Open Space, Environment, and Sustainability Committee Meeting Transcript –10/26/2016 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 10/26/2016 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 10/26/2016 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [2:07:34 PM] >> Pool: I guess I have to look at a calendar to remember what today is. Wednesday, October 26th, 2016. And this is the open space environment and sustainability committee. There we go. And I'm calling the meeting to order at 2:07 in the afternoon and I have vice-chair Garza and mayor pro tem tovo today as well as three of the chairs of the commissions today, water and wastewater, and our parks commission Dr. Jane Rivera. Thanks for being here today. All right. First item since we're called to order is approval of minutes for the September 28th meeting S there a motion? Vice-chair Garza moves approval. Is there a second? And the mayor pro tem seconds. Are there any changes or anything to it? All those in favor raise your hand? Looks like that is unanimous with councilmember Zimmerman absent. Citizens communication, I'm looking to see does not look like there are -- okay, David. Okay. >> [Inaudible]. >> Pool: He could come in and we could get the information from him. Is he out in the hall. Thanks, Kelly. We'll hang for a second and let him bring himself? While we're waiting we have two items for discussion and possible action. The first is the Lamar beach [2:09:36 PM] master plan and then a briefing on the sustainability natural and built environment code prescription and code advisory. That was I think one of the first written on the prescription code. Do you want to move forward on Lamar beach? I was going to wait for the citizens communication? >> [Inaudible]. >> Pool: Great. We'll hear from him then. Well, staff, do you want to go ahead and get started? Let's do that. All right. It's all yours. >> [Inaudible]. >> Pool: No worries at all. Do you want to speak before [2:11:37 PM] or after the staff makes a presentation? You're speaking on Lamar beach? >> Citizens communication and the Lamar beach front. >> Pool: Is your communication on something not on the agenda? >> I think so. Related, but still -- >> Pool: Then you will be able to speak too when we get to the item. >> So this is my -- >> Pool: Can you tell us your name? >> Robert corbyn. And this is my first open space committee meeting to speak at. So I've kind of got on the subject about dogs, especially off leash dogs and dogs running around town. So the best way to, I guess, describe my issues is that the issues that I've actually had with dogs in the open spaces, in the parks around town, especially the greenbelt, zilker park, any park I go to in this town I have dog issues. And I still do even after the city started enforcing the leash laws. Then there was the minor thing like the dog poop and all that stuff, but basically two days ago I got in zilker park I got attacked by I don't know how many chihuahuas, can you believe? They just poured out of this car like a waterfall and they were coming at me from all directions. Of course, I was too close to the car. I was maybe 20 or 30 feet away from the car. I actually filed a police report. I think one of them bit me and I was bleeding. And I was concerned because believe it or not the same thing happened with the same chihuahuas about a month ago but I didn't get bit. So anyway, I filed a police report on it. And a couple of weeks ago I went to the hill of life. Some guy's got a German [2:13:37 PM] shepherd off leash. And I tell him. Anyway, the dog comes over and kind of slams into me. And it ends up the guy wants to fight me, the the owner of the German shepherd, because I'm telling him that his dog is supposed to be on a leash. Four weeks ago I go down to the hill of life and every single swimming hole along the there, because the water was running, had off leash dogs and boom boxes. I ended up not even swimming. I ended up walking back. Another time six weeks ago I'm sitting on a rock after similar swimming a big dog comes up and slams me in the head from behind. I turn around add the owner is behind the dog. And I tell the owner that I don't appreciate that his dog hits me in the head like that. And I was fairly nice about it really. He tells me, oh, you need to get out of here then. That's exactly what his words. So he and I got in a big argument and I ended up leaving. Every single park I go to I have off-leash dog problems. And I don't care, every park. You go over to the park in Clarksville, they have an off leash in Clarksville. Every time I drive by it, or almost every time, there's dogs in the off leash area and there's dogs outside the off leash area. And it always seems like if you say anything to them you're the problem. [Buzzer sounds] So anyway, that's a little prelude that kind of ties in with what I'll say about Lamar beach. >> Pool: Very good. Thank you so much. Hello, Ricardo. >> Thank you. Ricardo Solis with the parks and recreation department. And I'm joined by Charles [2:15:45 PM] Mabry. We will be asking council for their approval in December on this plan so we're hoping to be on your agenda very soon. I'll talk to you a little bit about the background of the park. Why park -- why pard began master planning this park. And then taking through the planning process of what we engaged with the community in the last year and a half. With giving you our recommendations at the end. Just to give you a little background, in 2014 the city council passed a resolution to initiate master planning for this park. The resolution stemmed from quite a bit of activity occurring around revisiting existing agreements. Users of that property today with some of the organizations as well as planning for the presser street extension. While all this activity -- with all this activity council asked pard to work on a comprehensive plan for Lamar beach to look at the issues of parking, to look at environmental protection, public impacts and benefits of potential traffic changes due to Pressler and future mopac toll roads. So Lamar beach park is outlined in blue there and I think we passed out some handouts for you just looking -- just a closer look at the park itself. It's 65 acres. The park boundary is of course the lake to the south. The bluff line or near fifth street on the north, Lamar boulevard on the east and mopac on the west. The park itself is bisecretaried by Cesar Chavez that separates the park into two parks. [2:17:48 PM] So the park is used by many organizations as I stated before, animal services, Austin pets alive, Austin youth association, which provide a lot of youth programming, the ymca, the Texas rowing center, Austin high school as well. The project timeline -- and July of 2015 the parks department had a design workshop through an rfp process to work on this master plan. So between September and January we worked closely with the community to come up with some recommendations on this plan. And currently we're going through the boards and commissions meetings and like I stated, hope to get to the council this dissection but so far we've gone to the small area planning committee, we've gone to the animal advisory commission. We've gone to the planning commission, downtown commission and the design commission. And last night we made a presentation before the parks and recreation board. So far all the groups have endorsed the plan. There's going to be continued discussion at the parks and recreation board in November before their final recommendation. Just glancing at the goals of the plan, which are in priority order by font size and by numerical order, the first goal is essentially maintain the current uses of the many organizations mentioned earlier on this park, that utilized this park. The second goal is to gain support from the affected stakeholders. So we have old west Austin neighborhood to the north, we have Austin high, and then just people that use the ymca, for instance, so to gain support from affected stakeholders from a [2:19:49 PM] unified vision for this park for the future. Goal 3 is to enhance natural assets and improve the environmental characteristics of the park such as drainage ways that lead to the lake through the park and tree cover. Goal four to provide safe connections to and through the park not only for vehicles, but also for pedestrians, particularly as well old west Austin, it's -- we have this neighborhood up near sixth street that -- and they have the park down under the glove that there's really very poor pedestrian connection and bicycle connection down to the park. Goal five is to ensure financial sustainability of the park. And six to solidify the identity of the park. Right now it's really, like I said, it's bisecretaried by Cesar Chavez and -- bisected by Cesar Chavez and traffic go through there 45, 50 miles per hour right we need an identity for this part of the city and this parkland. Just to give you an idea of the community input that we've received in our project website we had over 8,000 hits to our project website. We had over 1500 people that gave us their input through online. At our community workshops we had three of them. They were highly attended. We had over 100 people at each one of the workshops and they were held at Austin high. We held stakeholder group meetings, particularly the user groups, the ymca, the Austin pets alive, Austin high, and got some insight directly from those groups. We also had a technical advisory committee that not only city departments were [2:21:50 PM] attending, but also txdot, for instance, the central mobility authority also attended those meetings as well. That just gives you a sense of the technical group and the key stakeholders that were involved with these small group meetings. As I mentioned, the community workshops, the first one we held was in October of 2015 where it was more of a vision workshop, just trying to really get a handle of creating the goals for this park. And I went over those six goals. That was in October. By December we were able to come up with six plan alternatives, and were presented at the December meeting. By January we put a little bit more information with those alternatives and voted -- got input on the preferred alternative of the six. So we got input at the workshop. We got input through online as well. So we came up with one particular preferred alternative. The biggest proposal in this plan is the relocation of Cesar Chavez. To the north side of the park. As you can see on the graphic, Cesar Chavez is the main thoroughfare of Cesar Chavez, is going towards the north and rising as we go from Lamar, rising. One of the benefits that we see here is that the ymca now has a front door to Cesar Chavez. [2:23:51 PM] Included in this recommendation we have the existing Austin pets alive or the animal services building. We are relocating that north of Cesar Chavez adjacent to the ymca. This is a proposal where the ymca had some property there as well as parkland so we would be in a joint use with using some of the ymca property to kind of locate the building and parking and the kennels would be on parkland with this proposal. Another advantage with this alignment is as we are rising we are going up to the elevation near Pressler. As you can see Pressler kind of in the middle of the graphic. We would be up to that level to connect Pressler at a signal light or at a T intersection there at that point. Where then we would then merge with the mopac lanes. Some of the big benefits that we get here is that now we have a contiguous parkland that is adjacent to the water. Another big advantage that we're gaining here