City Council Special Called Budget Work Session Meeting Transcript – 9/8/2016 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 9/8/2016 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 9/8/2016 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [2:42:25 PM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. We're going to go ahead and convene today's special called budget work session meeting. Today is Thursday, September 8, 2016. We're in the boards and commissions room, city hall we're at 301 west second street in Austin. The time is 2:42. Council, we have today's meeting set. We also have a special called meeting that was noticed for tomorrow in case we wanted to have that. And then of course that gets us into our budget week next week, which is the 12th, 13th and 14th. But we had talked a week ago about the need for us to get together potentially just to talk through items. I think we have some folks with some scheduling challenges today as well. Ellen, we want to congratulate who delivered yesterday -- day before. Saturday. Pretty exciting. Incredibly cute pictures, in case momma is watching. Baby girl. Juliet. Which is pretty exciting. We have some people today, I think Leslie needs to leave at 3:30. We have others with a hard stop about 5:00, I think. 4:30. So we have -- we're going to start losing people in about 45 minutes. Tomorrow we also have the ability to be together, but we have some folks that have a lone star meeting in the morning, so we're going to be challenged again tomorrow as well. We had -- I'm sorry? >> Tovo: I'm sorry, mayor, [2:44:27 PM] I didn't mean to interrupt. What time is tomorrow. What time is the lone star meeting? >> Mayor Adler: There are two of us that are on the lone star board, Ann and Pio, and that meeting runs from 10:00 until noonish in San Marcos. >> Tovo: Oh my goodness. >> Mayor Adler: So they would be back to us like at 1:00, say, tomorrow. >> Houston: And mayor, I can't get here until 10:30. I had something I couldn't change and then I have to leave by 2:30 in order to get to the university of Texas. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. You would have to leave at 2:30. So it looks like between 1 and 2:30 we probably have the group back again, everybody between 1:00 and 2:30 tomorrow. >> [Off mic]. >> Mayor Adler: So let's count on 1:00 to 2:30 tomorrow for additional time together. Sounds like we have everybody together for that. And let's see if we need to go more or less before or after that. As I hope the council has seen following from the work session meetings that we had and some brief conversations with some of the colleagues, I posted something on the board yesterday which I think has been handed out to everyone, which is changes to the proposed budget that balance. And what it points out are several really hard choices that as a group I'm sure we're going to need to discuss. But in what's been handed out we've tried to identify [2:46:28 PM] where there is potentially money available in the budget, and certainly there are still questions about some of these items, but they appear to me to be perhaps the kind of things that might have critical mass. We have the asset forfeiture fund question. There are limitations on how that can be used. I know that the chief and others have already designated where they think that money is going to go, so there's probably a conversation to be held with respect to that. We had a certain reallocation of public safety monies. Councilmember Garza I think when you said to staff go away and come back with cuts they could make, I think this is what they have come back with, $152,000. Those are in millions, by the way. So .152 would be $152,000. The community incentive development fund, that was that sweep of funds that we had designated for entities over a several-year period of time, but there was some undesignated sum for that. That's what that is. The economic incentives reserve fund was not a really established fund by policy. It was just something happening by practice, putting aside five percent of that for future payment. Staff has taken a look at that and looked at the history. And is now recommending that's something that does not have to be maintained as a reserve fund. So that money is there and [2:48:30 PM] available. One option we have that's a hard choice and probably a conversation about whether it's a choice we want to make, concerns the body cameras. That is money in budget for next year's body cameras. That includes $762,000 there that might not be real because we may have already purchased the iPhone component of this. I think the iPhones are being mailed to us so we have a conversation about whether or not if we wanted to whether we could delay the purchase of the iPhones. As I recall public safety said there was an alternate basis or alternate need for the iPhones, whether we did the body cameras or not. We need to talk about that issue. But there are the monies that we have there. The cip funds are not expended, but we need to talkouind of those issues. We also tk a look at the library. There was some question -- there were 38 vacant positions of the 48 that we approved last year. The money for those positions not approved was swept, I think, and put against the project itself, but they're about ready to fill those positions. There was some question about when the library would actually open. And it's set for April now. We could probably have a conversation about if it's really going to happen in April or whether it looks more like summer, as well as the question for how staffed does the central library need to be on the day that it opens as opposed to shortly thereafter. But the 580,000 is what staff is indicating is appropriate if we wanted to go into that area. I know that we all want to do the 42-hour work week for [2:50:31 PM] E.M.S. That's a big ticket item. It's about $3.4 million of the budget. When we had talked about doing this last year, we were presented an option that was a three-year phase-in. We elected to do a two-year phase-in, so we did some last year -- or some this current year. We could -- what's in the manager's budget right now is doing all the rest of it in this next year. We had the chief of E.M.S. Before us last week and he said that it was workable to do the final phase-in over two years as opposed to one year. And I think there was actually a conversation also about going beyond that, but in any event, what this reflects is just phasing it in over the two remaining years and moving forward with half of that phase-in this year. So only saving 1.7 of that 3.4-million-dollar item. We have the equity assessment tool, which is $75,000 we had separately funded, but that is now grant funded. And is being worked on by staff and others now in terms of that money. We took a 10% reduction in select membership subscriptions in travel. Attached to the posting that I put last night was not only this page, but also what the universe of those things looked like. I think I have eight of them here if anybody would like a copy of that. I apologize that I didn't come with enough of those. But what that shows are the categories that would be involved in that. They total just over four million dollars, so the 10% [2:52:31 PM] reduction of those items would be the $413,000 we have there. Building maintenance, that would be cutting back building maintenance by 10%, that's $180,000. That would leave us about two and a half million dollars, which is more than double what we had in that fund this year. >> Gallo: Mayor, can I ask a question on what you just pass out, the 10 percent? Is that an equal 10% on all of those lines across departments or does it vary department to department? >> Mayor Adler: What you see on that chart is what the departments are spending total. If you look all the way to the right-hand column it comes to just over four million dollars. What we did on this was we just took 10% of that number. Of course that could be applied however it was that we want it to provide. >> Gallo: [Indiscernible]. >> Mayor Adler: We could ask the manager to do this across all departments. We could direct it be in a particular department. We didn't make any of those decisions relative to this exercise. All we did here was just take 10% of that number. >> Gallo: Thank you. >> Tovo: And I assume we'll have a chance -- so I have a lot of questions about several of these items and so I just want to a lot that this is one area where I have questions for sure. >> Mayor Adler: And I would expect and assume that people have lots of questions about all these items, but certainly to put up a notice to staff that that's coming up, that's helpful. Building maintenance we talked about that, a 10% rejust. The I put this on here anyway so they could see it, it's 475 that's already in that fund. Down below we allocate that 475 so it's a wash between those two. The senior exemption is an 800,000-dollar expense. This exercise has that [2:54:33 PM] coming off. And then the convention center, there was the issue of well -- with additional property value increase charging the convention center a share of the downtown pid equal to its value rather than just the 75,000-dollar plug number, which is what they pay right now. So this would have them paying consistent with the value as opposed to the plug, which would give us an additional $225,000. Watershed department says that it has 1.2 million that could be applied to things like flood buyouts. >> Kitchen: Actually, this is not the right number. It's close. It's 1.250 and it relates to the onion creek buyout. It's a follow-up of our resolution that the council passed. >> Mayor Adler: So there's 1.250 in the watershed department that could be attached to pay for flood buyout programs. >> Kitchen: For the upper onion creek area. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Then we talked before as we saw when the tax rate first came to us there's another $850,000 than was put in the proposed budget because of the actual certified tax roll that we ultimately got. So that number keeps us -- we have $850,000 additional room. And then there was a draw down of ending balances in these various departments, which total $520,000. And then the question also arose we have money in budget for negotiations with our three public safety [2:56:34 PM] entities next year. The question has arisen whether or not given that we've had a transition, whether the new manager should be in the position where they negotiate the -- whether they come into office and have the opportunity to do that rather than having that done for them just before they come. We had informal conversations with the three associations. And no one association has committed to any of these because obviously they couldn't go back to their membership, but with all three it seemed as if there were something that was worthy of discussing with them. So that we would enter into more of a maintenance contract for the year. And then the affordability audit was $500,000. Obviously this is everybody making really tough calls. This is near and dear to my heart. Phase 1 of the affordability audit is being completed and that's the one that will tell us where we spend -- where people in our community spend money when we talk about it's not affordable here what does that mean. And to have that work done by district and the auditor's office is preparing that I think probably to present to us or to finish that work. Phase 2 was the part of the process where we would have an outside consultant come in to take a look at our ordinances around tell us what our ordinances are doing with respect to affordability in the city. And that's what that money would be for. In talking to Elaine hart about the concept of enabling us to really look at budgets, I think we called them sunset reviews for lack of a better term when we talked about them before. It really wasn't something [2:58:36 PM] that we were able to affect in that way so we moved to the affordability audit, but Ms. Hart has indicated that she's ameanable going forward -- amenable this next year perhaps discussing a process that would have us November through April getting engaged in the budget early in the process so that we would be in a position to do more than just discuss changes from year to year in departments, so that between November and April we could have work sessions where we brought in all of the general fund departments and actually take a look at them, how many people are working there, what are the projects or the programs. Are therein credibly wonderful projects that are doing wonderful work around the city that even though they're incredibly wonderful projects might not reflect what the priorities are of this council, and if those things exist what are those things? Then we might want to redirect toward a priority that is this council's priority as opposed to past council's priorities. And I'm comfortable at this point with some significant misgivings, willing to put this ante back into the pot because I think we'll achieve a lot of what it was I wanted to achieve in the process that Ms. Hart has indicated she can do and do within the budget of that office so that money becomes available . You total those things up and it's $13.3 million . These are not easy things, and everything on here that we're talking about cutting has a constituency and a real reason to be left alone in exactly the way that it was . . What I have object next page are the things that people daylighted as we went through that exercise a week [3:00:37 PM] ago and there was some measure, expression of support. Obviously you believe an exercise to go through to kind of orient us but the first section of our -- are things that relate to health and human services and equity and access. There was the child care continuity issue . As you'll recall, staff came to us proposing a funding level that is like at $500,000, I think -- I'm sorry . Three different options . I think as I recall the middle option was $500,000 and that's what staffing with a representing. They also said the county was going to participate, they weren't sure at what level . Indications are they are participating at the $235,000 level so I put this in at the same level that I understood the county to be doing. There were two food access issues . One with 95,000, one at 200,000 that are listed there as items -- the second and third one down. We passed the tenant relocation matter before, fully fund being that, you know, could be a million dollars, more than a million dollars. But in talking to councilmember Renteria's office and in the context of these tough choices we're making and a lot of needs, 167,000 was that number. I put in the two social service programs that we would be funding through the -- through the aid. The first one of those social service programs were parent teacher support specialist. The second social service program was the prime time afterschool program. But both of those social service - - health and human services or social service programs are listed there. We have the housing trust fund. If we fully move the money available to us, it's the [3:02:41 PM] $963.8 million. So -- hundred thousand dollars so that number is there. Workforce training bucket. I put in the capital idea money. We had talked about Jane lane and meadow lake boulevard, both access opportunities that are needed here very quickly because of the developments that happening around them. We had talked during the bond program of pulling those out of the bond program but funding them as cos as part of this process. So this is the book mark that I put in there to make sure that we remembered to do that as part of this budget. I put in the quality of life eastern crescent, spirit of east Austin, and some additional health and human services monies at $3 million in there. As you'll recall we probably had proposals from each of the qualify of life commissions that were in excess of two to $3 million each. There are also programs that we're looking at that were in other categories that would also attach to the same general populations that -- underserved we would be trying to help. I pull in $3 million there, thinking that would be kind of the block grant deal, similar to what we did in parks last year. Colleagues, I think that we really need, as part of what Ms. Hart is proposing to give us between November and April, that we really adopt a policy as a council like Travis county does, and I was really inspired listening to -- sitting next to county judge Sarah Eckhardt when she was approached by someone with an incredibly worthy program, asking if she could help get that program considered in the Travis county budget. And the judge looked at them and said I would love to be able to do that but our rules don't let me do that. That's not how we process those. And if any unof us