City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 06/01/2016 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 6/1/2016 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 6/1/2016 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:12:59 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think we have a quorum now. Today is June 1st, we are at our budget work session today. The time is 9:12. We are in the boards and commissions room down at city hall. Councilmember troxclair will not be able to be with us today. Councilmember Gallo is home not feeling well, but watching us on TV. The mayor pro tem is not with us I think for the next half an hour. She's at the kickoff of the homeless outreach, the street team, which is an exciting thing to have happening. So it's good to -- we thank the mayor pro tem for being there for all of us. And I want to welcome in our presence former mayor pro tem Cole I think is here. Hey, Sheryl. Ed, do you want to talk to us about what our agenda is today? >> Sure, mayor, members of the council, I'm ed van meanio, budget officer for the city. Today is our fifth budget work session for the city council. You should have a thick packet of powerpoint slides with a blue tab. For those of you who have been paying attention you might have noticed the color coding to our work sessions, we started off with the blue day, went through the green day, yellow day, purple day, green day. I think we're out of colors because we're back to the blue day. This should fit right into your forecast and policy work session binders. You can see the agenda up [9:15:00 AM] there that we have planned for you today. We have a -- what I think will be a fairly lengthy presentation about mobility and traffic. When that concludes we will move on to our public safety staffing levels discussion, specifically in regards to police department and fire department staffing needs. And then at the end of the day, based upon input we receive from the city council, we plan for a discussion about the budget process as we move from the financial forecast to the budget development stage, we wanted to have a conversation with the council about budget process and in particular the council concept menu process and how that might work this year. So that's the plan for the day. Our first presentation again is mobility and traffic. And I'm joined here by our assistant city manager over infrastructure services, Robert Goode, our planning officer, Robert Trimble and Greg canally who will do all the heavy lifting on this presentation. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. I'm going to hand out with respect to the budget process question, the mayor pro tem and I and ed and Robert met about one way to approach the budget process. I'm going to hand out what came from that working group. Obviously we'll talk about it later, but I just want to hand this out. And this has been posted or is about to be posted on to the bulletin board for members of the public so that they can have access to it as well. >> Mayor, I have a question. I don't know if you meant it figuratively, but at the end of the day as in we're going all day today or is this until noon again? >> All these work sessions have been scheduled for the workday. They have been ending early. I anticipate this one probably won't. Again, the mobility presentation is pretty lengthy. It just depends how much dialogue there is with the city council. They've been ending [9:17:00 AM] around 2:00 or maybe 230 I think was the latest one. >> Garza: Because of that we scheduled some meetings but I wanted to give some notice now. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Add ed mentioned, Robert Goode, assistant city manager. Mayor, you mentioned earlier to go big so we took that literally on our slides and we have 103 slides to present to you today. I'm not sure if that's what you meant, but that's how staff took that. [Laughter] So we have a lot to discuss with you today, to share with you. This is -- this is in reaction to your resolution that was adopted in February where you directed the city manager and initiated public conversation. And for us to identify and prioritize transportation projects and then recommended funding options. So we've been at that since February. We'll talk later on in the presentation about the typical process that we take and then the aggressive schedule that you all asked us to engage in with this resolution. Today's presentation where there's three different parts, Mike Trimble is going to share with you the mobility talks engagement process, the process that he and his staff took in that engagement process and the results. And Greg canalry will talk to you about bond financing options and the bond capacity he and his team have put together. And I'll end the presentation with alternative funding options and some of the package alternatives for you to consider. After each one of those, mayor, that's probably some good places to break after each one of those segments, if there are any questions on the public engagement process, for example, or the bond capacity, those would be good places to break. With that I'll turn it over to Mr. Trimble and he will go through the [9:19:03 AM] mobility talks engagement. >> I'm Mike Trimble. As Robert referenced, the resolution that you passed directed staff to go out and do a very robust public engagement process with the community about mobility priorities. I'm glad to say in the short time we had we were able to put together a multifaceted strategy. As part of that, kind of two key ways we got feedback, one was through online survey and hopefully several of y'all have seen 78 or took the survey. And so we got great feedback on that. We had almost 6800 people fill out the survey. And then we also had speak up Austin online, which also was an effective tool. Also we were proactive in getting out to the community. So we had several different ways to do that. We had two public meetings in April. We also had our mobile engagement team. So we had folks go out to various public places and locations in each council district across the city and just work with folks and actually one of those folks is pictured right there, had iPads and had the surveys and just walked folks through the survey. We tried to do our best to reach out to every facet of the community and I know that was very important to council when they discussed and passed that resolution. And this is just a quick map to show you where some of the engagement activities happened. Some of the meetings and mobile engagement teams and where they were at. We were able to get a pretty good dispersion across the city. We also adjusted as we went along if we were not getting good participation in certain areas or certain components of the community, we would reach out to your district offices and first of all, thank you for that. Thank you for working with us on the engagement strategies. And try to shore up some of that participation where we could. And so we adjusted the mobile engagement team as we went through to try to make sure we were getting good participation. So if you look at the survey, there are really four key community benefits that is focused around and three key facets of the survey. And one is the mode of [9:21:03 AM] transportation that folks are using now and prefer to university and then there was a set of questions related to the four key community benefits, managing congestion, improving safety, improving connections in the neighborhood and the streets. So we got feedback on the type of mode, what would be the most important community benefit to you as well as looking at the different types of investment options that are related to these key community benefits in the survey. And in the conversation core we were able to get more into discussion with folks in smaller groups. So we were able to ask some questions about trade-offs, given limited resources, and then what sorts of improvements would you be willing to spend some of your own money on getting into potential bonds and voter -- tax impact on the voters. So with all this information that we got from our public engagement, we got what's called a crosswalk, which is basically we gathered that information on the community benefits, on those investment priorities related to those and then walked those back towards the types of programs and projects that the city would have in its toolkit to address those priorities. So that was part of the staff analysis that we did after we were able to compile all the results and kind of factor into some of the recommendations that you will see later in the presentation. So one of the key findings that came out of the survey and all the community engagement was improving major city corridors. We asked a question in the survey that really hit on the scale, and this related back to the universe of needs that we had talked to you about in February where we talked about regional mobility, corridor mobility and then local mobility. So 46% of our respondents when asked to look at those three different scales of investments preferred corridor mobility. And when you think about it that kind of makes sense because there are so many modes that converge in our major corridors within the city. And so that also links to some of the other feedback that we received in the survey which is folks wanting mobility choices, [9:23:04 AM] mobility options when they're getting around the city. And then another -- this kind of leads into this slide. When we talked about mode of transportation, probably no surprise that the majority of folks currently drive and so we're still using cars, but when we talked about preferred modes, that's when we got different Numbers. So we actually had a lot of folks talking about they would like to use more public it transportation options and some of the other options such as walking and biking as compared to driving alone, which was interesting. So again, going back to the theme of folks wanting mobility choices, mobility options as they get around the city. Another key theme was providing safe connections. This was a theme that kind of resonated not just from the survey and some of the other engagement, but also from our prior gauge. When you -- engagement when you asked us to go back and what was done previously, safety was a key priority and concern. So safety in the sense of being age to travel safely in different modes, whether walking, biking, driving. Also connecting to other modes of transportation and getting to your destination. So accessibility to different mobility options as well. So that could be access to transit stops and then just moving from one mode to another, whether it's biking and getting to one destination and then walking to another component of that destination. And then -- this again probably is no surprise, when we talked about the community benefits and we looked at when you're talking about a certain mode of transportation compared to community benefit, folks when they were looking at driving alone or carpooling, managing congestion was obviously most important to them. Biking and walking, improving safety was most important. With public transportation, improving the connections. Again, we can probably interpret that as providing that accessibility to those transit options. And then when we got to some of the other ones, just not a lot of folks really chiming in on that for some of the other modes that we have [9:25:05 AM] up there. So I'll give you some highlights of some of our key questions around the community benefit. We had this set of questions about investment options. So when we talked about managing congestion, what would be the investment options that would be most important to you. When we talked about in the context of managing congestion, increasing transportation options resonated with folks that responded. When we talked about improving safety, separation of transportation modes really resonated. When we looked at improving connections in the naked, again, increasing public transportation options and services really resonated as well as connection to bike and trail routes. We looked at improving the quality of the streets, creating streets that accommodate all modes of transportation really resonated. And this again overlaps back to feedback around the corridors, having streets that really address multiple modes of transportation in one given corridor, one given area. So here's the question on the -- that really resnated. We asked that question about scale. You can see that the majority of respondents responded corridor mobility, to focus improvements there. And also local mobility and regional mobility were about the same as far as those responses. And that correlates well with some of the other responses that we saw. And when -- we did ask some questions about funding options as directed by the resolution. And so when we asked how the city -- how does the city funding transportation and time frame for additional funding work, we talked -- folks talked about underfunding really resonated and we don't fund it enough and also funding within one year seemed to be the priority. So again, those things resonated. So aside from the survey, that was mainly from the survey feedback. When we got into the conversations and some of the feedback from boards and commissions [9:27:05 AM] you did have several letters of recommendation or support coming out of your boards and commissions. As we get into some of the conversations it tended to correlate pretty well with what we saw in the survey, but one of the things that kind of resonated there too is that we could probably address multiple community benefits with certain investments. In other words, you could probably address safety and manage congestion by improving options for using certain modes of transportation. Then also feedback about having some transparency in how that money is used, when we're using that money for mobility improvements. And then looking at having more data driven decisions and having some metrics associated with as we make these improvements how are we able to tell that we're really making the progress and achieving the community benefits and outcomes that we really expect to see. You had also asked us to go back and look at prior engagement. What feedback have we gotten from the community previously in those prior plans and initiatives that we had done related to mobility. So staff went back and looked at several plans, 52 plans dating back to 1998. And we did our best to glean from that key themes, recommendations and priorities that came out of those plans. And again, those themes really seemed to correlate with what we saw in the survey and other public engagement for mobility talks. Interest in more mobility options, emphasis on more pedestrian infrastructure such as sidewalk and bikes, and then enhance is safety and connectivity. And again the safety component really resonated. So that's really about it for mobility talks. I know that was quick. But if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool? >> Pool: Thank you. That was really helpful. For the slides that show the large majority supporting changes in the corridor, the definition of corridor, I'm interested in how that was defined and what the context was for [9:29:07 AM] that support. >> Sure. So I do have the survey. So the way we had defined -- let me get to the definition. So corridor mobility in the survey was defined as improving roadways to make them safe and accessibility to all forms of transportation. Corridors may include those with completed preliminary engineer is reports and it included some of the corridors that we talked about such as north Lamar, burnet, Riverside, airport, F.M. 969. >> Pool: So if people were thinking in terms of corridors, it's also including the built infrastructure on the side, the sidewalks and bike ways, would that have been teased out in that question? >> It was included as part of the definition again with the all modes of transportation. >> Pool: Okay, thanks. >> Kitchen: [Inaudible]. >> Kitchen: First off let me thank you guys. You did a phenomenal guys in [inaudible]. Thank you for that. So I have some questions about differences across the city. Did you see any? In other words, did you see any that were -- that were, you know, noticeable or in terms of how people looked at things in different parts of the city? And also I'm just curious about the survey size. Do you feel like there were parts of the city that were not as responsive? We didn't reach out to -- we tried to reach out, but that we didn't get as much response from? >> So on the first question I think when we looked at some of the district breakdowns, and councilmembers got reports for your districts and all the reports are online. When we looked at those all the general findings seemed to correlate with the general findings [9:31:07 AM] overall. So the findings over here when we look at some of the district level reports there's a little bit of variation, but overall they seem to be very similar in the feedback. And surprising or not surprising that's kind of what we saw kind of from district to district with a little bit of variation. >> Kitchen: And what about sample size? I mean, I don't know if you had to do any kind of adjustment. We got 46% of people felt like corridors. Is that -- did you have to do any kind of adjustment for -- by district? >> Well, and we did as we went through. And we were able to actually get a pretty decent distribution across the districts. >> Can you tell me about that, what the distribution looked like? >> Sure, as a matter of fact, I think I have that as part of my presentation. >> Kitchen: And not just district, but demographics. >> Sure. So our district, I'll just give you percentages, district 1 was about eight percent of respondents for survey. Two was about four percent. Four was about six percent. Five was about 15%. Six was six percent. Seven was about 12 percent. Eight was nine percent. Nine was 14 percent. And 10 was 13%. And we had five percent that went live in Austin basically. >> Kitchen: And what did you learn about the demographics and the representation of demographics? >> Yeah. So what we did is we benchmarked against the American community survey census Numbers on demographics. And so we were a little -- to be honest with you, on hispanic Numbers and African-American Numbers and we did our best to adjust as we went along and really try to reach out more to the community. We work with different stakeholder groups, we work with some of the quality of life commissions to do that as well. We did our best, but we were still a little bit low on hispanic Numbers and African-American Numbers. >> Kitchen: It's not a criticism. You guys did a great job in a very short period [9:33:08 AM] of time. This just helps me understand the context of the results and represents my in terms of reaching out to my district now that we're a little further along because in the far south -- and this was a problem that we had, you know, in terms of getting much feedback and, you know, south of Ben white, at least in my district. I don't know that we had a lot of feedback. I want to talk with you more about where those survey respondents -- you probably can't tell from the survey, you can only tell the district. Anyway, thank you very much. >> And I will just emphasize too, and this is really a credit to the folks that were on the mobility talks team, they really went out of their way to try to I just as we went through. I want to emphasize that with y'all. We tried to get out for the mobile engagement teams as we saw that we understooded to shore up certain demographic Numbers. >> Kitchen: You guys did a great job. It was a tight time frame and we all know in our own areas how difficult it can be sometimes to get some feedback. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Garza? >> Garza: On page -- there's no pages. This page. 7, I guess. Are these blue dots all of these other -- these things on this page combined? Or are these -- what do the blue dots represent? >> So the blue dots represent really discrete public engagement opportunities. So where the mobile engagement teams were. We have a list of those in the report too, the different locations that they went to. It includes the two public meetings that we had, which were at Crockett and northwest rec center. And then it includes one dot for the boards and commissions. Obviously most of them happened here. But yeah, any of our discrete -- in the conversation core. Those locations as well. So any of those opportunities that were public engagement opportunities, town halls, et cetera, the only thing it doesn't include is the online. So the online survey and speak up. [9:35:08 AM] >> Garza: I guess I would just like to point out there is nothing south of oltorf and east of south congress. So my entire district did not get any of that, and a good portion of councilmember Renteria's. So those are just some concerns I have right now on the public input. And I know you you had a short time frame and I appreciate the work that you did, but I don't know where I am on this entire conversation or discussion just yet, but that's a concern, especially when we see other failed bonds that you see the map of how the votes -- who voted yes and who voted no, and it's because maybe they didn't feel buy-in because they weren't asked. Or they didn't -- because they're working families they didn't have time to show up to these things. So that is a concern right now, but I do appreciate the other work that you did. >> Thank you, councilmember. And I will also say that we did shore up some of our efforts in drew specifically -- in drew specifically so maybe I can let you know what we did differently. >> Garza: And I know one of my staffers went to the schools and passed out flyers. So there was a lot of work to get people out. I know it's a struggle, especially for lower income districts. But yeah, I would like to see what other efforts were made. Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Reason and then Ms. Houston. >> Renteria: I didn't catch the district 3 Numbers that took the survey? >> It was about seven percent. >> Renteria: Okay. And -- >> 493 respondents. >> Renteria: Did you break down -- since it seemed like y'all recorded the district survey results, did you also record the data where how many people went for bicycles, how many people went for the other public transportation, sidewalks? Did y'all have that data also? >> As part of the survey, so the questions [9:37:09 AM] that we asked were around what mode you currently use now and what mode you would prefer to use. So yeah, we did answer that. >> Renteria: If you could get that information to me. >> Sure, sure. I'd be happy to. >> Mayor Adler: That would be interesting information for all of us to see. >> And just to let you know, we did -- just a high level in this presentation. And so when we talked about the different modes used most often, again, I had mentioned driving alone right now was the highest at 76%. Biking was at eight percent. Public transportation was at four percent. And then walking was at two percent to give you some examples. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. And then I think the question that I heard councilmember Renteria is if you had that broken out by district as well. >> We do on the district reports and I'll be happy to get that to you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. If you could get a copy to all of us, that would be great. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Pool? >> Houston: Excuse me, I thought I was next. With everybody, I want to thank you for all that you've done because this was a massive undertaking in a short period of time. And it's very complex. And so in district 1 I appreciate you giving me the graphs that talked about how the people, the eight percent of the people responded to the information because although in some ways it's very similar and some ways it's very different. And so I have so much information here it's going to take me awhile to switch -- go back and forth. And I'm not going to be able to keep up with what you presented because I'm looking at my book, but I think we're talking about community benefit and type of investment. Generally the large graph that talks about managing congestion and public transit is number [9:39:09 AM] one under community benefits, improved connections and improved safety. Again, public transportation is number one, sidewalks is number two, and then improved safety we've got sidewalks is rated number one. And so I think some of the confusion for some people is that there were times when we talked about all modes of, and they didn't have a chance, an opportunity to talk about either sidewalks or bicycles or mopeds or segways. So sometimes we lumped two modes together and we get information that's kind of different, but if we asked individually by district what I looked at, it was pretty clear that it was not all modes of transit, it was the lack of sidewalks in district 1 that they were most concerned about. So I -- just when we develop survey instruments we need to give people options for the next time you do it and not try to combine all modes of transit because that confuses people. And they're really pretty clear about what they're ask is. Their ask is. Let's see one other thing -- thank you for the information of past public engagement analysis. That was very interesting. And you don't have that, but even in the past public engagement opportunity, sidewalks are by far the largest amenity or community benefit that people were asking for. The thing that I want to say about the public engagement benefit, the public engagement opportunities is all of those happened when we had an at-large district and so there were very few people who participated in designing either the pedestrian master plan or the bicycle master plan. And so now as we try to implement those plans, people are trying to get more engaged, but if [9:41:10 AM] we're insistent on doing those plans, according to my records, we haven't had -- let's see. 2002 -- I'm sorry, 2009 -- well, that was a neighborhood plan, but the most recent all of them are very low. I could go down the list. We start with the airport in 2011 is current. 2014, the bicycle master plan was updated, but again, the diversity was not there to participate in what that master plan looked like. It wasn't in the pedestrian master plan. It was people who looked the same, making the decisions that would impact everybody in the city. So I think we need to make sure that we understand the context of how these plans got developed. And it didn't represent everybody. So we really need to listen to what people are saying now. >> Pool: Thanks. Could you switch to slide 11, please? It's one of the key findings. 10 and 11 are really interesting to me and it goes back to the question I was trying to get to about trying to tease out the support for sidewalks improvements and bike ways. What I see on 11 is that while 76% of the respondents currently drive alone they would rather not. Am I interpreting this slide correctly? >> That would be -- >> Nearly half of the 76 would like to take -- would like better bus systems, better public transportation. And then 23% would use their bikes more often than their cars. So I think this is an [9:43:11 AM] important slide for our conversation here. There seems to be a shift in the community acceptance of our multimodal transportation. We've been working on that for a very long time. And this slide I think begins to distill that focus for our use to say that while people may be driving that would -- a significant portion of them would rather not. Would you agree that's a good interpretation of the slide? >> I think that's right. The way we interpret that is that folks are looking for, like you said, a multimodal transportation network and having options. And so when you look at some of the responses from some of the other questions that's really kind of what we glean from that. Not just looking at the modes and preferred modes, but also looking at some of the other family members. When we looked at the other questions what we gleaned from that is people want choices. I'm not tied to driving my car, but I have other options and other folks can use as well which can in turn remove cars from the road which can help with congestion. They're all interconnected. >> Pool: A lot of it because it's a pretty complex decision that an individual makes depends on their family situation, how far they are from work, whether they are working, how many children do they have and how many different places do the children have to be at a certain time of day and is there equipment that goes along with the kiddos. Having been in that position myself when I was raising my daughter, I completely understand that. So I can see where our efforts to improve our access to buses and also to make our routes walking to school and biking to school, for example, better and safer and more plentiful, is a good move in the right direction. It feels to me like the community is ready to make that shift in a larger way. Kind of been inching along and maybe this is the time where that [9:45:11 AM] inflexion point has been hit. So I guess we'll see. I just wanted to point out this slide 11. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mr. Casar? >> Casar: I would like to sort of emphasize that I concur with councilmember pool. I think often times the challenge that we face with bond elections is balancing what's popular with -- with current needs and current voters with a vision for future, but it seems like the good news is at least with the people active enough to participate in this survey and the folks that we reached out to, there's actually some real popularity in a change, which I think is an opportunity that we shouldn't pass up. And it's not surprising to me that so much of it is in public transportation. I understand that we aren't, you know, San Francisco or Manhattan, but if you look at Atlanta, some of the Numbers that I've seen is that they've got three times as many folks percentagewise in a city that is not compact, thought of as transit friendly city, taking public transit to work compared to us. And more than twice as many folks percentagewise saying they're walking to work compared to us. So we don't have to make that far of a leap to be able to at least be able to compete with Atlanta with what it seems like the desires of our own residents are. So as we make investments, I'm heartened that we can potentially do both what is going to be -- what can be popular, but also what's visionary and isn't necessarily serving the drive alone mentality that people think we may have because it seems like there are lots of folks that are willing to make that change if we give them the option. So I'm glad that councilmember pool brought us back to this slide because I think it's an important one. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Mayor, I feel like we're talking about capital metro behind their back [9:47:18 AM] because they are players in transit. And in a district where I have continually asked for more public transit, more direct routes, we're still not having that conversation. Where capital metro has a green line that could be active in their portfolio and be able to move people to the east side downtown so we could leave our cars and come to work, we're still not having those conversations. In district 1 transit was 46% of people who want more transit opportunity. So I don't know how we can have that conversation without capital metro at the table to begin to talk about. And I know we have representatives here, but that's not capital metro to talk about how we engage people who are very clear about transit, public transit and the availability and the efficiency of that. And I also want to say that about 25% of the people in district 1 who responded to the survey are over 55. So there are some things that they may not be able to participate in so their efforts are focused on public transit and walkability. Only 10% want to drive alone, but we have to put public transit first on the table so we can get access to people who currently don't have access. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: Thank you, councilmember Houston, that's very well said. We have a lot of challenges with cap metro and the transit system and looking forward to working on that with the connections 2025 we're going to get to have that conversation -- is it August or something like that? So - - well, soon. And we need to work -- figure out the way that we include the whole council in that because that's critical what you're saying. >> Mayor Adler: [9:49:18 AM] Mr. Casar? >> Casar: I'd like to ask, I'm not on the mobility committee, but if we are going to have be asking the discussion on mobility could we invite cap metro to be there to answer our questions because I think that coordination will be important. And I think council makes a oo councilmember Houston makes a good point. If we make the investments to make transit more feasible on our corridors, we need that agency's help in making sure they hold up their end of the deal so I think that having them there would -- could be -- would be helpful to me. And it sounds like helpful to others. >> Kitchen: We could. On the 14th we have public hearing on this. We could also ask cap metro to join us and give us an update on connections 2025 and just have a conversation around the public transit connections here. Okay. I'll check on that. >> And I think that chairman kitchen of the mobility committee has invited and encouraged all of the -- encouraged all the council to come to the mobility public hearing on the 14th. That will probably be the big public engagement opportunity for folks to come in and talk to the council on this issue. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Thank you, [inaudible]. >> Mayor Adler: Anyone else? All right, thank you. Ed? >> Do you want to keep going here? Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem and council. I'm Greg canally, deputy cfo with financial services. The middle part of this presentation we're going to talk about the funding options and financing typically associated with bond elections and specifically with mobility improvements. [9:51:21 AM] We're going to look at what we've done about a bond perspective and look at where we are today in terms of our projections about what opportunities and options would be available to you from a policy perspective and looking at perhaps new funding and new debt. Just to start in general when we look at funding sources related to mobility, and this is a slide that we talked -- walked through in the mobility committee back in March. Typically we look at debt funding. They are either voting approved public improvement bonds or certificate of obligations and in the past we have issued some certificates to do partnerships. For example, with txdot we are always exploring students and grants, especially with the federal government and then our partnerships I partnerships have been strong with txdot the counties and cap metro over the years. We've also had an opportunity when you look at the way the mobility and road infrastructure is built it's actually done by the development community as they build out subdivisions, whether they are inside the city limits or outside the city limits internal roads are built as part of those developments which then the city ends up bringing into its inventory. And another topic we've had more recently is about value capture. So really today the two topics that we're going to dive deeper on are debt funding as well as value capture. So let's start with the debt side and what we're going to be walking you through today is our bond capacity analysis, really projecting what we have available that could be issued in new bonds and new debt. So to get through we'll walk you through history and knowledge sharing to [9:53:21 AM] make sure that from a policy perspective you understand the context and that the public understands the context when we're talking about debt. I think some of you have seen this before, but we still think it's worthwhile to go through. So just as a big picture the city's tax rate is -- actually has two components to it. It is an o&m piece, the general fund, that is the piece that you look at each year when you set your operating budget, but at a time you're also setting the debt service rate, which is a piece of the tax rate. Currently right now the tax rate is about 45 cents. Debt service is about 10 and a half cents and the remainder is the o&m. Each year our debt service tax rate must be set at the level necessary to pay all the bonds that we've issued. Once we issue those bonds we are obliged to raise the funds to pay the debt service on those funds. It's really one of the first pieces we figure out in the tax rate each year as we go through our budgeting process. So looking at debt, we're looking at general obligation debt. There's actually several types of debt that we refer to when we talk about G.O. Debt. The first is public improvement bonds. There are some certificates of obligations and contractual obligations. Currently right now the city has about 1.4 billion in outstanding G.O. Debt, of which 1.1-- it's actually not 1, but 1.1 billion is actually supported by property tax revenue. The difference is often times we have to issue the general fund credit, our triple a credit. We issue debt that is not paid back by property taxes, but, for example, is paid back by the drainage fund when we issue certificates of obligation for our flood buyouts. They do not have their credit. We use the city's general obligation credit to issue bonds and that's the difference. And I'll be toggling back and forth between those through this presentation as we walk through some of the [9:55:22 AM] metrics. We issue our general obligation debt once a year in August prior to setting the tax rate. And the most important thing about our G.O. Bonds that leads into our very strong credit that we have with the market is the revenue pledge. The city's ability to levy taxes and that credit is backed by the city's full faith and credit of that -- of the ability to issue taxes, the ad valorem taxes. Again, the types of debt that we have, we have public improvement bonds. They are voter approved. We issue them in terms of 20 years. And they are again for capital improvement projects and capital assets. We also issue certificates of obligation. These are for real property or capital assets, often times for land acquisition or off cycle capital needs. These do not require voter approval, but are subject to a petition, an election if there's a petition signed by five percent of qualified voters. We also issue those debts -- that debt in 20-year terms, a 20-year pay back period when we talk about term. And then finally, contractual obligations, these are shorter term debt that have a life of five to 10 years. These are non-voter approved and these are for our equipment, our vehicles, our technology, and I think you saw a piece of that last year in the budget that you adopted. This is just a slide to show you our history of our debt going back about 2006 as we have gone from -- as we had several bond elections and we've increased our debt profile, which I would say is typical of a growing city. Growing cities invest in that they can stay constant with all of our infrastructure. That just is breaking it down again between what we have tax supported, the credit that is paid [9:57:23 AM] back by the tax rate, by the tax rate -- the debt service piece of the tax rate and the other side of that is the self-support, again has a different revenue stream besides property tax, but has a back of our overall credit or backing of property tax revenue. I wanted to provide this FBI, on the front end of the presentation as some context as we go through the rest of the presentation. How Austin compares on a variety of metrics. We're going to dive -- I'm going to explain in more detail what these metrics are. Going across from left to right, debt per capita is the outstanding debt in general obligation debt divided by the people -- the population. There's another metric, debt to av. That stands for debt to assessed valuation. That's the total value of the property, real and personal property, within the community, within our taxing jurisdictions. The next section looks at the bond ratings. Most major cities work with all three major rating industries. The city does that as well, and they are listed here. You can see our credit ratings. We have the highest credit ratings that are achievable. Finally this metric that we put together is the debt service as a percentage of the tax rate. Right now our tax rate, again, is about 45 cents and 23% is associated with the debt service piece of the tax rate. Just to put this in a perspective, going back ten years, in 2006, the city's tax rate was 44 cents, more or less the same as it is now, but the percentage that was applied to the debt service was about 36% or nearly 16 cents of the tax rate back then was debt service. It's now closer to ten. I think ed talked about this in his forecast presentation, as we've seen that, mainly as [9:59:25 AM] a result of a growing assessed valuation, but also certainly a lower interest rate, environment has helped in how we issue bonds and also our treasury staff does a fantastic job in manage our debt profile to make sure that we are paying off principal that way that allows us to continue to be in a place to reinvest. So this slide just shows you comparison to the major Texas cities and how we compare. Obviously, not a complete apples to apples. Everyone has different debt profile in terms of what they're doing but certainly a good context to see how we're doing with our fellow cities around the state. So why do we perform bond capacity analysis to begin with? Certainly as one of our key process that's we go through in long-term financial planning, it is -- it is slightly different than the operating forecasting that we do in terms of when we look at issuing debt we're issuing long-term debt. When we have bond issuances these are long-term investments. They last six to eight years so we look at it with a slightly different lens in terms of the assumptions but generally it is part of our overall financial planning exercise that we do within the finance department on behalf of the city. We also want to look at what our debt burden is. So the council and policymakers can look ahead. You need to see where we are now. It helps us look at what we can do, what the city has capacity for additional long-term debt, and then ultimately projecting our future financial situation with new debt under different scenarios. And really what it comes down to as well is the idea of linking up our financial planning with our capital planning, something that Mike's group does citywide in look at how we are timing and coordinating and leveraging [10:01:26 AM] our overall capital investments. The financial planning aspect is key to that. The idea behind capital planning is you are really look at an issue behind debt. The key concept is the idea of intergenerational equity. If you're in Austin now and you just moved and you happening to use the twin oaks library on south -- on Mary and south fifth street, that's a building built as part of the 1998 bond program. We're still paying off some debt on that. It was issued in the early 2000s so you are participating in that -- you are participating as a citizen in that facility by paying taxes on that. That's the idea of intergenerational equity, whether you were here when the bonds were sold or you move here or vice versa, you are helping to participate and fund these long-term assets that are a key part of our community. So I want to talk a little about our credit ratings, what we, do why they are important for us as a city. So just as a general guidance on our credit ratings, again there are three major credit rating agency that's the city works with, again, that most entities around the country work with, moody's, standard and poors and Fitch. They have different ratings, aaa all the way down to a weakest at C. What that correlates to, when the city goes to the market to issue debt, the higher rating that you have in most cases, all other things being equal, you will receive from the marketplace a lower rate. You're a better bet. You're a better investment from those pension funds, insurance companies, the retail market that are investing in municipal bonds. They are going to -- they know that we are -- have a track record of paying off our debt [10:03:26 AM] and as a result of that we can get lower interest rates, which is important for the management of our tax rate and our overall finances. Coming out of the great recession, there certainly was a lot of dialogue about the credit agencies and the credit -- and how credit was issued and ratings were issued. Not so much around municipalities and states. But one of the outcomes of that was the rating agencies put a more rigorous criteria in place for how ratings were achieved. And this is really the framework that they have in place. The criteria look at institutional, the overall institutional side of the entity, the general economy and tax base, how are you doing as an entity, as a region? They look at both the policy management and the fiscal management of the city. We look at our financial, our financial management, how we are managing the finances of the city. And then, finally, our overall debt. The key part is debt is not the only -- how we do on our debt is not the only factor in terms of achieving our aaa credit rating. Again, as I said the city has had these aaa credits since August 2010, and one of the reasons for that is, as we came out of the -- in 2008 and 2009, not only did we manage the overall -- the city -- the city council at that time and management managed the financial hit that the city took as a part of the downturn, we also continued to manage our debt profile very well in that time. And as a result of that, in both how we managed our money, how we managed our finances, one of the factors in getting our credit upgraded really at a time when the national economy was still in recession [10:05:27 AM] about, about to come out of recession, was a result of all of those practices. Here is every year when we go through our rating process. We do that each August in advance of issuing