is six acres of land that was used for right-of-way, were used just not efficient at all with the alignment of Cesar Chavez today. What this proposal also gives us is that the original Cesar Chavez that is there would be put on a diet where we would have two lanes. We would have onstreet parking and it would be a park road with probably 25 miles per hour that would serve Austin high. We would have the buses that [2:25:51 PM] could exit Austin high to a light there as we get -- as we move from west to east we would have a light there by the ymca so that would be signalized. We would have another signal at Pressler on Cesar Chavez, so this would serve to reduce the traffic as it enters downtown and not have the traffic coming - - flying through this area and then coming to a light at Lamar. So these are some of the goals that we would get out of this proposal. Austin high would be able to play some of their recreational amenities, for instance, grow some of their tennis facilities, for instance. We already have joint programming with the wawa fields and Austin high and this would really solidify our relationship with Austin high and this proposal. Another opportunity that we see here is the cmca as I stated would have now a front door. We could also grow their parking. The parking there that is very tight with the Y by also we could expand that parking as you see there for the general public. So now we could have parking there for people coming to the hike and bike trail, going to the Y, using the way fields, Austin pets alive, so it would give us a lot of opportunity. As far as parking is concerned, as the Cesar Chavez is elevated, we have the opportunity now to have parking underneath the elevated Cesar Chavez. So that just enhances even more we're almost doubling the amount of onstreet [2:27:52 PM] parking with -- onstreet parking with this proposal. So with the idea of enhanced parking, having a continuous waterfront, gaining parkland in our downtown area, are all of the benefits that we see associated with this plan. These are some of the benefits that I just went over, it's just summarizing those benefits. The mobility benefits here, we would -- as I stated before, we would have pedestrian a and bicycle access to old west Austin, so up and down the bluff. We would have pedestrian access through the park, a much safer movement through the park now. We would create a connection at Pressler, have a light and have an opportunity for ingress and egress of downtown or fifth and sixth street. Directly into mopac. We would have an opportunity to have a left turn lane at Santa more rad da and also br rentals where we would have space to have that stacking for that as well. In this proposal we have what weaver calling a -- what we're calling a boardwalk where we could take the hike and bike trail that is so close to Cesar Chavez today and move it out into the water. So you could see that small spur that comes out where that would be the alignment of the hike and bike trail and taking that away from Cesar Chavez. [2:29:54 PM] With this particular proposal right there at the Lamar bridge and Cesar Chavez is a pinch point because of the bridge itself. So we would -- with this idea we would have to go and dig a little -- go under a little bit under the bridge in order to make space for an additional lane, and that's what we would get that turning lane for Santa marada because it is really tight there so we would have to go under a little to create an additional lane as we go under Lamar bridge. More rad da. I believe the community benefits I just went over already. Improved connections to Austin high, increase the user capacity of the park itself. Like I said, we would be gaining seven acres. We would want to add a family day area. We would want opportunity to have central pavilion, have more of enhanced trail Ed. Would give us a lot more opportunity for family recreation. The funding part. This just gives you an idea of what we're talking about. With general park improvements we're talking about 20 to $26 million for that. Of course we have helpers that would help us with this. We would have the Austin youth association or the ymca -- the cmca and potential for aid and the trail foundation to [2:31:56 PM] assist us with some of that work. The Cesar Chavez realignment of just the street itself is about 27 to 37 million. This would be a partnership between a joint bond between parks and transportation in the future. The animal services facility we're estimating would be anywhere from 18 to 24 million and of course that would be a partner as well as they raise money for their improvement. This talks a little bit about phasing, if we need to phase this plan where the cost of phase 1 could be about 35 million that would include the way improvements, the general park improvements and improves with the animal services facility and the ymca as well contributing towards that general parking lot that would be in front of their facility. So phase 1 would be about 35 million. Phase 2 is where we would look towards the transportation improvements. And the transportation improvements would be about 41 million and that would include the boardwalk that I mentioned earlier, which would be a partner as well for that. And general park improvements with enhancing the gateway into downtown, for instance, and water quality features that we would like to add. To phase 2 would be about $50 million in this plan. [2:33:58 PM] So really that concludes my presentation. >> Great. >> Thank you for your questions. >> Thank you. Are there any questions at this juncture? Great. All right. Who would like to lead off. Vice-chair Garza? >> Garza: So the funding, you said our partners are Austin transportation department. Can you elabor lab rate on that? I'm assuming this would take a bond. So it's not like they're moving up on -- on a cip list or something. That would be bond money. >> This is something that we could see in the future as a bond where it would be a transportation and parks joint initiative. >> Garza:. >> Garza: Cesar Chavez realignment, is the additional four for the bridge or this little spur thing you mentioned -- >> Yes. Some of the additional would be the boardwalk, for instance, yes, what we're calling the boardwalk. And general park improvements like enhancing the arch, for instance, or just some enhancements that you would enter the parkland and so that's what we were thinking of. Some beautification. >> And the park road -- I'm sorry if I missed this. Would that be -- would that be for like -- is there a way to make sure that would be park traffic only because this is a great idea and I know the intersection has been dangerous where the spur is suggested. Actually, I guess that would still be Cesar Chavez. It would still be Cesar Chavez traffic. But I'm just wondering if that would create-- if we're reducing Cesar Chavez to two lanes instead of four would that create a situation where cars are just cutting down through the park road or would that be restricted -- is there a way to restrict [2:35:59 PM] that? >> Yeah. I think that would be sort of like our gateway there to Lamar beach. We would have how you're entering the park now, you would have to make -- going from east to west you would have to make a left into the park and otherwise you would just stay on Cesar Chavez. So a that would be either a right turn lane or left turn lane going into the Lamar beach park. >> I guess nothing would prevent somebody that didn't want to wait because of reduced lanes from cutting through on that park road? Could traffic start going that way. >> It could, but the idea is that we would have pedestrian crossings, we would have parking on both sides. It definitely would be more of a -- woo, this is a park road. Unless I was going to Austin high, I think that would not an incentive to cut through. >> Garza: So transportation, they've worked with you on this plan and they think -- okay. >> Yeah, they've been working with us. One of the things that they've stated was that it really doesn't increase capacity, but it's neutral. One of the things they did see as a positive is the turning lanes to be our rentals and Sandra Morada would be an enhancement. If we go under the Lamar bridge to make another lane possible for those left turns or right turn lanes, they definitely see an advantage for moving the hike and bike trail away from Cesar Chavez. And then the other enhancement would be that we could have Pressler as an additional outlet or for downtown to mopac. >> Thanks. [2:38:02 PM] Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: Thank you for this. I know it's been a process with many ideas and many stakeholders. So thank you for coming to this point. I have a quick question and maybe a longer one. The -- two quick questions. On page -- on the page that talks about stakeholder outreach and you've noted the number of website visits and then the number of online survey takers and I apologize. I may have asked you this question a year or so ago when we first had the discussion, but I can't remember whether the online portal allows for people to take the survey more than once or are those -- in other words, are those unique, was that 1540 unique users were were those 1540 surveys submitted? >> Only one survey per computer, per ip address is what the survey tool would allow. >> Tovo: Okay. And I assume we haven't figured out a way -- you can take the survey. That's not necessarily unique users if people used multiple devices? >> That's true, yes. >> Tovo: Thank you. And on -- there's about -- I think it was in the context of the left turn opportunity at Sandra Morada and there was the term stacking used. Were you talking about cars? Okay. Stacking up as in accumulating and -- >> Cueing it to -- queuing it to make that left turn. >> Tovo: And actually it was on the next page where you're talking about the community benefits. It talks about a consensus having been built among the stakeholders and I wanted to verify that includes the Austin high community who were concerned about some of the changes because of the traffic implications on their students? >> Absolutely. And I really should emphasize that a little bit more. When we started this planning process it was very disjointed. We had Austin high represented as parents that were very, very [2:40:03 PM] concerned about the Pressler -- the alignment that we had before and so it was -- yes. We were able to reach consensus among all these groups that used the property or live or reside adjacent to the parkland. And we created a plan that accommodated and made compromises with the group so we were plus gaining the seven acres of parkland. >> Tovo: That is terrific. Having attended some of those meetings, I think that is a real success to have been able to find a consensus plan among all of those different groups. So thank you. >> Pool: Dr. Rivera? >> I was just going to say that I wanted to catch the councilmembers up on the action taken by the parks board because we did have this agenda on our meeting last night. We have the standing committee and we were unable to hear the item two weeks ago because they didn't have a quorum. One of the members is very, very ill and another one didn't make it. So there was no quorum. Therefore it came directly to the board without their input and the members of that committee were concerned that they didn't have a chance to review it because the standard method is that they review it and pass it along to the full board. So we did not have a large enough number of people saying let's pass it along to the council so that a decision that we reached was to have the land and