starts processing things that way, [3:04:42 PM] then the whole system breaks down. So that's a really worthy project. I hope you get funded. Here the person you need to contact on staff that's running the matrix and looking at the performance criteria, and I think as one of the things we need to discuss collectively as a group is whether we should be doing that same kind of thing and deciding that early in the year so that we can give people time and they know where it is they need to go in order to be able to get funded. But it would make those things let political and more objective and fact based and driven if we could get to that place to be able to do. And I think that's something we need to consider. But for now, I have 3 million in that category, and I have the top in essence $1 million of priorities for each of the three quality of life groups, which I'll hand out here in just a second so that you can see what those kinds of items are. I have a million dollars in there, a block grant for health and human services. As you can see by the subject matter as well as by the concept menu number, a lot of things that are up above that were pulled out are health and human services expenses. So there's, you know, you total all these things up, you know, there's probably $8 million in this category . One second . I'm just gonna work my way through but the $1 million would triple the $500,000 undesignated amount already in the manager's budget, bringing it up from $500,000 to a million five. Then on public safety, I think a lot of people were stopped to really consider this issue of the evidence backlog that we have on the forensics and the fact that we don't have a forensic lab that's operating. [3:06:43 PM] So we pulled in the money for those two -- to those two things. The next one was the downtown museum security for the two museums at $60,000 and the downtown loo that we've discussed to pilot and test at $150,000. Parks came in and said their first priority I think was the master plan to set up parks, and daa apparently has offered to come in and take a big piece of that, as has the parks foundation, leaving the contribution that the city would make to that as reported to us by our staff at $300,000 for us to do in a budget. Here is the music stuff that comes out of the account that we already have in music. Again that's a balance up and above, 475 above. Summer internships don't cost us anything but it's important and I wanted us to memorialize that and I naught there so we wouldn't -- put that there so we wouldn't forget that . Here's the million two or should be a million two five that Ms. Kitchen identified just a second ago as money for the northern onion creek buyouts because, as I understand it, this is the highest priority of buyouts that we have in the city next. Then I have also the concept was to have a transportation fte whose job it would be to go after more money . It is the sense of the people on the campo board if we can actually take someone out of their other work and jobs have V them focus locally, regional and federally there might be significantly more money available than it would cost [3:08:43 PM] to have the fte for use of transportation . I have the host pilot program in at the $431,000, and with all of this increased spending because we have increased spending there is increased reserves that we have to keep on our budget to stay at 12% . So that becomes a cost that has to be included as well as as we increase. When you look at all those things they both balance out, which means to the degree that things are cut here we don't want to cut and we want to put them back in, we have to find something on the list we like and vice versa . If there are other things we want to add that aren't here, we need to add a revenue item to be able to bring them back . But at this point there are still questions about a lot of these so this is only roughly balancing at this point. So, Ed, before I turn it over to the council, is there anything that you would point out to us about this? That you think we should know? >> Maybe just add that there's a number of these things, for example, the first list on the revenue, they have forfeiture, we're still working with the police department, the law department to determine what other things we might be able to swap, things that are maybe in the police department's operating budget that could be paid for out of those asset forfeiture funds. Right now, we are pretty comfortable that the process evidence related to the rape kits could be utilized out of asset forfeiture funds but that's the only thing on the list so we're working with the police department to see if we can get to $1.4 million and that would mean because the police department has those allocated to other needs so we would need them to come and speak to that. Some of these things are -- you know, we didn't want to -- I think, the mayor wanted to get too much into the weeds on [3:10:45 PM] this, but some of these are one time, some or on going, some of the expenses are one time, some are ongoing so our staff has looked at that as a dynamic and I think we're in a good place with the one time sources roughly aligning with the one time uses, so we're also taking a look at it from that perspective. >> Kitchen: Yeah, it would be helpful -- Mr. Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: That is my question. It would be helpful if we could -- I don't know what the next step will be, but I would love to see this broken out by one-time and ongoing. >> Mayor Adler: And then that would be the next thing and I think that the staff is already working up that kind of thing with this. As we go through today if there's any greater direction of what's on this list, what's not on this list, we'll basically turn this list over to Ed, who will become the keeper of this list and we'll work on the pharmacisting -- will work on the formatting for us and put on this information. Don, you had turned on your light while I was talking. Didn't know if you wanted to say something. >> Zimmerman: Sure. You made an interesting remark about how the county was handling requests for additional funding, there may be staff dedicate to the idea of processing requests for additional funding, additional money out of the budget. I wanted to hear along with that if we were to do that we would have another team dedicated to receiving requests for cutting expenses, cutting taxes, cutting fees and cutting fund so that we don't just have a team of bureaucracy interested in increasing spending without a corresponding group interested in cutting spending. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Zimmerman: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: So I lay this out to the council and the dais, recognizing a lot of people have a lot of questions, and just for -- I was just thinking that this might be a way to take the 30 pages that we had in the concept menu and get us to a [3:12:45 PM] more workable place and the like. Mr. Casar. >> Casar: I would start out by saying it's hard work getting things narrowed down and I would like our -- our conversation, I feel sort of comfortable starting from this point, even if it's not exactly where I'd like it yet but we have some time. I just want to lay out for the councilmembers sort of what -- if I was to start here, what I would be trying to change so that y'all know which general direction I'm headed and then I can hear the same from y'all. As far as big pots of money, I do have -- even though we're in litigation I do have concerns about not having some chunk of money set aside for body camera purchases after the first 500 because it's always challenging to find that money and so eliminating in its entirety our set-aside, while I understand that it would still enable a three-year roll out potentially it would just have the litigation push us back and I would like for the litigation to push us back as little as possible. So that's one area I might be looking around. I know we're gonna have continued conversation about the asset forfeiture fund. That could be used for those sorts of things, but understand the asset forfeiture funds have legal limitations to them. I also right now, the asset forfeiture fund has the full continuation of the walking beats occurring in the rundberg area and I'll be looking to continue to fund those whether it's in that fund or not. The other big ticket items, of course, as the mayor mentioned, getting the workweek down for ems is important, but, you know, we'd have to find pretty significant amount of funding to roll that all out next year and that will be challenging. But, you know, as I look I'll be looking around for them. And then, finally, I had [3:14:46 PM] mentioned earlier that I put a concept on the concept menu to do 3% pay for performance instead of 2% and that was clearly in this budget year very challenging for us to do and so if our current 2% pay for performance would come in in January for our employees and seeing if it could come any earlier would be a pretty big ticket item. These are all sort of big ticket items I want to let you know I would look for funding for that isn't on the existing list. I appreciate what you've put together here, mayor, and would be challenging myself to go above and beyond this as opposed to changing this too much. And then as far as smaller issues there are almost not worth mentioning but I guess I should bring them up so they don't sound like a surprise please a concept to follow up on a resolution for a study for affordable housing linkage fees which would be a smaller ticket item and for expanding Sunday hours at our rec centers and our district parks which would also be a smaller ticket item. I've got my bigger bucket stuff, my smaller ones, and I will keep looking around but won't cannibalize too much of what's here because I understand what we're spending on here are priorities of mine and of the entire city and the council and I appreciate sort of where we're at right now. >> Mayor Adler: Yes? >> Garza: I also appreciate the hard work to put this together. And I do agree that, you know, we need maybe a better streamlined system to how things are -- how we propose things for this budget, but I will say we do have a process, and that is the ifcs that we sponsor that have been vetted, that have had stakeholder processes, that have gained [3:16:46 PM] cosponsors and that have gained six or more votes at a council meeting. And so I guess my initial concern with this list is there are things on here that are allocated at a significantly lower level than what we had discussed during, you know -- items that have been sponsored. Mine would be our health and human services and where we should be at 6.8 million. I appreciate that these all add up, but I would -- I guess I would argue that some of these don't belong under health and human services. And so while it's absolutely a great increase to our health and human services, holistically, I still have -- I think there are some things in here as far as health and human services. I'm concerned about us pushing ems back. We made a commitment. There is some, you know, morale issues in that department, and I'm hoping we can find the money to implement that in this coming year. I'm hearing the testimony over the rape kits last week was extremely hard, especially as a mother. Hearing the mother talk about her daughter, getting the call from her daughter. I would ask if we can direct A.P.D. To go find that money. You know, there's a bunch of great work done here, and we're allocating the good work that the mayor's office has done. We're allocating 1.5 of that that we had to go find or you and your staff had to go find to something that needs to be prioritized, yes. I don't know why we can't say, A.P.D., go find that money and you need to prioritize this. This is an important issue to our community and to this council. And that would free up 1.5 million from this and that could fund the ems -- the implementation for a full year. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't hear [3:18:47 PM] what you said. Where were you thinking the money could come from? >> Garza: I don't know why can't we direct A.P.D. To find that money. If it's a priority of this council, a priority of our community, we go back to them and say, you need to go find 1.5 million in your budget and it needs to be directed for this issue. >> Mayor Adler: Ed, do you want to comment on that? >> So I think right now the rape kit piece of it is $500,000 and, again, I think that is a -- most likely an appropriate use of asset forfeiture funds. If we're still looking at that, but I'm pretty confident that will be the case so that takes care of that piece. The $1.4 million is related to new staffing for the forensics lab, seven additional positions, and some contractual commodities related to increasing the capabilities of the forensics lab and that would not be eligible for asset forfeiture funds. But I'm hearing from you you'd like A.P.D. To try to find something else in their budget they could stop doing in order to fully fund the forensics lab and they would need to do that work. >> Garza: Or if we don't fund the current proposed additions of ftes it could be funded that way. >> Yeah. >> Garza: So that could be an option for us to direct police, go find the -- whatever the forfeiture can't fund -- what is the balance of what, what the forfeiture can't fund? >> $1.4 million is the other piece, yes. >> Garza: So the council could direct A.P.D. -- I'm just -- it just seems weird that we have to go find the money and we don't know where to find the smartphone it's so hard to find the money. The departments are in the best position to be able to know where they can make those kinds of cuts instead of us having to find that money multiply this is an overall [3:20:48 PM] discussion. I know this will be a lengthy discussion. That would be my preference to find the money for the rape kits and the ftes and to fix -- to catch up on the backlog and to be able to fund ems, the implementation of that. Mayor, did you say that you have a list of the -- do you have suggested allotments for the quality of life? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. I have prioritized list from the asian-american. And I'll post all these after this meeting. Because I don't know if they're publicly available or not. I think they were sent out. But in case -- I think, they were sent out but I'll follow up today's meeting and post these on the board for people to say. >> Houston: Mayor, I handed these out a couple weeks ago or last week. The weeks are running together now. >> Mayor Adler: In fact that might be where it was I got these. I think that may be. >> Houston: For the asian-american quality of life and the African-American resources. >> Mayor Adler: So that's the Asian I just handed out. Here is the hispanic quality of life. And then African-American. >> Houston: Mayor, there's -- I put place holders for all three of the ethnic quality of life so my name needs to come off the hispanic because I'm still on the Asian but you've got enough representation here for my name to come off of those quality of life initiatives. I was just doing that for a placeholder. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Pool: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: I think the ones I've handed out here don't have anyone's name on [3:22:48 PM] them at all. >> Houston: I mean on the concept menu. >> Tovo: I think you said you weren't sure if they were available publicly, I believe they're on the commissions recommendations website of the city if any members of the public want to look at the specific recommendation that's came forward from the commissions. >> Pool: I believe they were all also emailed to us, I think, through the boards and commissions process. But it's great that you brought those to hand out. I think I had some of them here but not all of them. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Garza: One more thing to add. I know these are tough decisions we're going to maybe coming up soon. Generally speaking that's the direction I'd like to go but I have found somewhere that I can offer -- I believe our transportation -- my staff has worked with the transportation department, they have an fte that they're willing to replace -- the fte in transportation, it's a gis analyst, I think, for special events, and it's my understanding they're willing to not ask for that in exchange for funding this one that's here. And I would ask that we move that hundred thousand that will make -- that we'll have a surplus in there if we just trade out ftes in transportation to the healthy food retail initiative. So instead of 200,000 that would go up to 300,000. >> Mayor Adler: Say this again. >> Garza: There's an fte -- >> Mayor Adler: We have a hundred thousand dollar fte for. >> Garza: Transportation in the manager's proposed budget already funded. It's my understanding transportation is willing to take that away and then we would -- because it's funded through like a mobility weird bond. It's not general fund funded. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Garza: Use that money instead to fund this fte. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Garza: And use the hundred thousand left over now that we have extra here because we're use something other fund to fund this, and add it to the healthy food retail initiative [3:24:49 PM] so take that from 200 to 300. >> Mayor Adler: If we were to take -- I understand what you're saying, okay. I understand that. >> I think, mayor, there's -- we'd have to -- that's a position funded through the transportation user fee, then we would need to use that funding that was freed up on that mix for something that's appropriate within the transportation user fee ordinance, which is generally for the maintenance and upkeep of the street system but here is rob to maybe tell us where that gis position is actually funded from. >> Mayor Adler: I could certainly make the argument that look for additional money is -- would benefit users of our streets and our roads. Could we not make that argument? >> So, mayor, this is Robert spillar, director of transportation. The position for the grants was proposed by councilmember kitchen. It originally was proposed with some general funds money. I don't know if those are still attached. But you're right, we could absorb it in the -- you know, the next year and then look for that position to bring in enough money to replace it. Is and that's me thinking, councilmember. >> Mayor Adler: So what would mean here on our analysis is in essence we would redesignate the position already in transportation to be a gis specialist to be -- >> [Indiscernible] >> Mayor Adler: What that would mean we have a hundred thousand dollars that we would take off that fte in transportation, have a hundred thousand dollars drop to our bottom line so we would then have a hundred thousand dollars in our bottom line and Ms. Garza is suggesting she'd like it to go to additional money in the food service. Other people might have additional places they would want that hundred thousand dollars to go to but what that [3:26:49 PM] would mean is that if we made no other changes on this, we have an additional hundred thousand dollars than what this shows. >> Kitchen: Could I ask a question? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: Just wanting to make sure I'm understanding. So you would still have someone dedicated to this role. Is that what you're saying? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> We would look for someone that could also do some gis to help us out on the side for that position. The one thing, mayor, if I could offer you is we need to verify whether those funds are mobility funds or general funds. If they're mobility funds they're restricted somewhat -- well, they are restricted. >> Mayor Adler: The other thing to look and confirm is that to the degree if this person was doing anything else other than this, the reason for this was to have somebody who could focus on this and not other stuff. >> Kitchen: Right. >> Mayor Adler: We want to make sure we're not -- >> I understand. >> Mayor Adler: That we're actually doing that. So I was 100% before length to -- I heard you said they would also do some gis stuff and that made me nervous. >> Little bit. >> Mayor Adler: Tiny bit. Ms. Houston I think is next. She hasn't had a chance to talk yet. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. I have a process question. Is the process if you find additional money someplace that automatically goes to your project or this is just going into a larger bucket. >> Mayor Adler: No. There's no link between those two. >> Houston: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: We're hoping everybody will find as much money as they can and as a council we'll decide where the money goes. Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: Okay. I wanted to go through. I appreciate what councilmember Casar and councilmember Garza have gone through so I'll quickly go through my thinking. >> Mayor Adler: That would be helpful. >> Kitchen: Let's see. So in terms of larger I'm sorry and starting on the revenue side, I am interested in understanding more from the police department budget [3:28:53 PM] perspective. I am concerned that -- I don't have the answer yet on exactly what dollars are going to be spent to carry out some major recommendations on the community policing report that relate to infrastructure needs. And those are related to things like developing metrics to actually determine that we are moving forward on community policing. And the other one relates to -- there's a large none of administrative -- I'll call them administrative changes but they're actually infrastructure changes that need to be made within the police department to support community policing. And I think that it's essentially that we do those things -- essential that we do those things and that we know how they're gonna be funded and that they be reported back to us so that we know that we're actually moving down the road on the community policing. The more tangible items that we have coming forward in this budget is the addition of civilians because that's part of this report, which is the addition of 21 civilian positions to then be able to move those 21 positions back into patrol or back into sworn spots. And I think that that's a step forward and so I support that. But I am not yet to the place where I can support the additional 11 sworn positions because I don't think that's the first thing that we need to be doing. I think that what we need to be doing in order of priority is making sure that we've got the dollars and the focus on the other aspects of that report, which is laying the ground work for community policing. And that means, you know, the metrics we've got to have a development of metrics. And the administrative changes. So that needs to happen. And then as everyone else has already talked about, very, very concerned about the backlog. So we need to clear up that but we need to make sure we're not continuing to create a [3:30:55 PM] backlog. So I do support the funding for the lab, but I also think we need to dig a little deeper, perhaps go over the next year or next six months or whatever. I'm very intrigued by what Houston did in creating their Houston forensic science center. I don't know enough about that to know if that's a good solution for us here or not, but it's something that we should look into. It's purported at least to be a way in which to move -- move lab results faster at a lower cost. So I think it's something. So the bottom line of all that with regard to the police budget is I expect at this point to be bringing forward a proposal that we not fund the additional 11 spots for the sworn positions, recognizing that we are gonna get at least 21 more, and that we not -- it's not quite ripe. It's not quite time for that, I think. And I'd like to suggest that we move forward on the other community policing recommendations. So I'm gonna bring that forward. The other thing I would say with regard to the revenues is I cannot -- I can't support going back on the senior exemption. What -- I really appreciate what you've brought forward, mayor. I think it's very helpful to speak from this, but this takes us back even prewere pre what's in the budget and we can talk about that in more detail but I think that at a time when we are -- I think people being able to age in place and affordability is absolutely critical for our seniors. And this would be taking them backwards from where we are right now. So I cannot support that. I will be bringing forward a recommendation. Again, this is something to look at over the next year. [3:32:57 PM] And that's the potential for a circuit breaker approach for tax exemption in the future, and that's a way to look at -- I talked about this before but haven't moved it forward so I'm gonna trying to move that forward. That doesn't solve our problem right now but that's something for the future. Anyway, okay. So that's what I would say with regard to the revenue. I also echo the concerns that councilmember Casar and councilmember Garza have brought forward on the 42 hour workweek. I'm concerned about slowing it down like this. So I just want to raise that as something that I'm concerned about. Not sure that I can move forward with that. And then looking at -- on the expense side, let's see, I would just highlight -- there's a number of smaller items that councilmember Casar had characterized what he was doing as major versus small. There's a number of smaller items that I still am concerned about funding and that I will be looking at potential sources of dollars for. And those relate to the community paramedics program. I say that's a smaller. It's a smaller dollar amount. That program pays for itself. It is a saver. It doesn't pay for itself in the sense that we talk about fees coming in, but it reduces the cost to our city in huge ways. And it's one of those programs that really needs to be taken to scale. So that one is of concern to me. There are some smaller items around senior transportation. I had put in some items that were really under a hundred thousand so I support the suggestion that councilmember Garza is making, in terms of that additional hundred thousand, but I might suggest [3:34:58 PM] that -- I mean, I really have to think about healthy -- I hate having to choose between these programs. I really support the idea of having a process in place. So I support the healthy foods but I'm also concerned about some senior transportation issues. So and then there are some requests that were made by Umlauf for some issues that came up with them that are a result of maintenance types of issues that the city should be responsible for. Some may not know that they were flooded, for example, flooded in the sense that their grounds were a lake. And they've got some issues remaining from that that I think that the city is responsible for. So I'm trying to find some dollars for that. Then with regard to the C.I.P., there's some things that I may want to bring forward with regard to the C.I.P. Because I had proposed some additional sidewalk dollars. And so I just want to put that as a placeholder. There will be some items related to C.I.P. That I may want to bring forward. So with that, I'm is still exploring mayor pro tem tovo had brought this up with regard to the 380 funds, and I don't know that we have the answer yet to our questions related to those so that's still a question for me. So, anyway, I'll stop there. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Zimmerman: Mr. Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Real fast -- >> Zimmerman: Point of inquiry, quickly, the circuit breaker, what was that. >> Kitchen: It's a concept used in other states. So I don't know yet. What I'll be bringing forward is a request for our staff, our legal staff, to do an analysis for us on what can be done at a local level and what has to be done at a state level. And so it will be a resolution [3:36:58 PM] to that effect. Circuit breakers are used in other communities to put a cap on the dollar amount that people have to pay on property tax and it's a needs-based cap. And it's used differently in different places. It may be an income base. It may be something like that, something else. But it's a way to take the problems that we have with our narrow approach to property taxes right now and understand that there's some people that just can't afford to pay it. >> Zimmerman: I just got excited about the metaphor when you have too much current, I was thinking of spending, spend gets too high and gets cut off. I just got excited about that. >> Mayor Adler: Let me go ahead and recognize Leslie who is going to be leaving here. >> Tovo: I just wanted to say I think it is a great idea, I think it has been part of our legislative. >> Kitchen: We don't know that yet. We haven't had a legal opinion yet on whether it can be done locally or state level so I'm going to bring forward a resolution and if it needs to be at a state level we'll put it on an legislative agenda but I'd like to see the analysis. >> Tovo: It's been part of the analysis that we're not able to do it here in Texas but if the analysis finds out otherwise that would be great. >> Kitchen: There isn't an existing analysis. >> Mayor Adler: I'm going to make a running list of legal issues because on Monday when we're together -- there might be several different legal issues. >> Kitchen: I'm going to bring this forward as a resolution. >> Mayor Adler: So it's not really part of this discussion that we're having here now? >> Kitchen: I'm just giving people a heads-up. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. We don't need the time. I'm going to go Leslie real fast. This is a draft and I hand it out know only because councilmember kitchen raised the issue of the forensic labor and whether Houston should be done. I meant -- we had talked about making part of our budget [3:38:58 PM] adoption this time in essence have instructions to the staff on what we meant when we appropriated money and the like so I hand this out just as a form for something that we might want to consider and talk about. It just so happens it's that subject area. The sec thing -- second thing, on the senior exemption it would be really hard for me to adopt something that didn't move forward with the senior exemption. And there are nothing but hard choices in this but just to be clear what I had intended here in taking out the $800,000, that exercise, does not have us moving backwards inasmuch as it takes away from anybody a senior exemption they already have. It just does not give them the additional increase this year above where we are, nor does it let us get to where they would have been with the rise in home prices. But the dollar amount, the existing senior exemption in our city, I think, is at, what, $75,000? Is that what it is -- >> Kitchen: No. It's 80. >> Mayor Adler: 80,000 now and this would maintain this at 80. >> Gallo: I'm going to -- it's interesting as we started talking out about quality of life funding that's in your concept and what you passed out -- >> Mayor Adler: Let me stop you for a second. We're gonna have a discussion about the policy associated with senior exemption. For people who are listening to think that we were taking an 80,000 senior exemption and moving it back to 70,000 or 75,000 by this I wanted people to know that's not what this does. >> Kitchen: But it does take them backwards in terms of the dollar amount that they pay. >> Mayor Adler: And I agree with that, that it does, I didn't want people thinking we were actually reducing the senior exemption dollar amount. But I understand the policy issue. Before we get into the policy issue we're about to lose Leslie so before Leslie walks out of the room I'm gonna let her talk to us and then we'll come back immediately to you. >> Gallo: Respectfully mayor can I say one thing. >> Mayor Adler: Really fast. [3:40:59 PM] >> Gallo: You carried the conversation in a different way that I think needs to be clarified. What the instruction was back to the city manager when we passed the resolution we said to the city manager we want -- we want to keep the senior and disabled population from suffering increased tax bills because of what we're doing with tax rates and what we have seen with appreciations. What would the dollar amount be to keep them at the same level of a tax bill that they had last year. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Gallo: That does two things. One is he proposed half of that to come through with the proposed budget, which -- which what you're proposing removes and the other thing was weekend the concept menu item that increased the amount to get to the 91,000, which is the amount that we need to have in a senior tax exemption in order for the seniors to be in the same place they were last year with their tax base. >> Mayor Adler: No, no we're gonna come back to a much longer conversation about the senior exemption I'm sure. Before we do that, Leslie, do you want to talk to us before you leave? >> Pool: Do I. Real fast I'm gonna pass out some additional information of the pieces that I had proposed in the concept menu just so you have additional background and it's also on the message board. And after looking at the items, mayor, that you offered up on the message board yesterday and that we were talking about earlier, there are a number of things that I had proposed in the concept menu that I think will fit nicely underneither some of the larger -- underneath some of the larger fund approaches, for example, the northwest district park master plan would be part of the master planning effort for the parks department that director Hensley talked about with us last week and that we have been discussing. This is just some additional information on that. The graffiti abatement efforts I'm going to go look at a way that we might be able to -- because we passed a resolution [3:43:00 PM] and asked the city staff and city manager to come back to us with best practices we may be able to hold and until we get that report and see what we are looking at. This would fit nicely under health and human services as a small expansion of the existing and very necessarily graffiti abatement efforts. The neighborhood partnering program you all know from your districts is a really, really successful and important program where neighborhoods come together. They pick the projects through sweat equity and some fundraising and matching funds. The city partners with neighborhood coalitions and does programs, projects that are really important to the neighborhoods that are not funded otherwise by the city. This was looking for some additional money for the public works department. The cultural and historic resources and the digital records archavist are the last two I'll mention today. The archavist could fit underneath the library budget without too much trouble I think and the cultural is another important piece that goes with our preservation district and making sure as this city grows and changes we have identified which are the iconic areas or places in town so we've got a sense of where they are and what they are and we don't lose them or if -- if we do lose them we at least have some historical record of them and as fast as the city faces changing it's even more important to do this today than ever. So with that I'll just say that I'll -- back tomorrow. We're gonna -- >> Mayor Adler: We're gonna go from 1:00 to 2:30 tomorrow. Do you have an idea -- so these things total about a billion dollars. Are there cuts associated with those billion dollars that you would have to fund? >> Pool: Did you say billion with a B or million with an M. [3:45:03 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Million. Sorry. Million. >> Pool: Because it was a B, the answer was absolutely. >> Mayor Adler: No, no. Sorry. A million dollars. >> Pool: Yes, I have some they'll and there is some ability I think to add these specific directions to the list that we have. So my main point today was to pass it out, to make sure everybody saw it. And I wanted to thank my staff for the work that they did to put this altogether. And I do apologize for having to go. >> Mayor Adler: That's okay. Thank you. Do we want to do that? Do we want to reconvene at 1:00 tomorrow when we're altogether? We're not stopping now but I make sure we lose a couple people in the morning. We could convene in the morning, it looks like we're next back together at 1:00. Yes, we'll convene tomorrow at 1:00. Thank you. Who wants to -- Ms. Gallo, did you want to go next with respect to that issue that I cut you off on? Do you want to go now or do you want to wait? >> Gallo: I can go now if I can find in this pile where my notes are. >> Garza: I can make a quick comment whiling you're looking for your notes. >> Gallo: Thank you. >> Garza: I just wanted to clarify, and I did with councilmember kitchen, this 200,000 allocated for the healthy foot initiative, if we do add 100, it's not really extra because we allocated 400,000 last year. So if we only allocate 200,000 this year, that's 200,000 of unfunded already -- contracts that are already in place right now. So they've already implemented this program in a lot of convenience stores and so basically this would mean that we would be having to take some of those programs out of some of those convenience stores because I believe it [3:47:06 PM] was one-time funds we used last time. I want to make clear it's not expanding the program it's keeping it in place. >> Tovo: Councilmember Garza, you may know the answer to the question that I asked to 54. It's still pending but the question was how much of that 400 had already been expended. Do you know if they've actually spent all 400 from this year. >> Garza: I don't. But I'm sure one of the staff would know that. >> Tovo: That's question 254 so that will help us know whether there's funding that might carry over for this next year. >> Garza: That's a good question. >> Mayor Adler: Did you hear those questions, Ed? >> Tovo: I've already submitted it. The had answer I think will tell us whether there's any ability -- >> Mayor Adler: So your understanding is that the 200 shn on this exercise just keeps going existing one- time expenditures. >> Garza: My understand was we allocated 400,000 -- we allocated 400,000 last yeah, they implemented that program. I don't know if they spent it all. But this would just keep the current what we started last year going. But I'll hand it over to director Jones. >> Yes, 400,000 was allocated last year. We spent I think 320. 300,000 of it. We're in the process of trying to allocate the rest of it. If it's reduced to 200,000, then of course that will be a reduction in next year's capacity. Some of those contracts are underway. The assumption would be that those contracts would continue. Obviously if we have less money we would have to continue at a much reduced level. >> Garza: Okay. So yeah. >> Tovo: It sounds like 100 hasn't been spent. >> It's in the process, we're in the process of trying to to incorporate. They're in process now. >> Tovo: Does that mean you have contracts for that 100,000? >> Yes, yes. >> Tovo: Okay. >> I might add, Phil Wong, [3:49:07 PM] health authority, some of the contracts are actually going through December so this -- the funds are anticipated to be extended because like some of it was for schools that went through the summer and when the rewarding of contracts, it took time to get them time to extend these funds. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Garza: Are any of these, the -- is it called farm share? Is that one of the programs? Do you have the information right there? >> Yeah farm share -- farm share Austin, its budget is 58,000. They spent advocacy today 13,000, 45,000 is remaining, contract was executed in June, but it goes through December 31. So, again, it's anticipated these funds been expended. >> Garza: So any reduction would mean that we couldn't continue some of those? >> Correct. >> Garza: I just want to -- you know, this is one of my priorities and del valle is a huge food desert and that farm share program, the community was so excited about this farm share program going into del valle and being a resource for them because, you know, many have to go very far away to get fresh produce so I really hope we can find the balance of the 200,000 for that initiative. Thank you. >> And the practice of getting people in the habit of doing that and then to pull those programs create sort of unanticipated negative outcomes of what we're trying to achieve as well so. . . >> Mayor Adler: So rather than -- so if there's 200,000 -- if we put in $200,000 as part of this budget, with 100,000 that you have yet to enter into contracts for, does that enable you to keep the current programs going? >> Not at the same level that -- they were continued, some would overlap. Some would start. We'd have to work those logistics out but conceptually it should allow us to continue that premium but the contractors and all of those activities may change based on [3:51:08 PM] the amount of money that's available. >> Mayor Adler: If there's 400,000 put aside before and you've executed contracts for $300,000 and you're look to go execute another hundred thousand dollars worth of contracts -- do I understand that correctly? >> No. Actually, all of the funds have been obligated and it's just some of the money hasn't been spent as of this date. So it's not like there's a hundred thousand that have not been allocated for contracts. >> Mayor Adler: So if you got $200,000 as part of this process what happens? >> For continuing it for next year, that would be not the same amount to continue the activities that are currently funded from this last fiscal year. >> Mayor Adler: Does that mean that you would have to be shutting off programs next spring? Or -- >> Essentially. >> Mayor Adler: So some contracts are paid through December. >> December. >> Mayor Adler: So what is the value of the contracts that we currently have that are not paid? In other words, some of those programs if we wanted to continue them to next year would only require half a year's spending. Some of them might require a full year spending. >> And Kim is also saying the hundred thousand dollars that's left over is snap double dollar reimbursement. So that would not be available for that purpose then. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So it would be interesting if you would take a look at it and tell the council what happens if you only get $200,000 as part of this process. >> Essentially, again, some of the existing activities would not be able to be continued at the same level. >> Mayor Adler: So if you could give us a little bit more detail on that, that would be helpful. >> Actually, the office of [indiscernible] Might be able to provide more details on what would happen. >> Mayor Adler: I wasn't meaning to put you on the spot to have to do it here. >> We'd be happy to get a response of what that impact would be. >> Mayor Adler: Quickly because obviously we're in -- in five days we're approving a budget. >> We'll work on it now. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Further comments? Ms. Houston. [3:53:08 PM] >> Houston: Thank you. Thank you, mayor, and thank you for trying to get us into a point where we could have these conversations. The first thing I want to say is that we gave one one-time funding last year and now the organizations are coming back to have that part of their permanent budget. So I want to caution us about using one-time funding because sometimes people don't understand that that's one time. They think it means that's the entrance to now and forever more. We need to be clear about one time is one time. So that reduces the ability to use some of that money that was in one time for some other project this time. So the other thing is, I thought I asked and maybe I didn't, if we could look at phasing in composting rather than -- I think I asked that question the last time we M and I don't see that here. If there was a way to phase in the city-wide compost sog that we don't have -- composting so we don't have the big hits next year that have some latitude. If you didn't hear me ask for it, that's one of the things I think that we need to at least look at, not doing it -- not expending those monies next year buffetsing in the expenditures. >> What's planned next year is a phase-in. There was discussion with council about whether they we wanted this implemented city-wide over three or five years. If there was some interest in doing it over seven we could ask to look at how that would change things. >> Houston: The numbers you have in the book. >> Reflect a five-year implementation. >> Houston: Okay, then thank you. The other thing is I want to just talk just for a minute about the asian-american quality of life on page 2446. It's ql117p. Can somebody tell me what the flu vaccines -- what does that [3:55:09 PM] mean? I thought that Travis county always gives flu vaccines so why -- does anybody know why that $10,000 is for flu vaccines? Seems like we already do that. Ql1.17p as in Paul. And it's not a lot of money, but I think we already do that so I'm not sure why we've got an extra amount in there. And if Mr. Jones is out there, then maybe he can tell us. So that's one thing. And the other thing is we've got several instances where -- >> Mayor Adler: Ed, can you find out the answer to that question? >> Houston: They're looking. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Houston: The other issue is that there's several instances where we talk about translation and interpreting services. That's a city-wide issue. And that's something that needs to be pulled from here and put in the city-wide because that's a problem across the city. We talked about it with 311. We've talked about it in community engagement. So that should not just fall on the asian-american resource center. The city should be looking at the ways that we provide interpreting and translation services that are culturally appropriate to folks, and we have the five major languages that the quality of life have sent to us. So that's something that should be pulled out of there and put in a city-wide but, again, we're gonna have to talk with the folks about that. But I see that as a city-wide issue. Okay, we've got health and human services here now about the flu vaccines. >> Stephanie hays. >> Mayor Adler: With respect to the last point that you made, the Asian -- the translation services, is the program -- I know it appears in the quality of life, but is the work that's being done limited geographically? I just want to know if the substance of that work, if [3:57:10 PM] funded, is limited that way or if that initiative is a city-wide initiative. >> Houston: No. I think this is specifically for the asian-american resource center and for the population that they serve. I'm just elevating it, a skylight, bright lighting it as you say to say this is a city-wide issue and needs to be more than just the asian-american resource center, it needs to be city-wide, including 311 and that may increase the numbers of people and amounts that we have and I don't know what that number is. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Yes, sorry. >> That's okay. Stephanie Hayden, deputy director, ql1.17p with the question about the translation services or did you want the -- >> Houston: I did. >> Okay. So the vaccine. >> Houston: The vaccine. >> So typically the department only gets a certain amount of vaccine for our department. So when we partner, we're able to partner some but we're not able to meet the requests of the partners. And so the Asian community would like to have their own vaccines that they have that they'll be able to purchase. Now, they would be able to still continue to partner with us, as far as the nurses and all of that piece is concerned, but this request, they're requesting to purchase their own allocation of vaccine.. >> Houston: That's interesting. So why can't we give health and human services the $10,000 and you purchase it and partner like we're going to do with the Delco center? I don't understand why this is a separate line item. >> You could do that. You could do that. >> Houston: Thank you. [3:59:12 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: While Ms. Hayden is here I have some follow-up questions on those two issues. Now I am really kind of confused because I see Asian American resource center translation and interpreting a the secondary list and then I see translation and language interpretation citywide on the priority list. So I'm not now really clear whether they were thinking about it as a citywide issue or not. It is clearly a citywide issue and I regard that as a high priority. I don't know whether we'll be able to identify funding in this year's budget, but it comes up again and again and we just haven't really taken the steps I think we need to address it. And so I would encourage us to think about how we will do that. And also I think it's an issue for the school district and potentially we could partner with some other entities in this area to share in those resources. So I don't have a solution here. I just want to say I think it is a high priority that I'd like to see us find some funding for that. >> Mayor Adler: Isn't that just a question of scale? I read this to say that their highest priority was to deal with the cpio translation and interpretation citywide which has a cost of $250,000. And if we couldn't do it citywide are then to do it in a more localized way. >> I was hoping the 250 was a citywide estimate and not specific to the aarc. >> Mayor, if I may. To add some clarity to the list that you have, and again from the perspective of the Asian American quality of life mission, what they've tried to do is create a list from the total Asian American quality of life items that have come before them. So what you have is the [4:01:14 PM] priority list up to one million which they perceive to be the the number to structure their requests and they see the translation services and they do see the citywide value. If there were more money then in the secondary list, again some specific translation resources that the aarc would be helpful to that perspective. That's the list and there are a number of items on their total list that aren't in here and the prioritization that you have is their attempt to try to indicate to the council what they believe was the most important things up to a million and then beyond, if there was more money, that might be considered by council. >> Mayor Adler: And that part I got. My question is is number two on the priority list up to 1 million, up to $250,000, to do translation and interpretation citywide? Is the secondary request, which is just $10,000 those are two separate things? >> Two separate things, yes. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. It looks like both of those are citywide applications. >> Renteria: Mayor, I want to make a couple of statements. I'm really concerned about the discussion about cutting back our police force, not hiring the 11 police officers. I think that last year we cut the police office budget back quite a bit. And I believe that there's a reason why they put that, the 11 additional officers, so they can have the proper force to keep our community safe. I won't be able to support [4:03:15 PM] that item. You know, there's just so much money to go around, and that's it. As we get closer, I know that we're probably going to be throwing out all kinds of cuts out there, and that's why I kept my recommendation and list pretty short and kept it to the point where I think there's some really basic needs that we need to address, and especially when it comes to, you know, relocating -- come to the tenant relocation request where I'm requesting $167,000 because, you know, this is something really serious just facing our citizens here, and especially our low income tenants that are being relocated because of the growth and the gentrification that's going on through my community. So that's that. And I do support some of the groups in the hispanic quality of life, especially with the problem that we're going to be facing, especially this season when the health insurance sign-up comes on where there's a lot of these larger insurance companies. For some reason, I don't know, could be political reasons, but they're pulling out -- out of these states and not providing service. So I think there's going to be a lot of confusion out there in the community and we're going to need -- we're going to need someone out there to help our community sign up. They did an excellent job last year. I personally took a couple of people to get them signed up. So I think these are really important items that I'm willing to support, but I just can't see -- we should [4:05:15 PM] be taking it out on our police force, you know, cutting their budget back. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: As was mentioned on the Monday meeting, we are set for budget meetings Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of next week. Monday late is the campo meeting that start at 6:00. We start on Monday at 10:00 in the morning. We go all day. We have that Monday, that Tuesday, that Wednesday. For scheduling purposes it might make sense to just declare that we're going to be done on Monday -- we'll start at 10, work as hard as we can until 5:00, 5:30 and then stop on that Monday. And if we're not able to get the budget done then, then we'll come back then on Tuesday. Does that work to have a stopping point at that point? We'll lose several people for the campo meeting unless we want to say to people not to go. Then at this point we'll plan on stopping at that point on Monday. Yes, mayor pro tem. >> [Inaudible]. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you for your comments, Pio. Did you want to go next? >> Gallo: What we might do as we get to Monday is look to see how much progress we've made and then the four of us that serve on campo could put our heads together and figure out if it would be more important to continue the budget. So we would be fine with that. Maybe what we do is let them know that there's some possibility that four of us would still be in budget. We don't really get the agenda until Friday anyway. Let me just start, mayor, and I appreciate all your hard work on this. I think it's such a difficult position all of us are placed in, and I know we all feel the same way because we have so many needs in this community and we get asked for so many things that are really important services. But the reality is that we have a limited amount of money to spend and we have [4:07:15 PM] to figure out how to spend that in a way that takes care of and supports our entire community across all of Austin. But just some comments about what you've put forward, obviously as I talked a little bit before, removing the items from the budget, the senior, is really concerning to me. I think that last year I was really proud of the council because we began to address the fact that seniors who we want to encourage and promote being able to age in place, because I think that's a really important concept. I think it's particularly important because 75% of the Austin seniors actually live in a home that they own, and that's twice what the population of Austin is -- I mean twice what the other population of Austin, non-senior population. So we are looking at a community that obviously would like to stay in their home, but what we're finding is that they are getting further and further behind as their utility bills go up and as their tax bills go up. And as their health costs and expenses of living and health care go up, that we as a community need to either say we support the idea that seniors age in place and can stay in their homes and we really help them with that. So I'm really hoping that this council will find a way to not only leave in the budget the amount that the city manager proposed, which was to take it from 80 to 85, but to also support the concept item, which was fr 302 which took it from 85 to 91. And the reason the 91,000-dollar homestead exemption for seniors and disabled came forward is back in may or June when we did the resolution that passed unanimously from the council is that we asked the city manager to come back -- come back to us and look at what the proposed evaluations would be, how the median price moved up [4:09:16 PM] from last year to this year, and what amount of increase we would have to provide for the seniors to keep them at the same place they were last year on their tax bill. This isn't giving them additional savings, it is just taking away the effect of an increasing tax rate and an increasing evaluation. And I just feel like that's really important for us to do if we really want to encourage our seniors to be able to stay in place. Many of them are on fixed incomes, the same with the disabled population. I think you mentioned that Travis county was at 80 and central health was at equal amounts. And the comment I would like to make with both of those is both of those two entities also offer the full 20% homestead exemption, so we are already well below what they offer the senior population. And because the council did not support moving the full four or six percent additional in the homestead, we're not getting closer -- we're getting a little bit closer, but not as close as we committed last year to get to the 20 percent over four years. So I think the combination of all of those really says that there's got to be a place that we can find in the budget that we can help the seniors, and there's just a huge number of seniors in this community that this would help. So it's not just a small population, it is a big population. So that's my explanation of still having the support for not only leaving in the budget the amount to get us from 80 to 85, but also supporting the concept item that would take us from the 85 up to the 91, which is the amount that the seniors need just to be at the same tax bill what they were last year. I'm trying to think. I had another question. A question on the increased tax rate to the .4418. I know before we were below [4:11:16 PM] that tax rate and we were about 850,000 below rollback. Does that push us right to rollback? >> It would push you to rollback if council adopted the budget at the 4418. The proposed budget is still at 4411, but the 4418 would be the rollback level. >> Gallo: What the mayor has put in is the amount in here. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Gallo: Okay. Just wanted clarification on that. I'm just going to go over the items on your proposal and thank you for putting all this together. I needed a little bit of clarity please on the park department master plan, mayor. It's 300,000-dollar amount and it says pard first priority to be supplemented with daa and Austin pard foundation gifts. >> Mayor Adler: When we had Sarah here I asked her what was her number one priority for parks. And she said a park master plan. And I asked her how much that cost. And she wasn't sure what the number was and she also said that the daa and the parks foundation might also pitch in. She has since come back to us and said that I think that the master plan for parks that would enable her to set priorities around this city, have a master plan, was about $500,000, and I think the daa was picking up something close to a couple hundred thousand dollars and the foundation was willing to pick up some so that the net number that we would have to allocate would be $300,000. >> Gallo: For the master plan. So it's not actually park improvements, it's for the master plan. Thank you for that clarification. And then the other thing, the fte in the transportation department identified in seeking funding opportunities, the 021.11, I definitely support that. Where this issue first came forward is those of us who [4:13:16 PM] serve on campo, as the campo discussion moved to tif amendments and -- tif amendments, the transportation improvement foundation amendment, that municipalities submit applications to the fund so there is funding in their geographic areas. What we found was that of the 133 amendment requests that were received there were none that came in from Austin. And our transportation department does a good job in trying to cover all the bases, but we lose so much funding capability, capacity and opportunity by missing those opportunities to put amendments into the campo 2040 plan. So I really support this. And I think it will be paid back to this community a million times over in the amount of money that we will be able to hopefully gain by being proactive in the conversation with the campo 2040 plan. So I am glad that that has been left in. I think that's a real important place. I just wanted to briefly talk about some of the concept items that did not make the list. The first one is the old quarry library. So I certainly would be taking recommendations for other places. I know we've talked about the mobility bond and put them into -- even some co opportunities, but the quarry library was kind of third on the list and we got down to the two in this budget and I think all of the council heard when we had the people that came from northwest hills, which is where the quarry library is, and talked about how well it's used. And the issues that we have with that are both asbestos. It's an older library. It was built in the '70's, so we have asbestos issues there and we also have some A.D.A. Compliance issues with the bathrooms. There's been kind of a [4:15:16 PM] workaround that's been done to do kind of a unisex bathroom that can be used, but the existing bathrooms are not A.D.A. Compliant. So trying to find a place that we can get the funding to do that. Like I said, it was kind of on the presentation that the library department made to the library commission in talking about what they would put forward to the budget and it was third on the list and didn't quite make the cut. So I think if we can find some places to make that funding I think we've got some safety issues and obviously A.D.A. Compliance issues there. Emma park, it's park 1.08. We heard from director Hensley a week ago, two weeks ago, whenever that was, about the implementation of the master plan has been complete so they're ready to do phase 1. So they're actually ready to start doing things on the ground there. There's some pretty substantial safety issues. It's a district park that's used citywide. I think councilmember Renteria mentioned that as a youngster he used to go there. But et cetera a camping facility. We have some safety issues there with the camping, the electrical, the sanitary systems. There's I believe also some waterfront grading -- not grading, but support that needs to be handled for bank erosion. So there are several things that there need to be addressed. And it's ready to be addressed because the master plan has been done and the community outreach has already been handled, and it's ready to go if we can just find the funding for that. Ot 1.02 is auditor fte. I hope we can find a place for that. That is about -- just under 100,000. It's one fte. What that would do -- and I think that we all -- we have [4:17:18 PM] a wonderful capability with our auditor to be able to go in and look at things and look at departments and see how they're operating and see where we can become more efficient, see places we can improve. But there's not a really good transparent place to be able to let the public know number one, once the audit has been complete, and two, as the department begins to address those audit items there's not a good place for the public and us, to be honest with you, to be able to go in and see what accomplishments and what progress. So this would be-- I'm just going to read the point here. This position would focus on publicly available software resource deployment for realtime E documentation of findings, recommendations, implementation and outstanding audit findings. And once again I think that is just something that allows us as a council and us as the audit her's department to really be transparent in accountability for what is happening after these audits are done and what the departments are doing to address the audit. So that's the auditor fte position. >> Mayor Adler: Which position was that? >> Gallo: It is concept 021.02. It's an additional position for the audit department. It would help us have a really transparent way of letting the public know when an audit is done, what's on it and what improvements are made to address those audit findings. Eds 4, this is the fire station, we've had the department talk to us. We've had Bob nix come and talk to us about it. He's been working really hard. Bob, if you're out there anywhere in the audience you might step in. But this is a situation that we have kind of been the cause of as a city because what happens with the eds stations is they're set up to recover rural areas and then as the city begins to annex we begin to pull away some of the areas they have. [4:19:18 PM] And it does two things, one is it removes their tax base. And two is it -- their tax base is removed. They have to shut down their stations and reduce their staff. So the distance between their stations actually grows so their coverage becomes more and more difficult. Bob has worked really hard with Travis county to be able to do a shared participation in this and Travis county in their budget discussions, I think everyone got a message that came from him that said that Travis county did approve in their budget the $62,000 for the eds 4 contract for service by a 5-0 vote. So there was really good substantial support for that. That would be half of the funding for this year and the city would be responsible for the other half. Then obviously moving forward as these stations were taken over by the city, there would be an increased cost. The increased cost it looks like it would be about a million to the city, about 500,000 would be coming from the county if they choose to continue to support, but what we get for that is we get coverage -- I can't speak to the other districts, but I know in district 10 we get coverage in an area that is really at risk for wildfire and the ability to support those communities that are limited purpose annexations I think is really important. We get the facilities, so the cost to us may be a million dollars for the next handful of years but what we're getting for that million dollars are those facilities that I think usually run, from what I understand, between six and seven million dollars when we construct a fire station. I don't know how currents you are back there. But we get that, we get the vehicles, the equipment. We get firefighters that are already operating in a fire capacity and will then be pulled into the city program and go under the city training. You know, there's just a lot of benefits to this community for what seems [4:21:19 PM] like a really small cost. And the neighborhoods that are in this area that are currently using the E -- are serviced by the esd 4 really support us moving in this direction