our bonds. We walk through our -- all of the metrics that they are going to use, all of the criteria that the rating agencies are going to use. They issue reports and for the most part these reports have been a very -- very high on Austin, in terms of how we go through this effort, each of the annual bond processes and program sales that we do. The next several slides, again, leading up to the capacity -- we want to look back a littlety history. The next three slides are actually three different ways of look at our overall bond program going back to 1998. We have -- this is looking at the combined bond election from '98 through 2014. We've had 1.5 billion in approved propositions across these different categories. The largest being transportation and mobility at nearly $640 million. This is another way of look at our bond election. I apologize. This is small data, but we had to cram it all on one slide. This is actually looking at each of the propositions going back to 1998. So you can see how many propositions were in each bond program. It shows you the percentage of votes for each proposition going back and the total propositions as well going back across these categories for each of the propositions. So we've had one, two, three, four -- about seven bond elections since 1998. Some of them have been yen obligation -- full-on comprehensive bond programs. Some have been specialized, unique bond programs for one or two -- one or two programs. [10:07:30 AM] And then, finally, just the third way of looking at this, putting the Numbers behind that, again, going from 1998 through 2013, which was our most recent election for affordable housing, showing you the piece of each of those that was dedicated towards transportation and mobility, going back to '$98,158,000,000 in 2000, 1 persist million, again, in 2006. '98, 2006, 2012 were comprehensive bond programs, multiple proposition, looking at transportation, mobility, parks, housing, the city did affordable housing for the first time in 2006, the first in Texas to do that. So looking at transportation only, over the past 18 years, $638 million have been approved for propositions related to this category. Approximately 80% of this total has been expended. Majority of the remaining funds are already committed as part of the 2012 bond program projects that were -- that are currently underway. So now moving on to kind of look at our debt profile, this is building up to how we get to where we are. So what you're looking at now is the city's existing general obligation tax-supported debt service requirements. We're showing you principal and interest. As you can see, what this factors in is the remaining bonds that we still must sell for our active bond programs for 2012, for 2013, as well as I know there's a few left for 2006. So there's $197 million in bonds to be sold. They will be sold -- the last sale -- we have three more years of bond sales associated with those bond programs. We will issue those last in August 2018, which will be [10:09:30 AM] fiscal year '19. After that you can see our debt profile begins reducing. It peaks at about 139 million a year in debt service requirements and in the absence of any new bonds that the city would issue it would decrease over time. So we're going to take this chart and build on it to arrive or to derive our capacity, the city's capacity on a go-forward basis. To do that, we have to make some assumptions. That allows us to, again, look at what capacity options we have. The first assumption we make is we would look at our debt service tax rate beginning in fy17. Right now the debt service tax rate is about 10.6 cents. We anticipate last year -- we haven't finalized it. Obviously, ed has to go through his budget exercise, proposed budget but we would anticipate the debt service tax rate for next fiscal year to actually drop slightly due to the growth in assessed valuation. But the assumption on a go-forward basis would be the rate that the -- the rate derived for next year's budget would remain constant and we would look at that as a revenue point to see what we can achieve in terms of bond capacity. As I mentioned we still have $195 million of remaining bond sales we must sell over the next three years. We're also continuing our trend of repaying more than 50% of outstanding principal in ten years. What this does, no different than trying to pay off a mortgage early or paying more principal on your mortgage, helps lower your overall costs and we believe that is the best fiscal health for the city. Our assessed valuation growth is consistent with the forecast that you saw a few weeks ago. And also the borrowing rates [10:11:30 AM] are consistent with the rate environment. That being said, we are looking out into the future when it comes to interest rates. And if myself or our treasurer, if art could predict interest rates with precision I'm not sure we'd be sitting here. We probably could be in a different line of business. So we look at the interest rates. We're also going to look in this situation look at eight years' worth of capacity. How many bonds can we issue over eight years with those assumptions. When this allows the city council to consider would be a mobility specific bond program in 2016, following a comprehensive bond election in 2018. Associated with the 2016, any tax rate impacts would not be a factor for your upcoming -- upbudget that you will be looking at later this summer. If there was a bond election this November of 2016, we would not begin issuing debt for that until August of 2017, which would have tax and revenue implications for fiscal year Anne. So, again, fiscal year '17, the forecast that you've started working on, would not be impacted by a bond election -- a November '26 bond election. We're talking about future year budgets where this would come into play. Again, this allows for -- look at eight years looks at the mobility for city council to consider a more comprehensive bond program in line with what we did in 2016 and 2012 for 2018. Just as a reminder and we've talked to you about this before, each August, when the city has a bond election, we [10:13:32 AM] do not turn around the next day and sell all of that debt. It is phased in over the course of multiple years, and that is important for two reasons. One, it would require large -- it would be a spike in our tax rate, and, also, we don't need the funds. Capital projects, as Robert will walk you through -- a life cycle that they need to go through, from planning, design, and construction. So we sell our debt in conjunction with the cash flow. Also, though, with managing our tax rate and how much we can afford in each annual year. The city -- we have done and is our financial policy that have been adopted by council, we will use reimbursement resolutions. What that allows for is the ability to appropriate funds. So if there was a November 2016 election, we could come back in rapid order and begin the implementation of the bond program with appropriations. In the past we've usually come back, I think, microcephaly, in January or February, after an election to actually start the bond program. Then we would issue the debt each August as part of our reimbursement resolution practice. And then the tax rate scenarios that we will walk you through, again, do not occur all at once, but they are spread out over the course of the years in conjunction with how we issue debt. So the slide that we've shown you before our existing debt profile, when we look at those assumptions and layer them on for a graphical or an illustrative along at what that means is that top line is, if we -- if the assumption that the tax rate is held constant -- and this is consistent with San Antonio does something similar in thousand looks at its debt service piece of the tax rate. [10:15:32 AM] If the debt service portion is held constant with growing assessed valuation, which is a key assumption, we will have revenue beginning in 2019 that will be larger than our debt service requirements, which will begin going down, and that additional revenue would be there to support new bonds for future bond programs. That analysis shows us the following. If we, again, keep that revenue line at constant, a constant debt service tax rate with growing assessed valuation, we are able to achieve, for a 2016 election, $300 million in new bonding capacity. And looking at what that would do, it preserves $200 million also at that constant tax rate for a 2018 bond election, again, constant debt service tax rate. Coming back to 2016, if there was a 1 cents tax increase, that would generate an additional 200 million for a total $500 million of bond election capacity. Then another penny on top of that so taking it up to a 2 cents increase above the debt service, the constant debt service tax rate, that would achieve an additional 220 million, taking it up to $720 million of new capacity for bonds. Likewise, we don't have a chart for this but for 2018 the baseline would be $200 million at constant, an additional tax rate increases would be needed at that point on top of the -- on top of whatever city council would look at for 2016 to get beyond that 200 million for 2018. Again, our debt is sold over eight years, and our tax rate increases would be spread out over multiple years. We really look at the tax rate increases would happen -- would occur from a planning perspective, anyway, in half [10:17:35 AM] cent increments. So 1 cent would be fully -- a 1 cents tax increase would be fully implemented by fy19 and then 2 cents would be fully implemented by fy21. Again, any bond election if the city council looks at a bond election for this upcoming year there would be no impact to the fiscal year 17 budget that you will begin your work on in August. We mentioned on the front end some of the metrics we look at in terms of -- in how we assess the financial planning and the impact of bonds on our -- on the city's financing, overall management. One of the ratios we look at is debt to assessed valuation. The city has a financial policy that says our debt to assessed valuation must be less than 2%. Currently we are about 1.2%. We've managed this fairly well in a growing assessed valuation climate, certainly the last couple years. The scenarios beyond fiscal year '16 look at the debt to assessed valuation metrics under each of the scenarios. A 1 cents increase -- a constant tax rate which you would actually see our debt to assessed valuing going down slightly and that is because of our growing assessed valuation. The other scenario is a 1 cents increase, 2 cents increase for 2016 and in 2018 if there were subsequent tax rate increase what's that would look like. We wanted to show you a full robust picture of what may be. As we do this, as we would get to an it need '18 we would certainly be upgrade Numbers well in advance of that, we'd be back here at the same time of year in spring of 2018. The other metric we look at is our debt per capita. [10:19:36 AM] We're using Ryan Robinson's population growth Numbers as they come in. They certainly are -- I think he does, as we do, when we look at our projections of assessed valuation or sales tax he has to be conservative. Our current debt per capita is right under $1,500 per person. As you can see each of these scenarios under constant tax rate it actually -- someone didn't like the debt per capita Numbers. We're showing you out here until 2021. Another factor, another metric that we want to assess and share is the impact on the tax bill. Over the last several bond cycles, we've answered this question every possible way that's come up. Because it is -- there are many ways to look at this, and we're going to show you two different ways right now. If a 1 cents tax increase all occurred in the current year on a $250,000 house, taxable house, that would be after exemptions, the current year impact would be $25 a year or slightly less than $2.10 a month. Again, if we were able to assess that penny sale to bonds. But, again, we do not do that because we would not sell the bonds until we are -- from a cash flow perspective. So another way to look at this is to look at what happens to that $250,000 house as it increases over time as well. Again, that goes back to the chart and that's how we can achieve new bond capacity. We looked at the current tax bill, the debt service portion of a tax -- of a $250,000 [10:21:37 AM] taxable home after exemptions is $265 just for the debt service piece. If we take that house and -- as it increases in value over time, we would look at a constant tax rate in itself, because the assessed valuation won going up, the annual tax increase on leaving the tax rate constant would be $40 increase or about 3.35 a month. A 1 cents increase would be $70 a year or less than $6 a month and 2 cents would be $100 a year or about $8.42 a month. Again, two ways of getting to the same -- the idea of looking at tax bill impact. This really helps us get down the road of the truth did in taxation. If the city does move forward on a bond election Lela will walk you through that in much more detail. Other the last legislative sessions the legislature has dictated and mandated different ways of talking about tax rate impacts and that would even be a third way they really have us look at the current year and if it is built off the effective tax rate so it would be yet a third metric or analytical tool to look at tax bill impact. But we believe from a transparency perspective, showing you tax bill impacts from multiple perspectives is valuable for the conversation. So going back, we talked about several funding categories. One main one being debt and the other one being value capture. So wanted to spend several slides on this right now. Value capture has -- there are several different components of that or tools that are -- that use value capture. One is tax implement financing. That is a tool that has been used generally to encourage economic development. It's allowed under different [10:23:38 AM] state codes, Texas state codes, 311 being the main one that the city of Austin uses. The idea is you set aside property tax revenue due to assessed valuation growth and use that tax revenue for specific purposes in the zone, typically to fund infrastructure that actually generates that growth that wouldn't have been there before. Again, it's an economic development tool. This is an illustration to show how it works from a tax rate perspective and an assessed valuation. What you have is a base assessed valuation that would be going into the -- in our case, into the general fund and our debt service fund, and that base A.V. Would grow naturally with time as the overall health of the economy grows. What we look at when we look at a project's impact on an area or a zone's assessed valuation is would the growth be higher than it would have been but for that analysis and that's what the yellow area is getting at, above and beyond the Normal growth. Tif terms usually last -- they can last any terms. Our terms have lasted 20 to 30 years. At the end of the tif, the tif expires and the revenue reverts back to the general fund for the city. Another way of looking at this, and the key idea and the key concept behind tax increment funding is the idea of the but for analysis. But for the investment of public funds into an area, the growth in assessed valuation would have not occurred. However, there are different, for lack of a better word, different scales of that but for analysis. Most of the city's tifs really are occurring in that high end, where the tif, the value captured from the tif is really all occurring because of the value. When you look at Mueller, taking that 700 acres for the investment we put in that, as [10:25:39 AM] well as what the private sector has put into that to spearhead that project, waller creek is an example as well, where we put a tremendous a acres back on the developable land, took them out of the floodplain. There are some around the country where folks are look at tifs that may not have a large but for, and in that case what occurs is you are potentially looking at taking some of the existing tax bate and the existing tax revenue that would have occurred anyway and putting that into the zone. The result of that is it creates an issue for your general fund. So it's just something that we're cognitive. It's not an exact science, obviously, but it is something we look at when we assess the use of the tax increment finance tool and impact on the tax rate and general fund revenue. The city has some good experience with our -- with our tax increment finances programs, chapter 311, we have the Mueller, Seaholm and waller creek. They're all created -- all mechanisms that we use to fund public improvements via debt, again, using value capture and also this past debts council approved of the first homestead preservation district under chapter 373. This is more of a pay as you go tif where the annual revenue will be used for affordable housing within that new zone that's been created. Another tool, value capture tool, the public improvement district, where there's an additional assessment on top of the tax rate. They can be used to fund both infrastructure needs. There's a newly formed south congress P.I.D. That's been in place less than two years. [10:27:40 AM] It requires petitions signed by the owners in the proposed district, requirements for service plans and annual assessments. There's also been a use of P.U.D.S by -- for infrastructure and these are developer- initiated public improvement districts, examples include whisper value, Indian hills, where developers are taking down land for a way to get the internal infrastructure built they are assessing themselves and eventually the property owners as they come into the -- as the property gets built out. Tying this back to our mobility planning and the corridor studies Mike talked about and Robert will dive in in a little more detail here. The city is engaged with capital market research. We started this effort back in the midspring to study the economic impact and the market analysis of each of the seven transportation corridors that have been studied. This is north Lamar, burnet, Riverside, airport boulevard, methamphetamine, south Lamar and Guadalupe. The idea is to look at impact on value. Will the infrastructure improvements themselves actually change what is occurring from a -- what will occur naturally or occur from a market perspective in the area. We're going to study that. The city has done this in the past. We looked at rail. When the city council was considering rail and we looked at economic impact of that as well. For example, we saw that in some areas of town based on what the studies found nationally that rail had an impact above and beyond Normal growth of maybe ten-15%. This analysis will be complete in late 2016. First and foremost we believe this is going to be a new implementation tool that will [10:29:41 AM] help transportation, the planning department, capital planning office, look at how the implementation of bonds can occur, bringing together three areas that we have -- while we've been aware of, we haven't ever made the concerted effort to tie them together, that would be the infrastructure planning message, market activity, what is happening in the market at a certain time. Certainly a lot of these corridors that you see, south Lamar, north burnet, airport boulevard, there's a lot of activity going on right there if there's an ability to sync up the infrastructure improvements with the market activity and then, finally, bringing into thatiation zoning entitlements as well, where we are along the corridors, is there a way -- an ability to look at different density and higher density to help partner with some of the conversations that have been happening around density along the corridors. This also may provide an opportunity to partner with the private sector, to achieve other city policy needs that would be beyond mobility. That would be such things as housing or parks. Working with specific landowners and developers within sections of corridors to help achieve other goals, as we're doing infrastructure improvements, there might be an opportunity to look at value capture. Certainly a public -- as we've been talking to Charles, certainly we believe that landowners along corridors will benefit from these improvements, any improvements made along the corridors. That will increase their value, and so is there a way to look at assessments, value capture that could achieve other city policy goals. This analysis will help us begin those conversations. We don't anticipate -- again, the work is not done -- the uplift itself would be significant enough to offset any of the bond funding that Mr. Goodwill walk you through. Again, I go back to our rail as an example, where we saw in [10:31:43 AM] different parts of town the uplift or the but for analysis associated with rail was in the 10-15% above the Normal growth or the market driven growth that you would see in the absence of any improvements that is work we want to complete. We believe this is going to be a valuable exercise and we've had great conversations about that with bringing everyone inside the city together from a staff perspective to see how this tool could be used in a different fashion so it's something that we look forward to and obviously we'll keep you updated on that as we work with Charles and his team at capital market research. So that was a lot. I think it's time for a pause >> Mayor Adler: Any questions? >> [Off mic] >> Mayor Adler: Somebody has to go first. Ms. Pool. >> Pool: All right. Couple questions. Page 49 you talk about the capital market research was engaged to look at the economics and market of each of the seven transportation corridors. Was some of that funding from 2012 bonds or was that from another? >> The corridor studies themselves were funded I believe as part of the bond program in 2012. They're all complete now. >> Pool: Ongoing. >> Capital market research is now taking those -- looking at the projects that were included in those reports and then simultaneously looking at market activity and most importantly not only market activity but overall market absorption, what can any one corridor absorb from a real estate perspective in terms of retail, multi-family. So we're going to look at that, not that in itself it would grow but is there a [10:33:44 AM] market for it to grow as well. >> Pool: Okay. And I think the burnet study was done in -- a couple of years ago, right? It was done in like 13, 14, something like that? Is that about right? And then shift back to page 45 I think did you answer this one. I wrote down in my notes the different tifs, Mueller, waller creek, Seaholm. Does the tif investment in these three areas include mobility projects? For example, if we needed better sidewalks or expanded sidewalks at Mueller, would those improvements come out of tif funds or would that be part of a mobility bond? >> The Mueller -- the Mueller tax increment finance zone is one of the tools that is part of the overall master development agreement to build out those 700 acres. The majority of the investments being made are being made by the developer. The city's investments I think are about 15% of the overall development that's occurring there so you are getting -- in Mueller you're getting certainly roads built out, internal roads throughout the project. You're getting over140 acres of parks, sidewalks, parking within the town center. So our leverage, the public funds I think were leveraged very well for the outcome of what we're getting in the 700 acres. >> Pool: Okay. So in our conversations here we probably would not see projects in the tif areas because they're already being addressed by the funds coming off -- spinning off the increase in revenue tax base? >> As far as the -- the tif areas that we're talking about with the corridors? I think we would still contemplate some public investment from that side, outside of the tifs. I think the question is are there certain key areas in [10:35:45 AM] those corridors coming out from the study that really kind of have that -- the Numbers work from the but for analysis and Greg can probably speak more to that component of it. But I think the contemplation is, these are large segments, so we would still contemplate making the public investment in multiple modes. >> Pool: There could be in acceleration of products in the tifs areas. >> We would leverage that as part of the tif. That's part of what I was going to say too, the coordination about the mobility planning was coming out of the corridor plans with some of the planning the planning department is doing really to land use and economic analysis, tif analysis, we would work to coordinate all of those. That's one of the things my office is doing, how do we coordinate that into what public investment, capital investment happens, when does it happen in the corridors. >> Pool: Okay. Then my last question was on page 39. If you could just revisit, when we talk about the tax rate impact being constant, where there's no increase in the penny or the 2 cents in the rate, it says constant in the 2016 election new capacity would be 300 million but the first bullet there says preserves 200 million per 2018 bond election at the constant tax rate. Is that also withholding it at no increase to the rate? >> Yes, councilmember. >> Pool: That's because the 80 is increase. >> Ye, again, it goes back to -- >> Pool: It's just the natural growth in the property tax base. >> Yes, an assumption that we made. It's consistent. It's one of the key assumptions W made, yeah, in terms of the way to generate capacity won maintain the tax rate as is, unchanged, and let assessed valuation growth help create funds for reinvestments in the community which I think this city has done very well over the last 25, 30 years, in terms of the planning of those -- planning of those. [10:37:47 AM] >> Pool: And I would agree. I think our bond program and also the county has been very intentional and. >> Speaker9: Has had good results. So then the 1 cents that is in the second bar there, that's to have the 500 million, which is the 300 plus 200 but have it immediately. >> Yes. >> Pool: So then -- okay. >> Just to clarify that, thank you for the question, is that would -- a 1 cents associated with a November 2016 bond program, it would still -- it would still allow for 200 million in 2018 without any further tax rate increase. >> Pool: Thank you. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Why does one penny get 200200 and will two pennies gets you 220 million? >> Mayor, the reason behind that is coming back to when we layer on the tax rate. It doesn't happen all at once. So the 2 cents would take -- we're projecting -- again, we'd have to look at cash flows, but we're looking at a four year implementation of the tax rate impact. So the first two years, the A.V. Is at X and then years three and four the A.V. Would be slightly higher so, therefore, you're going from 200 million for a penny to 220 million for a penny. >> Mayor Adler: I understand. Thank you. Comments? Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: I just have one quick question. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you so much for all the information. I may have missed it, but in the corridor studies that you're talking about is 969 ever in any of those? >> Yes. >> Houston: I didn't hear it mentioned. >> Yes. >> Houston: I hear the north/south ones but I never hear the east/west one. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: Just a couple questions to follow up on the -- on the page 49. I don't know that you can answer this or not, but you were talking about the uplift value not being significant. Do you have any order of [10:39:49 AM] making institutioned, I mean, there therefore anyway to tell at this point? 10 million, 100 million? Is there no way to tell? >> We have not completed that analysis. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> We've been working right now to try to identify the -- along each corridor where are the most -- from a pure planning perspective and market perspective, what's happening without look at the data. When we arrive at that conclusion, it's really based on what we did on rail. When we looked at -- again, we studied Riverside -- we studied Riverside corridor, and we looked at a 20-year impact of having rail along and two stations, discover lane being one of them and club view was the other. We looked at kind of broad areas around that, and the uplift from those, again, associated with rail over the course of 20 years was about a million dollars of revenue, which would only support 500 thuds of debt. So we're drawing that analogy with the idea being -- really from literature, working with our consultants -- that rail would have a bigger impact on land values than -- than transportation improvements and mobility improvements contemplated as part of the corridor. We believe they still will have some impact. It's just the magnitude of those. But from a bond planning perspective, as the policymakers, as you sit here looking at that, we just wanted to kind of get that across, that it is -- the tool can still be used. We believe taxicab still be put -- it can still be put on the table once the work is done but perhaps used in a mover targeted fashion than opposed to actually subtracting from any of the corridor needs, which you'll see are large. >> Kitchen: Okay. Yeah, that gives me an idea. And I know the analysis needs to be completed. So the analysis is being done on all seven corridors, right? I didn't hear -- none of those [10:41:50 AM] seven corridors have tifs right now. Is that right? Or P.I.D.S? >> That is -- I'm going through it in my brain. That is correct. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> That is correct. I don't believe any of them touch any of our existing tifs touch any of the corridors. >> Kitchen: Okay. But it sounds like from the order of magnitude that it wouldn't be sufficient -- probably wouldn't be sufficient dollars to do much. I mean, it could perhaps do some target investments, but it's not going to be large-scale. >> That's our sense of it in our initial conversations with Charles. Our past experience on these previous studies as well, I think, highly influences that. >> Kitchen: Okay. Then my next question is on page 42. Just wanting to make sure I'm understanding. So when we talk about the tax impact and the years that it occurs. So that means it happens that year. It doesn't happen every year. In other words, so at a constant fiscal year '21, the $40 annual increase, does that mean $40 in fiscal year '21 and another $40 in fiscal year '22 or it's just the $40 once is this. >> We're just trying to -- again, from a way of answering the question in multiple ways because we get the question -- we get the questions in multiple ways, is just increment. Comparing our current tax bill to that future tax bill. That's always a -- there are projections about that. But it would not be every year an additional 40. That would be its new steady state level. >> Kitchen: That's what I thought. I wanted to clarify that so there wasn't a misunderstanding about that. >> Again, it wouldn't happen -- it wouldn't be $40 for first year either, gradually coming in. I think one of the charts we didn't update for this but ed shows a lot is kind of the percentage of median family income, that taxes. So certainly as that -- certainly house values going up we would assume as part of [10:43:50 AM] the projections you would see hopefully median family income coming up as well. From a percentage perspective the needle wouldn't be moving much but we wanted to show it this way as a different look. >> Kitchen: That's helpful. The last question on page 39 -- I think that's my last question, yeah. That's just a timing. So we're talking -- this illustrates for us a 2016 and a 2018 some amount for 2016, some preserved for 2018, and I understand that you'd still be preserving 200 million based on councilmember pool had asked. So how much would we issue between now and 2018? Say there was a bond in 2016 and it was approved. We only issue a certain amount every year, right? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: How much would wish between deploy 2018 bond? >> We'd probably be looking at issuing about 40-$60 million a year to get the program started. >> Kitchen: Okay. So our decision-making about when we -- when we take these votes in 2016 or 2018 doesn't -- well, anyway, there's a time frame for when we make those decisions. So we can make a decision in 2016 for a large amount but we're not going to issue anywhere near that amount so we can defer to 2018 if we so chose it, sounds like. Okay. More rhetorical, sorry. >> I think just to -- that is exactly. When a bond election occurs you're approving the total amount. Then we get into the business of the bond program implementation, which includes the project planning, the project phasing, the cash flow, the bond sales, how we manage the reimbursement resolutions. Wee not asking for X amount per year. The vote is for an entire amount that would be issued until it's unissued, until it's all issued,ished say. [10:45:51 AM] >> Kitchen: I'm thinking out loud. The reason I'm saying that is we've talked in terms of 2018 being the time we look at a more full bond package so if you -- you know, one of the things I'm struggling with is the balance between how much goes into transportation, housing, flood mitigation and all those other things and then just trying to think about when I need to make that decision. So that's why I asked that question. So the last question, then, is we still have one -- what was it? We have not issued -- under the current bonds we have -- was it 190 million or something like that not yet issued? >> 195 million for the three bond programs. >> Kitchen: What is that for? Is that all transportation or something else? >> It's a imitation. There's affordable housing. Majority is transportation and there's some additional health, public safety associated with the 2012 bond program. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> I can get you a full breakdown. >> Kitchen: Do we know if any of that is for corridor studies? >> [Off mic] >> Kitchen: You don't have to answer that now. I can look at it -- I'll look at it later. Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar. >> Casar: I'm stealing someone else's mic. Do you have -- you have variables here that are moving organic whether we do 1 cents or 2 cents or keep it constant. One variable here that is set is preserving 200 million for the 2018 bond election? That seems like a variable that you aren't moving around. If we wanted to preserve let's say 300 million for 2018 or if we weren'ted to preserve only 100 million for 2018, how old that change the other variables? >> So the way we looked at that, one of the assumptions, again, was we looked at an eight-year time period. That eight years results in $500 million capacity. We've assigned -- because of the way we would issue the debt, the way it assigns, because you have two years of issuing debt that would only be for the 2016 conclusion [10:47:52 AM] then the remaining would be split between 2016 and 2018. It just falls 300 and 237 but 237 -- 200. Whether it's all now or it all is deferred, that is a -- it's a policy choice. >> Casar: And so if we wanted to preserve 300 million for the 2018 election without staying constant, then we could only -- that very first line here that says constant would actually change to 200? >> Correct. >> Casar: It's just that linear? >> Yes. >> Casar: If we wanted to preserve none of it we could do 500 million this year and stay constant? It's just that simple, addition and subtraction right there? >> Yes. >> Casar: That's very helpful. Thank you. Now that I have my mic on I'll ask my one last little question, which is these value capture proposals that you've were thinking about, it sounds like these are things that need to be worked out over some period of time. Is the time line working out okay, such that we can -- if we choose to go to bond election, get the authorization from the voters but then work out the value capture work after that bond election? Does that work out okay or do we actually need to be figuring some of the tif or P.I.D. Stuff out, you know, between now and the end of the year? >> We would suggest that, again, it wouldn't impact the bond program -- the amount of a bond election. Again, especially in the way in terms of how propositions are set on the ballot. We would look at it as an implementation tool. Certainly if the results are different than what we expect, it would allow us to do additional work that we might not have contemplated. If a dollar amount is set for corridors and the -- there can be some projects done with [10:49:53 AM] developers that would help pay for some of those projects that were contemplated to be in package a or package B, then that would just allow more of those funds to be used for more projects. >> Casar: That's helpful. >> I think as Robert will show you, the needs far outweigh the resources. >> Casar: Thank you. >> Councilmember, I'll second that. What we do on the implementation planning side is look at what's coming out of the analysis and really use it more factoring into our strategic planning, as far as how we did implementation, when the projects are happening, where they're happening. This might inform where a strategic investment can happen, where we can leverage some other investment. >> Casar: So in short for the average listener, if certain public improvements to a corridor might be the catalyst for a really important mixed-income project that could provide some needed open space but doesn't quite get us there yet it might set us up to do the kind of tif that could help us achieve the transportation and the housing and the open space goals? >> That could be a potential strategic opportunity as we look at that. The purposes that the voters would approve the bonds for, we would still be able to meet those. >> Casar: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Just real quick question. Then, don. You said a million dollars in revenue equated to how much in dent? >> A million in revenue? >> Mayor Adler: You were talking about the tif revenue would be small and you gave an example. You said a million dollars in -- >> I would say, yeah maybe a million dollars in revenue would support about $600,000 in debt because you have to -- the $000,000 would need to cover both the principal and the interest on the debt that you issued kind of as a backup envelope. >> Mayor Adler: That's a million dollars in revenue every year? Or is that -- >> Right. You would need -- you would need a million over -- no, a million over the course of 20 years to cover $600,000, not a million a year. >> Mayor Adler: I understand. Thank you. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've got a lot of questions and points. [10:51:53 AM] I'll let you decide when I'm done. Let me start quickly. I was watching this upstairs and page 19 of the mobility report I just wanted to mention this for the record. I appreciate the slide. It says past community engagement analysis, 52 plans spanning from 1998 to present. And the last bullet point says themes, interest and more mobility options, emphasis on pedestrian infrastructure, enhancing safety and connectivity, three points. And what's missing from here, I'm glad that it's missing because it's the truth, congestion relief, vehicle congestion relief is not an emphasis and it's not an interest. We haven't had an emphasis on vehicle congestion relief since 1998 and probably before that. Moving on to page 25, quick question here. General obligation debt, it says 1.4 billion in outstanding G.O. Debt, currently 1 billion repaid by property tax revenue. I was listening carefully and I did not hear what that other 400 million was about. Was that general obligation debt or tif debt like the waller creek tunnel? Or what? >> Or is tif debt not even on here? >> This is not considered -- some of the tif debt is waller creek is. We can get you a list of what that additional $300 million is. What it is, money, it is all considered -- because it's issued under the city's credit, general obligation credit, the majority of our debt is repayable by our tax rate that you set each year. But there are some other funding source that's pay off our debt. One is, for example, the -- in the case of waller creek we issue certificates of obligation. The tif proceeds are paying for those. Other instances, we've issued debt on behalf of the drainage utility fund on watershed for the open space. They are servicing that debt with drainage utility fund revenue. [10:53:55 AM] But we issue under our credit so it gets better there rates and borrowing rates. So that's the delta and I can certainly get you the breakdown on what that is all for. >> Those details would be helpful because I'm interested in seeing the trend over time from voter-approved debt versus nonvoter-approved debt and what that trend has been for the last 15, 20 years. I'd like to see that if you could. >> Sure. >> Zimmerman: Page 39, I think we've made some comments on this already, but -- and I know that you can't put all the information down, right? I mean, there's a lot of complexity here. But I need to make this point and ask you a few questions. When you simplify, you can do it in two ways. You can do it in a way that makes something look attractive or that makes it look very unattractive. For example, on this slide on page 29, what's glaringly missing is the presumed interest rate on these bonds. And we really have no idea where the bond market is going, right? If you're going to tell the truth, nobody knows where interest rates are headed. And some of the slides, page 44 -- 41, for instance, you're showing Numbers out to fiscal year 2023. God only knows what the interest rates are going to be in 2023. There's been a lot of talk about potential inflationary pressures, right? We had so much quantitative easing. When we present this simplified slide on page 39, the interest rate is probably presumed to be at record lows, which it is now? Or is it presumed to increase and, if so, to what? >> We're -- when we take on this analysis as I mentioned in the assumptions, it's slightly different than what we do for our operating forecast because there's debt associated with this, we know that this could lead to the [10:55:56 AM] Wednesday of --ish answer of of -- we are in a very low interest rate environment right now but we are projecting our interest rate in the 4-5% range so higher than where we are now because we want to show kind of -- we want to show impacts, we want to make sure that we're being cautious about that. >> Zimmerman: The other thing is the term. Are all these presumed 20 years, 20 year payout? >> Every year we wish bonds we issue them as 20 year notes. >> Zimmerman: Because you do have flexibility on that, right? There's a lot of flexibility in the bond market, and you can pay off your capital -- you can structure your bonds, right, with a tremendous amount of flexibility? You get to decide what's the principal interest? Are we going to make lower interest payments now and more payments later, et cetera. They're very flexible, are they not? >> There are certainly options. Every time we go to market we work with public financial management, our financial advisor who does a great job of helping us to assess the market each year as we go to market. Art and his group are living this day to day. Certainly we have the opportunities to do that from a -- from a practice, though, we want to make sure -- from a long-term financial viability we want to make sure that we are not, for example, pushing principal back to the back end because that would only create a balloon payment for future taxpayers so we're looking at level debt for this analysis. We're not overstructuring it. We believe that is from a cautious perspective. >> Zimmerman: Fair enough. Just to make one more point before I move on from this, the problem, though, is when you put something before voters, right, you don't know what's going to happen in future markets. Unfortunately when the voters vote on the bonds, they authorize the government to issue that debt. I have not -- I know a lot about this, and I've been in court over this over ballot language. There's no way that I can see legally to bind the city, legally, to meet these targets of 1 cents or 2 cents [10:57:57 AM] increases. In other words once the voters approve a bond package if the interest rates go up unexpectedly, if our property tax growth rate, city growth rate if it dividendles and tax rates go up, the voters are still on the hook. They've already approved the bonds and you still have the legal power to issue that debt even though it's not as favorable as what it shows here. Right? These estimates are -- they're just estimates. And if the market moves against you, and we don't see the growth that we expected, we could be seeing much, much higher tax increases because we've authorized the debt. In other words,we've authorizes the debt. We're not going on these figures here, we're just going on the city's ability to issue the debt. >> To issue the debt? It doesn't require us to issue the debt. We bring those debt issuances to council each year. >> Zimmerman: Okay. Maybe the final question here, on page 36 I was making notes, and you made a remark, I think it will be on the tape, that says you said bonds that we must sell. I was trying to understand what you meant by that because when the voters approve bonds there's no legal obligation for us to issue them. It is our option to issue that debt. We're not obligated to issue the debt, nor do we have to spend everything that the voters authorize. So what did you mean when you said bonds that we must sell. >> In some instances the upcoming sale -- we were just in front of audit and finance a few weeks ago. This August sale will include $63 million of public improvement bonds for appropriations that council has already approved. So in that case again our practice that we've walked you through the idea of having appropriations with reimbursement resolutions, but certainly in the year two or three we have the ability to provide analysis that would show you did a project was underway, the point where we -- how much bond proceeds we need to cover our costs, but if there was a desire from [10:59:58 AM] a policy perspective to stop any of the projects, council would certainly have the ability to do that. >> Zimmerman: I think maybe we're going back to waller creek. We get into waller creek, we find out it costs more than we thought. So from that viewpoint it's like, well, we either have to borrow more money or we have to shut down the project. So maybe that's an idea of bonds we must sell or else we said we're going to buy out some flood victims. The council passes that resolution and we told the city to spend that money and buy people out, so in that context it's bonds we must sell, general obligation, to get the money to buy them out. That makes sense to me. >> Yes. >> Zimmerman: Final question. There was something said about on page 42 I've made a note on this page regarding -- now I'm not seeing the page. We're getting -- when we talk about the tifs and I guess the homestead preservation districts, the land trust, the housing corporation, it seems to me that the council has been moving in a policy direction of more and more subsidies, which is dedicating tax revenue to, say, pay off a tif or taking land off the market and putting it in a public trust fund. So that property is tax exempt. So it seems like we have a trend of putting more and more property off the tax rolls. And so you made a remark that we have good experience with tif, but I'm thinking maybe it's not a good experience because overall we're increasing -- we have increasing unaffordability. And so what I see happening is more and more of the tax burden is being put on non-subsidized taxpayers. And then we increase public housing projects, subsidized housing projects, more tifs, more homestead preservation districts so we're getting more economic segregation. So some people are paying a little bit less, but everybody continues to pay more and more and more. And so from that viewpoint I'm not convinced that the [11:01:59 AM] tifs have been successful. I'm not convinced the subsidized housing projects are successful because while it's true that some are paying less, everybody is experiencing more unaffordability in the city. So that's just my comment on that. >> Mayor Adler: Great, thank you. Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: I think I need to ask you to clarify your last point. Not the one about affordable housing because I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that, but when you talk about an increasing number of tifs, I just want to be sure I understood you correctly because we really just have three, as I understand it, plus the homestead preservation district. >> Zimmerman: Well, there was a Ted proposed for lone star rail. >> Tovo: I want to talk about that separately. >> Zimmerman: That was a tif that was out there and promoted. Hopefully that one is dead. >> Tovo: I was going to ask about that in a minute, but did I understand -- I guess I would -- I'm not sure that we have an increasing number of tifs. We have three. And possibly lone star, which we're going to talk about in a minute. >> Zimmerman: I've heard more rumored and proposed by other people that have come into my office, asking us to consider other tifs. >> Tovo: True, but we haven't approved those so they don't exist at this point. >> Zimmerman: Hopefully not. >> Tovo: Okay. But I do want to ask about the lone star rail tif. Can you clarify for us where that stands? >> I apologize. It is an existing tif, but it is not generating -- the capture rate is set at zero percent. There is no revenue being sent to that tif because the triggers that were put in the -- the triggers that were put in the revised tif resolution in December of '14 that lone star, they were not met. So the capture rate still stands -- while the district have been established, there was no revenue being generated for that tif. >> Tovo: So the [11:04:01 AM] December 2014 council decision, which was not unanimous, lit me point out, somebody was on the losing end of that vote, set the capture rate at what? >> It was zero percent and would go to 50% if certain conditions were met by lone star. One of which was to get a change in state law, which did not occur. >> Tovo: Right. >> In that agreement there's also other triggers in terms of their ability to show other funding and their ability to get their capital funding in place for the project. So in essence from a financial perspective we treat that while it is a tif on the books from a legal perspective, it is not -- from the operating budget we're not transferring money from the general fund over to that tif. >> Tovo: I'm sorry, I should remember this. I know there were benchmarks for when those benchmarks needed to be met. Have we passed that time frame? I guess the reason I'm asking is because we're coming up on another legislative session. There could be a change in state law that would enable that benchmark to be met and I know there was some funding and some other -- as you said, some other shows of support that they needed to be able to demonstrate for our agreement to take effect, but I'm not sure where we are with regard to the timing. Or have they passed the time frames that were identified in that agreement so that it is truly at zero? >> I think one of the triggers, for lack of a better word, was a financial viability plan. That had to go to 2020. December 2014th, the council extended that, the original six year term, by an extra year. Certainly what I would say has changed is the recent discussion with Missouri pacific. >> Tovo: Sure. [11:06:01 AM] I'm not sure that was identified in may the agreement in a way that would make -- maybe I better submit these questions if I can remember to do so, through the Q and a. I think this question comes up quite a bit about where that stands and I'm not -- I'm not really clear on what the answer is. I know at the moment it's not being funded, thank you, but especially as we look at other initiatives moving forward I think we need to really well understand whether we could be looking at a 50% recapture rate for the lone star tif at any point if those conditions still have an opportunity to be met. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: Thanks. >> Zimmerman: One quick question, if I could. Could you tell me quickly what would be the process for abolishing the tif? How do we eliminate the tif? If we were to vote to do so, what would it entail to get rid of the lone star tif? >> I think we'll work with our legal department and -- >> Zimmerman: I'd like to know what we would need to do to officially put it away, kill it. >> Mayor Adler: Council, it is five after 11:00. We have the second half of the report with the options. I think we should shoot to maybe get that done -- maybe that's an hour to get us to noon. Then we could take a lunch break and come back for the last two presentations. Okay. Let's shoot for that. 12 if we can do that. 12:12:15, somewhere in there. And then coming back at 1:30 would make sense to me too. Mr. Goode. >> We'll launch for the third part of the presentation today, mobility talks, program and bond development. I wanted to remind you quickly, and I shared this in February, our typical cip planning cycle where we identify needs W go through the long-term cip planning process, five-year cip plan that's run from budget and finance folks. And you will see as part of the budget process you adopt every year now an annual capital budget that funds those [11:08:02 AM] projects and then we're in the implementation stage and then we go right back into identifying needs as an ongoing cycle. Speaking of identifying needs, there's many ways that we do that and there's many ways that you all have identified in your resolution to direct us to do this current work that you recognize. We obviously look at existing plans and councilmember Houston, you are correct, those have been done in the past and this council certainly has an opportunity to reflect district-based plans. All the plans we have in the past were of course in an at-large system and reflect that in many ways. But that's at this point all the staff has is the previously adopted plans and so we are working with that until this council revises those through updates. Sidewalk master plan, urban trails, bike master plan, and I'm excited to remind you about the strategic mobility plan that we are launching will be coming back to council in June for the consultant contract. And just from a personal standpoint in reflecting the team, if we had that in place now we would have had a lot less work to put together this list of needs because that strategic mobility plan hopefully will capture this community's vision and this council's vision on what we would -- on what the future would look like in the city of Austin. So if we had that plan adopted, which will be two years from now, this next time we do a mobility program, it would be a much easier process. Again, the traffic impact fee study that y'all have authorized as well, that will be coming in June. That looks at the development impacts and what they should be funding for growth in the transportation side. So those are two important studies that when we complete those in June of '18, again we'll have a much better roadmap, pardon the pun, as we go through mobility projects. We always look at technical assessment of needs. We look at capital renewal plans, the condition of the infrastructure that we have in place that we [11:10:03 AM] have to maintan every year, and existing and new capacity on service demands. And obviously we do public input process. Mike's group did an outstanding job. Y'all have given him some feedback. I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for that, Mike. Lots of work in a very limited amount of time to try to engage the public. Did we reach everybody? We did not, but the people that chose to engage we do have some information from them. 311 calls for service, we look at that every year, especially on the maintenance side. Then your boards and commissions give us input as we move forward. I wanted to spend just a little bit of time talking about the typical project phases and I wanted to do that because there's been some misconception on the corridor plans, how far those take us in the process. Really the master plan, we do master planning, project development, preliminary phase, that's really what we're talking about when we have these existing corridor studies that are done. There is not design done at that point, there's not been an award phase or construction. So those are not shovel ready. I have heard some people in the area say we have plans that are shovel ready. They are not shovel ready. They are conceptual in nature, they are master plans. They have set the vision. At this point if you choose to phase the next phase of the process, then we have the hard design of the capital projects. So I want to take a minute to reflect on that so if you do hear some misconception in the community, help us change that because those are not shovel-ready projects. The bond development process that you all were -- we engaged you in February that really is three different phases, we typically go through, the initiation, program development, and then you set the election, I'm not going to go through this slide in great detail. I shared this with you in February. It's a detailed community involved process that we typically go through that has served us well over the years to engage the community and help you get data from what [11:12:03 AM] the community's desires are as well as staff input on the technical needs and what we see as priority projects. Typically that process, as was mentioned earlier, takes anywhere from 15 to 18 months. It's a long complicated process, but it's an important process to take in our community as you all want to get input and then Evan actually support if you choose to put an election before the public. Now, in February we talked about this, the typical process, and you all asked us to look at a process that we could engage for a potential November election. We told you in February that would be an aggressive timeline. It would be seven to eight months. We could accomplish that, but there would be some ground rules to that process or at least identify some of the things that we wouldn't do that we would typically do. Phase one, which normally takes one to -- more than that. We would only have a couple of months. We really wanted to look at already identified needs because we couldn't develop the universe of needs in that amount of time. We've done our best and I'll show you the results of that in a few slides. But Mike's team nevertheless still went out and tried to engage the community in that very aggressive timeline to touch base, to see where folks that did agree to commit to us, and I agree, councilmember Garza, we didn't get everybody in the community. A lot of surveys we always do and I want to again thank you, but it reflects a certain part of our community not everybody chooses to engage. That's what we have chosen to do and what you have heard in the mobility talks. Phase two that we're in, really now we're developing the potential packages for you to review. And phase III is the next process that if you choose to engage in that we would need to talk to you about the next steps. I'll get into that in greater detail later on in the presentation. So reminding you on the February 11th resolution you gave us direction to go out and identify and [11:14:04 AM] prioritize transportation projects. You listed a lot of existing plans that we would look back on, and Mike mentioned earlier there was 52 plans and they did their best in that time frame to go back and scan those plans. It's a lot of data and a lot of public involvement over the years. So he did his best. I'll tell you right now this is a very challenging resolution that you all directed us to do and very short amount of time frame. I want to take a slight moment and just thank the staff. This is an amazing effort that they put through -- that they put out in these last few months and we were working just last night at 11:30. And by the way, the one we sent you yesterday had errors in it. The one sent to you this morning is the complete one. We were working late last night to do some editing. So I want to just thank the staff. It's been an amazing effort and I've been proud to be part of that. Now, so speaking of identified needs, that was part of the process that we told you with this accelerated aggressive timeline we needed to really look at things we've already identified so we used that to develop this universe of needs. I want to remind you right now it's not a universe of needs. We're going to leave something off of this that some of our constituents will say what about X? And we probably didn't get everything that's out there. So it's probably a misnomer to call it a universe of needs. It's our best rough guess within this time frame of putting together the needs list for you to look at in this next few months. We block those into three key major areas that match the mobility talks. We lump them into regional mobility projects, corridor mobility projects and local/other mobility needs. As Mike shared earlier, the corridor mobility, 46% of the survey respondents chose that as their first chose. Where we should focus. 26% on regional mobility and 28% on the local/other mobility needs. I'm going to go ahead and walk through each one of those categories. [11:16:04 AM] First in a summary fashion and then we'll drill down in each category to show you how we identified needs and how we came up with some packages for you to consider. First on the regional mobility side you all know that we work with our transportation partners, txdot, ctrma, cap metro, on many projects in the community. And this is not an all inclusive list, but I-35, 360, mopac, oak hill parkway, Bergstrom expressway, you've seen the list. As I mentioned earlier, it is not an all inclusive list, but just those projects total 4.8 billion. The city of Austin is not responsible for all of that U but I wanted to show you the region. As we work through the program and you hear from constituents that mobility is one of the biggest issues we have in our community, there are many agencies, our sister agencies that are focused on this with us as well. It's a huge need and we move forward as we can when the resources are identified. We're also looking at corridor mobility. That's the next level down. That's the community important corridors in our community. It's really the major community -- transportation corridors that we're looking at. As mentioned, many times we have existing corridor improvement programs. I'm going to talk about that in a little bit more detail as we moved forward. We also look at future corridor improvement programs. I'm going to mention a little bit about how we identify the next set of corridors that perhaps we should launch some corridor studies to prepare them for funding cycles. And then we looked at other corridor needs and that really came from neighborhood plans, some redevelopment efforts that you see in our community and our infrastructure and maintenance plans that we have ongoing in the departments. The local and other mobility needs, this is really the neighborhood level connections. This is where you're looking at missing gaps in the networks in your neighborhoods. You mentioned you have [11:18:04 AM] heard from a lot of your constituents on missing gaps in the sidewalk network. That's where these projects will come up. This also includes capital renewal. As we focus on new projects that add capacity and connect missing gaps, we can't forget that we have a lot of infrastructure we have to continue to maintain in this community. Right now the focus in your constituents is usually you hear from them on mobility and congestion, but if we ignore the capital renewal, it won't be too many cycles until you'll start hearing from your constituents on the poor quality of their streets. I put that in context and you will see as we move into some of these programs it's a balancing that you have to consider as you move forward on how much to put on new projects and how much to put on capital renewal issues. So totaling that, and this number continues to grow as we continue to look at it. This is a summary and I'll get into greater detail in each category. We get about $9.5 billion of needs in our community. This is not a universe of needs, but perhaps a galaxy of needs. This is just the first blush. And every time you sit down with one of our transportation agencies they remind us about another need that they're working on and that we're not including in this list. But it's again a big apple, big chunk that we need to start looking a. What would you want to consider for the community as we move forward? What piece of that should we start funding? Now I'm going to drill down a little bit on each one of those categories. As you recall in February, Terri Mccoy, the district engineer for txdot did a great job of relating the regional mobility needs as far as the I-35 corridor. Senator Watson recently focused on that as well in a talk with the daa event. They've looked at that and you know that's been ongoing for quite some time in our community about the different options for 35. And they've come up with a two billion to 2.3 billion cost for the [11:20:06 AM] portion within Travis county. That's not the entire 35 corridor. But they've come up with what they think is somewhere between a 300 and 500-million-dollar funding gap for that portion and they certainly would like the city to partner with them as they move forward. We have looked at that and think there's a potential partnership for 35 where we could help fill that gap without having included -- having to include those funds in a bond program. These are a list of a few items. There are many -- there's a lot of work to continue to do with our partner on txdot on this, but these are some ideas that we think have some merit. We're going to continue to explore. The regional infrastructure bank I won't touch on these in great detail, but just to remind you, north mopac project when they needed some funding, the campo identified some funds that they could use as a region. We identified those and delivered those to ctrma and they forwarded, therefore they did not have to go to their bond market and they don't have as good a rating as the city of Austin. So it saved them a lot of interest rates on their project and therefore the region said if we're going to give you this money we want you to pay it back. So ctrma has agreed to pay it back, 230 million of funding into this bank that campo then can designate where those funds would go and that money comes back over a 22 year period. We would suggest that that money could be dedicated to 35. That's a thrift, a heavy lift that our campo members will have to take on and hopefully to support and hopefully the campo board would agree to that proposal because 35 is obviously an important corridor for many in our community, if not all of our community. Part of that, if we're going to dedicate that money for txdot to be able to use that. [11:22:06 AM] And remember that dribbles in over 22 years. They would need more of that upfront. So perhaps we could be a financing partner with them and we could bond against those with our credit rating and we could save the I-35 project interest costs as well because the state doesn't have as good a bond rating as we do, as either. So that would be something that we could look at that would save their project money that we could close that funding gap that wouldn't cost our community anything because it would be paid back with either ctrma funds or txdot funding. Another alternative is to take ownership of the txdot arterials that they maintain in our community and you probably don't even realize that or many of our community don't, Lamar, airport boulevard, 969, those are roadways that are on their system that they still maintain, but we really do consider those as city roadways. This is an effort that we would take on the cost burden of that, so that is a council decision you would have to think about, but that would help close the txdot gap because they wouldn't have to set aside funds for those maintenance -- for maintenance of those projects in the future years. We will negotiate and debate with txdot about how much that is worth, but we would say that would help again close that funding gap on I-35. Then as you consider going forward there are corridors that we would recommend that we would fund if you choose a bond program that are state roadways. 360, Parmer lane, 620, those are state roadways in the past that the state would fund, but we would say we would take on a community partnership role and help fund some of the state roadways and therefore we would like that credit on our side of the ledger for the I-35 funding gap. So the effort there would be if we put some money in 360 txdot, that's money that you would not have to spend on that project and therefore we would want credit for that. So with those three or four things, and there are other things we're developing and I think txdot is open to this concept to help them [11:24:07 AM] close their funding gap, it appears that we wouldn't have to in this November anyway, put on any funding in the G.O. Bond. Speaking of those projects that I mentioned earlier on state roadways, these are other regional mobility needs that are state roadways, but affect the connectivity and add to the congestion in our community that we would want to focus on. Loop 360, that's a 300 to 500-million- dollar total project, but there's some breakout segments of that, grade separated interchanges at Westlake and courtyard and spicewood springs that you may choose to help put matching funds in to help txdot start building and constructing those improvements to get our community some relief faster. Parmer lane, they've identified a 17-million-dollar ask from us that if we help them fund that, that would add additional two lanes on Parmer lane. Oak hill parkway, as you know, is a ctrma project that is currently under environmental review. That's anywhere from 680 to 730-million-dollar project, depending on what alternative they choose, the community chooses to build. But there are some portions of that project that they've asked us if you want to help accelerate that this would be a project to help accelerate their program. And that is one of those is to replace a bridge at old bee caves road. That's a low water crossing bridge that cuts off many parts of our community, in the southwest part of our community, and they've asked if we want to consider helping them accelerate, that would be a seven-million-dollar ask. On 620, txdot is doing a very big corridor improvement study, all the way from 71 to 183 north. And that could be anywhere from 200 to 800 million dollars' worth of needs in the community. And there's some parts that they've asked us if there's a segment to accelerate one of their priorities is a new bypass at 620 and 2222 [11:26:08 AM] that would be about $35 million, so we've thought about that in some of our packages. And then mopac south as you know is under environmental review and it could be anywhere from 250 to 400-million- dollar project. So that again totals the other regional mobility needs and other two billion to two and a half billion outside of the I-35 corridor. So we're into the four, five billion dollar range for major regional mobility needs. I'm going to dial down a little bit further now into our corridor mobility improvements, which are the major community corridors that you hear about from your constituents. And one of the things, how we have selected the corridors that we have funded in the past, the 2012 program funded these corridor studies that we mentioned many times, we are looking at mobility improvements. They're in the top 20 of our arterials as far as transportation user and transit user. So that's how we've started selecting these corridors. We anticipated that you may ask how we put these corridors together. We also look at safety enhancements. We're looking at as you well know you funded five of the most dangerous intersections to improve those in the budget that we're currently working in. We have another 30 of the next most dangerous intersections that are on our list that we would suggest that we is that right funding as well to improve the safety in our corridors. We also, as you all are well aware, we coordinate with txdot and cap metro as we move forward. I mentioned some of the txdot roadways so we've been working with them on what improvements that they would see as well as the improvements that are already identified in our corridor. In this corridor mobility, the six corridor improvements. Really there's seven, but the one corridor was done together was north Lamar and burnet. But you've already seen this list out of those corridor studies, there [11:28:08 AM] were $120 million of short-term/medium term needs and $700 million of long-term needs. That's over $800 million of needs identified for these seven corridors. Again, these were high traffic volumes and transit usage corridors and therefore these improvements would improve the traffic flow on the corridors as well as the transit usage. So we see these corridors as being very important as we move forward. But those are not the only corridors we have in the city, as you are well aware hearing from your constituents. So we looked at the other corridor needs as well. We looked at system and safety, mobility improvements, what corridors we could choose that if we did some work on would improve the mobility options of our community. We looked at the traffic signal and the automated traffic management system. That's -- Mr. Spillar has a good program in place that we do the best we can with the corridors we have and usually the bottle necks are the intersections and the traffic signals. So the more we can do to improve that effort the more our mobility increases as well. And then we looked at transit enhancement and partnering and that's a program, as you all mentioned, many of your constituents are looking for more connectivity in their communities. And that is a capital metro function, but are there ways that we can help them by relocating bus stops, by improving transit priorities and by -- and ensuring that the mobility of a corridor is improved by getting a bus out of the travel lane when they stop to get their passengers. So the other corridors, as I mentioned earlier, other than the six and seven that we've already studied, here's a list that we put together that we would suggest would be the next group of corridors that we look at. And some of them have different levels of preliminary engineering reports done and they're ready for design and construction. And some have had no preliminary engineering reports. And you can see in the packages as we move forward that there's [11:30:09 AM] different level of funding for them. But we do think that there would be the next group of projects, including some substandard roads which in a little different part of our presentation, different category, but these corridors should be the ones that we start the work next, start working on what would be the improvements to fund in the next programs. So we also have in the local mobility needs, this really gets into the neighborhood projects. These are the projects that move folks in and around our neighborhoods. And we're looking at not only active mobility, the sidewalk trails and the bicycle networks, there's an 800-million-dollar need in that category. There's a need in the local area traffic management and we'll get into that in a little bit more detail in the railroad safety crossings, as well as the street and bridge. And this is the capital renewal that I mentioned earlier. As we move forward with the programs, we would just remind you that we have to maintain our infrastructure as we continue to move into funding cycles. So dialing down a little bit more detail in those categories I mentioned, the local area traffic management, you hear from many of your neighborhoods as the traffic shifts and cuts through neighborhoods that they want to work with the city to develop traffic-calming plans and to try to slow down the traffic that's cutting through their neighborhoods, and that's what this program does, this works with every neighborhood to develop a plan that's specific to their neighborhood and to see if we can work at mitigating cut-through traffic, especially speeds, but traffic cut throughs through the neighborhood. Railroad safety crossings you hear from some of the constituents these do quiet Zones whether by the federal railroad administration, the trains are required to blow their horns as they flow through these intersections. Unless we work with them on some infrastructure improvements to make those safe so they don't have to blow their [11:32:09 AM] horns, that's what part of this is for safety crossings. And there's a need to work on some of those crossings throughout our community. The neighborhood connections as I mentioned earlier, there's a huge need that's been identified in the bicycle and pedestrian urban trail plans. The active mobility would actual $800 million and it's broken out into more detail on this slide. 109 million for all ages abilities network and bicycle plan. The sidewalk plan has 580 million, 150 million would be the sidewalk rehab and replacement. Remember we have maintenance on existing sidewalks. But then there's 380 million for sidewalk improvements for areas where we have missing gaps in our network. And 50 million are included in what we call named projects, which are identified in some of our projects as we move forward. I won't touch on this in great detail, but I've said this a few times. This is the capital renewal side of things. Please keep this in mind as we move forward. Either in the 2016 package or in the 2018 package we're going to need to fund capital renewal. We are at the 80% of our streets are in good and fair -- better than good and fair condition. We don't want that to drop below that. That number right now from benchmarks is low compared to some of our other communities, but it's at a level where again I don't think our community is as focused a the street quality as they are on the mobility. We do understand the need to put mobility as a priority, but we also want to remember that we have to maintain our existing infrastructure. You see in some of the street reconstruction, these projects that I have listed here can also be included in some of the corridor work, but these really are what we include -- what we title or define as substandard streets. They're project that need drainage improvements, that need sidewalks. So they're again a MIX between corridor plans and substandard streets. So this is again a list [11:34:10 AM] of projects and you will notice some of those that are on this list that I'm sure your shits --your constituents are well aware of. When we went through the process you identified some needs in the area and we brought those forward not only in the corridor planning, but in the substandard street process. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about the strategic programs that we still have a need for as we move forward, the great streets program. This is a list of projects that are next on their category. The imagine Austin small area master plans. These projects flow out of the master plans and projects. You'll note that we mentioned colony park loop road. We've included colony park loop road in some of our packages. That's an important connection for an area of our community that has a master plan completed and I think you should consider funding at some point. And then the partnerships, the neighborhood partnering program is a successful program that public works administers working with neighborhoods where there's a matching program that the city will provide funds if the neighborhood comes up with funds of their own and a lot of that is in-kind funds. And there are many things that we do that the neighborhoods are very excited about and so that would need funding as well as we move forward in either the 2016 or the 2018 program. So therefore after using that data we've gotten in place, now I'm going to start working into some of the packages. We've used all the data that we have from our neighborhood plans, as much as we could gather in the short amount of time frame from the previous bond programs, from the previous corridor studies and from the mobility talks. Mike did a great job of assembling that and giving us input as we move forward on what the community was telling us on that information. That's what we've done to put together the next of these packages. Before I unveil some of the packages we want to talk about some of the [11:36:10 AM] things that we looked at as we consider preparing the packages for your consideration. Obviously the needs always outweigh the available funding so we're trying to balance needs throughout the community. We don't really think you will have enough funding to do everything in one corridor so you will have to balance the needs as we move forward. It's important that the next corridors that he with start thinking about that. It's important for the community and our bond cycle to have corridors that aren't perhaps shovel ready, but are ready to be designed and constructed. And it takes quite a bit of time for us to reach out to the neighborhoods where these corridors are and to work with community stakeholders to develop the vision for what they want that corridor to reflect through their community. So that takes -- that's what a corridor study or a preliminary engineering report will do. It takes that stakeholder process and sets the vision that then when you all develop the next funding cycle we have projects that are Teed up and ready to go. So that's important as we move forward. Is not to only look at the corridor studies that we've completed thus far, but look at developing those next corridors to study. We also have with the limited time that we have to analyze this we had to use again as your resolution reflected existing data. So we looked at the rolling needs assessment that Mike's capital projects office puts together. We looked at the completed corridor studies. We looked at the recent quarter cent funding allocations that you all put together and we used that on a high percentage of your funding that went to sidewalks, for example. We touched base with the partners transportation agencies to see what they had on their books and what we could do to partner with them to accelerate needed projects in the community. We'll use those as we move forward to help [11:38:11 AM] implement some of these projects in a thoughtful manner. So we'll start working through the packages. I do want to mention that the package that we sent you last night digitally was incorrect and we sent you one this morning. Please use that as we move forward. The written copies you have today are up to date so they are correct. We also provided you a spreadsheet at each one of your spots that hopefully summarizes this. You might have to use a magnifying glass to look at the fine print, but hopefully that gives you something in one place to look at these different packages. So starting with the 2 best-million- dollar alternative, several councilmembers asked for an alternative. If we were at a 300-million-dollar constant tax rate, something that would be less than that. So we put together this 250-million-dollar alternative. I'll walk through these in fairly good detail, the 250-million-dollar alternative, and then after that I'll just reflect some of the differences between those. So in this again we focused on three different areas that matched in the mobility talks so for this regional mobility projects for the $250 million we had the 17-million-dollar set aside for Parmer lane to add the two additional lanes so that txdot project, we had $5 million for loop 360 that would partner with txdot to begin the design work on one of the grade separated interchanges or some additional work in their corridor that we would find would be a priority need to begin the design work. We didn't have funding in this package for 620 at 2222 or for oak hill parkway. This package designates 22 million for regional mobility? The corridor mobility projects, the projects listed on top, these are the corridors that have completed mobility plans. Corridor studies, the estimated costs are in the column in the middle [11:40:12 AM] and then what we think we would get out of those costs were some of the near term design and construction projects. These are a little bit fluid, but if you want to look at what those are you can look at the corridor studies and we can provide that data if you want more information on what those projects look like. If you look at the corridor studies. And we can get you copies again, if you look at the near term and short or medium term design projects, then you can see what each project could be accomplished with these funding levels. I will mention to Riverside drive, the corridor study that was completed for Riverside drive only had three million dollars for short-term improvements. They put most of their improvements in medium and long-term. We thought this would be another good opportunity for us to match its smart city grant, which is $40 million. Riverside is a corridor that's a priority corridor in that smart city grant application and we will know by the end of June. With the mayor's help you will get that money, right, mayor? Delia will help as well. And we will know be by the end of June if we're successful on that grant application. We thought it would be wise at this point to put the $40 million in really as a dollar for dollar match. So that would help improve Riverside drive again as a priority corridor in the smart city grant application. So that gets us to $156 million in this package for the six study corridors to help take them. Remember, there's 120 million dollars' worth of need so that doesn't complete the corridor, but it does do some of the near term work and some of the pilot programs. Moving down on Brodie lane, that's an important corridor as you all in the southwest part of our community that's been under study for many, many years and this $15 million would be a near term design [11:42:14 AM] and construction for intersection improvements along that corridor and hopefully they can bring monies to the table because portions of the corridor are within the county. And then the next list of projects or the next priority projects that we suggest we would begin doing again, preliminary reports or corridor studies on, that's the spicewood springs, that's the connection in 360 to Mesa. Colony park loop road is a master plan. Lakeline boulevard there's a segment of north lamar/guadalupe now that is not completed that we would want to continue the -- has not been studied. We want want to begin that work. This would be some -- there would be some traffic signal projects that we would continue to work on. These would be outside the corridors that are mentioned, but as you know as we continue to work through bottle necks in -- for corridor for mobility in these corridors we will find signals that will need to be replaced or installed installed. There is no money identified for transit enhancement other than what already is in the corridors. There's money for transit enhancements in the corridor plans, but not identified as a separate bucket in this package. And there's $10 million that we would recommend in this package you would devote to the top safety intersection improvements. You funded the top five this year. We continued to go down the list. We have the next 30 identified. By the way, we need to provide that list to you so you can have the information on what the next 30 will be. This would get us about to the next seven or eight intersections with that amount of money. So that gets [11:44:15 AM] $186 million total in this package for corridor mobility. Moving on then to the local mobility, and I apologize, the Numbers are getting a little bit small here to get everything on one sheet. We would not fund in this package the local area traffic management. We would assume then in 2018 that we would come back with a proposal to fund this program as well as the railroad crossing improvements. We would not fund in this 250-million-dollar package assuming we would get funding in the 2018. Sidewalk improvements, this is the 27 million that we begin on the top and high priority sidewalks around corridor mile around schools, transit stops. This would begin to attack those projects that are highest priority in the sidewalk network. Not nearly enough money to fund the whole sidewalk high and high priority needs, but this begins to continue that program. Five and a half million for bicycle lanes. These are really beyond street bicycle lanes and then you can see the urban trail corridors that we would fund as $24 million for urban trails. We would not fund the neighboring partnering program in this package and we'd expect to get funding in the 2018 package. We would not fund capital renewal in this package since it's at 250 million, but would again expect it to come back in 2018 and talk to you about our capital renewal needs. We would fund some level of substandard streets because we think those are important to move forward and those are listed here, meadow lake is a project that the ifc that came from councilmember Garza that you all adopted to move forward to identify funding on that project so we've included that in this package. This level would only fund the design and not the construction. Future additional packages we suggest you would fund the construction as well. And we do not fund again bridge, culverts and structures and critical infrastructure improvements. [11:46:15 AM] We would expect to fund those in the 2018 package. So that gives a total of 42 million for this 250- million-dollar alternative for total local mobility and then this is a summary of that 250-million-dollar package. Now, I won't spend as much time on the rest of the packages. I'll just try to reflect the differences because we use this as a baseline and we are obviously building off of that. The 300-million- dollar package, Parmer lane is the same. We adjust the loop 360 up to about 40 million. That again could be more on 360. With matching funds we could do at least one of the grade -- we would hope one of the grade separated interchanges. Txdot's priority at this point is the one the Westlake drive. That would improve mobility in that corridor dramatically. We would fund a million and a half for design on the oak hill parkway, the old bee caves bridge, that wouldn't be construction, but that would launch the design right now and then when ctrma gets funding and we identify future funding as we move forward then we could fund the construction of that. So that list, in this package there would be $58.5 million. Just as a a reminder the 250-million-dollar package had 22 million. The corridor mobility projects, this gets to the same level of the 156 million for the study corridors, so we have completed corridor studies on. So that's the same as the 250-million-dollar package. On the -- we begin -- we again have the Brodie lane and the other corridor projects is very close to what we had in the 250-million-dollar package. We did add Anderson mill, but this is probably not correctly shown. This is shown as a preliminary engineering report. We've already done some work on Anderson mill, so we'll have to come back and tell you what the next phase would be. It would be more likely construction dollars at this point because we're farther along on Anderson mill than is shown in this package. The others are about the [11:48:15 AM] same. That gets us to $186 million. 