facilities committee hear is on November the 16th at a special called meeting and then we will hear it again as a full board on December the 6th. I wanted to let you know, however, that the general consensus of the parks board is that we're immensely pleased that there is a consensus among all the parties, that's almost unheard of. So we're very happy with that and think it will [2:42:03 PM] be a really good project. And the major concern that the committee had is all the things about transportation. So they've requested that staff make sure that somebody from transportation is there to answer questions at that meeting. And that will be publicly posted so that public -- community can come and hear about it. >> Do you think at that meeting of the subcommittee that the Austin transportation department staff will be able to describe how these sorts of projects are normally handled? >> I would certainly hope so. >> Pool: Like if there are lane closures required that it's sort of a Normal process and there are ways that we mitigate for that? >> Yes. I would certainly hope that we would be able to get that kind of information because I believe that's what the concerns are. >> All right. >> Pool: Mr. Moriarty? >> Am I on? Is the acreage that's currently irrigated, is it irrigated with reclaimed water or is that something you would consider in the future to adapting to reclaimed water and save -- and save our precious drinking water for potable purposes? >> Absolutely. That would be one of our goals would be for reclaimed water? >> Does this increase the number of baseball fields on the site at all? Same number? >> Same number. >> Thank you. >> Pool: I had a couple of questions and then we'll call up -- I have about five or six people here who want to speak. Let me run through my questions. King the -- councilmember Garza was talking about the park road. Would minimizing the speed limit, the speeds on that park road, is that part of the plan? And what would those speeds are? >> That would be our [2:44:03 PM] vision is that speed would be like 25 miles per hour type of speed limit there, particularly with the pedestrians and bicycles and the parking, onstreet parking. >> Is that the Normal speed limit in parks 20 to 25 miles per hour? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Pool: I think that would be really important and probably to serve to discourage people from using it as a cut through because we certainly don't want it to become a cut-through. What is the widening of the widening of Lamar bridge going to have a the Lamar bridge, if any? Are there any supports right there at the water's edge? >> I think at this phase it's a little too early to know exactly what we would get into, but the transportation department feels pretty good that the feasibility of this is real, that we could actually get through the bridge like this, but they are going to have to lower it because of some of that, the structural issues with the bridge. >> Pool: Would that be able to avoid any of the support pillars? >> It's a little too early to say for sure, but yeah. >> That would be an interesting point to see what they come up with. At Sandra Morada, the added lane, would that also require parkland dedication to turn parkland, if it is parkland,, is that easement or would it have to be acquired specifically? >> At Santa Morada? >> Pool: If we have to widen Cesar Chavez right around does that go into existing parkland or do we need a chapter 26 on it? >> You I believe we would need a chapter 26. >> Pool: You talked about two left turns or one right turn and that's again Santa Morada. I thought that the transportation [2:46:03 PM] department recently removed when you're driving east coming off of mopac, going east on Cesar Chavez you can no longer -- there's no longer a protected left turn or a left turn at all to get up on to Sandra Morada? That was removed recently. >> Recall they said they did that as a stopgap, but people are still turning and it's an ineffective solution is kind of the gist of what they were saying. So this would solve a lot of the problems for them by giving a dedicated left turn lane so people can turn left there. >> Right now there isn't one and people just back up. That's interesting. I wanted is to see how that was going to fit in with fact that I know they had removed that turn there. And then the boardwalk height that you have on here would that -- how would you manage flood when we have lake releases and the river levels rise? How would that affect the boardwalk? >> I would think very similar to how it's impacting the boardwalk today. The longer boardwalk that we have further east. So it would be very similar to that. To that design and construction. >> Pool: Okay. And then there would be a light at Cesar Chavez and Stephen F Austin drive. I know there's two in the drawing here, but I don't see why on that western point -- >> Stephen F Austin doesn't connect to Cesar Chavez in this future plan. It actually connects to parking underneath Cesar Chavez. >> Pool: I see, so there's a gray line on that. Okay. >> So the first light would be at Pressler, but that's about half a mile closer than the first light now. So there would be a light there and on br Reynolds. >> And then on the next page, the one after the drawing, you have animal services facility, [2:48:04 PM] 18 million to 24 and a half million, and then potential private dollar contribution, 24 and a half million. Are those additive to get almost 50 million for the animal services facility or is Apa or the animal services folks, are they planning to raise the entirety? >> Actually, the animal services would be the 24 million is what we're -- and that -- we are envisioning that that would be -- >> Fully funded by the non-profit. >> Pool: By private fund-raising. That was my understanding as well. Did my questions give rise to any he other? Let's hear from the public who has come. Let's see if folks are here. Rusty tally, David king, Melissa morrow, Amy tailor, Robert corbyn and Monica ekcford. Who doesn't look like she wants to speak. Are these of knees folks here? >> Thank you. Is the vice-chair here. Sorry about that. I don't have all the titles down yet. And mayor pro tem and other guests here today and other members of the committee. My name is David king and I think it's important that we have this project coming guard. We do need to have a plan for this area of our city and we know with folks moving into the urban core we need parkland and we need amenities in those parks. And I think we need to look back and reflect and see what's happening. We've had roughly 87-million-dollar investment in this area, this parkland, which I'm not criticizing it at all. It makes sense to me what's being proposed. But then we see that we [2:50:05 PM] have other parks in the urban core that have lots of amenities, you know, zilker park, auditorium shores. We have Waterloo park. Palm park along waller creek, millions more investment there. And again I'm not critical of these investments. What I am saying is there are a lot of investments and amenities in these parks and the area of this haven't here. And -- vicinity here. And we're look at increases in density and where low income families can't afford to live here. So I worry that Austin may become what's called an imperial city where only the high income, affluent families can live in these areas and then they have all these amenities. I'm not saying they don't deserve amenities, but when you look at the broad picture -- I'm not saying this is intentional, but we need to keep an eye on that to make sure we're not inadvertently kind of creating something that we don't really want to have happen to our city. We don't want to create this inequity. So that's my main point is just to keep an eye on that. And I know the parks department doesn't have enough funding for all the needs in the constituent and I'm not critical whatsoever about what they're doing here or this proposal. I'm just saying that we need to keep an eye on that and look at the multimillion dollars of amenities and parkland here and yet we have so many other parks in other parts of our city that have no amenities and have not had these amenities for decades and they don't have enough parkland. I just was at the imagine Austin speaker series this morning and the speaker was talking about how low income neighborhoods subsidize amenities in high affluent neighborhoods and I hadn't thought about it that way, but his point was right on and I think we're seeing that happen here in Austin. So what I'm asking is that we keep an eye on that and we bring some [2:52:05 PM] equity to that to say we're going to take this money and invest in other parks and other parts of our city and other amenities there and other parts of our city. And I understand there's a funding -- [buzzer sounds] -- Issue here. My last thing before I leave is is it possible to have a strike fund. I know the mayor has a strike fund for affordable housing. Can we have a strike fund for parks that the city can decide where that money goes? Not a conservancy, but the city. The city can say no, we want it that money over in other parts of our city in east Austin and other parts south Austin and southeast Austin and other parts of Austin. Thank you for the time. >> Pool: Thank you, Mr. King. I would point out that there are a number of partnership opportunities in order to raise additional funds and some of the changes that are happening here are being messed because of the changes to mopac and some of these things are beyond our control, some of these things we are -- I think that the work that the staff and our partners in the private sector are working on, additional funding, is not entirely on the city, but I would ask maybe when Ms. Morrow comes up to talk about the west Austin youth association she can talk to you about where the kids come from around the city for -- to play on the ball fields and our parks folks could maybe talk to us about where people from around the city come to make use of these facilities and then it would be an improved opportunity for everyone. So I would offer that up for your consideration as well. >> Thank you. I appreciate those comments. Thank you. >> Pool: Thank you. Yes, mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I would just add that Austin high school, while it certainly draws from a particular attendance zone, does have several signature programs within it that may draw from beyond those boundaries as well. I'm not sure of that, but that would be another piece of information that would be interesting to know, the global studies program and some others may draw from students outside of that [2:54:06 PM] attendance zone. >> Pool: And principal tailor is here so she may want to speak to that when she's up here. >> Thank you for the service that you do for the city. My name is Melissa morrow. I'm the executive director of the west Austin youth association. As you mentioned, way serves kids from over 50 areas from around the city so we become a place for kids all over the city to receive services. Sports have been played at Lamar beach for over 50 years. The optimist club came before us and we've been there for 35 years. We've been a partner with the city to provide youth services in the way of recreational services and we sort of became involved -- actually, it was in this very room almost three years ago when there was a chapter 26 hearing. Pressler road wanted to come through some fields and we had just signed an agreement with the city of Austin to -- we signed an agreement for 25 years to improve those fields. We had an agreement from the city and