and really have been participating, I believe, with Bob in the discussions with the county and with esd 4 and they've made some really good movement forward on this. I just think it's an opportunity that we should take advantage of. And I know particularly councilmember Garza is interested in having the conversation about future fire stations, but it does give us some fire stations that are already there, built and the equipment that's in them. So that is something that I would support. And where the money comes from, councilmember Houston I think has a concept item 022.01 which is putting a freeze on the fleet vehicles. I think the last time we talked to you the answer to one of the questions was that that really wasn't a general fund expense because those were financed. And I think one of the questions that we kind of needed to hear back on or would like to hear back on is if they are financed -- if new fleet services are financed. And let me be clear this does not include emergency vehicles, emergency service. So it would exclude police, fire and E.M.S. But if they are financed, then where is the cost to finance? Where's the cost to debt service allocated to? >> In the esd? >> Gallo: I'm sorry. I just jumped to another one. I apologize. This is talking about fleet and it was talking about councilmember Houston had -- so basically what I'm saying is supporting her concept item, which would be generating some additional funds, which would be a freeze on fleet vehicles pulling out of that the emergency vehicles, but it was my understanding from the answer to that that they were financed -- that new vehicles were financed. And if they're financed then [4:23:19 PM] there is a debt service cost. And where would the debt service cost -- >> That would be general obligation debt out of our debt service fund, which would be funded in future years through the debt portion of the property tax rate, but there wouldn'ting any fiscal savings in 2017 because the cost wouldn't happen until the fiscal year '18 budget. >> Gallo: Thank you. And do we analyze -- a at what point we purchase vehicles and at what point we finance vehicles, and is that kind of a moving target depending upon what interest rates we're looking at and what bond capacity we have? Do we always finance? I guess I'm trying to understand the concept -- >> No, we do not always finance vehicles. Typically we try to cash fund vehicles that are routine replacements because to debt finance those you're paying interest on it. And overtime if you're replacing a vehicle every five years then you're also paying interest on it. So economically it makes the most sense to cash finance replacement vehicles. In situations where we're starting a new program and we're trying to avoid having a significant spike in our operating budget. So for example, for the organics program, we are issuing debt to buy, you know, those vehicles for that new program because otherwise we would have to cover it as a big spike in our operating budget. So that allows us to spread it out. But the routine replacements we try to just build into our annual operating budget and our annual rates to ratepayers so we're not paying long-term interest costs. That's the plan. But in the general fund we're limited by the amount of monies we have in our reserve fund within that 12% limit, and given that those have been -- given that they're at the level that they're at right now we need to issue debt in order to do the vehicle replacements in the general fund this year. That's typically not what we do. >> Gallo: At what point -- if we were to begin to buy [4:25:21 PM] vehicles instead of financing, where would those funds come from? >> For the general fund -- for surprise departments they would come from those enterprise departments and the rates they assess. For our general fund departments they would either come from the operating budget, but more typically they would come from our annual process of looking at vehicle needs and looking at other needs for capital equipment and funding those out of our budget stabilization reserves and keeping track of that whole 12% reserve level we're trying to maintain and the policy that says that we can't use more than a third of our stabilization reserves in a single year. So that's typically the dynamic that we're looking at. Just again this year we were struggling just to maintain the 12%. In a better situation we might be at 14 or 15 percent and can draw down to buy vehicles and as the year progresses we see more money flow into the reserves. If revenues come in higher than what we conservatively budgeted they can flow into the reserves. If the departments can spend less than what they conservatively estimated, that excess would flow into the stabilization reserves and then we would go right back to looking for how much we can allocate out of those reserves for vehicles. Again, this year there's very limited -- very few items that are being funded out of our stabilization reserves because we're trying to maintain that 12 percent. >> Gallo: So do you see as we move forward -- looking at the crystal ball do you see the ability -- do you see us based on where we're seeing our budgets go this year and may go next year, do you see us continuing to have to finance versus being able to pull out of reserves? >> I would say most likely in fiscal year '18 we're probably going to be in the same situation. We've talked a little bit about that fiscal year '18 budget that we're already -- we're already 401(k)ing that we're going to have a budget in fiscal year '18 at or near the rollback again. [4:27:22 PM] But as we project out we start to see the situation look better. We start to see a little bit of wiggle room come back into our budget. But of course the forecast is all dependent upon the decisions that are made in this budget, in the fiscal year '18 budget and what costs are loaded into it, how aggressive or conservative we are on the revenue projections. So the more conservative posture we take as a city, in regards to our revenue projections, the more likely it is that we're going to see monies flow into those reserves that can then be used to cash fund things like vehicles as opposed to debt finance them. So for example if we were at three percent sales tax growth projections and we come in at six, that's extra money that flows back into the reserves. If we're in at six, there's no extra money that flows into the reserves. So we're in the situation we're in now where we're having to debt finance things. >> Gallo: Okay. Thank you. Mayor, I would say the only other thing that -- the other thing that is of interest to me is that one of our concept items as far as it's not giving us money to be used elsewhere, but the cost, the budget reduction from both water and resource recovery to keep the utility bills from increasing. And we wanted to look at the numbers that their budgets would have to go down to be able to do that. So I would still like to have that conversation. You know, we were -- the council and all the parties that worked on it were so successful with the Austin energy rate settlement proposal to be able to actually reduce the electric bills for our community. And we probably spent, you know, hours talking about how we could get the small increase from the first proposal on the tier 1 customers down. And I'm just -- I would wish that this council will have that same conversation with our other utility rates also because we were really [4:29:22 PM] focused on trying to grab every dollar we could to get those savings and get those bills reduced for that fistier. And actually, the increases in water and the increases in Austin recovery are going to be much more to those individuals customers than what we talked about being able to save them in Austin energy. So I really hope that we as a council will continue that same conversation, but with the other departments too. That's about it. >> Mayor Adler: Before I recognize mayor pro tem, let me ask you the same question I asked Leslie. There's about two million dollars' worth of things you want to do, and quite frankly, I want to do every one of those. The senior exemption, for example, if we don't keep it at 85 and we move to 85,000, that's an 800,000-dollar cost. If we go from 85 to 91, to in essence hold the seniors harmless, there's another 959,000. So that's a little over 1.7 million before we get to the other things that you mentioned. Are there things that you can see that we're spending money on that you would cut on this page in order to make room for those things? >> Gallo: Well, I think those are really good questions because I think that as you have -- as you have done a really good job of looking at potential places to cut, then I think we also can look at the ones on the other side of spending. >> Mayor Adler: That was my question. >> Gallo: We talk about spending, so for example, the three million dollars that includes the quality of life and spirit of east Austin, those things are important, but to me giving seniors the ability to age in place and stay this in their homes when 75% of the seniors in this community own their own homes is a quality of life issue. So I think as we talk about quality of life that we need to include the things into quality of life that really [4:31:23 PM] are quality of life. Association it may be what I support is an allocation of that that spreads that out and also includes the seniors in that. While keep working -- we put out a lot of budget cuts early on and the way this process worked initially is the council voted on getting rid of the budget cuts first and now we're left -- we're not left with a lot of the things that we had initially proposed. So we'll continue to keep looking. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: I have small but multiple questions about items on this list that I hope we can address, but I wanted to make some larger comments. Thank you very much for pulling all this together, mayor. I think this is really a great place to start. I just wanted to alert the council there are a couple of small things that I probably will bring forward, both cuts and possibly additions, though I think they've been mentioned in the course of the conversation today. One challenge I'm having is I still have some outstanding questions from the Q and a and one real area of concern for me at this point is the eliminate insurance changes. I know we had -- health insurance changes. I know we had an opportunity to discuss them last week and I know these are something that we talked about not very much in the course of this budget. But I am really concerned that some of the changes to the co-pay, the participation, the increased level of contribution that's going to be required for our employees are really going to hit our employees very hard. So I wanted to bring to my colleagues' attention, I know we talked last week, [4:33:23 PM] the initial question I put in last week was 180. But then I had follow-up questions for some estimates of what it would cost to restore those the co-pay and some of the other benefits that we currently have in our plan. I've also asked a question. I don't know that it's been answered yet either about what kind of reproductive services are covered in tier 1. As we learned in our work session last week, the tier 1 physicians are all Seton physicians and they have some restrictions about that. And so this is a real area of concern. We're late in budget process to be airing these concerns, but it really hit my attention once I got the answer back to 180 and saw the degree of changes. So 250, 251 and 252 are the questions that are still pending that will return some estimates and then we'll have a better sense of whether there's an opportunity to affect any kind of changes within this year's budget. So that's one area of concern for me that's not yet represented on the list because I don't have the information. I do want to say that I am still really keenly interested and in keeping the money that we put from the hotel-motel occupancy taxes that flow to the tourism and promotion fund, we held back some of those tourism and promotion fund dollars from the acvb contract, and I'm really keen on maintaining those in an existing fund. I think it was councilmember Casar followed up on it with a question on the Q and a that's not been returned yet asking for what money in the current budget could be offset with that -- would be eligible expenses under the hot tax requirements and could be funding through the tourism and promotion fund, thus feeing up money in the general fund. And that answer has not been returned yet. And really I don't know how [4:35:24 PM] much progress we'll able to make between now and Tuesday given the complications of the state requirements and given the fact that we're still waiting for that information. I'm not sure we'll have a clear sense by Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of what in our existing budgets are eligible expenses for that hot fund. So I'm going to advocate for keeping that money set aside under the tourism and promotion fund and continuing the discussion about what expenses we currently have in our budget are eligible for that and how we can really in particular expand some of our current efforts. I don't want to get in the weeds on this. I guess I am getting in the weeds on this, I may as well just say it. I think that we could do -- we could expand some of our marketing, for example, of city facilities like the Hancock golf course. A few years ago when that was getting homework designation there was a lot of around how we could promote that to tourists and to visitors in town that it is a very homework golf course and frankly our golf enterprise fund could do with some increased rounds of golf there. So that's the kind of site we could promote. During the discussion of the oakwood cemetery that came up as potentially another source of -- a source of pride for the community and it's another area where if we allocated some specific dollars within the tourism and promotion fund for tautaug tours and really beefed up our efforts there we could use that money wisely and use it in a way that really benefits our city facilities. I'd also like to see us, as I mentioned last week, reserve some of that funding to expand the kind of preservation grants we offer so that we have some incentives and some resources to offer some of the civic facilities, including some of our homework African-American churches and other civic buildings throughout our city that could avail themselves of that if they meet the state requirement. So those are two big categories that I'm still continuing to think about. Again, I have some smaller cuts I'm going to propose, [4:37:26 PM] some of which have been the source of budget Q and a's that have submitted and potentially -- you know, I'm supportive of some of the additions that we've talked about, including the healthy foods initiatives and others. And I'll just -- if I could, I'll just speed through some of my questions and then if we have time to ask staff, that would be great. I would like to hear from staff about -- I am really very supportive of moving funds out of things like the economic incentives reserve fund if we don't need them, but given the conversation we had earlier about the conservative estimates I do want to talk with staff about the history. I know they went back to the history and just be hear -- avail myself of their knowledge of -- and their new opinion about that, that we don't need that five percent contingency. I am very interested in seeing us move forward on body camera implementation so holding back on those expenses would concern me. And I'm interested in the information, the ongoing dialogue about the asset forfeiture fund. I really am going to need to have a more lengthy conversation about the central library full staffing. This is a commitment that's a long time commitment to this city, was a source of a bond vote, and it is really important to me that we operate our facilities in ways that fulfill the promises that we've made to the community and that includes having staffing and programs. So I have -- I'm going to want to have a conversation about what's been proposed here. Ditto with the 10% reduction and select membership subscription and travel. I think we really need to look at that list carefully. That includes, as I said last week, while I probably could support reductions in travel budgets and food and ice and other things that are not necessarily necessities, I'm going to really be probably voting [4:39:27 PM] against reductions to things like our library budgets when we know that those lag behind other cities in terms of per capita spending. The convention center payment to the downtown pid is intriguing to me. It seems to relate to a question that I can't recall asking, but