186.5 million, which is very similar to what we in the 250-million- dollar package. We just added the Anderson mill package. On local mobility, the differences here on the sidewalk program goes from 27 million to 33 million. The bicycle program goes from five and a half to seven. The trail improvements goes from seven to 8.5 million. Meadow lake boulevard as I mentioned earlier, this is complete design and construction so it's listed at five and a half million. And so therefore the substandard roadways goes from about two and a half to six and a half million dollars. So that raises this package for local mobility from the 42 million in the 250 to about 55 million. So that's that summary then is listed here for the 300-million-dollar package. I'll move forward to the 500-million-dollar package. The difference here is in loop 360 we've raised it from 40 million to $46 million. That will again perhaps get us into design and construction for not only one grade separated interchange, but with matching funds hopefully we could do two. 620 now instead of the -- we funded in this package 25 million for midterm design and construction. That is txdot's result of their study is perhaps a bypass at 620 and 2222. And with those funds and matching funds from txdot hopefully we could get that going and constructed. And so that raises this number from the 58.5 in the 300-million-dollar package to 89.5. The corridor work, this raises pretty dramatically in this package. It goes -- north Lamar goes from 18 to 35 million. Burnet goes from 19 to 40 million. Riverside 40 to 60 million. Airport 20 to 40. 969 from 16 to 25. South Lamar stays the same at 23 and Guadalupe [11:50:16 AM] stays the same at 20. Obviously the more money we put into these corridors the more near midterm and maybe even some longer term projects that were identified in those studies would be accomplished and we would work through to identify what those projects projects are as we move forward. Brodie lane stays the same. Spicewood springs goes from just a preliminary engineering report to $17 million that would be acquired to add lanes from 360 to Mesa to complete that corridor. And then the preliminary engineering reports are the same with a note again on Anderson mill and those could probably be reflected differently. That would change then the other corridor projects from 18 and a half million to 40. The traffic signals we would increase from two to seven and then top safety intersections we would increase from 10 to 15. That would make this package 305 million and again the 300 million was about 186. So looking at local mobility we would start funding at this level the local area traffic management at 300 million -- three million. The railroad crossings at 1 million. The sidewalk improvements we bump up from 33 to 55 million to begin again to complete more of the sidewalks in the quarter mile from schools and transit stops. The bike program doubles from seven to 14. And the urban trail program goes from eight and a half to 16 and a half. We also change cooper lane, meadow lake still the same with a design construction. Cooper lake is funded at eight million to do design and construction in this package. And Ross road is increased to a million five and that's probably mislabeled there as well. That's just design of that roadway, not design and construction. So that package is 105.5, which again the 300 million was about 55. So there's the summary of that package. And now we'll move into two different alternatives for your 720-million-dollar program alternatives. The first one we called a blended alternative. [11:52:16 AM] It's a MIX between focusing on the corridors as a priority and starting to spread some of the funds out throughout the community, especially in some capital renewal. This is where we're starting to put more money into capital renewal. With the idea that if you do a 720-million-dollar package in 2016 that the needs in 2018 might be more challenging to get capital renewal into that program. So if you're going to choose a 720-million-dollar package we would suggest that some capital renewal funds be included in that package. So let me -- oops. Let me start walking through the differences here. So on loop 360 for regional mobility, we've increased that to 50 million. And for oak hill parkway we've now included the design and construction of that bridge so that community would get eight million dollars for that project for the oak hill parkway corridor. That raises it from 89.589 in the 500 to about $100 million for regional mobility. On the corridor mobility project, in this blended alternative we didn't change the study corridor money. We left it at 243. The Brodie lane is the same. Spicewood is the same. Colony park loop road is funded now to design and construction at 16 million. We've included preliminary engineering reports for the next set of corridors that are identified here, north Lamar, Guadalupe, all the way you can see the list. I won't run through all of those for six million dollars. Anderson mill and rundberg east/west again as I mentioned earlier, those are kind of misidentified. Those are really design funds and/or construction funds. We'll need to continue to work on what that number should be if you all choose those corridors. That puts the other corridor projects at about 55 million where we had 45 million in the 500-million-dollar program. Traffic signals are doubled to 14 million. Transit enhancements we've put a new bucket in at six million dollars. Those programs again would be to look at bus stop relocations, anything that we can do [11:54:17 AM] on an infrastructure side to make capital metro's easier to connect with our neighborhoods. That's what that bucket would help us partner with them. And then the top safety intersections we would get much farther down the list with the $26 million in this package. That leaves a total of about 344 million. 305 was in the 500-million-dollar package. Moving on to local mobility, these Numbers are very similar until you get down to neighborhood partnering program. We doubled that to two million dollars. The street improvements now as I mentioned erwinder are earlier, we're beginning to fund capital renewal. This isn't at the point that public works need toes to do improvements, but this gets them into the next phases of projects. So that's a 75 million dollars' worth of design and construction for street improvements. The substandard roads are bumped up a little bit to include some preliminary engineering reports on the projects that you see listed there for three million dollars. And then we've also funded again capital renewal for bridges, culverts and structures and some critical infrastructure projects. We have several projects that we've identified that should be funded in either this program or the next program. Fall well lane is a roadway that floods frequently and it has -- it leads to our wastewater treatment plant and to an Austin energy power substation. And we have employees that are trapped every time that roadway floods and washes out. It's something that we really need to address. So that's one of those projects. William cannon bridge is overpass over railroad is in dire need of help as well. Emmitt Shelton bridge, the community previously provided the funding. And north acres is a neighborhood that needs a lot of infrastructure work. As we moved through and put water and wastewater lines in, we've [11:56:17 AM] identified quite a bit of base and pavement work that needs to be done in that neighborhood. That's what those infrastructure projects are. This blended alternative for the $720 million puts -- there's the summary of those. Now I'm going to talk about another alternative for your 720. This focuses more on the corridor studies with the idea that if we wanted to make further progress on the six, seven corridors that we've identified the needs, is 920 million dollars' worth of needs, how would we move forward with that? To do that we had to >> We had to take money from the other buckets, we took money on the residential mobility projects, oak hill parkway is reduced back down to just design it it should just say design. So that's the reduction in the mobility -- in the regional mobility side. In the corridor side, then you can see the -- the large increase in the study corridors. Burnet goes from 40 to 80, so on and so forth, $448 million worth of funding in the seven corridors that we've previously studied, again getting more near midterm and even long-term design and construction done on the corridors that were already studied. It drops Brodie lane from 15 million for describe and construction really to $500,000 to just do preliminary design work, same for spicewood springs, same for colony park road. So there's -- those corridors would just be -- we would do some preliminary work to identify the needs for the next funding cycle if you go with this package. The traffic signals is reduced from 14 million to two and a half, transit enhancements from six to 2.5, and top safety intersection improvements won listed at 15 million. So that would put this corridor work at 471 million versus the blended alternative [11:58:20 AM] had 344 million. So you see obviously you see the focus of this package is on the existing corridors. Continuing on with this enhanced corridor alternative, the local area traffic management is left the same as the 720 blended, railroad crossing improvements are taken to zero, assuming we would get funding in the 2018 program. Sidewalk program, bicycle program remain the same as the 720 blended and then the tiered -- the urban trails is just reduced slightly to 16 million, I think 16.5 in the previous one. Neighborhood partnering program was reduced to zero then, again, assuming we would get funds in the 2018 program and capital renewal is reduced to 42 million, really just about a couple years worth of work for them to continue the street reconstruction and street improvements as they move forward so we would be back asking for fudged in the next funding cycle for the 2018 program. Meadow lake is still listed as design and construction and then critical infrastructure improvements, I mentioned those earlier, we would only fund this at 14.5 to start the design work and some improvements that we would need funding in the next bonding cycle to complete that work. So there's your summary on your enhanced corridor alternative. And then we put together a package so you could see all of those together. And we're here to answer any questions you may have. The next phase of this, as we -- you've gotten the phase three, this is the typical bond cycle. We have given you the bond capacity Numbers here today. Greg, thank you for that work. And then if you move forward with this and we will work with you in many more detail if you choose to move forward as a body on setting the November election, you have a window between August 10 and the 22 to set that, November 8 [12:00:23 PM] election. We would recommend that if you move forward with that that you spend the month of June to land on -- we've given you a whole bunch of alternatives today and it will be a challenge I'm sure to land on a package that y'all are comfortable with if you choosing to forward but you really do need to do that in June. Therefore, that gives us time to educate the community through July and August before you set the election on that package. We cannot advocate as staff but we would educate the community on what's included in the packages and then you have the -- I've listed the council meetings you have available for you, ninth, 16th, 23rd and then obviously the mobility committee on the 14th we would set a public hearing and continue to work on that. And so at that point, mayor, mayor pro tem, we're really here to answer any questions on this or anything else you've heard today. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let me add my thanks as well to the tee, Mike and Greg. An incredible amount of work done in a really short period of time. Covered quite a breadth and councilmember kitchen and the mobility committee have a big task over the next two weeks in terms of sorting through what are lots of options and I hope the community weighs in during that period of time. Just real quickly, my thoughts on this is that, you know, I began with -- the conversations as a council we've had realized when we talk about what it is -- when people say it's unaffordable in this community, what do they mean? We've seen from the stuff that we've gotten from ed that really what we're talking about are housing costs, be it rent or mortgage and transportation costs. That together represents almost for the % of what people pay at 100% mfi. [12:02:25 PM] It's an even higher number over 50% at 70% mfi and at 30% mfi, it goes over 100%. The taxes that we have on city of Austin property taxes represent 1.4% of what people pay, and we're going to northeastern a process here now over the next three months where we work on budget and it's important that we be as frugal as we can and that we don't spend anything we don't need to spend and only where we do need to spend. But as a practical matter, we're going to be debating whether that number is 1.3% or 1.5%. It's almost within that range that we debate. So I like the thought of being, as a council -- and we'll talk about this I guess at the retreat, which is happening over the same time period, in terms of how we prioritize what we spend our time on. And this council has been doing a lot with respect to housing costs and trying to push affordable housing and moving money to that direction. And I think that there are other things that we can and should be doing too, and I think that this mobility piece gives us a chance to do that. My -- if we keep spending mobility money the way we spend mobility money, where we're just approving -- improving roads here and there and kind of in the way that we've been doing that and adding capacity as we move, the city will not move off of the curve that we're on and we'll be a city that becomes increasingly more unaffordable over time. I don't know why we would expect that to change. But I think that there is an opportunity if we really want to bend the curve to really do something that's significantly different. I think that the mobility costs and housing costs are really intertwined with each other, and we have an opportunity to really do things that fundamentally change how we live in the city and how we operate in the [12:04:27 PM] city, and I think that we have that opportunity here with respect to what's in front of us now. I want to start off real fast by acknowledging the work that [indiscernible] Did, that you started off in your presentation. So senator Watson, in his negotiations with the state on I-35 seems to have identified a path forward where the I-35 improvements, including the managed lane, so that transit and buses can always go 45 miles an hour down mopac all the way up north is something that looks like it can happen without having to reach into our bonding capacity. And what that does is it lets us deal with that in -- really hard pain point but it really clears the avenue and the lane for us to focus on local stuff. So I'm real appreciate of that work and the work happening with the campo members that we have, dealing with will Connolly and the other leaders, will Connolly chairs campo and seems to have indicated he would support the kind of plan that senator Watson and our staff have been working out with txdot so the lane is clear for us to focus on doing stuff opinion then what do we do? I'd be -- what we really need to have is a year and a half to do this, as we go through the Normal bonding process and if we do this rights we spend a year and a half to do it and it may be that there's not enough time to do this and we can't do a bond election in November. And I think that's an open question and ultimately we have to decide that question. Because I think that that's very real, deadline. If we did a bond election in knot November, I think -- in November, I think it would be because there's enough consensus we can actually get to during June, over the next two weeks. And either that consensus is something that naturally [12:06:28 PM] follows from where we are or it doesn't, and consensus doesn't mean unanimous. I think we need to see whether or not the community has already spent enough time in giving direction and in doing analysis that the consensus that we're -- spade work has already been done. If it is, I think we can consider something in November from my perspective. If not, if we don't have consensus, if everybody is still real scattered and wants lots of different things, then probably we need to just acknowledge the fact that we can't go forward. There are a lot of advantages in going forward this November if we have that consensus, beginning with the fact that there will be 300,000 people that vote in the November election. This is going to be a really big expense potentially. It's a really big turn in our community potentially. We can really bend the curve if we want to in our community potentially and to be able to have that election when everybody has a chance to vote I think has a lot of value. As well as I think giving bonds the greatest opportunity of being approved because everyone in the community is voting in that election. The next time we have that election is four years from now. So if we don't do it now we're going to be looking at doing it probably at an election that is not a presidential election year. So that should have us at least taking a really hard look at whether or not we can develop that consensus to be able to do that election that we have now. And then the question is whether we have that kind of consensus. I look at the mobility talks report that you have taken us through and the very first key finding that comes out of that is to improve the major city corridors. There's the study we all -- we had Jeff Tumblin, who is the transportation expert who came through Austin a year ago and did a -- an independent look, strategic planning look on [12:08:30 PM] transportation issues. Just issued a report that has all came out to us. His first priority is to implement the corridor plans that we have in the city. The corridor plans being the roads that you've mentioned, Lamar, burnet road, 969, mlk, Riverside drive, airport. Those are the things -- and it will be good. I look forward to hearing capital metro weighing in on this over the next couple weeks and at the hearing, but it appears as if -- if you were really trying to maximize transit, to really be able to put transit in places where there would be the ridership, to be able to generate the revenue, to really show that transit can work as well as to make that cultural turn where a lot of people are now riding the bus who can afford not to ride the bus, but are riding it because it's in fact quicker and faster and more efficient, this is the same corridor plans that capital metro has been look at and designing too. So that happens at the same time. The corridor plans that we have -- and they're voluminous if you go through them all, and I haven't been through all of them, but I do see that the throughput from those corridor plans indicate that -- you said the real problem is at the intersections. I think that's true. That's my experience in lights and what people complain about to me. The corridor plans improve the delay at those lights anywhere in a range from 25% to just over 50%. The do nothing plan on those corridors is not a reduction of 25 to 50% in delay but an increase in delay of 70% over that same period of time. So it's a pretty extreme thing. But importantly it really moves transit through. The plans have the bus pull-outs, puts in the median so people are making left turns in the middle of the block, you're not stuck behind buses that are loading and unloading, it has the queue jumps, it has the elements [12:10:31 PM] that could really make transit work. And the community has already spent tons of hours and tons of money on these plans as they have been done and put on the shelf. And so coming up with a look at this that focuses on the -- on the corridors makes sense to me. It also makes sense to me, given where we are as a city and as a council, because we're going to be looking at the codenext process, and that's going to be in front of us in January. One thing that I think we've all experienced over the last year, people come up with plans that have increased density on these corridors and everyone looks at the plans that are coming in and they look at it and go, well, that may make sense on its own corridor but there's already way too much traffic on that corridor so even though that's where the density is said to go on imagine Austin we can't do that because there's too much traffic. We talk about doing the ads, where we reduce the parking requirements within a quarter mile of transit and the objection to that is very reasonable. It's, well, it might be next to a transit corridor but there's no frequent transit on that corridor. So you're building to an infrastructure that doesn't exist. I think if we're going to make the codenext process really work, if we're really going to be able to develop in a way that allows us to do density along the corridor so that it doesn't have to go into the middle of neighborhoods, then we really have to invest in those corridors so that codenext can really do the density along the side so that we can get the missing housing, so that we can get the frequency of the service on transit, so that we can actually make that kind of cultural shift as a city. So I like the plans. As I look at these, that focus on the corridors. And I hope that we do those corridors in a way that [12:12:31 PM] maximizes their potential to really allow for density and to really allow for transit to be able to work. Then I hope that we do that in a way where we go in and we just do those roads right and we're not doing construction now and then construction in four years and construction in four years. So we come in and we knock out the corridors and really change how we do those patterns in our city. But that has I- 35, that has our corridors done. I think it makes sense to do some of the other really high pain points, especially the ones that we can get credit for from txdot with respect to the I-35 project. So doing something on 360 makes real good sense to me. Brodie lane to the south, Anderson mill or Parmer up in the north makes sense to me. And then doing a significant advance -- investment in sidewalks. That seems to be something that a lot of people mention. We've lost two kids here recently, and making a real significant investment in sidewalks I think is real important. As you look at the real highest priority sidewalks, most of those are going to be east because those are the neighborhoods that don't have the existing sidewalks. And I think we follow that priority plan. And then I think it's great for us to hit the safety. We've hit the first five intersections at the $15 million. If 10 million got us the next seven and eight, maybe $15 million gets us the next ten, but I like us doing that as well. But that adds up to the 720. There are already people that looking at this and saying, wait a second, what about flooding? What about affordable housing? What about lots of other things? Parks? What about -- and those things are all near and dear to me as well. [12:14:32 PM] So I like the idea of taking the $200 million of the $500 million that we have that we can spend without doing taxes and putting it to a citizens' bond commission panel. That can start the year-long process to actually vet those things, the same way that the corridor plans have already been vetted. And charge that group with using that $200 million plus whatever is necessary to be able to drive whatever the other priorities are, but if we get into that conversation now, if we need to get into that conversation now, I think that's just an indication to us that we're not really ready to do something in November. Because if we go down that path, we're not going to be able to have the bond election in November, which might be the right choice to make. But if we -- the only way I think we get to November is if we focus on mobility, if that's something that people are okay with doing. And I think having the bond committee and seating it with 200 -- seeding it with $200 million is a good and effective honoring of those kinds of things. And then, you know, I've already heard people say that there's not bicycle and transit improvements in the corridors and then I've heard other people say that there's already too much money for bicycles in the plan, the bicycle people wanted $150 million toward bicycles. The -- this plan has bicycles in the package. It's also part of the corridors. It's also part of the urban trails. But we're not going to be able to please everybody on that issue. We're not going to be able to please everybody. We have communities that are divided on those issues too. So if there's a consensus package to happen, it's one that balances that and probably doesn't give anybody everything that they would want on that issue either. [12:16:34 PM] My hope is, you know, we did a quarter penny deal as a city, where we took money, we divided it ten different ways, went out to the community we said that was the last time we were going to do that. My hope is that we actually make the investment to see whether or not corridors in the city can change how we live in the city, to change the direction of the city. Because if we take all this money and spend it in lots of different places, we're doing exactly what the city has always done, and we won't change -- we won't change direction. We won't change who we are and the city will not become an affordable city. If we're really serious about affordability, if we're really serious about mobility in this city, then I think that we focus ever so much on the corridor plans. I look at a lot of these other things on here, and I wish we had $10 billion because clearly we have $10 billion worth of needs, but we don't. I think there's fine- tuning of the prioritizing of the corridor plan, which is the fifth one you have, because I see some things on here that I hadn't seen before, in terms of weighing and shifting. But for what it's worth, at this point, my hope is that we go big or we go home, that we try to reach the consensus, if we can, in June to do a bond election in November. If that consensus exists. But at least we try to see whether or not that can be true or not and I look forward to working with the mobility and the council as we head to June 14. >> Houston: We're going to stop? I'm trying to figure out because I'm getting brain dead. [12:18:34 PM] >> Pool: Take our lunch break -- >> Mayor Adler: You want to do that? Somebody want to speak before we -- I don't want to speak and immediately call the lunch break. [ Laughter ] >> Zimmerman: That's not a bad idea. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I'm sensing people want to break for lunch. >> Kitchen: Can I say one thing? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: I have a lot of questions which we can -- and I'll speak when we get back. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's come back here at 1:30 thank you. [ Recess ] [1:42:21 PM] >> Mayor Adler: We're ready to get back up. It is 1:40 on June 1st. We're back gearing up. We were in conversation, discussion, about the mobility presentation. Ms. Kitchen, did you want ago to go next? >> Kitchen: Yes. Unless somebody else wants to go next. >> I'll go and you have the. >> Kitchen: All right. Okay. So let's see, a couple of things. Well, first off, I just want to add that I think that the proceeding with major focus on the corridors makes sense. Not only does it make sense but it aligns with what we saw from mobility talks. The questions I have in my mind just have to do with what I -- I'll just call it balance, between how much we put on corridors and what we're actually getting for the dollars we put on corridors, and when we're getting those, and how that aligns with the other priorities closely -- you know, other high priorities that we saw from mobility talks, also, and that has to do with things like public transit and sidewalks and local roads and those kinds of things. So -- so that's the kind of thing that's going on in my mind. I also think it's important to really look at 2016 versus 2018, so I have questions related to how much can we really spend between now and 2018. And one of the reasons I have questions about that is because of the balance of the other kinds of bond things that we need to look at, and that might be -- in my minds, that's housing and also flood mitigation and other things like that. But it's also the fact that we haven't finished some major, major strategic planning. And I want to make sure that [1:44:22 PM] we've got the dollars that will support what comes out of our strategic mobility plan, for example, which I think is going to be major, and also the connections 2025 plan, which is the bus plan. So I want to make sure -- part of the balance for me is that we don't spend so much now, don't commit so much now, that we have tied our hands for some other major planning that's going forward, particularly in the connects that we can't spend it all between now and 2018. So those are the kinds of questions that are going on in my mind. I also think -- I think of the transportation system as a system. I mean, it's a system, and the corridors are, of course, a major, major part of that, but they're a piece. Even though they might be the highest weighted, biggest piece, you don't get the full benefits if you don't have the other pieces. So that's why I'm concerned also about the active transportation pieces, the sidewalks and the bicycle, in particular. So with that said, let me just ask a few questions. Let me start by -- I wanted to -- the mayor referenced the Tumlin report which has some very interesting information in it, very good information in it, and there's a part in there where he talks about geographic equity performance measures, and that's not something that you can just pull out of the hat. That's something you have to plan for. But I guess my question is, as part of our strategic mobility plan, is that something that we will look at? He mentions it in the context of talking about -- you can't just do transportation based on geography like you might do for parks or things like that, because it's a whole system. So when you're thinking about equity across the whole city, about how you make sure that the whole city has service, you don't think of it in exactly the same way because it's a system. But, at the same time, he does [1:46:24 PM] talk about a comprehensive transportation funding strategy for the city, which I expect the strategic mobility plan will be a major part of that, and he also suggests that a geographic equity performance measure that ensures no part of the city is ignored. So I guess I point that out, and my question simply about that is, is that something that we can address as part of our strategic mobility plan, looking at that kind of measure, a geographic equity performance measure? I don't know if that's something you all have thought about, as within the scope of that project or not. >> We're still in the planning stages for that plan. But, yeah, we certainly looked at -- you mentioned the system. We certainly look at the mobility systems as they tie together. >> Kitchen: Uh-huh. >> All the multimodal components of that system, but we're certainly open to looking at -- every part of our community needs to work together. >> Kitchen: Yeah. Uh-huh. >> Or it doesn't work. >> Kitchen: Well, that's a conversation for to do day, but I would just suggest that as part of the strategic mobility plan, looking at the measures, and one of those measures being a geographic equity performance measure, might be useful to have, and it kind of lines up with what we've been talking about with the equity office, for example, and the indexes we've been talking about for that. In terms of questions, I'll just ask a few and then let other people talk, then I may have a few more. So we've talked a lot about -- about public transit, or public transportation, and that was highlighted as one of the key things in the mobility talks. Do we have a sense about how these packages would support that, more specifically, what are we doing -- what would we be doing on the corridors that would be helpful for public transportation? Do we know that yet? Or -- [1:48:24 PM] >> We do. Each corridor plan has, again, the near, mid, and long-term improvement plans. >> Kitchen: Uh-huh. >> And the long-term improvement plans obviously include the entire cross-section, and some of that focuses on transit and mobility. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Especially bus pullouts, the Q jumps at the traffic signals. So all of those deal with it in certain ways, and as we move forward, remember, some of these studies are a few years old. >> Kitchen: Yeah. >> If you all fund something that the voters approve, as we move forward, we'll update those plans when we're going through design with transit connectivity in mind. The mayor mentioned earlier, these corridors were chosen because of the high ridership and transit usage. That's why these corridors have been studied, and that is obviously a priority for the community. In mobility talks, we heard that very clearly. >> Kitchen: Uh-huh. >> So we will be working with capmetro as we move forward to design corridors and even update some of the plans that have been put together thus far to ensure that that transit connectivity and mobility is prioritized. >> Kitchen: Okay. Let me drill down a little bit more. As part of our decision-making about the level of funding to put in the corridors, and which corridors, is there something we can look at right now -- >> Sure. >> Kitchen: -- That would give us an idea of what we get for transit in each one? >> If you look at the corridor -- plus, once you start narrowing in a package, we can give you more information specifically. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> But right now, if you look at the corridors, each one has what says the near, mid, and long-term improvements with cost estimates. So generally, you can match up the number in the package with those -- those cost tables, and you can see the projects and the infrastructure that would be included in those. We'll tweak that some, again, because the corridor studies are somewhat old, some of them, but generally, that will give you a [1:50:25 PM] pretty good idea about what improvements that would be completed with the level of funding each package. >> Kitchen: Okay. We could look at that and say, say for south Lamar, for example, I could look at that and say I'm going to have to fund, you know, mid-term or long-term or whatever it is, before I get to the point where we're talking about transit improvement. >> You can see that from the table. I mean -- >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Even the near term improvements may include some intersection work that would improve transit. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So you can see that in each study. You can see the breakout of the projects and see how they affect transit. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> So if -- the focus is -- the question is on transit, again, after you lock in on a package, then we can give you some specific detail about what we think will be improvements in that -- included in that package for transit. >> Kitchen: Yeah. Part of my decision-making about the package is the extent to which -- is the extent to which we're actually -- the extent to which we're getting anything that improves transit, and when. In other words, how much money do I have to spend to the point -- toget to the point where I'm improving transit. I'd like to know that about transit, bicycle infrastructure and also sidewalk infrastructure. >> What we can do, I expect all the councilmembers will want to see that. We can shoot for the mobility committee. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> And to provide the different level of packages we've outlined today. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> And - - as best we can, what improvements would occur based on those packages, for transit, bikes, for trails, and sidewalks. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Other folks have already asked, there's a sidewalk bucket, but there's a lot of sidewalks in the corridor plans. So you remember -- you've got to remember that if you fund the corridor plans, there's a lot of sidewalk bikes that are already included am those plans. Another bucket then is for other projects around the community. >> Kitchen: Yeah. [1:52:26 PM] Just the additional level of detail, and I think you're talking about bringing that. In the extreme, do I have to fund the entire corridor plan before I see a sidewalk, or do I fund this -- yeah. Okay. All right. I may have some more questions, but I'll -- >> If I can just add one thing, some of the corridor studies, some of those cost tables will show you that there's a pilot program that, if you fund the near and mid-term, that will be the entire corridor within a -- within a narrow scope of the corridor. So it wouldn't fund six miles of the new section, it would fund a mile. So the community would then see, after that funding is implemented, that's what the corridor is intended to look like the scope of the corridor. So some of those funding schemes so pilot programs along the way. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Casar, then Ms. Pool. >> Casar: So, for me, in this conversation, I would like -- I would like for us at a baseline to very strongly consider funding at a minimum the safety style improvements that we need. One of the recent deaths that the mayor referenced was in my district, and many of my constituents have reached out in some of those meetings with those constituents, they've said that they see this as a city responsibility, as something that they've seen coming, in many situations, and so even if we can't get to agreements on what a bigger package may look like, I think that, at a minimum, the safety needed on our major streets and on the most needed sidewalks, and for those cyclists and intersections that are most dangerous, I would be very supportive and urge us to at least be able to come together on that in the course of the next few weeks. But I also agree with you, mayor, and in the vision that you've laid out for us to make [1:54:26 PM] some transformational investments in our transportation systems. A lot of it is what's already outlined in our comprehensive plan. If you go and look at the action steps laid out in imagine Austin around land use and transportation, the very first one talks about creating neighborhoods that are more walkable and bikable and where there is a shift towards public transit, and you can see in our -- in what mobility talks brought up, that is actually what people would like to be able to do if we could provide them the infrastructure to allow them to do that. I think we can shift away from having 75% of Austin driving in their cars by themselves to work, and if -- I guess the question before me is what sorts of investments, at what size, would get us there. And if that is -- or would get us to a place where a majority of us aren't doing that. And if that is the current corridor plans, or updated corridor plans, that would be good, but if it's the green line, as councilmember Houston mentioned, or bus rapid transit on burnet road, as laid out in the plans for councilmember pool's district, I just want -- I'm not tied down to any particular plan yet. What I would like to do is take the opportunity now, since we have so much of the community most likely already planning on participating in a November election, to give them the option to vote for something really transformational. And so I think that, at least for me, some of the corridor plans I hear from constituents all the time that they want investments in them. I've got north Lamar running right up through my district, and there are some parts of that that are extremely poorly planned, by sort of a state highway running through every urban neighborhood, but there are some parts of the corridor plans that bring up concerns for me, like having an unprotected bike lane on that street. I think we need to move towards [1:56:29 PM] more separated and dedicated lanes for transit and for people to be able to walk around safely, but I also trust what Mr. Goode has brought up, which is, that we can make sure that in the investments we're making, as councilmember kitchen mentioned, we can direct those investments towards what our priorities are. And if that's reducing vehicles, miles traveled, and increasing walking and biking and making people safer and increasing ridership on public transportation, then I'd be ready to make some big investments and use our bonding capacity when we have the opportunity to do so, to do that. And so in short order, we have a short amount of time, but I agree with the vision of making transformational investment to make us achieve what we've laid out in our comprehensive plan. But I'm ready to work hard with the council to come to hopefully some agreement about what will do this. And I understand we can't just decide that quickly in two or three weeks and draw up all the streets ourselves. But hopefully, if we do decide to put this on the ballot, we can craft language for the staff that gives language towards what we're investing in. I'm not so interested in the streets being painted really nicely or the lights being timed exactly right, if it's not different than what we've been doing, which is road -- more and more roads that try to get people to get people moving faster and faster, but we get clogged up anyways. We have to have a shift in the way we get around the city, and I want it to be a shift in the way all kinds of different people at different incomes get around the city, so I also understand why we might want to reserve some money for us to be able to invest in housing. Or we could make it a whole smart corridor package now that includes the kind of money that we need for affordable housing and shifting to public transportation all at once. But in the end, I guess really what this is all meant to say, for my colleagues to share with you all, where I'm at is at a baseline, ready to do some monitor work around safety [1:58:29 PM] because I think that's a baseline responsibility, then if we can work together to figure out what going big is, I'm ready to do that if it means shifting towards public transit, shifting towards walking and biking, not doing more of the same, and I think that aligns exactly with the goals you've laid out, mayor, and in making sure that we have the sort of mixed income, walkable, bikable, corridors that all kinds of different people deserve. >> Mayor adler:ms. Pool, then Ms. Houston. >> Pool: Your slide 63 and throughout the presentation that you did, Mr. Goode, has north Lamar boulevard and burnet road combined whenever you talk about a corridor but urban airport is just -- you know, airport is just airport and Riverside. So Lamar and burnet, they're in the same part of town but there are two separate systems, two separate roads and they don't intellect really. I was curious why they're always combined. Is it because they're sharing -- >> They were done in one study. The consultant did both north Lamar and burnet at the same time so that corridor study is called north Lamar burnet. >> Pool: Ongoing. >> They are different corridors but they're -- as you know, parallel. >> Pool: Right. >> So I think the idea at that time was there's maybe some synergy on those corridors working together so the consultant did them together. >> Pool: Do you know how much state ownership is on? Can you tell us how much state ownership is on both of those roads? What segments of north Lamar and what segments of burnet road? >> North of 183? Okay. 183 to Howard lane was the north Lamar segment txdot was interested in the city taking over. >> Is that about 2 miles? >> I don't know if that's -- [2:00:30 PM] it's probably about that. >> Pool: Okay. >> Then burnet was 183 to loop 1 was -- >> Pool: That's probably a similar distance. So and this was something that senator Watson talked about in his presentation earlier this week and it occurred to me when I was hearing that there is a lot of therefore I think here in acquiring the -- interest I think here in acquiring the authority to work those roads but I also would like to see some money attached to that if there was going to be a topographer. It can't -- transfer. It can't all be taking a burden off txdot. Txdot has a lot more funding sources than the city of Austin does. I think we have a couple, three different changes to their funding mention nixes in the last legislative session and I think we passed change to the constitution on where they could get -- was it the university fund they now share? They've got a pretty good sized piggy bank especially compared to what the city of Austin can do. So I would like to continue the conversations about acquiring the authority and the rights to those segments of the state-owned roads that are within our city limits, but I would like the negotiation to include very careful deliberation and thoughtful process that would bring money to us, at least in the short term or midterm so that we are not having to [indiscernible] Those funds for ourselves. I think that would be a good part of that negotiation. I'm looking at page 67, and this one talks about our financing partners with the regional mobility partnership. We talked about campo, and I just -- if -- and this goes back to the presentation that was made before our lunch break so might have to refresh my mind before I make my question. We were talking about the ownership and maintenance responsibility for the various [2:02:32 PM] roads and campo's involvement through the regional mobility authorities. And the city would take out the loan because the interest rate is cheaper for the city to borrow the funds. >> Those are separate items. >> Pool: Ongoing. >> Mayor Adler: So there's some money that the rma owes to campo, that's going to come into campo and campo can assign those however the membership in campo would assign those funds. What the senator was talking about was joining with the regional partners to have that money all put on I-35 from 45 in the north to 45 in the south, with some block of that for the city of Austin. >> Pool: And if I'm remembering right, he was saying there would not be any cost to the city because txdot would be actually amortizing the loans? We would take them out because we could have a lower interest rate, but the amortization would be on txdot? >> Mayor Adler: Well, that's the first component was money coming from the rma, that's cash they're paying. Instead of paying it to the mpo, the rma would pay that money to the state. So that would be one element of contribution. >> Pool: Ongoing. >> Mayor Adler: A second item would be that some of the money that campo -- that the state