to be able to go out and get the private dollars to be a private-public partnership. Two months after signing that agreement we discovered from transportation at a transportation stakeholder meeting that there was a road that was going through the plans that we had made and we were very concerned that this road, while transportation had some very good reasons for putting it through there, it wasn't really done with the master plan. This area has come together not as a thoughtful way that you would design a park. It's never had a master plan. And so we and Apa and aid and Austin high and the ymca all came together and definitely at the beginning we were all fighting for our piece of it. And I have to say that [2:56:08 PM] the 79 workshop and the group has done an amazing job of listening to all the stakeholders and bringing us all together. If you had told me two years ago that there was a way to increase parking, meet all of the needs of all the stakeholders, I would have told you there's no way it can happen. And to add seven acres of parkland? And the parking for our use in particular is critical. As much as I would love for people to bike and walk and take mass transit down to the park, again we have kids from 50 different zip codes. We have moms with strollers, we have babies coming to their you can't have all those people do that on a bus and we really don't have the services there yet to make that happen. So the parking is just as much an important, although not green and I understand that's not always the fun part, but it really does make the park accessible to all of the people. The last thing that I will just add to it is that this is an incredibly thoughtful and intentional approach. And we realize we're looking at the long game. [Buzzer sounds] We're not looking at this isn't going to happen in three years. This is going to be something that we all build towards in the next 10 to 25 years. And way as one of our partners is committed to being there through that. Thank you so much for your service. >> Pool: Thank you so much. Hi, principal Taylor, come on up. >> Thanks for being here. >> Sure. Thank you for having us today and thank you for your service to the city. I'd like to start by saying thank you to design workshop and to Charles of the city for putting together a wonderful master plan. When I became the principal just over a year ago of Austin high the community came to me and said Pressler road cannot go in for safety reasons. I said explain that to me. Help me understand. And I was asked to be on [2:58:09 PM] the technical advisory committee to plan the Lamar beach master plan. And having that voice on behalf of our community was a pleasure to be a part of the process. I immediately said let's partner with the city, the parks and the other entities that we share that parkland with so that we can come up with a plan that's comprehensive of everyone's needs. And I'm proud to support both phase 1 and phase 2 of the proposal today. On behalf of Austin high I want to point out a couple of key factors. Most comprehensive high schools such as Austin high, which I will say is one of the oldest high schools west of the Mississippi, so it is a very important high school in the state of Texas and the city of Austin. Most comprehensive high schools have over 100 acres of land to support their comprehensive programming, such as a big marching band, competitive sports, and to have outdoor experiences, learning experiences for our students. We serve Austin high students, over 2,000 students, on 30 acres of land. So without the city's partnership for the tennis courts, the baseball fields, waya partners with us so that we can have additional playing fields. Lamar beach partnering with Austin high is a valuable, valuable relationship. We support the master plan being recommended today as again we fully support Cesar Chavez being elevated so the traffic is slowed down and we are concerned with the extension of mopac beside Austin high, that be feeder on to Cesar Chavez will increase traffic so having an elevated -- having the stoplights, we can say we would support Pressler going in and a year ago that was not the case. If phase 1 is approved, Austin high would like to see phase 2. Under phase 1, it doesn't really benefit Austin high. Our staff, our students and [3:00:10 PM] our parents have to feel confident that they can get to school safely and that our students walking, biking and driving vehicles themselves need to be able to do that in a safe way and currently it's not safe. That's all I have to say and thank you for your time. >> Pool: Does anyone have any questions? I just wanted to thank you for the meeting that you and I had, I guess it was about a year ago, and that was at a time when there were four, I think, options to look at and we talked a lot about the extension of Pressler and how to make it really safe for the new young drivers that are going to school at Austin high. And so I feel pretty comfortable and very supportive -- >> Very confident. >> Pool: That's really great news. I wanted to lend my choice to my colleagues and the community stakeholders for finding a way to come together and it looks like the plan has really benefited from all of the hands that were involved in it. >> Yes, ma'am, thank you. >> Pool: Thanks. Let's see. Robert Corbin, I think you are up again. >> I want to ask whoever the master mind in bringing all these groups together, we have a pud we would love you to work on. [Laughter] >> Pool: Mr. Corbin, thanks for coming to talk to us again. >> All right, well, as you might expect, I oppose allowing the animal shelter or affiliated nonprofits to remain on Lamar beach past 2020. My reasons, land now worth 10 to $20 million should not be used to shelter dogs, and $20 million more should not be used to construct a dog shelter there even if it's not public money. Think, if the land were sold to a condo developer, the city would get 10 to $20 million plus 2 to $3 million a year in [3:02:12 PM] property tax revenue. A lot of money that could help many parks around our city. Shelter located on Lamar beach is a nuisance. Dogs bark incessantly. The old shelter is smelly. And when weather conditions are right, the dogs can be heard yapping a mile away. About 60 to 90 days a year I can hear them yapping from my bed in the early morning. Shelter would be more dogs adopted out in central Austin which means more degradation of life quality in central Austin. More dogs on trails and parks. More loose dogs. More arrogant dog owners. More dog poop. More pollution of our waters. The shelter itself could also become dangerous, as according to Texas A&M, 10% of all shelter dogs are infected with the cheered Chavez disease. While transmission to humans is rare, that could change because many times bugs figure out new ways to make the leap from an animal to a human, and south of the border it is a very feared disease. So please get the shelter out of central Austin. Do not site a dog shelter on city land worth 10 to $20 million. The other Lamar beach project I somewhat object to is a way to control the ballfields. Which contrary to previous speaker, I believe to be more of a grab of precious city lands by the rich for the rich. Lamar beach is minutes away from west Austin, but an hour away during after- school hours for most Austin school kids. I don't believe you are going to find a lot of nonwest Austin kids using the way facilities. So I think it would be better as perhaps just open space. I maybe even rather see an [3:04:12 PM] off-leash dog park over in part of those lands than to just turn it into ballfields that mostly rich Austin kids are going to be using. Thank you. >> Pool: Thank you. And then I have Monica Beckford but it looks like she did not want to speak. And she is registered as neutral on this item. All right. Was there anything else you wanted to say or to offer? Was there anything else we needed to know? >> Yes, councilmember, I just wanted to mention, you had talked a little about lane closures and that type of thing. I just wanted to make a comment that part of the beauty of this plan is that we could keep Cesar Chavez open while construction could happen and not necessarily close -- have any lane closures, per se, for long periods of time just because they are two different locations. >> Pool: That's really good and that would be helpful and maybe when the subcommittee meets of the parks board that they will have that too from transportation folks and you may be there as well and can weigh in. I did want to check on your time line because I think in the time line on one of the first pages you've got November 10 as the request for council adoption. I guess that will be pushed back a wee bit. >> That's true. That's just because of the action of the [lapse in audio] In December and hopefully we can be at your December meeting. >> Pool: That's great. I think the council -- okay. The council December meeting. Okay. >> Or shortly after. >> Pool: Yes. >> Garza: I just wanted to comment. I appreciate the equity comment made by previous speakers and that's definitely something that is -- it is what I asked where is the funding coming from. There are other master plans that have -- are just still master plans right now and [3:06:13 PM] still haven't been funded. The mac is one of those. We're still trying to figure out how to fund that. I want anybody watching and the community to know that this is not -- I think this is great, but this does not mean that this one is going to get funded. It's going to go through the same process that every other master plan has gone through as well as a process when a council decides what to put on a bond and what will be funded, it's important for all these people who made the equity arguments are great points to also come and make those points when we decide on a bond package. >> Pool: All right. Is there anything else on this item? >> [Inaudible] >> Pool: No, no, that's okay. Let me refresh this. I don't see you on -- there you are. Now you are there. You have three minutes if I would like to come up and speak. Thank you, Kelly. Thanks for telling me that to refresh. >> I'm Joan martin and I'm here for Austin pets alive. We are thrilled with the Lamar beach plan. We thank you so much for involving us with the design, the staff, the community, the kennels we have or the city's kennels, they were built I think in 1938. They are difficult for the dogs. I was going to say how excited I was to be walking dogs and not have banged my head until yesterday when I banged my head. And the new facility is so much better for the animals that we have. It's slightly bigger, slightly longer. It will be funded, we are excited to start the capital improvement plan to get the money there. Although we're not in the flood plain, we have very old pipes that do flood, twice this year in June the shelter flooded. [3:08:13 PM] We had volunteers who stayed, volunteers who took the dogs home. We have about 160 dogs there at any given time not count wag the city has and we were able to get about 70 into private homes, but it was still a matter of moving dogs. It's difficult for them and so we're excited about the new facility. Austin pets alive is so important for the community. People who live in these high density areas who due to breed restrictions or size restrictions, they can come to Austin pets alive, do some training, take the dogs out on the trail. It's a wonderful involvement with the community. I retired from the city of Austin employees retirement system and I thought this will be my little volunteer thing and I could lose some weight. And I've really gotten so