was attributed to me in 212 and I need to understand that relationship because I certainly never meant to imply that the convention center should pick up the payments to the pid for other city properties, but I do think the convention center payment should increase as have other properties. So I need to understand what's here and again the question I don't actually remember submitting, although I suppose it's possible. Okay. Another question on this list for me is the drawing down of available ending balances. Those seem to be attributed to the general fund, but I would assume that those -- the drawing down of the ending balances have to stay within those enterprise funds. So I just wanted staff to weigh in on whether -- on whether that 520,000 is being attributed to -- I hope it's not being attributed to the general fund because I want to balance this as much as anyone around here given that it has several key priorities of mine on the other side. Association and I think that's it. I have a few on the other side. Housing trust fund, it's hard to see that funded at the amount we had anticipated, but I want to talk as a council that I hope that doesn't include allocations at this point. I don't think based on the numbers that it does. Delighted to see downtown [4:41:27 PM] permanent restroom funded in here. We'll need to add in some additional costs for the perch pilot so that we -- temporary pilot so that we know where to place it best. I want to make sure that the music and arts really includes arts and we continue to talk about it, because while we're losing music venue space we're also losing arts and performance arts spaces. And I could not follow the conversation about the fte in the transportation department and where that ended up. And while it seems like an extremely good idea to have somebody looking for grant funding, I want want that person's position to be funded through the grants eventually. So I may have been where -- where that ended up. It went here and there. I wouldn't follow where it ended up. I'm all for offsetting general fund costs. I would say it sounded like it was -- I don't know where it landed. >> Kitchen: Do you want me to speak to that? Basically we're just swapping out an fte right now. The A.P.D. Has an fte related to Gia analysis. They're saying they can replace that fte with this position. This is not just a grant funded position. The funding -- you know this, the funding for transportation is very, very complex at a -- a lot of this is government funding, not grant funding per se. So having an fte dedicated and an expert on finding us these kinds of resources is what this fte would do but basically we're agreeing Freeman coliseum them up, -- freeing them up, which is what councilmember Garza was talking about. >> Mayor Adler: And he hoped that this person over the course of the year would find a funding source for that position. And we would not wait on finding that funding source for this position. It's an existing position that they've got right now. >> Mayor Adler: Those are [4:43:27 PM] two separate thoughts. >> Tovo: I guess I understood that. But I think I would lean toward having it be maybe not an fte -- a permanent fte, but I would like to see how that worked out over the course of the year and whether they were able to generate enough financial resources to offset the cost of their position. I think that's pretty common in a lot of conversations. And I'd like to weigh that on option here. >> Kitchen: But it wouldn't -- the the problem is you wouldn't necessarily see it in one year. So for example if they were able to locate some federal dollars that perhaps we hadn't gone after before, it could be two years before we find that. So we can't do a year to year relationship there. We could analyze how it's working, but I would not want to put that kind of criteria on it. >> Tovo: I take your point. And I think it would be useful to continue to analyze it, though, as we all know it's hard to go back and cut an fte once you have a person in it. >> Kitchen: This fte exists right now so it's not a new fte. >> Tovo: On the conversation that's the way it sounded. So mayor, those were my questions about the items on this list that I would need to have answered before we actually take action on any of them. So. >> Mayor Adler: Did you get that list. >> Tovo: I wasn't planning on doing it through the Q and a, because I know the Q and a cutoff was last week and we're still awaiting answers to those. Most of these are pretty fast. >> I could probably hit on most of them, but I know we're short on time. >> Mayor Adler: I think we've narrowed down the universe of the questions of things we're asking about that are in play or people are putting in play today. The hope is that you would be able to help us give guidance on those. >> Kitchen: I think we have a couple more questions over here. You were first. [4:45:34 PM] >> Garza: I guess I have a process question. No one has moved this or have we voted on this. That's one concern. And mayor, I think you did a good thing if you're going to ask for new sedations where are we going to get that from? So I'm going to push back on if you find it, does that mean it's yours? I would argue it is. If your staff is going out asking the tough questions, finding extra revenue, then this goes to process, I guess, I would want to know at that point can I make a motion and say here, we found this, I'd like to make a motion that blah, blah, blah? >> Mayor Adler: We could certainly have a debate on that. I would argue pretty strenuously no because whether we spend money or something I think should be based on the merit of what it is that we're spending the money on. That means it has to compete against all the other things we could possibly be spending money on. So rather than rewarding a staff that was great and finding a cut which I would certainly like for us to have, I would have trouble from time to timing -- and in any kind of budget when we had the budget and we had it, we could move things on the budget and off the budget and back and forth in terms of what we do -- I'm not sure how you could limit the prerogative of the council for spending decisions. A. >> Garza: And I understand that. I would say with all due respect this has come from one council office, your office -- >> Mayor Adler: This could all go away. There's nothing about this that makes it happen. >> Garza: I want to make sure these are proposals that one council office has found and then found cuts and found where to put them. So it's essentially I feel like it's in a way the same thing. >> Kitchen: Actually, these are cuts that I found some of these cuts and they were spent on things that I -- were not my priorities and I think I'm not the only one in that position. The only thing to remember [4:47:34 PM] about this -- and I think this is good to bring forward, but the question you asked councilmember Gallo earlier about, well, what would you cut to pay for the senior exemption, there are other things on here that I brought forward to keep the senior exemption and now they're being used for other things. >> Mayor Adler: And we can certainly change those. There's nothing on here we can't change. There's nothing on here we can't -- we say we want to do the senior exception. So let's cut something to do that. There's nothing that -- that is -- it is intended for us to do that to this document. >> Garza: So what is the process? Are you going to move this and -- >> Mayor Adler: Eventually we'll have to start taking votes and I think they will be hard votes. Probably on Monday we'll probably talk through it a little bit more tomorrow, but on Monday the actual priorities of the council will be -- will be set. >> And the process questions, this is just a budget work session so there's not any voting here. This is for you all just to talk about concepts, budget hearings start on Monday at 9:30. They're noticed, statutorily required. Monday is when you will decide on the budget and take votes. >> Kitchen: Mayor, and I just bring that up for -- I know you didn't intend is that way when you brought it up, but I want to remind ourselves that this is great and I appreciate having the work to work on,, but there's a little difference between saying okay, if I want to keep the senior exemption on, I've got to take something off that I never had on in the first place. So I just -- we all have to do this together. It's just kind of a subtle -- let's just remember that we're all trying to figure out how to do this as a group, and it's not -- it's not so much that I have to now find something to take off to keep something on that I always wanted on. It's more of a matter of how are we going to do this [4:49:35 PM] together as a group? >> Mayor Adler: Exactly. We can add six more things on here and when we are three million dollars overspent we'll have to find three million dollars in things to cut. And the question was just to daylight what people's priorities were. It wasn't to put a burden on anyone to do that. >> Kitchen: So maybe this is a document that doesn't have to process at this point. Maybe that's another way to think about it. I don't know. >> Mayor Adler: It will eventually have to balance, but your point -- >> Kitchen: Eventually it does. >> Mayor Adler: But I understand. It was just intended to try to kind of narrow issues and to focus people. And to actually have a conversation that really got us to where we were in terms of budget. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. I just needed to say that we're going to have to get body cameras. I mean, this has been drawn on and on and on for many years now. The community's expectation is that we are a better community, more respectful community if it's recorded. So that's one of my priorities. And then I have others on the African-American quality of life that we can talk about later. But that is one that I will not be supporting any reduction in or delay in getting some body cameras on the streets. And then there was one other thing. We talked about summer internships. And we talked about aviation and the convention center, funding them, but there are other interns that we hire and one of the things was to hire some -- an additional 100. And what we're asking for in that line item is we don't have the staff, we're using temporary staff now to try to manage almost a thousand interns over the summer. One full-time person and then a part-time and temporary staff that we hire [4:51:36 PM] every summer. So that's just to have two additional full-time employees to help manage all of those because we manage them for the city and the county. The city pays for those young people that are interns -- I mean, they're on our payroll. So there's a lot of work that goes on to manage not only the young people, but where they're housed. >> Tovo: Can I ask a question? Councilmember Houston, I missed the first part of what you said. The interns are managed through the family and youth initiative office? I thought we added staff over the last couple of years. I thought they had -- because they brought forward a budget proposition a couple of years ago and we did not approve it. Anyway, I would look forward to some -- >> That's the request is does anybody remember if they've added staff? Because I was told that it was one full-time person and then part-time people. >> Tovo: We could probably go back to the budget questions of last year and the year before. So they had brought forward a budget proposition, the first year to add some staff and we turned it down and the next year it got funded. So I thought that they had more staff than that. And that would -- >> Mayor Adler: Let's add that budget question. How do we staff intern -- >> Tovo: Or I could try to do the research in going back the last couple of budget questions, but I thought -- I thought we added at least one more permanent staff position and they also had some vistas that were -- every summer some vistas that were monitoring those summer interns. >> It was actually just in the fy16 budget we added one halftime volunteer coordinator position and for the summer programs. That was added in this year's budget. >> Houston: That's a halftime position. >> Yes. >> Houston: That's what I thought. >> Tovo: I would like to know the year before. [4:53:37 PM] I guess I would like to know total staff in that program at this point. >> My memory is the same as yours, it was a position that staff recommended that council removed. >> Tovo: But then it got funded the next year, I thought. Anyway, if we could just track what that situation is. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Kitchen? >> Houston: Is this the staff that know the answer to the question? >> Rebecca candy with the human resources department. In the past two budget cycles we had put in requests for funding positions for our youth and family services office. Last year we received one full-time fte through the city manager's budget and then through the council review we also received a part-time position. So we did receive 1.5 positions last fiscal year. >> That's in addition to what was currently in there, one full-time person and plus some vistas every year that helped manage that program. >> We had an -- we currently have the administrator and then vistas. And so in our current budget year for fy16 is when we received the 1.5 ftes. >> Houston: And about how many young people do we manage over a summer? >> Over the summer between the county program and our own program I think it's close to a thousand youth. >> And they're asking for I think two additional -- two full-time, so that would be the halftime would go to full time and then one other. So one and a half. And then another $100,000 for 100 students which we pay them a thousand dollars a month. I mean a thousand dollars for the summer. >> And that's what we saw in the concept menu, in the human resources when we [4:55:37 PM] submitted our funding request, we requested one additional youth volunteer coordinator. So that was in what human resources had requested. >> Kitchen: I just have a question and I apologize, you may have already answered this. I'm trying to understand -- I'm trying to remember what's appropriate to go into the cip, for example. That's capital projects. And I'm wondering if the downtown loo could qualify for that because it's a construction item rather than a -- I assume it's a one-time item. Could that come out of the cip? >> Depending upon exactly what it is, it may be a cip item, did you it doesn't change the fact that it would still have to be funded by some source such as with the convention center funding or general funding or something like that? >> Kitchen: I guess I'm not understanding. That's why I wanted to see this divided by cip versus one-time funds. Because my thought would be if -- if I'm hearing you correctly, if it was qualified for the cip, then if we take -- replace one of the existing cip items with this then that's how you could handle it. In other words, you wouldn't have to use -- a lot of these dollars that we've identified are not cip dollars, if I'm understanding correctly. And we've got a whole list -- we've got a whole long, long list of cip projects. So could we not swap out cip projects if -- this is not my item so I'm not suggesting to do something different than mayor pro tem might want to do. I'm just asking a question. Because what -- if I'm reading this right we're [4:57:38 PM] taking this 150,000 out of dollars that could be spent on something that's not eligible for cip. Am I making any sense? >> It sounds like the part of it where you're saying we might want to look at our cip and see if there's some project that we would not do in order to do a permanent downtown toilet instead. And if we start talking about a permanent one as opposed to something that's mobile, it starts to sound more like a capital project. >> Kitchen: What's the criteria for what can go in the cip? >> Typically it would be something with a capitalized asset, facility or a building, but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes a multi-year project like codenext we actually have set up as a cip project because it's going on for numerous years, but typically when people think of a cip, and typically next things like streets, assets that are capitalized that have -- over some time period. >> Kitchen: All right. So I guess I'm hearing an answer that -- I'm not suggesting that this is something the mayor pro tem might want to do, but I'm hearing that it could be done if there was 150,000 that could come off of one of these other cip projects, then this could be moved into that and we wouldn't need to use some of these other funds for that. >> It's a matter of the funding source for the cip and what would be appropriate. I don't know if this -- if it was a restroom on a park, clearly