they can rent a hotel room for a night, clean up for a couple of nights, rather than go back under I-35 and 15th vote bridge. You also help city council people at a coffee and chat. We ran into a young man who was about to be evicted from his apartment and luckily we knew how to call you guys and y'all are working with him to do whatever. And that's confidential so I don't want to know what, but I wanted to thank you because you do go out and try -- you sent a case manager out to see what we could do to help that person as well. And so that's probably not something that y'all traditionally thought you would be date of birth, but you've taken -- doing but you've taken it on because it's something that has to be done. So I appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I think that's all we have. Thank you very much for talking to us. We're going to stand in recess. We have council meeting tomorrow at 10:00 we're adjourned.