involved in Austin pets alive in everything that they do and the dedication. Dr. Jefferson is not able to come today. She is sorry for it, but we're very excited. We're grateful to the ymca for the little space that we'll have in their area and for keeping Austin pets alive in the program. We're excited to be the largest no kill city in the country. We're having a conference next week where people are coming in from all over the country to learn what we do and the programs we have. Having a medical facility is so unusual. Having the parvo clinics and the cats, we can't forget the cats, we do so many cats. We're excited we've helped make Austin 98% no kill. It's great and thank you for your support and we're glad to be part of the program. >> Pool: Thank you, Ms. Norton, for being here, and I'm glad you told me you were here. I was wondering if Apa was able to come and -- >> Sorry, I didn't know the system here for signing up. It was a little different than the other two meetings I attended. >> Pool: I had met and talked with Dr. Jefferson about this plan also last fall and so at that time it -- again, just like with Austin [3:10:14 PM] high school, we weren't real sure if all the pieces were going to be able to be placed in a way that would help everyone. And I just got to hand it to you guys, this is really great. And even if it may take a while for this master plan to be realized, the fact that you've done the work and it has good support from all of the affected entities is really important because it just doesn't happen very often. At least not as quickly as you all have done it. And I just wanted to give you a tip of my hat for the level of commitment and the hard work that is clear went into this to gain the level of support from everybody. Anyone else? Okay. All right. Am I missing anybody else who wants to speak? Let me refresh this one more time. Looks like we're good. And our last item here, briefing with discussion on green infrastructure and sustainable water management policy issues in the natural and built environment code prescription and the code advisory working group report in response to the prescription identified as impacting the land development code including but not limited to watersheds and creeks, green streets, parks, public open space and urban trails, compatibility and green transitions and storm water quantity and quality. Welcome. Got staff coming up to the table. Who all is here on -- I think we have members of code advisory group as well. Would you all like to come join at the table? >> I'm here from planning and zoning and we have code advisory group members here and then a few other folks from additional departments who participated in the prescription. We have staff from watershed here, from dsd and from parks and rec specially to answer the more technical questions. >> Pool: Tell me who all from staff. >> Aaron wood, sue Barnett, [3:12:15 PM] Pamela, and then Marilyn is in the back. In the back corner. >> Pool: Great. Did we wish somebody else? Kelly -- Paul is here here too. Introduce yourself. >> Jennifer T.O.D. I work for the planning and zoning on codenext. I was our staff lead for this code prescription. >> Pool: And Ellie and Lauren from the code advisory committee too. The floor is yours. >> Great. Thank you so much. I'll just quickly give everybody an overview of what I plan on covering in this presentation. Feel free, of course, to stop and ask any questions. I'll do my best to answer or toss to another member of staff. I would like to give a quick understanding why staff are doing the code prescriptions. That's been a popular question, why release these things. Give an overview of how the code prescriptions fit with code development which is the primary goal of codenext as well as understanding the time line and giving an overview of the actual prescription topics in the document. I'd like to start by taking a quick step back to kind of give an overview how codenext came about. It came from imagine Austin, that was a comprehensive plan unanimously adopted in 2012. There were eight priority programs to help better achieve the goals and visions in the plan. It's a large document and needs focused effort to be brought to life. The eighth was codenext which was rewrite the land development coat. We this as an integration of the other priority programs. We take -- it won't be the imagine bullet that solves all of our issues, but we see it as a critical way to help these other priority programs achieve their goals. I'd like to also talk about some of the prior work that's fed into the development of the prescriptions and the land development code. Codenext has been a multi year process built on a lot of community engagement and outreach. Some of that is reflected in [3:14:16 PM] our listening to community report as well as community character manual which I'm sure several people in this room participated in. And then more recently we have the land development code diagnosis. This document hits a lot of the major issues in our current land development code, and the top ten list in the diagnosis is part of what we pulled prescription topics from. Examples including the diagnosis mentions we have an auto centric code. That hints at that, talks about lack of household affordability and choice. Difficult regulations with overlapping Zones and that kind of thing. Then we also have the sound check workshop report. That was a week-long workshop to look at code standards in places in Austin and see how they might be applied and what that could look like. We've done extensive on outlook through the prescription process. One of our main tools is the code advisory group. It's a 18 member group appointed by council. They've had over 40 meetings thus far including the specialized working groups in the spring of 2015. During the last 12 months staff has papped in many efforts, 45 road show meetings, any group in the community can request us to come talk to them and so we'll do a tailored presentation or discussion on whatever topic is most needed. Had nine community walks, coffee with codenext, speak up Austin discussion forums we specifically used with the prescriptions. These were a way for people to engage in the dialogue on the content of the prescription. With these we did to amas, basically a two-hour chunk of time where staff is available to answer any question from the public and then the sound check. The big question why do a code prescription. The main goal was to help frame a discussion of a lot of the complex topics and tradeoffs that we saw coming before the code draft debuts which would be in January of 2017. We really wanted to cue up some of the big topics in the [3:16:17 PM] community to have conversations about the nuances involved. The prescription topics, there were four. They were derived from the code diagnosissal was frequently cited questions and concerns from the public. We wanted to be responsive to the needs that we heard coming from the community. As well as to start prioritizing tradeoffs. We wanted to make sure our code is aligned with community values including looking at are we achieving imagine Austin goals, are the proposed prescriptions too strong, too weak, look at how priorities changed based on content. We had support from several groups including the mayor's office. Just like a general framing what's an example of how we examine competing public values is with parking. Parking is something that everybody loves to be convenient and easy. It means you can get to where you are going without a the look of trouble and certainty knowing you can reach your destination. Businesses, of course, like to have parking nearby. It allows customers and employees easy and reliable access. Too much impervious cover can lead to flooding. You see an example of shoal creek far outside its banks. Of course all of these things have monetary implications. There's a certain cost to I would abouting parking. That cost is shared by people who live in a residential dwelling. It's, you know, shared by people who shop at a business, and there's a cost also to having either too much impervious cover, which an example of which is parking, or in mitigating some of the effects of flooding. To give you an example or I guess an overview of the prescription schedule and frameworks, we've had four of them. This prescription came out in March. Since then we've also focused on household affordability, mobility and fiscal health. These are all leading up to the draft code release in January. Each prescription has a parallel structure. It starts with looking at where are we now with regard to a current topic and where do we want to be. Those goals are derived from [3:18:17 PM] imagine Austin as well as from established policy. And then what is the prescription. If there is a gap between where we are now and as a community say we want to be, the prescriptions give solutions to how we can potentially bridge those gaps. We did a lot of work with each of these prescriptions to try and reach out to the community in a variety of ways. Typically these would launch at a code advisory group meeting. At that time staff would give a quick overview of what's in the prescription. This is followed up by a more detailed presentation and discussion at an advisory group meeting. We had the credit ama, a public comment meeting where anybody can discuss a prescription with staff. A community walk to help illustrate elements of the prescription on the ground showing both need and solution. Another advisory group meeting. We had a council work session and then a planning commission briefing. And ongoing through all of this we had our outreach through speak up Austin as well as road shows. Another good question would be looking at who is writing these prescriptions. The primary responsibility is with planning and zoning staff. We were the lead authors on etch. >> Of these. We were responsible for coordinating with other writers. This prescription involved staff from development services. Worked with the parks department and we worked with watershed to come up with the content and recommended prescriptions. We worked with other reviewers as well as our consultant team. Also responsible for coordinating out reach and communicate with the advisory group, the mayor's office, with the public, with other city departments and other organizations. And then we are also responsible for reviewing feedback that we receive through this process and evaluating it for influence on the code. Our advisory group has a very important role in these prescriptions also. A small sub set of the entire cag was involved in reviewing prescriptions as develop offering staff feedback and they offered individual feedback as well as things [3:20:19 PM] they heard from outreach in the community, community stakeholder events and that kind of thing. These prescriptions contained professional recommendations. Thates are staff's perfect I have on potential solutions to problems. On this particular prescription has over 40 individual items addressing the topics that you see below. Some of which are -- I think are of particular interest to to this committee. We have general across the board recommendations. The primary one is to make sure the land development code results in an Austin that's in line with our character and with imagine Austin's vision and goals. We also want to capitalize on other ongoing initiatives so this is not a stained loan effort. Things we're looking at would be watershed protection ordinance, the green infrastructure working group, and the housing transit jobs action team. Whenever possible we would like to incorporate new technologies