we could use some park cip monies for it. This isn't that so we would have to really look and see what would be an appropriate bond proposition where we could redirect some monies towards this and I just don't have that answer. >> Kitchen:we can talk further about it. I won't take. . . >> Garza: I just -- a different subject, but I don't know if we addressed this through a policy change, but I have concerns about funding [4:59:38 PM] ftes for less than a year because of the effects of how it affects the following year's budget and we're seeing how that happened last year. We funded some ftes for six months and then the annualized cost the next year is -- it's creating those cost drivers that are giving that scary graph of the roll-back, you know, us being above the roll-back rate. So just an idea that I would offer for maybe cuts is right now there's 205 ftes funded for less than a year. It's about $9 million. That's annualized, that's about $12 million. So -- and, again, this is -- it's hard to, you know, pick specific ftes and I'm gonna cut this one from this department, but if we could instead, the annualized next year is the $9 million that's budgeted this year and then, you know, make whatever cuts are necessary so that, for example, this year that amount would be $6 million for a certain amount of ftes, the annualized cost is 9 million that is next year's. So that's a suggestion I would have. I don't know how to do that broad kind of ask, but that's an idea I have. >> Mayor Adler: What are we looking at for those numbers? >> Garza: It's a budget question we asked, budget question 224. >> Mayor Adler: 224, thank you. >> Kitchen: Did you ask as part of that across the whole -- >> Garza: Yes. >> Kitchen: -- Budget how many were -- >> Garza: 205 were funded for less than one year. >> Kitchen: Okay. What number did you say that was? >> Mayor Adler: 224. Mayor pro tem, did you have questions you wanted to get? >> Tovo: If we -- well, I guess I just need to understand sort of what the capacity is for answering some of the questions I raised earlier today or tomorrow. [5:01:39 PM] Let me see if there's -- >> That's very good. >> Tovo: A couple of them may be questions for you in compiling it. So if I could ask a couple? >> Mayor Adler: Please. >> Tovo: We can circle back and we can see. The housing trust fund so moving up to the full appropriation, I assume that doesn't change the allocation, which was specified in the proposed budget. So we would have a certain amount of that unallocated for this next year and could use it for available projects that became known to us? Okay, super. And one thing I did want to mention when I was talking about the money we have set aside right now into the tourism and promotion fund, the hot tax, one thing I wanted to mention while here as a group is Travis county has talked about at some point at least looking at the palm school and the future of the palm school. As I understand the hot tax funding, it can be used for the acquisition of facilities and so one thing, as we decide what to do with that money and whether or not to continue to reserve it for our future consideration, I would just bring that -- I would name that project specifically, that that offers us the flexibility to be in a position to potentially partner with the county on that facility for a public use that would fit -- meet the requirements of the statute. Mayor, the music/arts space issue was something you brought forward, and I just want to make sure on -- that I'm clear in my understanding, that that does talk about -- you're talking about arts in a general sense, not specifically music? Music and arts venues, even though some of this came out of the work of the music omnibus process? >> Mayor Adler: That's correct. In fact it was mechanicals and some of those that became really the driving -- >> Tovo: Great. Thank you. We're knocking out a lot of these questions. And this is a question for [5:03:39 PM] Mr. Van eenoo, the draw down of ending balances in arr, ae, can you help me understanding, those would have to go back to those enterprise funds? >> Yeah, that drawdown specifically -- >> Tovo: Does this final analysis at the bottom of the 13 million that I can into consideration? >> Yes. Yeah the draw- down is tied to two expenditure items so one of the expenditure items is workforce training capital idea at $600,000. That's funded in economic development. So we'd be increasing economic development's budget by $600,000 to do that. Economic development's budget is allocated out to three enterprise departments and the general fund. And so in the case of Austin energy, it might be $300,000 of that increase would be Austin energy's increase and they would fund that simply by increasing their allocation to economic development and their ending balance, instead of being, say, $100 million would be -- >> Tovo: So that's how that one tracks. You said there were two items. >> The other item is this position we talked about numerous times, transportation department dedicated -- this grant funding position. It was a hundred thousand dollars and initially it was on this list as we'll just add the position Austin transportation department and their existing ending balance would just be $100,000 lower because they maintain I believe a 30-day reserve on their funds so their reserve level would just be slightly lower as a result of that. Now, it sounds like maybe there's another option for getting that work done, for adding that position, but I just wanted to circle back to what kilograms was talking about, that given -- councilmember Garza was talking about given the way it's on some sheet, $100,000 coming away from transportation department's ending balance, anything we use that money for would have to be eligible under the of it UF ordinance. >> Tovo: Thank you. That answers that question. I have one more quick one. We talked about the economic incentives reserves fund and you talked about the contingency and the importance [5:05:40 PM] of having that and then I assume you went back and looked at how closely the projections matched the actuals over the last, I don't know, five or so years. >> Right. >> Tovo: I guess you found that your projections are good enough that we don't need a contingency? >> The issue there -- and where it's bitten us in the past is where we're doing projections early. We always come to council in April with our forecast and we do projections, and what's happened in the past is when we go from April where we're making these projections to the proposed budget, we go from having a not certified roll from tcad to having a certified roll and investing comes in higher doctor actually the certification comes in about what we expected but say Samsung's piece of the allocation is higher, right? So if we were projecting 8% growth and 8% growth is what we got but Samsung's growth ended up being hire, well now all of a sudden we don't have anymore revenue but our payment to the economic incentive reserve fund has to be higher so that's bitten us in the past and we started maintaining a contingency. Looking at the data, what we realized was that that's really the issue, is how do we do that early projection when we don't have a certified roll to when we get a certified roll. Once we have a certified roll it's pretty much set in stone. So we have a certified roll. We know what the values are gonna be so I can tell you with certainty what the payment is gonna be next year so we don't really need that 5% contingency in that manner. What we need to do is change our processes so when we're doing our early on projections we're being sufficiently conservative so when it comes time to deliver the budget to we're not saying, oops, we're off by a million dollars and we can do that internally without holding money in the [bleep] >> Tovo: That's great. That reassures me. And do you know if we'll have answers by tomorrow about the health insurance that I raised earlier, about what will what [5:07:41 PM] it would cost to affect some changes? >> Right. You asked those budget questions. >> Tovo: Did I. >> As soon as I get back to my office we'll see where we are with those and maybe tomorrow. >> Tovo: That would be great. My concern is it could be in the millions possibly and it would be good information to have before the weekend. >> Right. >> Tovo: I would say -- you know, and I appreciate the kind of conversation we're having, and I take your questions, mayor, to be good, good motivations to all of us to sort of identify some other places if we're suggest something areas that could be additional. I see somebody from human resources here. >> Mayor Adler: I'd have money from other areas or the arguments to say these aren't the things we want to fund, let's take something like this off the list and replace it to something else. >> Tovo: As I indicated I have some of both of those to bring forward. This is such a big ticket item it would be great to have some sense of the scale. >> Good afternoon, Karen hey wood, assistant director human resources department. The question in regards to question 250 was keeping the differential at 80%, the coinsurance. What that would do based on our discussion last week is the employees and the city, the premium increase would go from 8.7% to 13.7%, so a little over $8 million. >> Tovo: That would be one way to handle, it would be to just increase the premiums. If we wanted to offset that, do you have a sense of what that dollar cost would be, if you wanted to keep the premium cost constant but offset that, the other increases? >> It would be over $8 million. The way that we looked at this tiered network structure is it's all in. So we went back to united health care and to Seton to see if we could lower, I'm sorry, the coinsurance amount and they said that the coinsurance needs to have at least a 10% differential to [5:09:41 PM] maintain the savings. So if we were unable to do that then all of the plan design changes that we're recommending for 2017 would not hold. >> Tovo: Okay. Thanks. How about the 251, the anticipated fiscal impact of reflecting the -- rejecting the step therapy option? >> For this year the step therapy is approximately $50,000 to implement that January 1. So that's a savings of $50,000. But the thing about the step therapy program is, every single year it would continue to grow. And the reason why the savings on this one is so low is simply because we chose to grandfather all of the current members that are currently using any of these drugs that go into step one. >> Tovo: Okay. So that was -- I mean, if we chose not to adopt that plan change, the cost of not doing so is pretty reasonable. But to affect a change in the -- to try to keep employees getting 80% benefits rather than 70% benefits is about an $8 million cost? >> It is. And I think if we go back to question 250, when you're looking at that 10% differential that you had asked us about, really what happens, employees that are gonna use the network providers, they reach their out of pocket maximum quicker, okay? So all employees are capped with an out of pocket maximum so for 2017 the out of metric maximum will be $4,000 so the most in any given year that an employee will pay on the benefit plan is $4,000. So those that aren't receiving the deeper discounts will just get there quicker. >> Tovo: Can you address the question about tier 1 providers and whether they will be able to provide reproductive services given their affiliation with see summon. >> They will be able to provide that. We did confirm that. >> Tovo: Thank you. I thought I had submitted that through the formal q&a. >> That was just an email question that came through to us. >> Tovo: I'm sorry, I intended [5:11:42 PM] to submit that through the q&a and I know we've passed the deadline but I think that's an important point of information to have that on the record so if you would treat that as I formal q&a so we can make that part of the question and answer process I think that's important. I think the question also dealt with post birth procedures like tubule ligations and other procedures. Are those also gonna be could have had by tier 1 doctors. >> We did go back and there are tier 1 providers for all of our current LE productive services. >> Tovo: Thank you. Again, I think that would allay some concerns if we can confirm that in writing. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I think also -- I join in requesting that that be memorialized on the q&a. >> Tovo: Thank you for that information. >> Mayor Adler: We need to find $8 million or 3.4 for 42 hours or we just need to all be working. But I think this -- I think that at this point, rather than looking at a universe of 80 big things we're down to, I think, a more manageable universe that ultimately we can talk again tomorrow between 1:00 and 2:30, see what people have come up with, additional ideas but probably early on Monday we'll start figuring out a -- we'll have a process to start prioritizing those spending items so that people know whether to Sloat for cuts or not -- vote tore cuts or not and the like. Yes? >> Kitchen: So did you pass out a document that suggested how we might give direction on particular items? Was that -- >> Mayor Adler: I passed out a stab at one. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: And I think you've seen that as a rider. I think this one just happened to be on that but you might want to take a look at it. There is some translation services in the council in -- interest in the council, I [5:13:44 PM] have other copies and have can email it to you as well, the concept of making part of this budget ordinance some section that has direction from the council. So take a look at that legal, take a look at that and figure out how we will be adding those kinds of things to the budget ordinance that we passed next week. Yes? >> Councilmembers, I just wanted to note the work that you've been doing today is great on this current year budget, but we've also completed yesterday our bond sale, and I'm happy to report that on our 20-year debt we got 2.21%, which is a fabulous interest rate with our aaa rating and on our refunding we had 14.4% present value savings or $9,000,166 in savings over the next ten years. That will impact our debt service rate and that's the savings that will factor into future tax rates and future budgets, not the current year you're working on, but for '18 that will definitely help us in the -- and the years after that. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Way to you. Good job. [ Applause ] Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Just a quick one because I know we're about to finish. On page 244, I reduced that ql1.18a from 275 to 187,109. Not a whole lot. >> Mayor Adler: Which number was that? >> Houston: Ql -- page is 24 of 46. Ql1.18a, $187,109. That would make them have -- that's more than they're getting now but not as much as they asked for. I'm trying to whittle down some of the things to keep [5:15:45 PM] within your suggestion, but we have some other conversations that we'll have to have about some of the other issues. >> Mayor Adler: Absolutely. >> Houston: But that one was one that we had already worked on so that one is good. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Council, anything -- >> Houston: One more question. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Houston: What would happen if every social service contract that we have now except those that have been identified to increase like the food access, if they stayed same? What would happen? How much money would we realize if everybody stayed the same? Except for those that we've identified as the food access was one, I think, that said we couldn't -- we'd have to increase that. But what would happen if we stayed at the same rate? And didn't increase. >> Mayor Adler: I think right now the only increases we have built into the budget for service contracts is the $500,000 that staff is recommending to be added to the budget. I'd have to verify that but I believe if we were to do any increases it would be $500,000 less in this budget for those. >> Mayor Adler: Check that because I think it was unallocated funding which would mean potential with new entities that didn't otherwise exist but if we have a group of 100 that we're currently funding it may be that as part of the process there are contract increases associated with those and I don't know the answer but I think that's the question Ms. Houston is also asking. So when we've had a contract with the last six years, next year year seven is at a higher amount than year six was. Any other questions? Then we'll stand adjourned until 1:00 tomorrow. Since we only go from 1:30 to [5:17:45 PM] 2:30, let's really try to start at 1:00. >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry, one until 2:30. [ Adjourned ]