would use on the project would be money that in essence the city borrowed but the state agreed to make all the payments on. Because they have to -- they would end up paying a lower interest rate that way. >> Pool: All right. >> Mayor Adler: One of the open questions I think we have for bond council, who I think might be in next week to talk to us is what is the impact to us from a bonding capability if we take out the loan but the state is paying on the loan because they don't have the same credit rating that we have. Will that have an impact on us, at what levels? >> Pool: Right, okay. And that got to the question that I was going to ask, is are we actually at the same level with that, as far as [2:04:32 PM] bond ratings and would it have any kind of an effect on hours? >> Mayor Adler: Ours is better. >> Pool: I know, yes. >> Mayor Adler: And I think bond council is -- ed is going to find out, one of the two, what impact that would have, or Greg. At some point we need to answer that question. >> Pool: And then on slide 69 we were talking about corridor mobility improvements. I was curious about the time line. During the -- our budget last year, for fiscal '16, we put money out for the five most dangerous intersections. Would you be able to give us or remind us what the timing is on the work being done on those intersections? And the reason why I ask is, I want to move forward on an additional tranche of intersections, but I also don't want to enter into that -- [ laughter ] I'm sorry without knowing what -- when are we going to see the real improvements of the ones that we already said we were going to do? >> Councilmember, Robert spillar, department of transportation. So I'm pretty confident that I can tell you that we will have begun construction on all of those five intersections this fiscal year, but what is slowing us down is all five of those intersections happen to be on txdot roadways and so we've been working collectively with txdot and we still need to sign an intergovernmental agreement and that's something that came as a surprise. Originally we thought we were going to be able to make these minor changes without going that route but in subsequent discussions with txdot they want us to go ahead and do an intergovernmental agreement. So we figure out a way to accelerate through that, we'll be coming to you here this month, I believe, with an intergovernmental agreement, called an afa, but we anticipate starting construction on all the intersections this year. >> Pool: Okay. >> Some of them we've made interim fixes to, but then we'll go back and make those [2:06:33 PM] more permanent. >> Pool: Just generally, how long it will take to complete those five? >> It really depends on the complexity of each one. Some may take a few weeks and others four or five months. >> Pool: But not years? >> No, councilmember. I don't think so. >> Pool: So you think that those five intersections would be complete by this time next year? >> In '17, that is my belief, yes. >> Pool: Ongoing. That's really helpful. Thank you. >> Mm-hmm. Councilmember, just one thing. We had to start from a design level and go develop a whole design and everything so that's why we've been here. We're going to tap evergreen contracts, which means a pool contract wherever we can, and so hopefully we can move very quickly through those. >> Pool: Thank you. Then I just wanted to does a couple of questions on which of our projects are closer to shovel ready, for example, if I was interested in funding a good portion of the bonds on active transportation projects that could be done within the next fiscal year, they would be done a year from now, much like the intersections being done in the next year or so, can you get us a list or do you have one? The ones that are shovel ready, that are active transportation projects? >> Sure. We'll get you a list of the -- anything that we've had studies completed and we're ready to do design that's closer to shovel ready. So we can give you a list of the projects in the packages that are closer to shovel ready. >> Pool: Okay. That will be something that I'd really like to see. I think if we go forward with the bond this fall that -- to the extent that we're out there talking about what the benefit will be to the community and as we educate the folks in our district, I would like to be able to say to my people, much like with the quarter cent funds, that I put my quarter cent money [2:08:34 PM] primarily on the safe routes to schools and bikeways and pedestrian basic cons and that sort of thing I think as we all did. When I talked about it and they really liked the fact that they were relatively small projects but had large impact, and I'd like to see a good element of that as the leading edge on whatever bond proposal we may come forward with, so that if we do that, in that did in the first year or so we would also be hitting the ground running and turning some dirt so that people could see a real outcome, concrete outcome, of the bond package on the ground as quickly as possible. >> If I may add, on the sidewalk projects, the public works department does an outstanding job of cranking those out so those are funds that go very quickly and impact the neighborhoods. They do impact the neighborhoods faster than some of the other projects because they're smaller in scope but they have a large impact so public works does a great job of getting those projects out. >> Pool: And along the way we can maybe dovetail with some of the flooding concerns with our infrastructure because if we're doing some things with the roads and sidewalks, we may also be able to address flooding issues and maybe upgrade some infrastructure while we're at it so there might be some economies of scale that we could do. >> Yes, we certainly do that. Once we start adding complexity of projects then they start growing in scope and time. I was talking about the sidewalks get done quickly but we do that. I don't want to disagree with you, but it does add time to the projects because we want to cut the road once instead of two or three times so we along at drainage and water improvements, all those complexities to a project. >> Pool: Okay. So, yeah, the other questions I have just go to which projects are far enough along that we could reasonably fund them and start doing the work within the next three years as opposed to a longer range. That would be the focus I would have on a bond package. [2:10:35 PM] And this bond package is out of sync, as far as it's in the fourth year since the last one and normally we do every six years. So I would like to also just say that if we are looking to have a bond in two years from now, in '18, I would like to go back to our standard practice of having an actual bond oversight committee that's drawn from the community that's independent and that that's the only thing that they're doing. Right now I think there's a bond oversight committee that was put together to look at monitoring and implementing existing bonds that have already been sold but not maybe so much as oncoming so I'd like to reduce that confusion and have a group of citizens who their only responsibility will be vetting what the next upcoming one would be in 2018. >> We've listed that in our typical process. >> Pool: Right. >> That's the thing that with this aggressive schedule we could not do, but we do recommend -- completely agree with you, if you do a 2018 package that we would need to put a bond advisory group together that advises you on packages. >> Pool: Yeah. >> A lot of the heavy lifting is done by that committee, and in this process, it's done by staff. >> Pool: You guys are doing it, yeah. >> Because there's not a group that vetted that and came to you with packages that they think the community -- community members now come to us and you instead of that committee so this is a different process and complex and it's just -- >> Pool: Yeah, felt a little awkward from time to time but I think everybody is kind of getting into the rhythm of it all, which is good. So, yeah, that's also an initiative that I would support. >> Mr. [Indiscernible] Has led the staff effort by that via committee over the years and done a great job of being their liaison. You were one. >> Pool: Yeah I was. It was a good effort and I [2:12:35 PM] learned a lot and I think everybody does, which is why I'd be advocating for doing it again. It's a really superior approach. >> Mayor Adler: I like that too. Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you. Thank you, mayor. I've got a couple of questions but I'm going to ask one and then pass it around so that we can have some dialogue. I would like -- on page 34, you have the bonded programs since 1998, and it would be helpful for me -- I know councilmember troxclair asked for -- asked a question about transportation, but I need some additional buckets. I know to know, in those years where we had a transportation bond that passed, I'd like the buckets of sidewalks, urban trails and bikes. Again, as I said before, we sometimes lump those all together and I would like to have those broken out into those buckets. What did we spend on bicycles? What did we spend on urban trails? And what did we spend on sidewalks when those bonds were passed in those years? And then this -- my last thing, mayor, I appreciate the fact that you want to have a hurry up and change the culture. Sometimes if we hurry up we miss opportunities to do it the right way and we do it the hurry up way so at this point I have so many mover questions than I have answers that I can't at this moment support getting this on the bond -- I mean getting this on the ballot in November because there are just so much things that I need to talk about and get real clear so that when I go out and try to support or not support a bond that I have the information that the people in my district need to have in order to understand how they are to vote. So one of those things I'll bring up in just a little bit is presidential elections and how people vote straight party and then walk out the door. >> Mayor Adler: And to be clear, Ms. Houston, I'm not advocating a bond election in [2:14:37 PM] November. I'm advocating us determining whether or not that makes sense for us to do that, and I think that one of the things I raised was whether or not there was an ability to reach a consensus in this period of time, which is going to necessarily determine whether or not we can answer the questions that need to be answered. >> Houston: I apologize. When you gave your sole I will question, my assumption was that you were supporting it. >> Mayor Adler: That's okay Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. That was a perfect segue from councilmember Houston because I had some of the same questions about, you know, the buckets of what we're spending stuff on. First let me say real quickly, it looks like you took a swing from the fences and it's a whole lot of information in a short amount of time so congratulations. There's a lot of very interesting stuff here. I'll make a -- just a quick comment and then maybe a question and request. Going -- one more time I want to go back to this about since 1998 we really haven't been focusing on vehicle congestion, it says emphasis on pedestrian infrastructure, that's true. Interest in more mobility options I think our first big rail bond was 2000 with lance Armstrong and you can always trust him. Remember he tried to sell us the original light rail bond so I've been kind of vocal calling for new city management maybe that's not going to happen but if it did happen it might make sense to wait a year or two and wrap our heads around this again but somebody made the remark about guiding principles. I think I made a note on page 57, there was a remark about guiding principles and I think this goes back to the slide about what we've been doing since 1998. I'd love for there to be a way 40 council to give the voters a choice to vote on the modes. There are a lot of people that support -- still support the train and more mass transit options, people that support more bicycles, great streets, urban trails, you know, bike paths, what you have. [2:16:37 PM] A lot of us in the suburbs, especially my district 6 that want a loop around the city, so we want more freeway capability and we also want to open our green spaces to recreational bicycling and hiking. We don't like green spaces being closed off 37 it's a way to achieve safety too. If we take recreational biking off 620 where everybody is going 70 miles an hour, put it into the greenbelt areas that way it's impossible for somebody to hit by a car because there are no cars. So those are kind of broad ideas but I don't think I'm going to have the votes necessarily to separate out the modes. I'd like to see the bond election broken out to where we see here's vehicle relief, certain amount of money and here's the project, vehicle congestion relief. Then we could have bicycles, pedestrian trails, then we could have another issue with maybe mass transit, public transit options. So if we broke out the bond according to the mode of transportation, are we vehicles? Are rebicycles? Mass transit? If we broke them out that way, we could allow the voters to say what our guiding principles should be. But we don't do that and decide to lump everything together, if you go to page 81, I believe it is, there's -- I show on page 88 on the regional -- 88, 81, regional 620 and oak hill parkway, but 620 and oak hill have $0 connected to them. And I know that 620 carries tens of thousands of people every day, 40, 50,000 people. It's unbelievable the traffic out there and the number of people that we could serve. We could serve tens of thousands of people a day. If you flip over to page 83, [2:18:40 PM] this is the 250 million alternative, by the way. I added up here on the neighborhood connections and local mobility, 39.5 million, nearly for the $000,000 for sidewalks, bicycle, and urban trail, $40 million and $0 for one of the busiest corridors in the city, 620. Anyway, let me jump finally to the 720 million blended alternative, I guess maybe this is a swing for the fences, and as much as -- I mean, as everybody says there's really not time to vet this completely but I do kind of like the approach this makes if I can't break out the modes of transportation. Of all the things that's in front of me, this page 94 of the 7,230,000,000 blended alternative -- 720 blended alternative gives some decent balance and a little bit more money out in the suburbs. I do want to emphasize the fact that in district 6, Anderson mill is the most important, I think, segment in our entire district, Anderson mill road. The Parmer lane up in Avery ranch, extremely critical for them in the northwestern tip of the city, and of course 620 and 2222. But out of those three hotspots really Anderson mill is the most red hot out of those three. Finally, on -- there was a page that showed us kind of the regional and the local -- what page was that? It was three lines. It's 84. Well, 84 is a 250 million alternative but the idea of having the regional, the corridor and the local, having those three broken out, I think the voters would be more [2:20:41 PM] inclined to approve of the regional and the corridor if we lump those together and then let the local mobility stand separately. So there's a lot of ways to package even the packages. As to how we would bring them to the ballot so I think that will be my main focus, is trying to figure out what should go before voters and I'd like a way for them to be able to vote on the modes, what modes do they like the most. There's a chance they would vote for all three but that would give us an opportunity to see what they prioritize the most. If you have vehicle congestion relief, bicycle pedestrian trails and public transit and separate those three out, people would be able to vote on them and then we could gauge public support for these modes of transportation. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Any further discussion? Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I wanted to ask a question back to the page that -- let's see. I think it was 39. Talking about previous bond -- sorry, 34. Can you give us some sense, in those processes -- in those different bond packages what the process leading up to them was like? In terms of whether there was a bond oversight committee for each of these, how long it had met, what the public process was that preceded each of these bond elections? >> Certainly. I think Mike and I can combine, take a crack at that. 1999, I was here. I just started the city it there was a bond committee in place. I'm not sure how long, mayor pro tem. My sense at a minimum a six to nine month process in place for that $334 million bond program. 2000 was a special election for transportation, for mobility, as well as there was an open space package. There was no bond committee for that. >> Tovo: There was not? >> There was not a bond committee. 2006, the process for 2006, [2:22:43 PM] the November election started in February or March of 2005 and led through the election so that was a fairly elongated process. >> Tovo: I'm sorry? I'm trying to take notes on this and you're moving a little fast. Okay. I have a question about 2000, but if you could just say what you said again about 2005, when it started and -- >> 2006, there was a call for a bond election that occurred in January of 2005. And I think the process that Robert laid out in terms of that 12 to 18 month process, we -- the city -- the staff began its needs assessment bonding capacity in the spring of 2005, a bond committee was formed in late spring of 2005. They met through -- they wrapped up their work in January of 2006. And then the council at that point received the recommendations and then went forward and set an election for November 2006. 2010, I think I'll pass thatter to Mike. I think he might have a little more memory on that one. >> Yeah, and there -- >> Tovo: Before you pass it, can I ask about 2000, if that's all right? >> Sure. >> Tovo: You said in 2000 it was a special election for open space and transportation and there was no committee. >> We'll check, that mayor pro tem. Our fully is that there was not a called bond election advisory committee or task force,. >> Tovo: I would be interested in knowing what was the process, is it akin to what we're doing right now for this discussion or was there something else? >> We can -- >> Tovo: If I can get some sense of what that process was like. >> We'll see if we can find some history on that, absolutely. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Garza. >> Garza: I'm a little confused now. Did you say that you were not advocating for a November 2016 bond? >> Mayor Adler: There are a lot of reasons why it makes sense to have a bond election in November if we're able to [2:24:43 PM] do it. >> Garza: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: There are 300,000 people that vote and historically I'm told that -- that people that vote in a presidential election are more inclined to approve bonds, as you have the wider community voting. But I also said that the process that ordinarily is associated with bonds is a much longer process than the time that we have now. I would not be in favor of us trying to do a bond election so quickly that we don't do it right or that we don't give it a fair shot. In my mind, if it's possible for us to actually get to consensus in a short period of time, through the month of June, then that's an indication that the answers are clearer or that the work that's happened over the last four, five years has put us on the path where we can not spend a year vetting projects because we've spent cumulatively 20 years vetting the projects that are in front of us, if you add up all the time, or ten years, it's already there. So I think it's important for us to go through the exercise this month to determine whether or not we're in a position to be able to do that. If we are, then we can take advantage of having the presidential election as the election that we have. If we're not, then -- then we shouldn't try. >> Garza: Okay. I guess I just wanted to add my perspective. This -- I do feel like this is a lot to digest. I know some members of our council have been working on parts of this but some of us really haven't, and so it's a lot to digest, especially if we're looking at different goals, trying to solve traffic, affordability, which I would think were the two priorities but councilmember Casar brought up one that I was -- was really important, which is safety, so that's another, you know, priority that I hadn't thought of in [2:26:46 PM] this whole -- this whole picture. I guess my initial concerns are, well, the public input process, which I know it was a short time frame, but that seems to have led to the priority on the corridors. One of the questions was priority investment type to improve connections to neighborhoods, public transit was the main -- was the highest one. And then the following options to manage congestion, which is usually what our, you know, constituents have concerns about the most, it says what is the most important to you, and that, again, was public transportation options was the highest one there. So I can see where one could glean the corridors are the priority, but you could also glean that public transportation is the priority. And because we haven't had -- as a member of capital metro, we haven't even talked about any of this. I do have concerns about -- doesn't seem to have been collaboration with capital metro. In my mind if we're trying to get more people on buss that has to happen in conjunction with capital metro, has to happen with the 2025 connections, 2025 plan. You know, this conversation has started this push for light rail. We've gotten a lot of emails about light rail and I can't even see where we're anywhere near that, unfortunately, not because I don't support it but because, again, we haven't had that discussion at capital metro. And that would be the agency that's supporting, you know, light rail. So -- and I know, you know, one of the big discussions during 10-1, it's going to have more politics, for some parts of Austin it's a good thing that they have representation now, they are something here that's going to speak up for them in areas that have been historically underrepresented. And so I really appreciate the options and the men you're [2:28:47 PM] welcome but even in the -- menu but even in the biggest package of the 720 million there's about 15 million that goes to my district, which is such a tiny percentage so I don't know how I can, you know, go explain to my constituents this is going to cost you this much extra a month, it it's not really going to help us but, you know, it's -- it's something that we should do for the rest of the city. So it's just a domestic that -- dynamic that I'm trying to figure out how to deal with, but I do think it's -- I think councilmember Houston made the point. It does seem a lot really fast, and I think I know people are toured of planning and all that -- tired of planning and all that kind of stuff but we've got to do it right because if we don't it's just going to be another failed bond and we don't want that. Those are concerns. >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry? >> Tovo: Mayor, could I -- I really appreciate all of the comments so far and those included, councilmember Garza. I wondered if I could get back to the staff kind of walking us through those other and I think he was about to take on -- 2010 on, if you don't mind kind of quickly because I think we have heard several questions about time, whether we have adequate time, and I think I just want to kind of be able in my head to compare to the past processes. >> 2010 process as you know 2010 was a transportation only single proposition bond. And there was a community engagement process, mobility planning process as part of that where transportation department went out and got feedback on mobility priorities. Somewhat similar to mobility talks but even a little more in depth on looking at specific gaps and issues in mobility. And that information was brought back to a citizens advisory task force so there was a task force as part of that process and over a period of two to three months that he reviewed the finds and made recommendations to council. In 2012, a general bond [2:30:49 PM] process, there -- that was a more robust process, very akin to the 2006 process. We had gotten direction to do a capital needs assessment the summer 2011 and then council I believe in end of October, first of November -- November 2011, and obviously we had a community engagement process overseen by the bond election advisory task force, recommendations were brought to council in June. In 2012. Then in 2013, 2013 was a -- again, a single proposition for affordable housing, and so there was not a task force assigned to that because of the abbreviated process and that happened over a couple of months and, again, because of the nature of the single proposition. Also, council's discussion was that there had already been a lot of community input during the 2012 process that those recommendations were brought directly to council. >> Tovo: And in terms of the 2014, there was not a separate task force, was there? >> Right. If you recall for 2014 -- >> Tovo: I don't recall. I apologize. I'm so glad you're here to remind us. >> Robert might be able to help me a little bit on this but as you recall there was a task force of campo, I believe, working group, transit working group that really -- they really served as that citizens advisory group to work on the urban rail package and so that was I guess a decision made, well this group is already meeting and working on these issues. >> Tovo: Thanks. I appreciate that overview very much. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you all for being here and answering these questions for us. In district 1, I have several overlaps with the txdot. [2:32:52 PM] I've got I've 35, toll rode 130, 969, Parmer lane, 183, and I also share airport boulevard with airport boulevard plan. So as I look at all of the planning that's been done around, again, those north-south corridors, especially burnet road, Lamar, Guadalupe and auditor, we've not -- airport, we've not done that -- we've tried to address those with some of the bonds that we have based in -- historically, we've tried to address that. Capital metro, we've got rapid bus routes on those corridors. We've got the -- what do you call those accordion buses? Is that what -- rapid? Met throw rapid? Okay. Then just the plain bus that's go up and down those corridors. And yet people are riding less so even though we focused a lot of attention, capital metro has, trying to move people from those more congested or dense areas around town, we have not seen an increase in ridership. So when we talk about the way we've always done things, it seems like if we're not careful we'll still be doing the way we've always done things. We'll invest a lot of money into possible infrastructure improvement and it won't work. And so as we've grown over the last four years, since we've had these conversations, there's very little emphasis on some of these roadways that I'm talking about. I was talking to the txdot yesterday and he says we actually have rush hour on toll rode 130 where traffic is beginning to work up so that's new information. So we have to put in new information because Austin is changing so rapidly that if we use the same data that we used four years ago than we're out [2:34:53 PM] of date. And so one of the things that I have to -- need to ask is how much leeway -- how much leeway will each individual councilmember have in determining how these scenarios can change based upon their knowledge of their districts? And I want to give you one instance because councilmember Casar and I share Cameron road, and we've had -- we've narrowed that -- that roadway to two lanes. We've put in bike lanes on both sides. One side there is an opportunity for the bus to move over on the north side of the street there are no stops. So when the bus stops, everybody backs up. It's probably one of the most congested roads in this city, and yet there's no way to go back and try to say this doesn't work in that plates. But we don't do that. We put it in concrete and it's going to be there regardless of what the facts on the ground are. Now, in my part of the district, people are complaining about the amount of congestion on Cameron road because it starts at three lanes, goes down to two and then to one at 290 and Cameron road. It's not working. But that doesn't seem to metaphor. Once we put something in place it's going to say that way so I'm really afraid that if we put something in place this time that my great, great grandchildren won't get to see any relief because they're needing relief. It's caughting traffic -- causing traffic, lights from five first street are backed up to the shopping center and yet we can't do anything so I feel impotent to be able to make any of the changes where people in my experience are experiencing stress, cut through traffic, speeding, [2:36:54 PM] anger, people are getting very angry because they can't move any faster than they used to move. I'm not saying add any lanes. We're saying put back the lane that you took away. So what do we do about bicycle ride centers can we improve the sidewalks? Because you can walk on the sidewalks. I know they don't want to, but, you know, it's those kind of tensions that I'm having with how we develop these kinds of bond programs and how they're implemented and then once they're in place nobody looks behind to see if it's working. I know that's a lot, but that's a frustration that the people in my -- some of the people in my district are feeling. >> I'll try to answer a few of those questions as best I can. The corridor study work that we've done, that was very much public focus and community work, communities were involved in that. But as you mentioned, those are dated now because some of them have been three or four years old. So as you put -- as you choose to fund some of the implementation of those corridor plans, we would need to update those. I wouldn't suggest we start all over the community but we would certainly need to update those with y'all's help on the council-specific corridors and with the body telling us, as you adopt a program, I would hope you would also emphasize these are the priorities we want you to focus on, staff, as you go forward and implement these programs. Would we would take those and tweak some of the corridor studies and make sure that they're appropriate to the current condition. Now, let me address another point that you made, some of the older work we've done. A lot of our work is based -- this is focused on the strategic mobility plan. A lot of our work is based on the Austin metropolitan area transportation plan, the amatp, which which was done in 1985, update in 2001, 2004. Thus the excite that staff has for the strategic mobility plan. We're going to be able to work with the community and with y'all to set the vision on what transportation is going [2:38:54 PM] to look like in the next ten, 20 years. We haven't done a thorough update for that, again, since 2004 was a minor update. And that's the chance for the community and staff and council to work together and taishhat the mobility program will look like as we move forward. Then we will update that frequently from know on and not -- now on and not let it go out of date. Now we did a lot of work on imagine Austin as the community did and there's a portion, obviously a charter on the transportation and that's a piece of it that we still will rely on but this will dig much deeper in the community's vision on what will -- what we should plan for in these corridors as we move forward. And then that feeds into -- sorry for the long answer here, but that feeds into the campo 20 for the plan that will be updated. What Austin wants for our community, then we will feed to the region and say this is what we think the region should look like as much as our community aspect goes. I hear you. Some of these plans are old. Some of the transportation of the past doesn't work now. We want to make sure it's designed with the context of the neighborhood and the community. We do want to reach out with each councilmember to the communities that live around those corridors so we're putting the right thing in for not only the neighborhoods around that but especially having a conversation with Mr. Spillar on south Lamar, some of that focus was neighborhoods around there. Well, I drive south Lamar frequently. I'm a commuter through south Lamar. You have to look at both not only the neighborhoods around there but if you're driving through you have to have connectivity and mobility as a commuter for some of these major, you're right, north-south corridors, we don't have a lot of east-west corridors we focus on. Lodge answer but we do need to be more fobsed on community needs, not only locally but also from the commute basis on how the system works, as councilmember kitchen mentioned earlier, the system needs to work together too to make it work. So we can't devolve into just [2:40:55 PM] neighborhood plans that don't ever work together and you've got a four lane in one neighborhood wants it and two lane in the next neighborhood that wants a two lane. That won't work either and I know you know that. >> Houston: Right. Cameron road is not a corridor but that's what has happened. It is in our minds a corridor because it's a north-south connector from Parmer lane all the way down to five first street and so that is a connector to us. But somehow it's devolved into four to three to two to one and, again, if there was some way that in the process that we go through there's an understanding that periodically we would take a look behind and see if what we put in place -- every street is not going to be a great street. And I don't know whether that's our intention, is that a policy that we need to have? Or is that something that's already been determined? What is a great street? How wide does that street have to be to be a great street? And so sometimes we try to do things that are too small and then it's out of scale and it causes more problems. And so thank you for that, but those are some of my concerns. >> Mayor Adler: Further conversation? Yes. >> Kitchen: Just a couple of quick questions. The -- I'd like to understand where to look for safe routes to schools. I guess that's embedded in the sidewalk master plan? Would that be the place I would look? >> Certainly. >> Kitchen: Any funding we nut here with sidewalks would follow that -- I guess what I would want to do is I think safety is a priority and a portion of safety, in addition to the intersections, is the safe routes to schools from my perspective. So I would just want to know where to look to get an understanding of where that might be. >> It's public works prioritized their high and high -- and top priority. It's around schools, safe routes to schools, also the connections with transit as we've seen those pedestrian [2:42:56 PM] connections help the transit connectivity. >> Kitchen: Okay. Second question, simply if I understood correctly on the corridors, the next step on the corridors is design. >> Yes. >> Kitchen: Which includes the kind of updating that you just talked about. On the active transportation, the sidewalks, the bike, that kind of thing, is the -- are those sort of more shovel ready to go, you know, or do -- are they -- in other words could we be putting dollars towards sidewalks, for example, or bikes, for example, and actually starting to build while we're upgrade and designing our corridors? >> Sidewalks are good examples of that, especially as we mentioned, councilmember pool's question earlier, if it's a sidewalk only, that gets done very quickly. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> If it's a sidewalk and then we determine there's a drainage need that we need to do some storm work and there's a waterline improvement and public works was going to also overlay the roadway we rightfully so put 85 that together and that becomes much more of a complex project that takes some time. So sidewalks are a good example of yes and no. Yes if they're specific projects that don't have a need they get -- one of our quickest project is the sidewalks projects. >> Kitchen: My last question, we've been talking about housing and also been talking about affordability, that nexus with transportation. So and specifically the nexus with the corridors. So I'm wondering if -- you know, I had asked earlier about where I could look to see how the corridors relate to public transit and sidewalks and bikes. I don't know, have we done any kind of analysis that we could say, okay, what needs to happen on this corridor, like north Lamar, south Lamar, something, in conjunction with the corridor improvements we would need to do X, Y, Z to support housing or to support affordability? Have we done any kind of nexus [2:44:56 PM] kind of analysis like that? >> We've done some high-level information and research on the housing transit and jobs group that we've put together, the team that looked at that and how the housing and transit and obviously jobs, how they interrelate. We can refresh that and get that out to you, whatever work we've done that we can refresh and get that out to council. >> Kitchen: I don't know if it's available but I would want to understand if I'm making a decision to put certain dollars on a particular corridor, what is the potential for that corridor for that nexus with housing or that nexus with affordability to understand that. Now I know we're also -- you know, our staff is working on the housing plan, which will be coming to us next week, I think but that's another place to look for that kind of nexus. But anyway what I'm searching for here is a way to look at our mobility, to look at our transportation and connection with -- in connection with our other goals so we can understand what we're doing and whether that gets us to those other goals or not. We can say it does but that's not the same as actually -- I want to understand what exactly is it doing that makes that connection. Again, I understand you may not have that information, but if you've got it. >> Just one note on that, councilmember. One of the things we would do as part of our implementation planning is we'd get going on whatever the voters would approve, any bonds that would pass with respect to corridors. We would do a lot of coordination with other departments to see what other types of goals and outcomes we could achieve. So if that's housing, other utilities, like Robert mentioned, we would do a lot of that coordination work with other departments and a lot of that coordination is already happening. We've been doing -- even as part of our initial planning, we've been doing some discussion of -- particularly on the capital planning side, we've gotten departments together to look at -- there's a lot going on in these corridors. How do we coordinate all these different types of investments, whether it's park improvement, mobility improvement, all things having housing, how do we improve that? I feel confident we've built a [2:46:56 PM] lot of mechanisms to where we can do that coordination that we need to do if there's, you know, one leading investment offer couple leading investments for that matter when we're looking at the corridors. >> Kitchen: Well, yeah. No. I understand that the implementation gets us there and I know y'all have done a lot of work on that. I'd like to understand as part of the policy decision-making, so in other words if I'm deciding to put an investment on mobility, I want to know how that investment on mobility leverages the other things that we want to do so that I'm not making that decision in isolation. I also don't want to make that decision just trusting that it's going to get us housing or it's going to get us, you know, some other goal. >> Mayor Adler: For me, councilmember kitchen raises an interesting question. We could -- and it may be prudent to never -- to not approve a project until we've done the design work on a project. I guess we could also approve both the design work and the construction at the same time if -- if we were clear enough on what it was that we wanted to achieve, which goes back to the question that councilmember Casar asked initially, could we set those objectives. It could be that the corridors are not the place for us to really do transit in the city or the corridors are not the place really to achieve housing in the city. My sense is and what I'd like to find out over the next couple weeks is that we've already answered that question, going back to imagine Austin, we've identified that this is where we need transit to work on these corridors. That capital metro was involved in the cover planning that we had. It might be -- very much might be outdated now and there might be better practices for us to incorporate or planning to incorporate. But if the professional advice comes in, hey, we really can't be sure that corridors are the [2:48:56 PM] right place to do this and we really shouldn't move forward on it until we have better chance to look at designs, then I would like to have that information. If on the other hand because of the other studies that have gone on over the last half dozen years, this is the place where we want this to happen and we know what it is, even if we don't know the exact design, but we know this is where this needs to happen, we know this is where the population is, we know where this has to be, then the actual execution of that and how that's done in a way to have the transformationial change could be something that is the appropriate part of that process. I don't want us to get out in front of the decisions. I don't want us to be guessing as to what we're doing. So part of the questions over the next couple weeks and what I hope the mobility committee takes a look at is does that information exist and is there appropriate direction? That the community could give to the city in a vote if it felt like, you know, we're dealing with crises on housing and with the transportation, is it appropriate for us to move forward? Do we have enough information at this point to be able to assess that and to give direction? And what level degree of refinement needs to already exist for the community to -- to say go? But I think that that's additional kind of information that I'd like to -- and I hope that the committee gets over the coming weeks. We do Greg and -- >> Kitchen: Let me follow up real quick. My question is -- I think it's related to what you just said. I'm not suggesting that a corridor is not the right place. I'm just saying, if the answer [2:50:57 PM] is to get housing you have to fund the corridor plus housing, if we only fund the corridor and we never fund the housing, we -- this is a simplified version of that but if we only fund one piece and don't fund the other piece, we can't say we're gonna get so -- all I'm simply asking is what do we -- what do we know about what else we have to fund or support in some way? That's all I'm asking. >> One thing, councilmember, that might be helpful to get you the long rage strategic planning which your planning commission just approved and made a recommendation on about a month ago. We have a lot of analysts in there where we overlaid a lot of the city's priorities in addition to our unfunded capital needs. One of the things that came out of that is a strategic investment analysis and one of the things that resonated were the centers and corridors in the city and that's something conversation that your planning commission had. We'll be getting you more information about the long range C.I.P. Plan in the future. >> Mayor Adler: That would be helpful. The third element I would add too, I think it's a good point, not only the corridors and transportation but also the housing component of that and then it's the planning component of that. And, I mean, at some level you want all that to happen, each piece before you do the next piece. But in January we're going to be making decisions on the corridor and what happens as a result of that may be different depending on what actions the council has or the community has or hasn't taken with respect to the development of those corridors. So it would be all of those pieces I think. >> Mayor, add to that, we would again have economic analysis from Charles to add to that conversation, especially about the planning and the entitlements and how we can leverage these infrastructure investments, what's happening from a market perspective as well, just as a baseline to bring those three conversations to go ahead, the timing of that will work out well, as well as in terms of the timing of the planning discussions in January. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Mr. Casar. >> Casar: So I do want to peak speak to councilmember [2:52:58 PM] kitchen's point and also to a point made by councilmember Garza. I don't think there's anything precluding us if we're thinking about funding corridors to include housing money but, also, even if housing money wasn't included, we're just -- we would just be asking for authorization from the voters to issue that debt and we would have to still vote to spend it. And I think that we would want the economic analysis to ensure that our spending of it perhaps in conjunction with other dollars or other public-private opportunities could create that housing because I certainly would not be in favor of getting authorization -- even if we had the authorization, I wouldn't be in favor of spending it if all signs indicated that we might lose a lot of market affordable housing like on Riverside, for example, if we do a spend without a plan on how to make sure that it's a diverse corridor. So I don't think -- I do think that if -- and I trust that having some of these dollars available to spend on corridors can help us with affordability but I don't think it guarantees it. Obviously after getting any such funding authorized we really have to work with the community and with staff and potentially with other funding sources to make sure that we're not just improving corridors for folks of higher income that might choose to move into those improved corridors but instead that weaver making sure they're mixed income. So I think there's the authorization and then there's the actual spend. My understanding later. And that would be my -- that would be my preference on this. And then to councilmember Garza's point about what it says mobility talks about whether or not folks really wanted to focus or corridors or walking, biking, public transportation as being options, I sort of see those as being -- seems to me the same group of people saying let's focus on the corridors and let's focus on being able to safely walk and bike on those corridors and hopefully, again, on public transportation on those corridors. Councilmember kitchen, you brought up, well, how much do we have to spend before we get to that stuff? My hope would be that we can decide that that's what we [2:54:59 PM] want to spend on on the corridors. You know, if it means that the [indiscernible] Is a 84 less nicer, signals aren't quite as smart we get with capital metro to figure out how to make the buses run more frequently and on time, you know, it seems to me that that's the kind of -- more transformational shift I'd be more interested in funding if we go in this direction. So I see those as being one and the same. And then to your question with safe routes to schools, looking at the sidewalk master plan when you're closer to schools, it seems that those get extra points and get ranked but there are some schools that don't have the sidewalk master plan ranking, the very highest need and if we do want to make sure we're making investments in this bond election that have sort of universal appeal, geographically, I did have my staff print out some stuff we have been talking about for a long time, which was the quarter penny maps and if you ignore the Gs, which stand for the groups on here and just look at the pink dots, you can see where all those different schools are throughout the city. So, again, while my preference would be to see if we can do something transformational and bigger on our corridors that really supports public transportation, alternative modes, at a baseline, again, I do think safe routes to schools and walking and active transportation would be a worthy investment and they are scattered -- schools are obviously scattered all amongst our cities so I'll pass this out for anyone there had. Just ignore the g11, g12, g13 and look for pink blobs to see where the schools are and that may be helpful. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Garza. >> Garza: I appreciate the point, and as we talked about sidewalks and what would be funded we keep talking about safe routes for schools. But I was provided this matrix that gives where priorities are and actually routes to schools not the top priority. It's in the middle. [2:57:00 PM] And so I believe my staff asked, you know, does this need to be recalibrated so -- what seems to be the priority is the safe routes for schools, so that would be a higher priority, I believe the answer was this is what the previous council decided. This is the matrix we're working off of right now. So on this matrix, the top priority -- and it's an interesting one -- is for the criteria is state or local government offices. The second one is community rail stations, and then for public schools, close to public -- this is proximity to these things, the priority -- they get more points. You know, based on -- >> Casar: That's what I think my pont was, potentially instead of just funding directly to the sidewalk master plan which has rankings that were debated for a long time, some dissuasion of funds to that -- dedication of funds to that but perhaps a separate dedication just to safe routes to schools citywide since I think that would bump that up without us having to go and mess with, you know, reopen the conversation about how to do our sidewalk master plan matrix. I think there's a way for us to say let's look at the highest priority sidewalks in the city according to the matrix that has been debated for some period of time and then let's have an additional allocation for safe routes to schools because some of those schools may not come to the top of the matrix that we have but certainly, you know, have projects niche them as you can see, whether they're sidewalks or even on that plan you're look at, it doesn't include things like the protected crossings and pedestrian hybrid beacons that is also included in safe routes to schools but thankfully that's something we have been talking about for some time through the quarter cent process. I know all of us have projects we wanted to fund that we just didn't get a chance to and this may be a chance to do that. >> Garza: My understanding was, if we fund sidewalks, it would come off the priority list, and this is what guides the priority [2:59:02 PM] list. If we're doing half for the priority list and half for not, I would say similar to what councilmember Houston said, this was a priority list by different councils who had different priorities, and this is a new council that I believe has had a better approach -- not to throw the old council under the bus, but, you know, we -- I drive to my district, y'all drive to your districts, you know your district, I would argue that we know parts of our town better than maybe some previous council. So I would be concerned about even using this period, this priority list. I think it needs to be recalibrated, is my point. >> Casar: Understood. >> Renteria: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria. >> Renteria: Yeah. You know, I could support the two -- 250 million or 300 because I drive a lot of these roads, the key corridors that y'all have identified here, and I have to tell you, north Lamar, where it meets Guadalupe street, is one of the most dangerous intersections there is there because there's a little section there that you get caught right there where the light turns red, but you wait there about three minutes with a green light, but you can't move. You're in the middle of the intersection, and now you're worrying about about you just blocked the intersection there and you're going to get a ticket, or that someone is going to come by there and hit you. Let me tell you, driving that road -- I just drive it because I know locations out there that I like to go and visit, and how many times you get your bird flipped at you just sitting there because you're blocking the street, you know. So it's really dangerous. I really think we really need to focus on these streets that you have here on top where its $156 million. We can debate all the rest of that, you know, but we really need to really just start working on these streets because I -- I feel like these streets here are the worst streets here in Austin, you know. [3:01:04 PM] You get -- you're putting your life in danger driving these streets. So I hope that, you know, we really focus on these, and then we can debate the rest of that -- you know, Brodie lane is another one that needs to be fixed. You know, these are the streets where people die at, you know. So I hope that we really focus on that, and I support bike lanes, I support trails, sidewalks. You know, there's a big need for those, but we really need to start focusing on fixing up our big, major corridor streets that we have here in Austin. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? >> Houston: Me. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: I told you I had a lot on this one. >> Mayor Adler: That's okay. >> Houston: On page 87 and 86, the $3 million -- is that the base alternative, or is 250 the base? But in either -- in both of them, there is absolutely nothing for transit enhancement and partnering, and that's where I would use money to talk with capital metro about partnering with the green line, and nothing about bridges, culverts, and structures and critical infrastructure improvements. With the growth that's coming to east Austin, regardless of whether you all want to admit that it's growing or not, with no amenities and limited or no transit, infrastructure is a big problem. And as we become more dense, some of my areas are flooding for the first time in the history of 40 years that they've been in those houses. So we know where those places are. We know that they need to have major problems -- major work done on the drainage systems in the north part of the city, and some near the golf course where now with Mueller, all the water is running down. But there's nothing there. Nothing there. And so when -- how do we get those things into this base budget so that -- we're going to have to take money from someplace. And so how -- how does that [3:03:05 PM] process work to take from peter to pay Paul? >> The 250 and $300 million package both assume that we would be back in 2018 to handle whatever that's not there. That's to balance that. But you're right, as you all work towards a package, a consensus package, if you want to fund something more, then you have to take it from some other category. >> Houston: And I agree with you that we have not done a very good job in a lot of places about the infrastructure, and so that's beginning to crack and we're beginning to feel that. So I would not be comfortable with any package that doesn't have some money in there to be able to address infrastructure needs. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you very much. A lot of work. Thank you. I'm sorry, hang on, one second. >> Tovo: Sorry. I wondered if you could address the safe routes to schools and why that's not ranked higher on the sidewalk -- I mean it seems like sometimes that's come up in the past and there's other funding available, that that's sometimes where it's not the highest priority. Agree with my colleagues, that it should be an extremely high priority for our sidewalks, in terms of our sidewalk investments, but I've been operating under the assumption that when it's not the highest item on the list, it's sometimes because there -- we're relying on federal funding and other things that are available for that particular use. >> That's correct. This is a good opportunity to introduce myself. My name's Robert Hinojosa. I'm interim director. We've had discussions and it is part of the criteria and it is a criteria that was established years ago, based on a committee, so it is something that you all have the authority to give some guidance. That I know we have talked to your district about the criteria does not necessarily match all the districts. [3:05:07 PM] And that's a discussion we're willing to have, but that's the way it was approved, so that's what we're following. Again, the update is coming up, the sidewalk master plan update is coming up, and that's an opportunity to have those kind of discussions. >> Pool: So when were those set and is it a committee, public committee that made recommendations to council? >> We did, and there was a consultant in charge. We looked nationally at what the criteria was for sidewalks. And we had some discussion with your staff about the weight of that criteria. The criteria was pretty sound, but the way the criteria may not accommodate all the districts, for whatever reason, but the school is a portion of that criteria, and for whatever reasons, there was other complications at your district in some of the sidewalk group meetings on drainage, because you do have some rural areas. So that complicated things. That gets things more expensive. But that's what the master plan -- the sidewalk master plan update is all about, the discussions that we're having. >> Tovo: Well, it's good to know that we'll be looking at that again. I guess I still am curious about whether there -- whether there are other funds available for safe routes to schools, beyond just city funding and bond funding. >> That's all we have funded. >> We always explore grant opportunities, but sometimes we get them, sometimes we don't, but usually it's through these bond programs, that's how we got funded. >> Tovo: Okay. But sometimes there is funding available for sidewalks specifically for safe routes to schools. >> Yeah. >> Tovo: Whereas they may not be available for other kinds of sidewalks. I mean, I see some staff back there nodding. I mean, I'm just -- I'm operating under an assumption that may or may not be correct, but I'm offering -- I mean, I'm just asking you to let me know whether that's accurate. >> Well, we can certainly look into that and get back. >> Tovo: Okay. >> So we don't have all the answers, but we'll get you some answers. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. So when were the criteria set? [3:07:11 PM] >> It was 2000 -- >> 2009. >> 2008-2009. >> Tovo: Okay. Thanks. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: If there was a consultant's report associated with that in 2009, can you send that around? >> Sure. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Casar: And mayor? >> Tovo: If I could say, I'm just doing a quick Google search, and the U.S. Department of transportation does provide grants specifically tore safe routes to school. So, you know, again, I think -- I think it is a high priority, it's certainly a high priority of mine and some of those decisions may have been based on the kind of funds that are available for certain so forth sidewalk use. It doesn't mean we don't reevaluate it, but I just think that's a piece of the information that we should have, since we're having this discussion. >> As we move forward, I mentioned this earlier, the staff will use the plans we have to date, plus whatever guidance you give us and whatever ifc that you put forward to emphasize. So if safe routes to school is something that you would want to emphasize in these bond programs as we move forward, we would take that into account as we put it together after we do that. That's what we would expect. We would hope to get guidance from you on this, and move forward with this package, but here are our priorities we want you to focus on as we move forward. That's how you would give us direction. Council -- or staff appreciates that because then when we have these tough choices, we know what council's priorities are. >> Kitchen: Could I follow up on that then? If safe routes to school is funding for the federal government, do you need us to tell you we would like you to put that at the top of your list to get safe grants to school from the feds? >> No, ma'am, we always look for -- as Howard Lazarus would say -- other people's money. We're always looking to fund our priorities with grants as much as we can. >> Pool: Okay. I think what I was hearing around the table today mostly was a real interest in trying to knit together the fragmented sidewalk, network, [3:09:11 PM] that we have in this city. Generally speaking, I think most of us are talking about that and then active transportation. So if there are some -- if there is -- >> There's other people's money that we can use for that, that would be great, then that would help expand the ability for us to do more. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I think Ms. Houston was next. >> Houston: This is going to be quick. Colony park loop road is -- councilmember Casar talked about safety. That is a safety issue because once those kids are in school at Overton and Dorothy turner recreation, if something happens only overlaya and blocks access, there's no other way for them to get in or out, or for emergency vehicles. So the fact that -- it was on the list the last time but was not a priority. So how do we move those -- those roads up that didn't get funded last time, they're still in that same kind of phase, you're not saying shovel-ready, but they've been waiting for several years now to try to get that loop open so that there's an alternate way out. So what is the process to get them from going from preliminary engineering report up to design? >> As I mentioned earlier, the typical process is a bond election advisory committee that we can look to. We don't have that this time around. So you are the bond election advisory committee, and the staff will support you in that effort. So that's part of what your discussions would be in the next few weeks, is what to fund and at what level and what package, or if initiation in the November election. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar. >> Casar: So considering that the sidewalk master plan is coming back for an update from the council, help me understand this logistically. Let's say that this council theoretically put in $75 million, just into the sidewalk master plan and another $30 million in safe routes to schools. If, then, the sidewalk master plan came back to get updated [3:11:13 PM] and we voted on amendments and changes in September -- again, this is just a straw man that I'm coming up, since you just reminded me that master plan comes back to us -- would the projects then change because we adjusted the criteria for the sidewalk master plan, even if we had already funded and put on the ballot the sidewalk master plan for its funding? I guess the question is, would it be the old sidewalk master plan that's getting funded or the updated one, if the update happened in the fall? >> This is a good time to remind you what's on the ballot. On the ballot -- >> Casar: Thank you. >> -- Are big buckets. They're not listed -- there's not a list of projects. We will likely -- the corridor improvements will likely list, for example, north lamar/burnet, but they're not listed. Sidewalks aren't listed. The projects -- you're going to adopt, and then the voters will consider a bucket of sidewalk funding that would be $55 million. How you all give us direction on how to prioritize that, it used to be the old sidewalk master plan. It could be that you give us direction in the adoption of this count of this package that will be updated, and then it could change again if you adopt an medinad sidewalk master plan. Remember, this is an eight-year program, so we'll continue to reflect your policy priorities as you tell them to us. >> Casar: Right. So, basically, unless we put on the ballot a specific street getting a sidewalk, specifically written on the ballot, which you guys wouldn't advise for us to do, and I wouldn't advise that we do -- >> Wouldn't advise us to do that. >> Casar: I understand. We could include money for our -- generally for our sidewalks, and then recalibrate any issues that we have with that through -- >> Yes. >> Casar: -- The regular sidewalk master plan amendment to our process. >> Yes. >> Casar: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? >> Houston: I want to follow up on councilmember Casar's [3:13:13 PM] question and your answer. So one of the concerns that I have is that we put this big bond package on the ballot, and the money, they vote for it, and then that money can be used any way that is -- or do we -- because, as I said, colony park loop has been to the bond proposal before, priority before, but monies got diverted to use some other way. How do we keep the money from -- instead of being used for, say, sidewalks, it gets used for something else that -- because it's in such a big bucket -- >> Sure. >> Houston: -- That we have no control over how it's used, eventually? >> As we put these packages together, we give you the detail that you've seen, this level of detail, but then it morphs into more of a bucket to go to the voters to say it's a mobility program. About the you all know the background of that detail, and so does staff, if we establish $16 million for colony park, I'm guessing you're going to watch pretty closely to make sure that project gets done, especially with your district-based council offices, that's going to be even more of a focus. The bond advisory committee does that, as well. They look at what was adopted by the council and what was approved by the voters, and then Mike's group continues to feed them information, here's what we've got accomplished. They're your oversight committee as well that would report back to you and say, well, there were $16 million devoted to colony park road, and they shifted that somewhere else. So we're limited in what we can shift. The bond council will tell us very clearly it has to be for that same purpose. But there is some flexibility, so it's up to staff and council and that bond advisory committee to make sure that that -- those promises -- council will shiver when I say that -- are completed. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. [3:15:13 PM] Thank you very much. A lot of work. We'll go to the public safety staffing presentation. And then we're done. Okay? Ed, you want to do this up for us? >> I'm just going to pass it right over to chief Acevedo to talk to us about public staffing needs in the police department. >> Mayor Adler: Chief. >> And I'll just say he'll be followed by chief Kerr from the fire department so there will be a little bit of a break when chief Acevedo is finished. >> Mayor, city council, manager, I'm chief of police. I've got Brian Manley, assist chief of police and chief of staff, and Ms. Alice Thomas who's our assist director. It's an honor to be here with you and a presentation we've been watching all day, so applaud team Austin. This afternoon we're going to talk briefly about several items, we're going to talk about community policing, talk to you a little bit about how we're doing in terms of public perception and our scorecard of public -- you know, community perception, police services, [3:17:14 PM] calls for service, response time, sworn staffing, proactive police in community engagement time, staffing, and then we'll probably throw out a couple of policy questions for your consideration as you deliberate this summer, this long summer with the budget process that you're undertaking. What is community policing? Last year that came up a lot from this body, and community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies that support systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving uniques to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues, such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime. And that -- and these concepts and these definitions come from the cop's office publication entitled community policing defined. Community policing comprises -- is comprised of three key components. Community partnerships, which we're very proud of the fact that we have many community partnerships, both, you know, non-governmental and actually community members. Collaborative partnerships between law enforcement agency and individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and increase trust in police. Partnerships can be other government agencies, which we have with all of these, the prosecutor's office, probation, public works, law enforcement, health and human services, child protective services, code enforcement and schools. Organizational community member groups, we work with on a regular basis include neighborhood groups, the Austin neighborhood council that we work very closely with, all of our neighborhood groups that work very closely with us, with next-door and other platforms that do a lot of great work communicating not just with us but with the elected officials, with the crime commission, Austin alliance lul naacp. There's center for child protection, [3:19:14 PM] interfaith community that we have great partnerships with, which includes all faiths, across the spectrum of faith in this community. The private business community, which includes chamber of commerce, visitors center, that help us identify problems and communicate challenges and opportunities for the police department. And one of the areas that we work with closely is obviously the media. We're very proud that we work closely with our media through a organizational philosophy transparency to get messages out to our community and to promote safety throughout this -- this community. The organizational transformation, the alignment of transfer and systems to promote community partnerships and proactive problem-solving, agency management, obviously the climate that we create, our leadership, planning and transportation is a key roll, our organizational structure, the way that we provide geographic assignments and resources and the way that we spend the finances that you all provide. Perjuries obviously the recruiting, training, and evaluation, it's a key part of making sure our folks are focused on the organizational, I think, philosophy of not just the Austin police department but obviously with the city. And one of the things in terms of problem-solving, is we use the Sarah model, which was a model coined and developed by bill Spelman, one of your predecessors, at the university of Texas, scanning and identifying problems around the city. Analysis, African American what is known about the problem, response, developing solutions to bring along -- bring along lasting reduction of the external problems and assessment. We assess our response to see -- and that's something we do ongoing. Part of that is our concept process, that some of you have actually sat through and seen what we do on a regular basis, using the data provided to deal with these issues. Community attitudes to the police department and community perception, there's obviously something at the national level in the last couple of years with Ferguson and some of the [3:21:16 PM] more high profile things around the country, we've seen a chilling effect nationwide to the relationship, and part of it is what I call the false narrative that police is broken, when in fact it isn't perfect, but there are 18,000 police departments that are under more scrutiny than any, any generational police officer. I would say they're the best trained, best equipped, the most professional in the history of policing, and despite whatever the media might want to say or that perception, having said that, perception is reality, and we've got to continue to work on overcoming any perceptions of mistrust or lack of trust or lack of transparency. If you look at this bar here, it will show you this graph. The 2015 community survey that the city conducted reflects that 73% of citizens are either satisfied or very satisfied with the quality of police services. About 68% were satisfied or very satisfied with the speed of response to calls. I mean, that's a challenge for us, especially as we go into our call load, you'll see that we do a fairly good job, descent job when it comes to our high priority calls, but low priority calls, really quality of life calls, we fall way back. And 53% were satisfied or very satisfied with law enforcement -- with the enforcement of traffic. Austin falls above the national average in quality of response time for cities over 250,000. I think that if we were measured against cities of a million, which is what we are, we'd do even better. But this is -- this is including cities 6250 or more. We're slightly below in traffic enforcement, which is 53%, and I think that part of that is that last year -- it's really reflective of the fact that we had one of the worst safety years here in Austin in our history, but it also was one of the worst safety years around the entire nation. Many, many metros had very [3:23:17 PM] bloody years and traffic fatalities last year. And I think that's part of the reason we're at 53%. Not to mention the fact that we have some tremendous congestion relief issues here, ongoing congestion is a big problem of the mobility issue, especially for the aging population, which I hope is part of the conversation as you talk about mobility. But some of the cities we're compared against in this survey including Arlington county, Virginia, Arlington, Texas, Denver, San Francisco, San Diego, San Antonio, Providence, don't you remember, amongst others. >> Mayor Adler: I know just because I keep forgetting this, when atc was here presenting the results, they said they could present the results compared to cities that were 500,000 and greater. They didn't have a cohort that was a million. And we said we were going to get the rework of that at the 500,000. I think that would be helpful. I never saw that, if that came in. >> I remember that conversation, and we can certainly follow up on that. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> If you look at our -- the types of calls, the department sends resources out based on four different types of calls. They include the hotshot, which is an emergency call for service. These include the -- types of calls included are calls involving physical harm or injury to personal property, and calls that are in progress or involved parties still on scene. Some of those include someone threatening suicide, bomb scare, burglaries in progress, crash, disturbance with people fighting, sex crime in progress, robberies, prowlers, officer needs help, shootings, stabbings, kidnappings, things of that anyway. The next, which is just a hair lip lower than the code 3 response, and it gives the officer -- they have the authority to either go code 3 or -- which is lights and sirens, or code 2, which is as fast as they can, depending on traffic conditions and information they know, urgent calls include calls involving physical harm or perceived threat to any person or [3:25:18 PM] property, and that which just occurred or may still be in the area, where a quick response might aid in the apprehension, that would be urgent calls. These are more complicated calls. These calls typically take more resources because of the nature of the calls, and quite frankly, to be able to catch bad guys, you have to set up containments and call k-9 and if you call a helicopter, that means the police department is looking for a bad actor who is probably a felony or greater, and that we're putting all our resource to bring that person and capture them before they injure anybody. Those are urgent calls. Some priority 1 calls include domestic violence, alarm with glass breaking, alarm robbery, a bomb threat, burglary urgent, so things of that nature, and some of the other ones, but where the suspect is not immediately present, just may still be in the area. Priority 2 calls are calls that pose either a minimal or no immediate threat and that are in progress or just occurred and warrant a rapid police response. And some of our priority 2 calls again might be an older burglar alarm, a missed -- mischief, vandalism, robbery service, which means the person is long gone and they just want us to come out and get the report. And, again, the sooner we get the information, the sooner we can get it out to units. Suspicious unknown vehicle, suspicious person, suspicious package and some of the other disturbances. Other lowest priority call, priority 3 calls, these are the calls where protection of life or property is not at risk, and an immediate police response will not likely prevent injury, loss of property or result in an investigation. Having said that, now when you get to priority 2 and 3, this is where we're really -- I think really have challenges getting to those calls and we'll look at the response times in a minute. Priority 3 calls, some of them that come to mind that really anger people that are quality of life issues are the loud parties on any given weekend, especially in this university town where we have a lot of institutions of higher learning and, you know, [3:27:18 PM] kids, especially on weekends, like to party. And unfortunately, we don't get to get to those calls very quickly. If you look at this chart here, you will see a break down of some of our calls for service. Urgent calls dispatched for service that increased over the last few years, while our total number of calls have decreased. It's important to know that again, our total number of calls have decreased slightly slightly, but our more urgent calls, the calls that are more complex in nature are the ones that are trending upward, and that is a concern for us because, again, as those very urgent calls and emergency calls that some of you have been on with us, you'll get to see that it does require a lot more folks to handle, so those were the type of calls that are going up. Our goal for this year, for the emergency calls, is 637, and our goal for next year is 627. Before you ask, you might want to ask yourselves, well, where are we this year as it relates to our response times for emergency calls, which is the highest priority call, and we're at about 6:38, as of April of this year, through April of this years, at 638. Our response time for urgent calls, which is again one hair lower than the emergency call, our goal -- our actual 2015 was 842. Our goal for next year, we hope to try to reduce it to 821, but once again, this years, I'm happy to say that we're down by one second. So for our emergency calls, we're up by one second to 638, above our goal for 15, and -- excuse me, 627, so we're up 11 seconds, and 8:21, we're up 20 seconds. I looked at the wrong one. I was looking at '15. I apologize. Last year we had a real -- we presented the council and [3:29:19 PM] the mayor -- mayor and council, we presented you with a plan developed by the university of Texas to really talk about proactive policing time, looking in terms of staffing at police and community engagement time, a time to do things, to actually disrupt and prevent crime, and do things to actually engage in community building, trust building, and the other things that the officers can do when they get out of their cars and get on foot patrols and do the things that help trust. Last year's projection was to end 2015 at 21%. As you recall, council added 39 officers at 39%, which was our goal. And our actual end in 2015, we ended at 17%. The academy graduates -- the 133rd academy will graduate 38 officers, as of today. We have 38. That could change. Let's hope nobody else ends up failing or quitting. The someth academy class began on March 31st, and that will be graduating October 28th. We have 50 officers in that class right now, 50 cadets that we hope to graduate, but that will probably go down. Our 135th class begins July 11th. 135th class will be a modified class, which will be a class of police officers from around the state and country that come here. We're hoping to hire anywhere -- a Minnesota numb of 30 and up to 40 for that class, and they, too, will graduate October 28th. Last year, again, council elected that option that would maintain the uncommitted time to 28. We ended up 17%. As soon as the officers that are going to be graduating will be trained, we think that by the end of this years, we'll be turning to 18%, and again 133rd class will -- which will be counted for this year, for 2016, will finish their fto period towards the end of the year, by the end of the [3:31:20 PM] year they'll be done with their fto period but will be impacting that uncommitted police time. The last class that -- the next class that starts on 11-28-16, the goal for that class is to have 80 to a hundred cadets. In case you're wondering, we average about 12% vacancy rate for sworn, due to retirements and resignations and indefinite suspensions which equates to about 150 vacancies which is part of the pressure point that we, I think, experience every year as a police department, and I think most police departments experience. Some of the challenges with sworn staffing, just today I read an article at one of the major newspapers about the challenges with recruiting nationwide. I think part of that is twofold. One, the economy is actually doing well, compared to how it's done in years past where people have options besides policing, where then you add all the scrutiny that the profession is under. People just aren't as aggressively seeking these positions as years past. I'm happy to say that the police department has put a great emphasis on the recruiting piece and our intake is up -- our intake is actually up 20% this year. So we are trending, and we're not done on that. We're working on actually automating some of our hiring documents, like the personal history statement, so folks around the world, if you have somebody that's doing an internship in Europe or the middle east or anywhere else or serving on an aircraft carrier, as soon as they hit a hot spot, they'll be able to submit their paperwork electronically. If you think about the generation of people we're hiring today, they were born with tablets in their hands. Seems like some of them use them as restaurants and so on and so forth, I'm not sure she even know how to use a pen similar. We have to update our recruiting processes. We're in the process of doing that. Some of the issues we're dealing with on a national [3:33:21 PM] level include the terrorism threat, not just from overseas terrorism, but combating violent extremism right here in our nation, especially when you look at the challenges of the flavor of the debate as it relates to immigration, in this presidential election, it concerns myself and other police executives around the country that we not put people in a place where they feel that they need to succumb to some of the extremist views out there, because they're being marginalized and demonized in a debate. That continues to be a challenge we have, and this police chief and my colleagues would continue to push back on the demonization of people based on where they were born, based on their religion and religious leaves and we'll continue to push back on that. The short-term solutions that we've done in terms of trying to capture that uncommitted time and increased uncommitted time, the practical policing time, the time that we have to do better with our response times, to all of our calls, not just our urgent and our emergency calls, is this years, we just started this month rotating our non-patrol assets onto patrol shifts for a week at a time, three times a year. What we love about that, two things, number one, it's going to continue to help us focus on our -- on our readiness, you know, when people have been out of police cars for a long time, and all of a sudden you've got a world trade organization meeting that's going to come here, with all the bed space that's being built here, I'm convinced we will have a major wtl type meeting here, especially with your leadership, mayor Adler, or a convention, political convention, and we're at the state capital with all the very emotional issues that are being dealt with on the national level, on the state level, we're going to see more and more need for resources on the street to keep our community safe, especially when we're trying to protect people [3:35:22 PM] safe when they're exercising their first amendment rights. We think that's going to be a really positive thing to have these detectives and non-front line officers come out to help augment our patrol, and by having the officers on patrol working with our young patrol officers is going to give them the opportunity to train our patrol officers so they can start training the next generation of detectives, and just as important, to give them an opportunity to hit the ground running when that violent crime occurs and they're already out there, we're hoping we can help alleviate some of the challenges we have with caseloads by having these detectives up front, in the field, in patrol cars, fighting that. That's some of our short-term solutions. Again, long-term solutions, we feel that we're going to be able to really enhance our recruiting efforts, and again, 20% increase is B indicative that one of the questions that we would, you know, pose to the council for the council's support is community politician, which includes time to determine future patrol staffing. I think we started that question last budget deliberation, and as mayor pro tem remembers, many years ago we used to talk about two per thousand as a matrix that we would use. We've kind of moved away from that last year we had the study from the university of Texas that talked about this issue where we presented you with a plan for 80 police officers over a five-year period to impact that -- that -- that lack of time to actually be out there in the community the way that we'd like to be, and to actually disrupt crime before UT occurs like we'd like to be. Then the other piece that was still hanging out there was the police executive research form study that showed back in 2012, we were about 27 officers short. That's a question we want to throw out, then I guess once we finish, we can come back for questions. Clearance rates and police staffing, they go hand in [3:37:22 PM] hand -- >> Houston: Excuse me, mayor, we usually broke and talk about the policy question. Are rejust going to go through the whole thing again? >> Mayor Adler: We can or we can take a break at this point. That's what we have been doing. >> Houston: That's what we have been doing. >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to address it. >> Houston: Yes, please. Thank you so much for being here, everybody. Thank you, chief. Could you tell us the results of -- there was a police community engagement study. Did you all talk about that while I was out of the office -- out of the office -- [laughter] >> It's been a long morning. >> Houston: Out of my head. [Laughter] What is -- what is the feedback from the community engagement consultant that would play into what you're talking about? >> Good afternoon. I'm Brian, chief of staff. We're waiting for the final report. Matrix consulting group has been brought in, they've held meetings in most of your council districts and taken a lot of feedback. We have received preliminary information from the consultants but we have not yet received their final report. >> Houston: And when do you expect to get that? >> By the end of this month. We gave them a very short timeline so you would have that for your consideration during budget discussions and debate. >> Houston: So at this point their definition of community policing is the same as your definition, or is it different? >> What I've seen in their documentation is that their definite, if not word for word, is very consistent with what we're using here today and what we have used for several years. >> Houston: Okay. So I sat in the one at my district, and it was a little different, but we'll wait till they get their report out. >> And my understanding is that they are going to present their report findings at some point back to this body, directly. You'll hear from them. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Ask Casar? >> Casar: You know, I appreciate getting a chance to work with matrix and appreciate y'all giving us the update on what the actuals look like on uncommitted time. It looks like it's actually [3:39:23 PM] a little bit less than what was estimated, but that you -- you shot pretty close. For me, the answer to this question is, yeah, the concept of community policing is something that I, and I think the majority of council, support. Here, you talk about how the concept of uncommitted time fits into that, and I agree that we need more officers if we want more uncommitted time. And what I'm interested in having a conversation with the department about, in conjunction with matrix and some of the community members that came out in those meetings with matrix is, is how we make sure we're committing that uncommitted time to something the community feels like is a productive purchase for the dollars invested in that work. And so I have believed you and still belief you that we need to hire more staff 23 we want uncommitted time and how we turn that uncommitted time into the highest and best use for the community is sort of the next step in the conversation. I look forward to having that conversation with the council. >> And I think that one of the things that that group is going to deliver is how do we do -- how do we capture that and what does it look like, and how can they provide us with data that we can gather for you all so you can go back to constituents and say here's what we invested and here's with a we got in return. And that's part -- that's supposed to be part 2 of -- there's a two -- two-step process, and that's -- that should be coming at the end of the month as well. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I'm sorry. >> Casar: I apologize. >> Pool: Yes, on community policing, we talked about it, and I think it's a good idea. What I'm -- what I'm trying to figure out is, when we -- we have the vacancies that haven't been filled because of the training and the process to get into those slots, if you are going to bring us a request for [3:41:24 PM] additional staffing, what I would like to ask in advance is for you to look at filling the vacancies based on the classes that are coming through in the academy and give us a sense of what that time frame is. >> We can put together a spreadsheet that kind of shows you where we're at. Again, we know in November we're looking for a class of 80 and possibly a hundred, so that's really going to go a long way towards addressing the shortage we have now, plus the two classes that are currently in session. But we can definitely put together a spreadsheet that will give you a timeline in which we think we will hire and train any additional positions that we are -- that we are given. >> Pool: And to fill the vacancies that already exist. >> Yes. Absolutely. >> Pool: Okay. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar. >> Casar: It's a fun rabbit hole to go down because it is impressive how the department subtracts out that vacancy money, and it's -- I wouldn't say I recommend it, but it is an interesting rabbit hole to see how it is it's calculated, but it's not like the department is sitting on a bunch of money because of those vacancies as we've come to understand and I think that -- >> We got our budget down to about 1% every year. That's a pretty good -- pretty good track record, without going over, which we're very proud of. >> Casar: So I did now have a curiosity question related to that y'all estimated that we'd be at about 21% uncommitted time, but now the actuals are coming in at 17 or 18%. Which variable did y'all see affecting that the most in the last year? Was it you were getting more calls than were anticipated, recruited and trained less staff? It's not that big of a gap, but I'm just interested. >> I think it's a combination of both. I think we're seeing staffing shortages now that are impacting that number, as well as the calls, as the chief was just explaining, although the overall call load has gone down, call load for the priority -- the highest priority calls, P 0s and P 1s have gone up. [3:43:26 PM] They demand more time and resources. So I think the combination of the higher priority calls taking longer and the staffing shortages that we have are leading to having fewer hours available to do the community policing efforts that we want. >> Casar: So even though we appropriated the funds that we estimated would keep us at about the same level of uncommitted time, even with the hiring of those additional folks, we -- we had additional calls that were -- that were more serious. >> Correct. And part of that is just the time frame in which it takes to recruit and train and get those officers on the secrete. The -- on the street. The fact we're looking to have a class of a hundred in November is a reflection of the investment that this council has made that would allow us to have such a big class that we can start attacking the shortages that we're having. >> Casar: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: On page 7 you talk about all the calls for services and response time. Do you all keep in I data on property tax -- I mean -- property tax -- property crimes and what's your closed record on those? >> Yeah. We're going to talk -- that's the next slide is some of the clearance rates. >> Houston: Okay. >> The next slide. Yes, ma'am. Which is the slide we're on right now, which will be slide 12. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Why don't you go ahead with the presentation. >> Let's do -- okay. We're going to start with violent crime, which is number 11. If you look at this -- this slide here, it's really talking about our clearance rate, and our clearance rates for violent crime are currently at about 48%. The last full ucr data shows other cities are about 36% so we're about 12% above the national average -- excuse me, 36%, with Austin at 53%. So we're nearly 17% above the national average that relates to violent crime. You looked at in homicides, [3:45:29 PM] cases year to date for 2016 are 5 cases, cleared year to date are 6. You might wonder how is that? One of the cases that were cleared is from a previous year, so that's why you can't look at that year to year because it can occur one year and clear another, so you'll see we're 120% clearance. 2014 clearance rates, Austin, we've got 66% for homicide and the rest of the country is 56% rate. 54% versus 37%, and then the robberies, 31 versus 23, and 61 versus 43, and overall, 53 versus 36. Again, we're above the national average, but we can do better. That's why I really believe that with that uncommitted time, that policing time is so key because part of that is actually disrupting, preventing these crimes from occurring in the first place, which I think once they occur, whether they're -- we want to solve them, but we've already failed whether we solve them or not, as a community. Then this is the one that councilmember Houston was just asking about. This is our burglary. The clearance rate for property crimes are currently at about 13% nationwide, and we're at about 15%. We continue to use DNA evidence and science to try to solve these crimes, and we'll continue to do so. Last year, April 2016, cases cleared, year to date, burglary, non-residence, we've had 606 cases entered and cases cleared, year to date, are 75, about 11%. Burglary of residencies 1092 entered. 141 have been cleared so far. Year to date was 14% as of April. Auto they have the, 683, cleared 18. If you look at all those cashing we're at 15% property crime with the rest of the country at 13%, based [3:47:31 PM] on 2015 your data. The biggest thing with property crime, it is frustrating, but the number one deterrent to burglaries when we're out working is to have a high police visibility and presence to stop the burglaries from occurring in the first place. So that's a look at our -- actually, clearance rates here around the country -- I mean around the state, versus -- the city versus the country. If you look at slide 13, some of the challenges we've had and continue to have is that we've had some growth with sworn, but our non-sworn staff hasn't kept up, hasn't kept up with demands. We've had about 454 additional sworn in the last nine years, and we've had total of about 97 added in terms of civilian staffing. When you think about the H.R. Staff that we have, we still have paper timekeeping, and it's just disheartening that these poor folks are there trying to keep up with this continued growing workload, created by the uniform staffing, with hardly any additional staffing for our H.R. Folks. The manual timekeeping includes the fmla requirements and other programs that require ongoing maintenance. Our citizen administration staff supports carrying caseloads due to departmental growth. Forensic folks, again, we're continuing to use it for property crimes, in 2015 we received 18,069 DNA, blood alcohol, an fingerprint cases that came into the forensics division. Out of those 18,069, we've cleared and analyzed 16,514, which means that we end up with a net backlog of 1555 cases. There's some things going on on the national level and state level that we're going [3:49:33 PM] to -- that will require some potential reanalysis of cases that we don't know the totality of the number of cases, but there's a national phenomenon. We may see that even be further exacerbated by some developments on the national level. So I think that that brings us to, again, our staffing, you know, policy question for the council, is when you look at those clearance rates and you look at the -- the stagnation in terms of civilian staffing, would the council support adding additional detectives and staff to improve crime clearance rates for the people that we serve. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> That's the end of our presentation. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Questions for the chief am response to the last question or otherwise? Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: Just a quick question on the -- the -- let's see, slide 11. Is the clearance rate -- we had talked a while back about the backlog of the rape case. What's the status now? Is it all cleared up? >> We are -- you know, it's really interesting that we are very fortunate that -- I don't know if you heard about our Danny grant, which is the district attorney of New York City, relationships matter, and he gave us nearly two million dollars -- how much? I thought it was a little more than that, but well well over a million dollars, and we're actually in the process of catching up on most of those. I don't have the exact number. Those are actually going to private labs, based on that grant funding from Mr. Vance. But we'll get -- do you have additional information? We'll get you that number. >> Kitchen: Okay. I was also just curious about -- you know, I see the clearance rate. Is there anything, any impact on the clearance rate related to the processing of the labs? Maybe there's not. [3:51:34 PM] I'm just asking. >> Maybe the question is, do we believe we're going to clear more cases once we clear up the backlog of these rape kits? >> Kitchen: I guess it's more to the point of -- you know, one of the questions was supporting additional detectives and staff, but my question, is there something about the process that can be improved that would assist with the clearance rate? >> So I think -- go ahead. >> Okay. We've actually engaged the Texas science commission, forensic science commission, and the department of public safety here in Texas that oversees all the crime labs in the state. They're actually in the process right now of looking at our entire operation, to look to see where we can make process improvements and make sure that there's nothing that we're falling short on. We should have something back from them in the next, probably, I would say, six to eight weeks. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. >> Objection, form. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Ms. Pool. >> Pool: In answer to the question, I would ask you on page 13 you talk about civilian support staff hasn't kept up with sworn additions, but you're only asking if we would support adding additional detectives -- oh, I do see and civilian staff in there to improve the crime clearance rate. I would like to see some input from you, maybe a plan on what additional civilian staff boosting you would need to do in order to address those rates so that -- I know there's burnout, but I think the civilian folks need a little bit of attention as well. >> Yeah, we'd be happy to provide that. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I just had a comment really. Thank you for the information and the data. I think that's really useful, but I just -- I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank the officers who were involved in the homeless -- homelessness outreach team that did launch today and includes two APD officers, [3:53:34 PM] as well as two case workers from attic, ems, and outreach worker from the downtown Austin alliance, and I wanted to thank your downtown commander, commander Cochran, for his leadership and all the officers that have been involved in this last week's planning. I was glad to see them this morning in that partnership, so 24 thank you for your support. I know you were a supporter of commander Cochran's exploration of that and launching that initiative with existing resources. So thank you, and I hope that as you are working with the city manager to develop the budget, that that will be a consideration, the resources that the police department would need to keep that program going and potentially expand it to other -- other geographic locations in the city. >> Thank you. One of the things that we're just -- one of the challenges we're having right now is that we have a -- we have to continue to separate -- there's two classes of folks that are homeless out here. You have your homeless folks that most of our cops know by name. They don't bother anybody, they just happen to be homeless. Then you have your criminal transients. And we're starting to see some evidence that the criminal transients are starting to prey more frequently on our homeless population, which is something that's very -- of great concern. Not only that, it's part of what's driving some of our aggregated assaults, is that population. So we plan on taking a really close look at that problem because we're not going to tolerate criminal transients really hurting our homeless population, the vast majority of whom, again, but for being homeless, they don't bother anybody. But I meted to keep that on your radar. We'll have more data to follow. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Casar. >> Casar: Back to the clearance rates issue. It's impressive and I want to acknowledge basically every category, but I guess of interest to me, especially when it comes to staffing, might be how those are trending. Obviously, it's -- we can't take for granted that we are clearing more cases in some [3:55:34 PM] of these categories, and if, because of staffing, in your view, it's -- we're starting to get closer to the -- to the national average instead of staying above it, that would be of interest to me, or if we're, you know, baseline, hovering high above the national average, that's of interest to me. So I'm glad to see that we're doing well in that area, and I applaud y'all for it. I don't think we should take it for granted, but I think of interest in the budget would be, are things getting worse with our clearance rates or are they getting better or are they staying the same. >> And that's part of our concept process. We'll be able to provide that. >> Casar: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria, then -- >> Renteria: Thank you, chief for all you're doing. I'm glad you brought that out, the difference between the homeless and the ones that feed off of them. I've been saying that for years, because I've known people in my neighborhood that have actually gone out and they were just, you know, not transient criminals, but they were just criminals, and they were taking advantage of the homeless people, and I was, you know, very alarmed about that. And that's why we are implementing community policing in our neighborhood, so that we could get rid of the -- identify these people so that we could get them off the street. And I hope that, you know, you have as much success, because I know that there's a lot of problems right now, criminal elements that are just hanging around there. So I really appreciate that, all you're doing there with the staff that you have. I know it's been difficult for y'all to be recruiting people, because, you know, it's just the way it is here the last two years, with all the criticism. And I'm very impressed with, you know, the Numbers that we have here. You know, especially with the murder cases and solving the these murders, because as we've seen, in some of these bigger cities and cities our size are having all kinds of problems with [3:57:36 PM] their murder rates and, you know, innocent people are just getting shot. So I really want to thank you for that. >> Thank you, sir. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Yes, please. Thank you all again. On page -- slide 13, can you tell me what the spike in sworn -- what is that spike there? What happened in psem? What is that, psem? >> Oh, that was the -- well, that was the psychologist of the former public safety emergency management police department, which really handled the Lakes -- I mean the parks, the park police, the courts and the marshals, city marshals courts and airport. So a couple councils ago, we -- we negotiated a psychologist and it became one police department. Back in the two per thousand era, this was many years ago now, my response was, it came with their own workload. Our parks are kind of our -- a jewel, I mean we're very proud of our parks. But that's what that was from, from that psychologist. We have one police department now in the city. >> Garza:I'm sorry if you already answered this I was reading stuff while you were talking most -- sometimes. [ Laughter ] The cases cleared, my assumption is they were solved? Is that what that means? >> Yes. >> Garza: Okay. And do you have data that supports that hiring more detectives would help that? Because my assumption would be some cases are just hard to solve because there's no eyewitnesses or there's no evidence and so it just -- are there cases sitting on a shelf right now that the detective just can't even start because of low staff? >> There are cases that really when you look back it, you look at all the evidence, there is no evidence, there is nothing to follow up on so [3:59:38 PM] they're suspended. But I can tell thought caseload has been increasing and if I'm a detective, the more time I can spend on the case, especially the senior I can hit a case when something occurs, the better our chances. The supervisor will actually take a look at it and assign it because there is follow-up but some are suspended. When you reduce the caseload for the detectives, we should see an appreciable increase in the clearance rate. From proactive policing community engagement piece, I don't think we can underestimate the impact, effectiveness, especially when it comes to some of the property crimes during the day where everybody is working of police presence of a visible, in-view police presence, police patrol, if we can disrupt and prevent in the first place that's probably where we should hope to be. >> Garza: My assumption would be at some point there might be a diminishing return on hiring more detectives and how that affects the -- your cases cleared. Do you have data that supports -- >> I'm sure we can get that data. >> Garza: Okay, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So maybe I missed it. I had to step out. We had a consultant come in from California, I think he spoke at our town hall last month. And he did some q&a with district 6 out in the Avery ranch area is and it kind of went the same way as what I've been telling you, speaking on behalf of my constituents. The property crime was a big thing they were talking about and how it just seemed kind of abysmal that we were only doing ten, 15%, you know, clearance on the property crimes. Has he reported back yet? >> He will -- councilmember Houston had the same question. They will be -- their full report will be done by the end of this month and he's [4:01:38 PM] supposed to be presenting his findings at some point to a work session or a session here with the mayor and council. >> Zimmerman: Let me offer this, though. Obviously, I've never been a policeman, I'm speaking as a civilian representing constituents. And I don't necessarily disagree with the premise that if you hired -- if you had an unlimited budget and you could hire as many officers as you wanted for community policing and we had cars driving around every neighborhood, then, yeah, I guess if you have somebody thinking about doing a crime, he's, wow, look at all these police, I'm going to get busted, I on the do it. There's something about that bothers me as opposed to let's say we solved 80 or 90% of our burglaries and that guy is thinking about breaking into a house, he goes you know what? Everybody I know that broke into a house got busted, had to do some restitution. I see two scenarios on how we cut down on crime, one a policeman on every street corner and the other is the burglary knows he's got a 80-90% chance of getting busted and brought to justice, two very different scenarios in my view, speaking as someone who revise constituents. I can tell if you I had my choice, absolutely I'd rather have the second choice where people don't commit these crimes because they know they're going to serve some time or have to do restitution. Not because we have what looks like a police state with cameras and police everywhere. So that's the best I can do is offering you some guidance from voters and constituents. They want the crimes solved and that process of solving crimes in the community I still says that community policing. That builds relationships, right? Our officers go and they interview our constituents, what happened, anybody suspicious? You know some teenagers that are unruly? Ask questions, get to know people. It also focuses on the part of the community that is [4:03:38 PM] suffering from the violence and it also targets and looks for the people committing, you know, the violence or burglaries. In other words, it targets the victims of the crime and the people who are committing the crimes, not just a blanket police presence over the whole city. Can you appreciate that point of view? >> I appreciate all points of view. We're a diverse thinking community and I'm no different than the rest of us. >> Zimmerman: There are opposite ways to go about the problem. One is covering the city with police. Another is cracking down and bringing justice to the people who committed crimes. They're different. >> But there's two pieces to that equation. It's making the arrest and then there's a justice piece too so one of the frustrations we've had over the years is what happens in our courts, where we actually can tie somebody into 20 burglaries and a jury gives them probation. So there's a lot that goes into this conversation that's well beyond I think the control of the police department and then when you ask the legislature for some tougher consequences, we can't afford the bed space in jail. So I think, again, to me the proactive prevention is probably the best solution. >> Zimmerman: I have friends in the Texas legislature. Can you promise to bring me a discussion at our next public safety committee and let's talk it over? >> Sure. >> Zimmerman: Let's talk it over at the next public safety committee meeting. You're right we need to bring justice and legislature can help. >> Mayor Adler: It's after 4:00 I think we'll go to the fire chief at this point and through the budget process and then a quick question on community engagement. Thank you very much, chief. Thank you. [4:05:42 PM] So I think we're on page 16 of the powerpoint. >> 15. >> Mayor Adler: 15? Fire chief's birthday. >> I heard it's the fire department's birthday. Is that right? >> Yes. So yes. So I was going to mention that it it's not my 100th birthday, thank you. If it is we better be selling tickets to the water around here, right? No. It's the fire department's 100th birthday, and as a career department. So back in -- 100 years ago the fire department started with 27 men, and I do say men because that's all that was on the department at that time. And I can imagine that what they would think about having moved to a department of almost 1200 men and women and the difference in the delivery of services and apparatus and equipment and technology that we've achieved. So it's happy birthday, Austin fire department. >> Yea. [ Applause ] And I hope that y'all took the time or will take the time, that quick video that I think I -- made sure I sent to all of you it periods really nicely done and I think it's only about three minutes. So we are celebrating our 100th birthday. >> Casar: This actually just reminded me because we don't let people escape getting their birthdays until we trapped councilmember Garza, I was trapped, I almost stepped myself getting my birthday sung to me and councilmember Gallo rend, the councilmember with the youngest heart on the whole council's birthday was yesterday. >> That's right. >> Garza: So I believe. >> Mayor Adler: We have to sing. We have to sing. >> I wouldn't want to let him get away with it. >> For both you and for the fire department. >> Okay. [ Laughter ] [4:07:54 PM] >> Leslie? ♪♪ Happy birthday ] [ Applause ] >> And it's not 100, is it, councilmember? [ Laughter ] >> Mayor Adler: That's water. [ Laughter ] >> So let me get started. The quick overview, we're going to talk about operation staffing and included in that will be mandatory staffing, response times, standard of coverage, and then adding fire stations, the costs, the plan to maintain that standard of coverage, and then finally the policy questions. I know it's been a really long day, so I will try to move through this quickly and be succinct but descriptive. So first of all, the staffing standard. There are two agency that's sort of determine our staffing standard. One is the national fire protection association, and that standard is the 1710. And that's the one that requires a minimum of four firefighters per each fire fighting apparatus. Then we also have an osha standard that is two in, two out. What that means is so you can see there in the little picture that there are two Pfeifer fighters inside with a charged hose line. There have to be two firefighters outside with an additional charged hose line. So we don't send anybody inside unless they're at least -- there are at least four people on scene. So, therefore, why four people on a unit are important. Then in addition to that is the council resolution back from 2007 that dictated that we start to increase our staffing to four people per unit. And then back in -- to add to that -- that was suppose to be completed by 2019 or sooner. Fortunately we were able to complete that six years ahead of schedule and that was -- council also gave us a resolution that approved us to [4:09:54 PM] apply for then ultimately we were able to accept the grant, which is staffing for -- I forgot, firefighter in emergency response. I'm sorry. I totally forgot. Does that happen to y'all sometimes? I apologize for that. But so we were able to achieve that four person staffing by 2013. So we have an engine, we have an aerial. There we go. So we have all these little trucks and police has been making fun of us that we have -- have you brought your coloring book? But we thought these visuals are really good. So just so you understand the difference between apparatus in how we staff on each one of those, the-in or sometimes known as a pumper is the one that has the hose on top, the smaller or the shorter of those. An aerial can also be called a ladder or a quint. That's the one with the great big ladder on top. The difference between a ladder and a quint is a quint has five functions, it carries water, able to pump, carries hose, has the big ladder on top and also has a pump so it's able to pump the water. Then T rescue, which is also known as our special operations, and that's either a large truck or in some -- one case on one of these it's also just -- looks just like another engine but they are the ones that do the water rescue and have specialty skills, hazardous -- provide hazardous materials rescue and operations to that. And if you saw any of the news coverage on the rescue of the women that perished a couple days ago, rescue 14 is one of the major companies that was there trying to effect that rescue and wasn't able to really do so. And then a battalion chief, which are the ones that drive [4:11:56 PM] around in the big suburbs or big trucks and they are known as our incident commanders or in one case, one of those is a safety chief. And they're the incident safety chief, as well as making sure that we're in compliance with some of the safety regulations in regard to things like our turnout gear. Then an example of what does a box alarm mean, and that means that a total of nine units and 30 firefighters arrive on scene for an alarm for a single family structure fire. So just an initial box alarm would get you four engines, two ladders or aerials and a heavy rescue or special operations, right, and then two battalions, right? One is a safety chief and one is the incident commander. All right. Next that map I realize is a little bit small, but it's just to give you an overall feeling of the number of dish push this one -- okay, thanks. The number of sworn positions, the number of civilian positions that we have. There are 44 stations that are spread throughout the city and then there's the 45th station is on the airport. So that's the 45th. Station 46 will be the one down in shady hollow that will be opening in June and then the one in the planning process for 47 is the onion creek station, which isn't expected to open or be constructed until '18, March of '18. And that describes to you -- I don't need to read that all to you the number of engines, ladder trucks, quints, where they are, and they're there by the legend so you can see where specific type apparatus are in regard to that map. [4:13:58 PM] Next is response times. We cover over 323 square miles. We do assist some of our neighboring emergency service districts with automatic aid on some of those critical incidents. Automatic aid is not module aid. It's different. Automatic aid means the closest unit responds regardless of which jurisdiction they come from. That is only, like I said, on those critical incidents. It's not on all calls. It's just on those that have a high priority and that need emergency assistance immediately. We have responded to, in fiscal year 15 we responded to over 89,000 calls and interesting to note 70% of those are medical first response and then just a little note that station one, which is located right downtown on fifth and Trinity, is our busiest station with over 10,000 -- actually 10,700 calls. So almost 11,000 calls in a year. And then engine 18, which is located at Berkman drive and U.S. 290 east is our busiest single unit, and they run over 5300 calls last year. And then I think this is an important note that I want to talk about just a little bit about keeping the fire to the room of origin. 84% of the time on all structure fires we contain it to the room of origin and 90% of the time on apartment fires. And so what does that mean? It's a real economic driver. Let's just take a strip mall, for example, and the fire occurs in the middle of that strip Maland we are able to get there with the appropriate number of people, apparatus, training and effective time frame and we take -- confine that to the room of origin. That means maybe in four hours the rest of that shopping [4:15:59 PM] center is open and in business. But if we don't get there and put it to the room of origin, then it impacts every other business in that strip mall or even in an apartment fire, if we can keep it to a certain apartment or number of apartments, then the rest of those apartments can be reoccupied. So it's an important measure and it's an important status that we try to keep. The next is our response times. So our goal is that 90% of the time an AFD unit will arrive on scene in eight minutes or less. And in fiscal year '14 we revised that goal. It used to be 85% of the time but 90% of the time is based on a national standard and we are working towards become an accredited department and that is the standard that we would need to use. And fiscal year '15 actually 90% of the time, AFD afterward on scene in eight minutes 55 seconds or less. And you can see that that's almost one minute over the [indiscernible]. And so we can reduce those response times, and one of the reasons we're here, we can reduce those response times by addressing standard of coverage deficiencies. So if we reduce the distance between the stations, so we increase coverage in the city, and if we place stations closer to the residents, then we reduce travel time. . Our standard of coverage and, again, I know this is a small map. There's a little larger one on the next page. But it's really the visual of the colors that really becomes [4:17:59 PM] important this is our 2015 standard of coverage map and the purple areas are those that need fire stations now based on either the significant development, the increased population and response times that are substantially below our AFD goals. Then the burnt Orange areas could need stations in the next 5-10 years. The reason I say could need stations in the next 5-10 years is that if beput stations in the purple Zones, we may see a reduction in the response times just because we've gotten better coverage in some of those areas so we won't really know specifically do those burnt Orange colors need a station now or do they not need them, you know, from five years or ten years out, depending on development in how things go. So the next one talks about our standard of coverage, same map and just designates the top five priorities for where those stations need to go. These are in order. So Travis country, number 1 on your map, will show that you -- I think the important part is that response time of 12 minutes four seconds, 90% of the time our first unit doesn't get there for 12 minutes 4 seconds. That's our 90th percentile so we're way over what our goal is. And you look at each one of those, loop 360 area designated by number 2, that's ten minutes 4 seconds. Then goodnight ranch, number 3, so these are in order of when we believe we need to come in. And I don't think I need to read all these to you. Y'all can read those yourselves. I know you're at a tight crunch so I don't want to take that much time. And then the next page, slide, talks about costs. These are, again, I want to remind you general estimates. So if we have to purchase land, it could be about [4:19:59 PM] $1.5 million. Again, remember this is a general estimate. It depends on where we're purchasing that land as to what the costs would be. The construction and furnishing of the building is approximately $8 million. And then our apparatus, the quint or the aerial, is a million dollars and engine company is 800,000, and one of those rescue companies is about 600,000. And then the annual staffing is at $1.8 million, and that's for 16 firefighter positions. And we need 16 per apparatus in order to staff it for three shifts, 24/7. And then that is only if it's a single company station. There are some companies that we may -- or stations we may open that would have more than one apparatus and that would mean that there's 32. So the costs would be doubled then on -- on these estimates. Finally, the timing of the station opening can also impact our overtime budget. Then the personal protective equipment, which is arranges and the turnout gear and all those things we need to buy for firefighters, for 16 of them is -- that's $64,000. And, again, let me remind you that if there were two units, that price won doubled. Would be doubled. And then adding fire stations and our plan to try to maintain standard of coverage, we are working with ems on station design and implementation, and we have several stations, as I mentioned earlier, that are either in development but they're at different stages of the funding. So, you know, one is to acquire the fund and acquire land and another, the second step, of course is to design the station. The third is to fund and order the apparatus, and we need to do that at least a year ahead of -- before you open the station because it takes that long. And then the station construction, and then five, of course, is fund the operations and the staffing. And, again, let me remind you [4:22:00 PM] that in order to open a station, we need to have those firefighters on board at least seven months prior because that's how long a cadet academy takes to operate. And then the next slide on the plan to maintain the standard of coverage, we have talked about how to fund these things and certainly different models but one of those, including the public-private partnership or the p3, and that would be with or without city land. And we will provide you additional details in late June with the staff response to the resolution regarding the comprehensive plan with proposed funding mechanisms and time lines for building fire stations in the five named areas of immediate need. And the next one is we just ask you, how does adding fire stations compare to other council funding priorities? And I'll answer any questions. >> Mayor Adler: Great, thank you for the presentation. Ms. Pool? >> Pool: Thanks so much, chief. This is really helpful. We had a presentation in the public safety committee last Monday on a proposal from esd4 to transfer their assets milled mold, and to -- to combine their operations with ours. I know y'all are familiar with that. If we were to do that, what -- I'm looking now at slide 22, which is -- maybe slide 21. So we're look at response times, how would folding in the stations that they have already in place -- I think they have three stations and quite a bit of equipment that would come our way, how would that affect our response time? >> So the -- they have -- they do have three stations, I believe, one in the east, one on the west, and then one on [4:24:01 PM] the -- >> Pool: South. >> And the only one that would probably help sus the one on the west side. I think it's 407. But the others are not really in a place that would help us in reducing our standard of coverage or improving our response times. >> Pool: Okay. And then generally, though, the imitation of the efforts, how do you view that? >> So are you asking me how we would combine those two organizations? Or -- >> Pool: Well, it was more -- one of the reasons that esd4 is coming to us and asking for us to consider this is that the response time that they have for their constituents is difficult to meet because they're now in little islands since the city has annexed all around them and esd4, which once has a fairly large contiguous territory is now, like, four or five islands throughout the county. And they're coming to us saying that they're not able to serve their constituents well and as a result Austin is having to fill in probably more often than they would like. And so for effectiveness and efficiency it's makes some sense to me to see -- to have that conversation with them. So I'm just wondering how that accommodation could happen here and would indeed we be able to address their -- their response times better, the people who are in those little islands around the city if we were all one fire department? >> I see you handing things out but is this in response to that question or -- no. Okay. Very good. So I would say that I think that we have to look at that and we have provided assistance to them numerous disciple we do supplement and augment their delivery of services. I think that we have to look at that and say, the delivery [4:26:02 PM] of services that they are anticipating that maybe we take over is maybe not the way that we have to deliver those services. So instead of stopping two stations maybe we staff one station and we figure out how we continue to cover with an automatic aid agreement with esd11 in some of their other areas. Because I know that -- and I think we're well aware of there's a $1.8 million gap on the year one because it would require all that training and then overtime in order to staff those two stations and then about $1.5 million I think each subsequent year. >> Pool: There's also tremendous revenue that comes in in the assets that would be transferred. And we don't have to unpack the whole issue here today. >> Yeah. >> Pool: But I was persuaded in many ways as to the -- the justification for it so I would like to have that conversation maybe continue. Don't have to be any decisions made and certainly not in the budget discuss, but I did want to ask if that was something that would help as far as response times and maybe being able to get a little ahead of the curve other than -- because putting a new fire station online takes a number of years and here there's at least one that could help us. >> Yes. And we are planning on having that discussion further. I believe we have another meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning. >> Pool: Great. >> So we are continuing to have that discussion. >> Pool: Great. I just don't want the gap 61 point something million to be such an obstacle that we can't engage the obligation because we have surmounted larger obstacles in the year of that we've been here so I don't think that should be a stopper of the conversation at all. >> Understood. >> Pool: Okay, thanks. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Chief, talk to me just a moment about the land purchased. Do we look for city-owned land in the areas where you need for our stations? [4:28:03 PM] >> So -- >> Houston: That the first level? >> So there's a couple things that happen. We do have land, for example, out on -- by the circuit of the Americas Elroy road, and that was land that came to us through the M.U.D. And it is in an appropriate place. There are times when we are offered a piece of land that really doesn't serve a purpose, either it's in the wrong location or it's not large enough or it's not the appropriate geography for that. We are in some discussion with -- if you look on there, I think it's goodnight ranch, number 3 on that map of where we need to add our stations, and there is some discussion from the developer about not only donating the land but building the station for us as well. So we do try to look at different options. And, again, we also try to look for land and, you know, we do this research and planning and try to determine that maybe we can purchase the land years ahead of when we know we're going to need it, but that we can purchase it at a lesser price also. >> Houston: Okay. Thank you. Then the other thing is with the esd4, we didn't ever get -- public sanction we never talked about response times. And I know that one of their stations is located in colony park, which is off 969 and they should have a pretty good response time because it's pretty contained in that area. And the other one is offspring daily and 290 so we never talked -- so if y'all could get what those response times are in that area because we never talked about those. >> Sure. Be happy to do that. >> Pool: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar. >> Casar: Could you get us a version of the map with the key on what the different colors mean as far as response times? >> Absolutely. I'd be glad to get that you. >> Casar: That would be helpful. As far as which one is meeting our standard or the average, do you recall which color is -- [4:30:04 PM] >> Casar: Right. >> Means we're hitting the mark. >> So the dark green is where we are hitting the mark. The light green is we're not quite there. I don't know the Numbers but there is a percentile between those. And then the dark -- the light Orange peachy color is the next scale down, and then the dark Orange or the burnt Orange, I guess we go hook 'em horns on that one, right? Is our next to worst. Then the worst. I think less than 40% of the time on the purple. >> Casar: Ongoing. >> We will get that you map that has the percentiles that has a better scale and has a better length he's not for you. >> Casar: That would be useful. Just of some interest to me, sometimes when we have a fire station located somewhere and then right next to it there is peachy color or whatever -- I'm terrible at identifying colors, but, yes, I think that's of some interest to me, seeing of course there are plenty of areas where you've got a station and all around it is green and dark green and there's as this some areas we have a station there and -- that would also be of interest to me, would be stations and also what it is we need to provide the departments to make sure that once we put a station there we get the response times that we need and want nearby it. >> We'll be happy to do that. You can see that as the city developed, the dark green is in the core of the city and, you know, we built those stations and then as the -- you know, as the city grew out we didn't necessarily respond to annexation growth. >> Casar: That's right. Thank you. I appreciate it. >> You're welcome. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Zimmerman. >> Zimmerman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to go back to uncle page 19 real quick, couple of questions here. I was really astonished, looking at these statistics, that apparently 92% of the incidents are not related to fire. If we look at structure fires [4:32:05 PM] and other fires we're at about 4.4%, which tells me 95.6% of what the fire department does isn't fire. It's medical. It's something else. 20% other call types. That's a huge -- a huge number. Help me understand that. Only 4.4% of our calls are fire calls. >> So, I mean, I think that really today being the 100th birthday really describes the difference in what fire departments really do. We still call ourself a fire department. Many entities call themselves fire rescue instead of just fire department. We like to say we're the Austin fire department, where a mission goes beyond our name. So we respond to water rescues, any other type of rescues, vehicle rescue. All those things that are part of our job above and beyond just fighting fires. So we are a multi-agency response organization. So it's hazardous materials, any types of calls for service that we provide above and beyond what, say, a police department would do. >> Zimmerman: Fair enough. But, again, we have an affordability problem. I could say we're a city where taxes and fees go beyond our budget. >> Well, that's true. >> Zimmerman: I look at 92% of a department that's not fire- related it just gave me some pause. But I got another quick question here on page 22. Canyon creek is near and dear to me. When I was the president of the M.U.D. There, we had 1293 homes and I know those homes are there because I routinely dropped political pamphlets on every door so there are at least 1293 homes. Since then they've built it out, there's even more residences and hundreds of apartment units right in that area. It's the purple dot you had up there, where you had number 5, canyon creek. So where did that number of [4:34:07 PM] 500 come from? Is that -- it's more like 2,000 in that immediate area? >> We'll have to go back and relook at that, but I believe it usually comes off tcad. >> Zimmerman: Wow. It was probably 500 back in the late 1990s, but it's probably over 2000 now in that immediate area. >> We'll certainly look at that again. >> Zimmerman: On page 23, these are budgetary estimates. This speaks to what councilmember pool was talking about, of the expense of the fire stations. You know, 8 million kind of being a budgetary number and the fact that esd4 could get us, you know, three fire stations in big budgetary Numbers we're talking $24 million of expenses that might be avoided by Austin, you know, in the future. So maybe the point here, too, is that if we don't do the merger this year, it may come up next year or the year after that. So, yeah, it's still something on the horizon as the city continues to annex areas and fill in out there. And just one more note on -- back to page 21 with the map, if we could put that Alabama boning. I want to make an important point here about the difference between the western side of the city, where we have these huge open spaces. Of preserve areas. And if you look just to the lower right of the canyon creek purple dot there, that huge white area -- >> Yes. >> Zimmerman: Lot of preserved space out there and a giant wildfire risk. >> Yes. >> Zimmerman: So I'd like to point out that some of these areas in the western part of the city are really very serious while fire urban interfaces, right, wile life and urban interfaces. >> That's correct. >> Zimmerman: I'm very deeply concerned about the fire risk out there and I'd like that to be mentioned. In addition to response times [4:36:07 PM] we have this issue of the wildfire risk. >> Correct. >> Zimmerman: Not just response time but also wildfire risk that kisses there. Canyon creek is one of those neighborhoods right on the boundary of bcp. >> That's correct. We continue to work on the wild and urban interface, as well as station place. And part of the decision-making on designating how these areas were prioritized had to do with the risk levels. >> I just want to make -- point out one thing, if we're talking about the preserve, the preserve comes under different standards and the federal government is involved in the better management practices. And the city cannot unilaterally simply go in there and do whatever. So -- and I know that in the conversation y'all have taken on the federal -- the documents that were provided and so forth and so that conversation is happening. But, you know, as a partnership that we have with the county and with the fish and wildlife service, so it's not a unilateral action on the part of the city. >> Thank you. We've been from day one have always felt that it is a partnership and that we all have to have a part of it. >> Pool: Right. Thank you. And I would also take issue with the characterization of the preserve as being incredibly flammable. In fact a healthy forest is able to withstand a fire. >> Zimmerman: Mr. Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Mayor. >> Zimmerman: I don't see a partnership. In fact there's a 1- direction relationship with bureaucrats who don't live next to this dangerous area and our people do. And if a fire gets started out there, it's going to be terrible because the lands are not being managed I know because I live next to them. They're built up with dead seared, they're extremely dangerous and the money that's [4:38:07 PM] going to preserves is being used to -- for two things, buy new land and erect fences that that's what we use the preserve money for. We are not clearing the dangerous underbrush and dead vegetation out of those areas. And we need to do it. If the government tries to stop us, we need to do it anyway. It's a danger for us, not for them. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: On page 19 I'd like to speak just a minute to the 63,000 medical calls. Some of those medical calls, because of not having the opportunity to regulate house bill 219 homes which are unregulated homes where people with various kind of different abilities live for their social security, ssdi. Having been in the police academy and doing a ride- out, when those calls are made we run fire, police, and ems to those calls. And so it is probably -- if we could put a dollar amount to these medical calls -- not all of them are. Some of them are grandmother fell down and can't get up. So the first group of people get there and that's the fire department and then ems comes with the -- but the police also come. But a lot of these calls are those kinds of calls, especially in my district. I don't know about district-wide and that's stations 18 is the one that responds to all of those. And so there's a huge financial impact just by trying to regulate -- trying to attend to the people who live there. So hopefully in the next month or so we'll have a resolution to bring to council or item to council to talk about how we can begin to register and and those homes so we reduce that expense and the time that's associated with those calls. >> And we are working collaboratively with ems to try to reduce the double need for both units responding, and [4:40:09 PM] it's just a difficult -- part of it is the dispatch and the receipt of the call. And making sure that we're dispatching the right resources in an effective amount of time to the incident. And so we're working with ems and we have reduced some of those calls so that we can wave ems off or they can wave us off on certain calls. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, thank you. Ms. Garza. >> Garza: I guess answering the policy question, I think it's, you know, public safety -- public safety agencies are why cities were created, to collect taxes, to pay for these very expensive agencies so, I mean, that's the reason cities were kind of invented, the bureaucracy of the city. So when we need these extra stations, you know, my assumption would be that you'd like -- goodnight ranch, for example, that's going to be an additional tax base so that should pay for and especially since they're donating the land and possibly the station, I guess why are we behind, like, that? If -- I feel there there should be a rose in place as we're annexing, there should be something in place that automatically happens. Is that not the will from the council at the time? Or is that a loaded question? [ Laughter ] >> Probably the answer to that is yes and yes but I'll give it my best shot. So yes, there is -- there was no will from the council to build stations. I mean, since I've been here I've asked for stations. It's a very expensive process, as you can see. In the 2012 bond -- project we asked for five stations and got one in that bond project. And today that station is not even going to be erected until 2018. So six years to get the station erected and be able to occupy that. So, you know, I think that it's the funding process that's difficult. And then as we annex, when we [4:42:10 PM] annex, the city annexed large portions, you can see we added a large number of stations and firefighters at one time. But as we get little pieces here and there, we don't really have a metric that says when we add so many acres or so many square miles we should add people. We are working on such a metric so that as territory gets annexed we can then work on adding the right number of staffing and work on adding fire stations as appropriate -- as appropriate. >> Garza: I guess I'd also like to point out I've been a huge supporter of our health and human services and it's because as somebody who has been on those medical calls I know fire would not have had to show up if that person had had access to health care or some kind of option brothers that or even -- I'll never forget a woman literally waiting for us with her purse on her lap because she just didn't have a ride to the hospital basically. >> That's right. >> Garza: I think as we solve these other issues and invest smarter in health and human services and our mobility options, we can decrease the budget of fire but, I mean, that's not to say that we don't have to make sure that you have your -- you're appropriately staffed and have appropriate number of fire stations to our outer reaching communities. So thank you for the work that you do. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. The last item we have is budget process. We have two things on that. The first we'll talk about the process itself and then I think ed wants to talk about the community engagement a little bit. Ed and Kathy and I got together to talk about the process. The staff had expressed some things that they liked and some reservations they had with the process that we used last year. Chief among the things that they wanted us to take a look at was, one, to actually [4:44:12 PM] establish a rose in June so that everybody would know what the process was going to be. That's something we are working at as we went along, which is what happened last year. They also wanted to have a process that would daylight ideas relatively early so that they could see and they could be discussed and then with a shutoff date for ideas that would be precise prior to the last three days we're working on the budget so they weren't costing things out at the last minute so there would be a cutoff date, recognizing that -- that hasn't happened before so I call that out real loudly for everybody to see so that the community all understands that if we do that there will be a date prior to the last three days of the budget and if it's not surfaced at that point it doesn't come up, it would come up later as a budget amendment at the end of the process, but as far as the budget itself, there would be a cutoff date but we all would know that well in advance. But I highlight that. They also asked that we tend a little bit more aggressively the list that we have. So that ideas that are on the list that are pending and still in play are on the list but things that get onto the list that really don't have support on the council be taken off the list so that the community isn't wondering whether something is going to be put into play or not. After going through those conversations, there's a quick little powerpoint that's been handed out to everybody. It's also posted on the bulletin board. It just talks about the different elements. Everybody has seen these in several different forms, including what ed has given us earlier. It's another visual version of the budget key dates and the budget time lines so you can see when things are happening. [4:46:13 PM] The next page talks about the city council road map. The manager takes us through preparation of the forecast, forecast of the budget development. Then it gets turned over to us on July 27. And then we have the department budget presentations and then our budget work sessions and we set the rate. Those dates were all set. On page 8, there's text but don't look at that because that text has been written a little bit in more detail on pages 10-11 >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Page 8 and moving on to page 10, 11. This is really the gist of the kind of the outline for the budget that the three of us are presenting. The state -- the staff will create and manage the concept menu. To obtain budget concepts suggested by councilmembers but also function as a worksheet or calculator so that you can move things in and out, select things that you would have so that you can see what kind of budget you would make and you can also follow things as we're appoving items. But everybody would have that available to them. It would also be available to the public that worksheet or calculator. We would need -- meet weekly during the month of August so the budget comes out from the manager on the 27th. We start meeting in August. And that after each one of our meetings we would have the opportunity to take things off the menu or put things on the menu. Ask the staff to take a look menu item to see how much it would really cost. But we would do that on a weekly basis. The concept menu itself would be organized by the -- kind of [4:48:13 PM] the program areas that we had last year. You can see them down there. They were employees, park and open space, fees, public safety, utilities, financial policies, quality of life, economic development, health and human services. And then within each one of those areas it would be -- there would be subcategories, things we would propose to add to the budget, things we would propose to take out of the budgeted or revenue changes. The staff would prepare a standardized form for us to submit concepts to be put and included in that concept menu. That would encourage some kind of description of the item or justification, kind of a really, really abbreviated whereas or resolved clause if it had been in the ifc so people would know what it is that was intended. And that the initial concept menu, as it came out the first time, would include all the ifcs that we have passed that were not otherwise put by the manager into his budget. So if there was an ifc the council approved that wasn't into the budget that would be the initial concept put into the menu. Anybody can submit concepts that would go into the concept menu without having any cosponsors until August 2. So you could be spending June or July thinking of the ideas you want. You could check and see if the manager included them into his budget and if not, then -- and anybody can put anything they want to on the concept menu by filling out that form. And it would then go on to the concept menu. >> Garza: May we ask questions now? >> Mayor Adler: Yeah. >> Garza: I wondered what the reasoning behind that policy is because -- or if we can talk about it and maybe change it. >> Mayor Adler: All this is subject to change. Weaver just laying out an idea. >> Garza: We get so many asks and wish we could say yes to [4:50:14 PM] every single one of them and as -- what happened last time I felt like is everybody started throwing stuff on the concept list and then we had to start saying no because -- because of one somebody and because we're a were councilmember and because we're a body where majority rules I'm wondering if we eliminate that part, like maybe you have to have certain, maybe two other cosponsors to get something on there. I think we were really lucky last budget season and as soon as anything gets on that concept list we're going to give a lot of people a lot of hope and have to be a lot tighter this time around. So that's just a concern. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. There are four -- three places here where we talk about the number of council people to be identified. Let's go through it long enough so we can identify at least each much those three places because that might inform the decision about what the Numbers should be but I would be fine with that. But let's mark that as a place where we have to see what the number of cosponsors would be. >> Pool: Following up on that, getting it on has the increasing Numbers of cosponsors like we did last year, which we may change, but it has to take it off is six. And so unless I'm not reading it elsewhere, but it looks like to take a concept item off takes six people and I think that maybe we should look at that because that may be more what you're talking about. >> Mayor Adler: Right. Let's take a look at both those Numbers. >> Pool: Together. >> Mayor Adler: Where last year there was an ever increasing number to put things off and decreasing number to take thins off it was suggested we do it much more simply and we throw that out and just Virginia certain number to put things on and off. One question would be, with the initial list -- the question would be how many cosponsor asks it take to put something on the list and do we differentiate right away versus in that first week or the rest of the time or just have it the same for the whole time? First question. Second question is once something goes on to a list, [4:52:17 PM] how many does it take to remove something from that -- from that list? And then the third vote that we would have -- and I'll come back to you -- and then the third vote in terms of the number of people just because something gets put on the list does not mean the staff spends time to research it. >> Right. >> Mayor Adler: One of the things staff had was there was 160 things that showed up on the list and they're running around trying to fund things. So there also has to be a certain number of people on our weekly meeting that agree that this item on the concept menu staff should actually spend time against and the number we have here is five. But, again, those are the four Numbers. What's the number to put something on the menu in the first week? What's the number to put something on the menu through August 22? Which is the proposed date when you can't put anything more on the concept menu? How many does it take to take something off and how many does it take to ask staff to spend time against it to learn more? Yeah. >> I have two different questions just to get them on the list. >> Mayor Adler: Mm- hmm. >> Kitchen: Actually the first question may go away depending on what the decision is made about how many people, but I think August 2 is too tight from July 27. So if we're going to keep that concept of changing the number, then I think a little more time from August 2 is important so that would be one thing. The second thing is the last bullet that says the budget question submitted by councilmembers at the budget office deems to be concepts, I respect the concerns they have and I'd like to have another way to deal with that. Because I think we're the people that have to determine whether it's a concept or not. So I would just say perhaps there's another way to deal with the concerns about extensive analysis and workload, but I think that -- I think we have to preserve -- as councilmembers, our option to ask questions and not have [4:54:17 PM] them concept menu items. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. We can talk about that. So my recollection had the concern was is that sometimes -- it's a -- when does staff have to intend considerable amount of time against something? >> Kitchen: That's really the question. We can talk about that. But the decision about whether something goes on the concept menu or not has to be ours. >> Mayor Adler: Yeah. One issue was staff not spending time on something else there was as critical mass for it and second was having all the concepts in one place so that someone didn't have to go back and forth to concept menu and the questions and answers so they wanted to know all the different ideas that related to parks funding, there was one place to go. >> Kitchen: I may have an idea I don't want on the concept menu because I'm never going to advance it to a concept but I may need to ask questions about it first. That's why I want to retain the -- you know, I think I need to be able to decide whether it becomes a concept or not. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Yes? >> Mayor, you would say I think we should talk about thousand handle that. I think as I understood the concerns there were -- at least there's a possibility to submit a question through the q&a process that really requires pretty extensive evaluation and analysis and may never really have the political support to move forward but we're asking staff in the middle of the budget process to really analyze -- to do the kind of analysis that they're doing in the concept menu. It was a bit of a loophole last year and I think it's just important that we be mindful of the amount of analysis that goes into some of the q&a, especially as it gets later in the process. >> Mayor Adler: What we can do. >> Tovo: Especially if it doesn't have the political support to move forward. >> Kitchen: The other aspect, regardless of the concept, if I'm trying to understand the budget, then I may want to ask some questions that may require a fair amount of analysis and if it's not done already, insider be able to ask -- I should be able to ask [4:56:18 PM] a question about the budget whether or not I want to put it on as a concept or not. >> Mayor Adler: Would it work to say you can either put something on the concept menu, in which case -- it has to be on the concept menu in order to be something that gets put into the budget. >> Kitchen: Right. >> Mayor Adler: But you can ask a q&a. Since we're going to be meeting weekly and tending it to, if you get an item on the q&a that you can answer because there are a lot of q&a answers you can just answer, but if someone has asked something on the q&a that you think is going to take a substantial amount of time then part of our weekly meeting should be you come to the council and say here were six items that were asked on the question and answer and as a council we could say, yes, there's an additional three people or whatever it is to do that. The loophole was having one person ask a complicated question and then taking a lot of time. So that's the issue. Go ahead. >> I'd say I don't know if we want to get into depth on this now or do the overview and come back to it. The way I see it it's analogous to what we do during the year, when asking regular informational and we they're easy to answer the staff will provide us with that information and we can use it to either move forward an initiative or not or just for our own information but there is a point where staff sometimes turn and say, I'm not going to do any -- I can't get you that information without a council resolution and then we need to bring one. I had that happen about some of the housing information, for example, that, you know, some of it we had and that was available to me. This -- as we moved additional questions forward, it was decided that it really needed to happen through a resolution because there needed to be, you know, substantial support on the council to warrant that kind of staff analysis and so that's -- that's what I think the analogous situation is here, if they're just straight informational questions that will all take time for the staff to compile answers to, you know, then they can get handled that way. For the ones that are really asking for calculations and [4:58:19 PM] additional analysis and lots of additional information, I wouldn't expect there are a whole lot of them. You know, and that might be useful to see what some of the examples are of things that the staff would flag for, you know, some sign of political support of substantial -- I don't know, whatever we decide that substantial support is to warrant that expenditure of time. >> I understand the balance. I'm not sure where it is. I'm just not sure about being able -- >> Mayor Adler: Let's not decide that today. Let's give people a chance to think about it since this is just being introduced and then we'll put this as a discussion item for one of the council meetings here in June so that we get that resolved, so maybe at one of the work sessions over the next couple weeks, we'll come back to that. So here's the first question to see if there's like a consensus on this issue. We meet pretty much weekly in a work session. Generally in August if someone wants to put something on the concept menu, how many co-sponsors should that person have? Should they have to find four other folks -- I mean three other folks like an ifc, or since this is happening weekly, do we want to have a number that is one less than that? Does anybody have feel for that? Kathie? >> Tovo: Mayor, as we talked about, I'm sort of interested in, since - - you know, if we decide to have some kind of vote to keep things -- or judge on a weekly basis do we still want to get a measure of support with getting sponsors. I was just trying to reflect back on my experience last years, and I don't think anybody asked me to co-sponsor something [5:00:20 PM] on the concept menu where I said no and I don't think anybody said no to me. I just want to get a feel for how useful that it. A few of you have suggested it is useful, or do we just want to go with the on and off vote? Do we want to have both or just an on and off vote? I'm kind of undecided on it myself. >> Mayor Adler: Ed, did you have a preference on that? >> I don't know that we had a preference in regards to getting things on the concept menu. I think some of our issues was with trying to get things off the concept menu and narrow it, so just some status. Last year there was 135 concepts on the council concept menu. 130 of those were launched on the magnitude of four or five a day, including the weekends, and we had concepts coming to us, even before the budget weekends, we had concepts launching. And in all those Numbers, there were zero concepts removed from the list during the process. So, you know, just I think the bigger issue is really the more valuable issue, here, is for council to take votes on a regular basis so there's an orderly process of these are the concepts that really seem like traction to move forward the staff can do an analysis of and push that information out to council, and again, I think having some cutoff points. I know one of our concerns last year, we do public hearings at the end of August and early September, so the public is coming down and commenting and testifying on these different budget issues and concepts, but there was a whole bunch of concepts launched after the public hearings had closed. So I think having a cutoff date certainly in advance of the public hearing not only gives the public full opportunity to comment on those concepts, but also gives staff time to finish [5:02:21 PM] our analysis and get a clean set of documents out to council in advance. And ideally, we give those to council in advance of the September work session. Remember, you have that work session on September 1st, so I think an ideal situation would be to have the full menu of options, it would be 95% or 99% of the menu of options on the table by that September 1st work session. >> Mayor Adler: And what you had talked about was having a cutoff on the 22nd, new ones that gave you a week to be able to process any new ones that had shown up. >> And to get the completed list out to council a few days before that September 1st work session. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> So the first question, let's talk about this. Right now, August 22nd is the date that you have to do something by, but let's talk about just -- we're going to break this into pieces. So let's first do the piece on, do you need a co-sponsor or one, two, three, or four co-sponsors to put something onto the item. Ms. Garza, then Mr. Zimmerman, then Ms. Kitchen. >> Garza: My recollection of last time is, there was a lot put on the concept list, and then we didn't take those votes to take them off. So they were just kind of ignored. So, I mean, if we're going to do that, that's fine, too, but to make it easier to put it on, but harder to take it off, that means you're forcing your colleagues to vote against -- six of your colleagues to vote against something that one person put on. So I just feel like that's a weird position to be in. And last time, I feel like there were specific things -- I remember one in the African American quality of life, I remember councilmember Houston saying what about this, and a lot of things were kind of, well, we're going to have this package kind of a -- I forgot what you called it, mayor -- what was it? Block grants. Block grants, that I think in some ways became problems later because it happened with the [5:04:22 PM] parks block grant. We had a parks block grant that the public thought that there were different intentions for that block grant, and then when it came before open space, we had community members saying, no, this is what that was supposed to be, this is what that was supposed to be, and those are decisions that should have been made during -- in my opinion, during the budget. Those are when the hard choices need to be made, so we don't have that at the end, the community stakeholder saying, no, this is what was meant by that no, this is what was meant. We need to be really clear. So I feel like it should take more sponsors to get something on there, also because it was alarming when I saw how many millions we -- we spent last year. I think it was more than -- I forgot what the number was, but it was a huge amount that, of course, they're all very necessary programs and stuff, but like I said, we have a much tighter budget this time, so -- so my suggestion is one and three co-sponsor, just like how we get things on the council agenda. >> Tovo: So a total of four. >> Mayor Adler: Total of four. Mr. Zimmerman? >> Zimmerman: Mr. Mayor, obviously, the fiscal conservatives, you know, are outnumbered on the council, so the majority here could do whatever it wants. It could set the bar at four or five people, to have stuff put on. That's the prerogative of the council here. Obviously, I'll live with whatever you decide to do. Most of our interest is trying to identify places we can save money, but also trying to figure out some of the complexity and the budget. One of them -- and one of the reasons that I appreciate what ed had said about, you know, stuff coming back, but the budget has some complexities. So when we ask an intelligent budget question, the information that comes back to us informs us, oh, we didn't know about all these things we learned in the answer that leads to the next round of questions, so on and so forth. So -- and some of that's a necessary evil because we just [5:06:23 PM] came into city council for the first time, we don't know, you know, how the budgets work and how people do funding so some of that iterative process is just because we don't know what question to ask from day one, and that's why it keeps coming back to you. I would be okay having two people as a minimum to put stuff on the -- on the concept, but again, I'll be looking for ways conserve money. One of the areas I want to look at is what's happened with our reserves and why we've had this huge, huge -- $80 million of deferred maintenance. So we would probably ask a series of questions on that, you know, what has been the budget practice in the past and why do we find ourselves behind so much? Have we - - have past councils allocated money for reserves, and then it's been reappropriated and spent on other things, or has it just been neglected? So a lot of things that I do for my office is just trying to investigate and understand where the money is going and why it's going there. And that was behind a lot of the budget questions we put out. And, yes, they are -- they are complicated. They're so complicated that when we get the answer, we figure out, here's what we should have asked in the first place. But one thing I would suggest, Mr. Mayor, you didn't ask for this yet, but I'd like to see us change the dates somewhat, and make sure we get the budget early. I think I asked for this last year, that the city manager go ahead and present our budget earlier, maybe the last week in June. All right? So we have a chance to see what does the budget look like from the city manager's office, get it out to the community, and let them start looking at it at the understand of June before we go on break, and that buys us more time, you know, for public feedback and for -- and for asking these questions so we can have this basic information before we get to August and September. Does that make sense? You know, just to move the calendar back and let us ask those questions sooner so we can do the follow-up and have our answers by middle of August, probably. Then we don't have to bother you [5:08:25 PM] and -- >> Mayor Adler: Let's hold that question right now because it would pertain to next year, as opposed to this year, because if process has already been set up, I think. Let's come back to that question as we kind of do our postmortem this time. >> I just wanted to talk about the budget question to make sure we are very happy to respond to budget questions. Last year I think we responded to 304. It was handily the all-time record of budget questions, and we are more than happy to push those out. I think the question that's come to bear is, now that we have this council concept menu process, which we've never had before, how do you kind of avoid the loophole of, there's not council support to study that as a concept, so I'll just ask it as a question and still get my information. And I don't know how to close that loophole. >> Mayor Adler: Let's hold that and focus just for a second how many people it takes to get -- >> Pool: Mayor, I have a 5:30 that I also have to leave, but I would support what councilmember Garza is saying for putting it on, and then I think fewer people to take an item off, maybe four to take it off or -- I don't know what the other number is, but I think six is too high. >> Mayor Adler: My sense is, is that if there are six people that are in favor of something, four people shouldn't be able to take it off the agenda because of the majority. So I think to take something off -- >> Pool: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: -- You know, it almost has to be six or you have a minority -- >> Pool: Okay. I understand. >> Mayor Adler: -- Number that's stopping -- >> Pool: I thought it would be more related to how many people put it on, but I support what -- >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So -- yes, Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: I think the cutoff is a good idea. I'm fine with the 22nd or maybe a few more days so we have a month to look at it. I think that's important. To answer your question, I am uneasy, I guess, about this concept of being able to remove items from the concept menu during those four weeks because, to me, what we did is, we looked at -- we looked at it as a [5:10:27 PM] package. So we had everything on the concept menu ahead of time, and I think it's good to have a think about it, but we did a package on decision-making. So I'm uneasy about people putting stuff on understand a removing it the next one because we're not really analyzing things in a package if we do that. I'm also uneasy with requiring four to put something on the concept menu. I don't think that's fair. Itdoesn't strike me as fair. I do think more than one is probably good, but this is a discussion, and I think a discussion is very important as we go through this process. And I may not agree with someone or two or three or whatever people that put something on, but there might be something in the discussion that I find valuable. And so I just think -- I think this has to be a pretty open process. So I would -- I would fall down on some number between one and four because I think four is too many to require for someone to put something on the concept menu. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Kitchen: Then I would -- I would not -- I would be very uneasy about starting to take things off before I was looking -- it want to know the whole package before I started taking things off. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I'm going to do this, only because everyone is seeing this for the first time and I think it's unfair for everybody to have to look at this and react. This page has been positively. I think the questions that are open for us is August 22nd as far back as we should push that? Take a look at that date and see. The second one is, how many people does it take to put something on the agenda? The next one, how many people does it take to take something off the agenda? And do we want to have some period of time, a week at the beginning, where anybody can put anything on? I would remind you that during the month of August, we're going [5:12:28 PM] to be meeting as a council four days a week. I mean, there's a budget work session, a budget meeting, Austin energy, so there's not going to be a lot of time to be running around. So I just point that out to everybody. But I think those are the four questions, how many to put on, how many to take off, do we make it different in the first week, and is August 22nd the appropriate cutoff point. Yeah. >> I wanted to just express a little bit of why we were concerned about things staying on the concept menu. Last year, you all had some concepts that affected employees. And if you're going to look at that, that's great. That's your prerogative, but if the majority is not going to look at this, you have employees standing about, worrying about losing their jobs. If you're going to look at that, that's your right. But if you're not, if they can get off and employees can relax, that's one of the concerns we had, is really focus on this budget, as it does every community member, but it does affect employees in many, many ways. So that's one of the reasons we were interested in not having things prolonged, if they're really not interested in, the majority. >> Mayor Adler: So one way to deal with that might be to of a high threshold to take something off, seven or eight votes to take something off. That would mean it stayed on there unless there was an overwhelming number of people that were ready to take it off. >> Kitchen: Or we could just focus in on what was the issue, which was anything we could do that affected employees, and make a commitment to think about that a little earlier. Maybe that would be -- >> Garza: I just want to point out that's not the only example of that. There were several other -- I'll give one example. The chain of events I think everybody knew that we were not going to cut the funding to the chambers, but every single chamber person came and spoke, and I believe wasted their time [5:14:29 PM] because they thought council was going to cut funding. There were several others that I think we all knew funding was not going to be eliminated for those things. That's any concern. I think to get it on there, there should be a higher threshold. >> Houston: Mayor, if I may speak -- >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Houston: -- To that, I was ready to cut the budgets. I was ready to cut their budgets because their focus was on doing something different than what the people in my district need for employment, and they need refocus their priorities to be in alignment with what we're talking about, poverty rate, people who are coming out of jails, and then that's not where they are. So I was willing to -- I was willing to cut that budget, but I understand some people weren't. But I think it's something we have to talk about every year, is the chamber doing, bringing in the kinds of businesses that will help Austin become the kind of city that we want to be as far as affordability and wages, and not just the $150,000 jobs, but people who can make 45,000 or 50,000. And the answer is, no, that's not been their focus because we've not said this is our focus. So they're still going out doing what they've always done, and we're saying there's a population of people who are being left behind in this very prosperous city, and you all are not getting it. So I was one of those that was willing to cut the budget. >> Garza: If I could just -- it was also cutting the minority chambers, too, and I guess my point was, there wasn't a -- there wasn't majority support for that I understand some councilmembers would have done that, but that's why I'm saying if we're going to put something on there, let's make sure we have some kind of evidence or some kind of showing of a close to a majority support, so we don't create, I guess, that fear in people with these different budget items. >> Mayor Adler: There's also another question that we need to resolve and it's the one that's in the note section. So last year, as you recall, we didn't actually take a vote on things, we just kind of reached a kind of consensus, and then when -- before -- when we were in that last week, I handed out [5:16:31 PM] what was generally -- what I believed to be the consensus agenda. If we're actually going to take binding votes, then we -- and unless we're going to open each one of those votes to public comment and public hearing, we probably need to pass an ordinance that allows us to, in a budget work session, to move things on and off the budget without public comment. Right now on a work session, you can't take action. If we let there be action on a work session, then our other ordinance says then you'll take public testimony on it. So if we're going to be able to move things on and off the budget, we just need to pass a conforming organics that lets us do that practice. >> Houston: What page is the note on that you're referencing? >> Mayor Adler: It's on page 11. It's the second paragraph from the bottom. >> Houston: Oh. Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay? Yes, mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: If I could just make a couple quick comments, and I don't -- I'm not going to -- I go back and forth about how many sponsors and whatnot for some of the reasons you all have suggested. But I think we should just consider the logistics of that time period, given fact that we'regoing to be in meetings most of the time. It's pretty hard for me to catch up with y'all and talk outside of meetings as it is, because we're in meetings so very often, and that period of time is going to be even more challenging, so we might factor that into the consideration of how many sponsors, though, you know, I think it is important to demonstrate some degree of support. On the other hand, I think it is -- I think it does send different messages to the community in two directions. We can have things that were concepts to be cut. We can also have -- we also had some concepts on there that were substantial funding increases for certain programs, and those also create expectations. I think it is very -- it was really complicated last year trying to explain to people that the concepts that were on that list were not necessarily -- you know, were just points of discussion, I think. So, you know, that sort of leads me over to maybe having a [5:18:32 PM] substantial number of co-sponsors on there. So, again, I go back and forth, and I think I'll just leave it there. I look forward to the discussion. I do think, though, the one thing that would will really help -- you know, a lot of these proposals are kind of mini resolutions, in a way, but we don't often have as much supporting information as we do with a regular council resolution. And so one request that I would like to see us discuss is having, on that standardized form, some ability to provide a description, a justification for the expenditure, and as much contextual information as possible to really aid the refs us the rest of us in making good decisions about it. It is going to be a tighter budget. We really have the responsibility to look at each potential budget expenditure really closely, and I think the more information that the lead sponsor and co-sponsors can provide, the better decisions we'll make in the end. And so, you know, I -- just to get back to something you said, councilmember Zimmerman, I am really keen on saving money, and I consider myself somebody who looks for ways to save money, too. I think we disagree sometimes on how to spend that money, but anyway, I think that those proposals -- the more filled-out those proposals are, the better. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. If there's nothing else, I'm going to go ahead and set this for -- for work session for a meeting so we can do this. This is posted so everybody can see these -- see these pages. We'll post it on the agenda. Ed, do you want to talk to us a little bit real quickly about the community engagement? >> Thank you, mayor. So at the end of nearly five weeks and six full-day budget work sessions, and I'm sure hundreds upon hundreds of powerpoint slides, I hope you'll have the patience for just one more and won't begrudge me too much for this one last slide. But I didn't want to miss the opportunity to remind everybody that we are fully underway with our public engagement activities related to the budget, starting [5:20:33 PM] on April 27th, immediately after we did our financial forecast, we did the television town hall, which was a lot of fun and kind of got the ball rolling on our public discussions about the budget. There are a lot of different ways to get involved and I put this slide up there and I gave you a handout that looks largely the same as this you can see austintexas.gov/dollars and cents. You can go to that dollars and cents website and find out about all the ways you can get involved in the city's development process, including participating in boards and commission meetings. We'll be talking in more detail about the various aspects of the budgets. We have a number of community events that staff is going to be attending. We have town hall meetings at several of our councilmembers that are having town hall meetings where they've invited budget mistake of to now, and of course we'll have public hearings. One of the highlights of our budget engagement activities this year is what we're calling our budget sip later. You can also get to that budget similarity by going to simulator by going to the dollars and sense website. It's a new and I think really cool tool where somebody can go in, take about ten minutes and kind of craft your own budget. It's kind of like a modern high-tech version of our budget in a box activity last year. What we heard last year was, the budget in the box activity was fun, but it wasn't quite granular enough, so you'll see now that you can do this online tool, and you can actually dive down into a little bit more detail. So instead of just making choices about I want to increase or decrease funding for, say, the libraries, you can now actually say, well, I'd like to increase or decrease funding for this specific area within the library, and maybe have different decisions for different aspects of the library. I think another cool part of it is the fact that you can actually enter in your home value, and so you'll get a different tax bill consequence of the decisions you make, you'll get a different consequence, depending upon the value of your home, because of course that's what drives your property tax rate. So we heard that from a lot of councilmembers, that, you know, my district doesn't look like that Medina value that you're using on a [5:22:33 PM] budget in a box. So we think we've addressed that as well. It's available both in English and in sparks and it'll work -- if it's an electronic device, it'll pretty much work on it. If you use your cell phone, if you use your iPad, your laptop, your desktop, computer, as long as it can pull up a web page, it works very, very nicely. I mentioned some of the community events. We have been at 18 community events already, pushing our budget simulator tool. We go out there with these -- these attractive, unmistakable, unmissable, dollars and cents t-shirts, so if you see -- we're going to get this up here. If you see somebody walking around the city wearing this unmistakable shirt, why don't you walk up to them and ask if you can use their iPad and do our budget simulator tool. We've done 18 events already. Over the course of June, we're going to be at the hackathon, we're going to be at triangle farmers market June 8th, we are going to be in councilmember Houston's town hall June 11th, pushing our budget simulator tool. I hope we're going to be there. You're am looking at me like -- okay. We're going to be there. June 11th, also, we're going to be at the downtown farmers market. We'll be at the juneteenth celebration. June 17th, councilmember troxclair's town hall meeting on June 25th. We're going to be all over the town. There are a few districts. I'm not going to call anybody out. But there's a few districts we're not doing quite as well on participation as we'd like to, about 700 folks have already participated in our budget simulator but we're going to be reaching out to some districts where Numbers are a little lower than other districts and we're going to be seeking your input about how we can take you from last to first in regards to participation in our budget simulator tool. So I just wanted -- we're really excited about our engagement activities this year. We will be providing council a full-blown summary report of everything we did and everything we heard. It's it'll be coming out in early August, soon after the proposed budget comes out. I just want to make sure everybody is aware of that, and certainly would seek any [5:24:33 PM] help we could get from councilmembers in terms of telling people about these activities through your -- your newsletters or whatever other networks you have available to you. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. >> Houston: May I say something? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Houston: I really appreciate the fact that the budget staff is going to come out and participate at the town hall meeting. It's going to be at the Asian American -- is that right? Resource advisory council? --Advisory commission? No, it's at the church onbergman. >> I don't have that. I'm sure it's listed on the website. >> Houston: Okay. Whatever it is, I really appreciate it. And we know it's a tight budget year because every time I have a town hall meeting, we offer snacks to people because they've taken time out on their Saturday. I ask the budget department, they said no, they weren't having any snacks, so I'm going to provide snacks and some water so people who come out for an hour and a half have something. So it's a tight budget year. I can't even get snacks out of them. [Laughter] >> Mayor Adler: All right. Anything else? All right. We stand adjourned. Ed, again, thank you very much.