and best practices, clarify code definitions that are currently murky and create new ones where necessary, and improving administrative procedures that we get a clear, consist I want and timely process for everyone. The first topic here is water and watersheds. The main theme of these prescriptions is we want to retain our current protections and strengthen them going forward. As you know, our waterways are a cornerstone of our community. You look at places like lady bird lake, Barton creek, waller cream and creek -- we would like to retain these protections, also spooming to issues that come up. Examples would be increased risk of flooding, issues of water scarcity in the future and incorporating new tools to meet these challenges. So again we would like to recommend maintaining the watershed protection ordinance improvements. We would like to carry those forward. Another prescription includes having new and redevelopment mitigate for that site share of downstream flooding, watching the rate of discharge and undeveloped conditions. Also looking at having new and [3:22:22 PM] redevelopment sites retained and beneficially use storm water on site as much as possible. When possible for green infrastructure. And then incorporate green streets through Austin that are calibrated for context. So for example a green street downtown or along a corridor would not look the same as a green street in on more residential area. With regard to landscape and trees, we want to leverage current tools and successes while realizing there are new realities. You look at these realities as things like the urban heat island effect, climate change, water scarcity, a context sensitive approach and new methods and technologies. Some examples would be integrating landscape elements throughout a site. Rather than relying solely on a street yard you would look at other ways of incorporating green on to a site. It doesn't have all be between the I would abouting facade and the property line and street. We like to use the pallet of green options so integrating green elements in a variety of ways. This also includes under landscape and trees setting impervious cover limits as a maximum and not a guarantee of buildable land. If the impervious cover limit is 45% but you -- you may not always be able to achieve that based on other factors. Allowing a double counting of landscape and watershed protection requirements. This helps to maximize whenever possible glean elements on a site. And having multiple functions for a single thing. And then using a site by site approach to tree preservation rather than a quantitative one size fits all approach. The next topic in this prescription is compatibility and transitions. You'll see here an example of not so great compatibility. There is multi-family building on your left, large ac unit next to a parking garage. We would like the new code to not allow this kind of development to occur right next to each other. I'm sure a lot of these don't appreciate being so close. [3:24:23 PM] We have a pro-pronged approach. One is the form based zoning districts. We would like to have compatibility integrated into the base district. You can do this in a variety of ways, by regulating for building height and placement as well asthmas of the building and parking placement to make sure that it is compatible with the surrounding uses. The image here shows a transsect of building how they might relate on a very condensed scale. Not quite to reality. Allowing for a variety of housing types. What you see is an image from the airport boulevard plan and you can see towards the corridor in the back of the illustration, you know, a taller building is probably commercial. Behind that is a transition to a missing middle housing style and then behind that is single-family housing. And then in use space districts we foresee something similar to current compatibility standards. Next issue will be mobility. I'd like to caveat this section by saying the third code prescription focuses exclusively on mobility so there is a lot of nuance and detail that's not mentioned here. This is more of the broad brush overview. One of the big strategies related to the environment here is mitigate the negative impacts of our mobility infrastructure. Examples of this are like on your left you've got a parking lot without any trees. It's a pretty brutal experience for everybody, as well as drive walks. That's a situation where a lot of street, you have so many curb cuts the driveways look like the sidewalk and road and it's very unsafe for everyone. While mitigating for these things, there's also the reality of needing to maintain convenient access to necessities. On the left you see an example of a multimodal street. There's a bicyclist, pedestrians and cars and, of course, not every street would look like this, but it's an example how you can [3:26:24 PM] incorporate these different modes with street trees and other things to make for a better street. On your right you can see a parking lot that has trees and sidewalks and that's a better experience from a people perspective than the larger lot without any of those amenities. We would also look at reducing parking requirements in particular areas and those would be areas targeted for compact development especially transit. In an area transit is accessible, the idea fewer people are relying on cars in that area. There's also, of course, designing for context. On the left you see a photo of a south Austin corridor. There's a lot of street, a lot of cars, not a lot of people. With the idea with a few changes you could make an environment that is nor amenable for people. You gut in -- that green strip on the bottom, potential for street trees, wider sidewalk, as well as you see an interactive experience for someone walking down the street being able to look into store windows and feel safe from the cars going by. Connectivity is also really important. When we look at mobility. Whenever possible through codenext we want to promote street, sidewalk, bike trail connectist. All all things will be possible in all places. As well as using greenways when you have that opportunity to build new transportation systems. What you can see on the bottom is an example of a house near a school. Same distance, but two very different paths depending on the available street network. So connectivity matters for getting people places conveniently, quickly and safely. If, with regard to redevelopment, imagine Austin calls for promoting a compact and connected city. That prioritizes infill and development over the green field development you see in other areas. With focus on new development in corridors and centers. This is, of course, tempered by the reality that undeveloped land is scarce in corridors and centers. [3:28:24 PM] There's not a ton of it available. So we would like to create a regulatory environment. It supports redevelopment, but realizing we need to balance with other needs such as water quality, storm water protection, mobility and parking and the neighborhood character and compatibility, all of which I alluded to earlier. The primary goal of redevelopment is to encourage infill over sprawl. Ways to achieve this include reducing parking requirements in areas that are walkable and urban areas that are served with transit. With form based codes addressing compatibility through standards of base zoning. If a development goes in near one of these things, we would like it to connect to existing infrastructure. Another strategy would be allowing walkable block sizes instead of very long super blocks that aren't very friendly for pedestrians and for people on bikes. And then allowing for diverse and compact lot sizes throughout the city and integrating components of existing programs such as subchapter E into base zoning so it's a little bit clear what you can and cannot do. Green field development is, of course, going to continue going forward in the future and through codenext we would like to make sure this new development meets current standards and values as a city and contributes to sustainable growth and while being of the city. That including incorporating mobility choice, sustainability, connectivity and housing choice. We have a few suggestion for how to achieve that. One would be refinements in the subdivision code. In codenext the subdivision code will likely just taken the process and standards that you need to have a legally platted lot. What are the physical standards would be in the zoning code. We're looking at things like requiring road, alley, walkway and trail connections where available. Looking at potentially having smaller lot sizes in certain contexts, and using new tools to encourage creative design. An example may be a conservation subdivision where you would cluster your subdivision development in a particular area to preserve green space or environmentally [3:30:25 PM] sensitive features. And then also promoting green spaces that are both connected, desirable and multi functional. Which brings me to parks and open space. As alluded to, as Austin grows, it becomes more important people have access to quality park space near where they live and work. There are a couple ways we can, you know, help achieve this through the land development code. One we propose is increasing the range of parking open space types and then calibrating those types to particular contexts. For example, creating different park types such as pocket parks, neighborhood parks and greenways and active and passive parks. As well as enacting changes that are from the parkland dedication ordinance, recent code amendments. That would include updating fees to account for actual costs, increasing the amount of land to be dedicated and allowing for credits for private space that's dedicated for public use. We also propose looking at incentivizing and developing metrics for green infrastructure that meets open public open space needs. So again, the open to the public part being pretty important there. And then requiring connections between new and infill projects to adjacent or nearby parkland. So if you have a park amenity nearby, we would like people be to able to reach it whenever possible. Given all the outreach events that go on around a prescription, an important question is the [inaudible]. How are you getting it. As a quick reminder, we have all these big issues as a community. How does the cold solve it, can the code solve it, where does the solution look best, is something missing, and then prioritizing tradeoffs. What we've done is gone [3:32:27 PM] through for this particular prescription, I think we have over 200 pages of public comment that were taken at our public comment meeting with the code advisory group through speak up Austin, through our Reddit ask me anything and public comment meetings. So we looked at all of these distilled for staff and opticos review for refining the code. And that is all I have today. >> Pool: Does anyone have questions for staff? >> Thank you. My question is a couple of places you talked about base zoning standards. And I'm not clear on how that comes into play. >> Okay, so the base zoning would be -- so for example a house may be zoned single-family, sf-3 and there are certain requirements associated with that zoning. In our current plan you might have single-family or another base zoning plus additional Zones or requirements on top of it. And those all basically tell you what you are allowed to do on your site. So like what uses are you allowed to put there, where is your setback, how far back from the road do you have to be. If you are a bigger development are you required to dedicate parkland. What we would like to do is integrate as many of those factors as we possibly can into your base zoning so it's easier for a property owner, a neighbor, a staff to look up a piece of property and understand what's allowable rather than accessing multiple documents. >> That makes it clear. Thank you very much. II did have one other question. If there was an organization that would like to have someone from your department or advisory group talk to them and explain what has happened so far, how would one go about finding out can that be done? >> There are two ways. One is on our website. We have a link that asks, you can connect to a codenext road show. [3:34:27 PM] Austin texas.gov slash codenext. Also you can send staff an email. Then they will work with you or another group to schedule a time. >> Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Pool: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I don't have the exact language in front of me, but in your presentation you talked about double counting. Can you help me understand that? Would that have the impact of reducing the requirements in half because we're double counting particular features as both storm water -- a storm water benefit as well as open space benefit? >> I'll give a quick answer and if sue wanted to chime in. One way of looking at it is especially on a very constrained site with a small geography, you may not be able to meet separate requirements, for example, like perhaps flood mitigation and landscape requirements. The idea would be if you could combine the two it might make it more achievable as well as redevelopment in a certain area. I don't know that it would necessarily mean reducing by half, you know, the amount of space on an area. >> Tovo: Well, it -- I guess I'll have to look at that section in the prescription paper because it would seem to me the site development standards are instructed in such a way -- structured in such a way to require mitigation. If we start double counting features, something needs in terms of the development structure needs to be scaled back. If you can't meet the requirements as currently specified. >> One example that we see currently are on some of our major corridors. We have a really small commercial site and you see a lot of remodels happening rather than redevelopments. And that is for a variety of factors. But one of them we've seen is you needing to mitigate for storm water sometimes is a limiting factor and just the [3:36:29 PM] ability to put a building, plus parking on a site. The idea is if you could potentially combine uses that are achieving the same goal into one space, that that might allow for more feasible redevelopment in certain contexts. >> Tovo: I appreciate that. I guess I would like to see some examples because I've been thinking about demolitions all week. Stems I would say sometimes there's a huge environmental benefit rather than dephog accomplishing and reconstructing. If some of our policies are encouraging the renovation of existing buildings that may be good rather than incentivizing the demolition and reconstruction of different structures. >> Agreed. >> I do have something to add to that. I'm sue Barnett, manager of developmental review and my team are who drafted the landscape ordinance revisions for codenext. We've built on what we currently have and we're trying to make it more clear that -- and to reinforce some of our current regulations such as tree preservation. We are trying to build in a way for -- to even sent I haveize a developer to design around trees rather than mitigate for trees. We're trying to get just a little extra double dipping to give you extra credit for your required landscape area for incorporating existing trees. That's one aspect. A second aspect is regarding green infrastructure and particularly storm water management to encourage use of required landscape area to also serve as any sort of storm water infiltration area. So we currently have teeny bits that incentivize that, [3:38:29 PM] but we're trying to encourage much more of it. Those are a couple ways we're trying to incentivize and double dip. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> But going back to just the redevelopment, something that we actually have not ironed out with opticos and the planning and zoning department is what would apply in redevelopment. The picture Jen showed earlier of the parking lot that has no trees whatsoever, in the late '80s we had a tree ordinance that said you have to provide shaded parking places in your surface parking lots. That's been working really well for all of our sites except for redevelopment sites which don't have to have that. So if there's any way you can help us build that into the next code, I think it would be really great. >> Tovo: Thanks for that additional context. >> Erin wants to say. >> Erin wood with watershed protection. I just wanted to emphasize we strong strongly support I want %-@greating because of the benefits to water conservation, you are putting the storm water to good use and helping irrigate that naturally every time it rains. That's something we encourage now under the code. To a limited extent to let people do you believe count that. But we definitely would like to see more of that moving forward so we see even more of that water conservation. >> Pool: I have a follow-on question to that. Do you not think that just people would naturally want to include them without having to be incentivized? >> In 2010 we adopted some revisions to the commercial landscape ordinance that ask people to direct storm water to have of their required landscape area. Or you could preserve some undisturbed natural areas on [3:40:30 PM] site. We've seen a lot more people favoring the undisturbed natural area option and not as many developments embracing that directing water to the landscaping. I would agree I think it's a natural thing to take advantage of with the new requirements for beneficial use of storm water with codenext, upping that and raising it beneficially we think there will be a much stronger incentive for people to look at that landscape and say hey, let's get as much water into that as we can. >> Pool: The integration piece, is that the berm and Swales and rain garden type approach? >> So rain gardens using rain water harvesting systems is part of your irrigation system. >> Pool: Right. Do you think there's more of -- the movement is toward adopting them? I mean are people moving that way newly because they understand that it benefits everyone in the long run and as Mr. Moriarti, if you need to irrigate something it would be better to do it with rain water than potable water. >> We've seen a proliferation of rain gardens as more people are getting comfortable with the technology, but I think there's a lot more work that could be done. We still have a lot of raised islands within parking lots that you see is pretty standard and usually a curb inlet right next to it so the storm water is by passing those vegetated islands and going to a storm water control on site. So we would really like to see those at grade or depressed so the water can get into the medians and help water vegetation. >> Pool: So we would have an opportunity to try to institutionalize some of those more forward ideas you are talking about. >> Yes. >> Pool: I think that would beerrific. Councilmember Garza, did you have anything? >> Garza: The last page, I'm [3:42:31 PM] just trying to -- 36, you said that there were these questions is the prescription too strong, too weak, too vague and you mentioned 200 comments. Are you in the process of going through those comments to understand -- to answer those questions or has this question been answered? >> We have been going through the process of distilling the process and looking for themes. We ready everything and grouped into comments around landscape or trees and water and using those to go back as we're evaluating code standards. There's a lot of push back on a particular item see do we still think wee making the right recommendation or does it need to be changed or tweaked and if there's a lot of support for something, it's like okay, good, like a lot of people also feel we're on point with this recommendation. We've gone through that that sharing with the code writers and the ap -- with the opticos team. Internally we have an idea but Austin's we're still finalizing the code we're not for sure which prescriptions would be implemented as is and which ones would be changed and to what extent. >> Garza: Okay. Thanks. >> The Austin water department is undertaking the Austin integrated water resources task force, which is a 100-year water master plan task force group that's currently working and expected to finish our work in about 18 months. We expect to have some recommendations from that work that would logically fit into the land development code rewrite. And I know there's been concern that our schedule may not match up where you all would get done and we're not ready, but the recommendations we're probably going to have [3:44:33 PM] are very significant. So to the extent hopefully we can make that happen some way. >> And I think one would be we're calling our core team and that's several different city departments who we meet with on a pretty regular basis to discuss code issues and we have representatives from Austin water so any information that comes up could be funneled to our team through that even if it's not quite final, but we would be happy to hear any spots that come up -- thoughts that come up along the way. >> Pool: Okay. All right. >> We do have a cag presentation. >> Pool: I know, and you are next. >> Just making sure. >> Pool: Are there any other questions of staff at this juncture? Let's turn it over to Elian Lauren. >> Thank you for having us and giving us the opportunity to go over our report. I'm Lauren ice. By daytime a staff attorney save our springs alliance. Eleanor Mckinney is also on the cag with me and she and guy doubley, appointed by councilmember Zimmerman, the three of us make up the working group. So we read with great into the first prescription paper that was released in March. We helped to facilitate the meetings, the regular cag meetings that we had and the public input cag meeting that was focused on what we have been calling it the nbe paper. And then we worked on a report to provide our comments, the comments that we were receiving from the community and bounce ideas off our fellow cag members to then provide back to the code writers, the staff and consultants so they make sure to receive all of those comments. We also wanted to as a part of [3:46:35 PM] this report identify the topics that we saw needed extra attention, maybe topics missing in the prescription paper. It was a, I think, very ambitious precipitation paper. As I mentioned in our joint meeting last week, the natural and built environment covers everything so to put all of that in one paper it's a pretty broad topic. We did identify some missing topics we wanted to make sure got attention. At the time, you know, we focused on lot on what the public participation process was going to look like and how people were going to read these prescription papers and then provide input in how the code writers would take that input and use it and have it make its way into the code. So this record also reflects on that. And then sort of to round it all out, we also included the individual comments that we received from our fellow cag members and at these meetings that we had and put those this this report. So this report is really meant to be read with the prescription paper to sort of round the whole topic out so it's all in one place. So it's very long but don't let that intimidate you. About half of it is our substantive report and the other half is the appendix. Ellie is here and she is going to fill in anything and she is the expert so she will be here for harder questions. In our executive summary, we tried to make sort of one recommendation that the whole cag could agree on and that was at the time, I think still holds true, that we need to develop a system to respond to these comments as the public [3:48:35 PM] is giving this feedback, they want to hear that that feedback is being considered. And so we're hoping as we move towards receiving drafts of code language that we can identify three to five major questions or areas of concern that the public can still drill down on and provide help to the code writing team to kind of give us an idea where they are at on some of these issues. We also included in our report an overall natural and built in vision, to look at the code through a green lens and provide an exemplary environmental vision in the rewrite. One thing that we heard in our comments were that the prescription did lack detail and it did lack ambition. I think this is sort of a challenge from the community that said bring it on, we want more information and we want to do something big with this, with the natural and built in environment prescription. That is something we communicated to the code writers. Then we sort of -- I'm just going to highlight what some of our current comments or current concerns are with regard to some of these sections. And I guess sort of the agreement was on the cag and we've heard, out of the water and watershed prescriptions, I think we identified with the most contentious prescription would be and that is the requirement to have redevelopment meet pre-development conditions as far as matching the rates of discharge. This is a pretty new -- this is a new, a big new change and I think some folks are concerned about the costs on redevelopment. This is I think also a [3:50:36 PM] contentious prescription because it was a clear prescription, it was a clear, bold prescription, so I personally feel like it's an example of a really good prescription and it's something staff had looked at and said the cost would be something like one to four percent of increase in redevelopment so they have that kind of data to back that up as a positive prescription. We also heard a lot of support on cag and the community for double counting for a lot of the reasons that Erin explained. And we also identified some information that we still need. One of those is regarding drainage capacities in certain watersheds. And we know that watershed protection is currently doing a wastewater capacity -- watershed capacity analysis and we want to make sure as others have mentioned that we still have this data that's outstanding, we want to make sure that makes it into the code and does inform the code. As far as trees go, we did talk a little about our support for content sensitive consideration for trees and we want to ensure that the biodiversity and the overall healthy -- the overall tree canopy is being considered. Under landscape and tree section, since I think the code -- the prescription paper came out, we have -- we now know that functional green will be included in the code and that's a menu based system for properties over 80% impervious cover. This is one of the more innovative things we can do with the code rewrite. We want to make sure we're standing by for the missing million dollars housing. - - Middle housing. In the parks and open space section, broad support for to context sensitive approach as long as everyone adds with [3:52:38 PM] that caveat that the flexibility we provide with context sensitivity ensures that we're getting the additional benefits that were promised. There has been also a discussion that privately owned but publicly accessible green space is not really, you know, it's not really one for one there. Privately owned property will always have limitations that publicly owned property will not so that should be something we're aware of as we work that into the new code. And as we change the code and provide for missing middle housing, we also need to continue to aggressively acquire parkland along those centers anchor doors because -- and corridors because we have places that are park inefficient and that needs to be an aggressive part of it. We want to maintain the 5% open space and provide sufficient on site open space in the transitioning middle zone. Compatibility is another issue that we have not, I think, discussed as much as we would like at the cag. There's general agreement that it's obviously very, very important and that there's going to have to be some serious changes or additions to accommodate for the missing middle, but without seeing sort of what staff and the code writers are proposing, we haven't had that conversation that I think is going to be on our agenda at our December 7th meeting. So again we want to make sure that the conversation that we have and the input that we hear from the public makes its way to the code, you know, before it's released in January 2017. And then as far as the green field development prescriptions go, there's broad support among the cag and the public in general that this is a great opportunity to really get the benefits of the [3:54:40 PM] new code and that includes preserving open space and trees and parkland and ensuring that every community has access to those amenities. We also recognize the benefits of conservation, subdivisions to protect more green space and environmental features, and obviously we need to provide an emphasis on connections, transit and bicycle access. I won't focus too much on mobility and redevelopment just because as was mentioned earlier these are covered in other prescription papers I think more indepth R. But we need to revisit the green streets and flesh that out and further discuss incentives for redevelopment and I think that density bonus -- I think it's on one of our meetings in November so that will be something we'll talk about more. So as I mentioned, the first prescription paper didn't include a glossary of key terms or executive summary so we drafted that with help from staff members and from our cag members just to round out that first prescription paper. So if anyone is looking for a term they don't understand in the first prescription paper, they can go look in the cag report. Real quick to some of the topics that we also wanted to make sure made it in front of the code writers, and I apologize, this is a paper, it should have pretty pictures, but it's all a bunch of text. The final topic that we touched on was our critique of the public participation this the black hole effect. This is the feeling that some folks have including members of the cag our feedback is slipping into a black hole and we're not sure how that's [3:56:42 PM] being used and we would ask when developing our public engage the process from January 2017, the following six months, that we develop a way to respond to comments that we're hearing from the community, a response that staff can give or the cag can give to let people know sort of where they are and take the temperature of the info that they are giving. These are the cag events we included in the report, the -- sort of the notes we took, the comments that we heard so all of that has made it into the public records so folks should feel like they can find their comments either at a regular meeting or the public comment meeting that we had devoted directly to this topic. And then in our appendices there's a chart from all the members, the full glossary and resolution related to our work as well as the notes from the events. As I said, we tried to be very thorough and round out the record, and that's it. So any questions, we're happy to answer. >> Pool: Ellie, did you want to add anything at this point? >> Well, I think the piece about being more ambition in the green lens, I think that in some ways because this report was so broad that, you know, including redevelopment and compatibility and mobility, that we didn't get the focus on green infrastructure that some of the other prescription papers had the benefit of. For instance, a whole prescription paper on mobility, or a whole prescription paper on affordable housing, or a paper prescription paper on fiscal health. We did not really have a prescription paper that was totally dedicated to green infrastructure, sustainable management. The focus on that was diluted and also because this was the first prescription paper out, it didn't get as much of a -- of a laser focus that some of [3:58:45 PM] these other prescription papers have subsequently. So that's one reason that we are grateful this was brought forward to the open space committee, council committee so that maybe there could be a little more focus on this prior to, you know, the draft code coming out. We're really encouraged by the functional green components that we saw in the latest, you know, contract deliverables that the council supported. We really want to see that come forward. Unfortunately, the time line for that is not due until March because it was five to six months from the signing of that contract. Whereas the code draft is going to come out in the end of January. And so we're concerned that that information will not be there at the same time. And especially how that might influence the amount of open space on site for, for instance in missing middle transition Zones, for storm water infiltration or tree preservation and how is that all going to come together. It's not going to be in a >> All right. So that's a major concern. Also, there's a concern that the stake holder groups noted in the contract document were basically the development community and then the citizens at large. And so there is obviously an environmental community that would have great interest in this functional green component. And yet that wasn't kind of called out. And it seems like that that would be critical to acceptance, to understanding it and accepting it and promoting it. So I think those are some key pieces there. [4:00:46 PM] We are encouraged that watershed and development services and parks and rec have been working on all of this. I think that the main piece here in the new code is going to be the missing metal, right? That's the new transition zone. So our questions are how are all of these green infrastructure pieces being addressed in the missing metal? In how we are currently in the code, that those pieces are addressed in commercial and multi-family, but since we have a whole new segment of the code and missing middle, how are those same infrastructure -- green infrastructure pieces being addressed in missing metal? For instance, we have an opportunity to extend the tree protection and mitigation ordinance that's currently in multi-family and commercial into the missing middle. So that would be a perfect example, but we don't know if that's going to be in the new code or not. We have been promoting that, but we don't know if that's going to happen or not. Right now, as we know, the single family adjacent corridor will be upzoned to these missing middle housing. And, yet, in single family right now, we have only trees that are 19 inches in caliber and they're protected. In commercial, we have trees that are protected and mitigated from 8 inches to 19 inches in caliber. So how would that make that leap, you know, into the new transition Zones? Obviously that's important for our urban heat mitigation. So it's not a minor piece in the whole piece, as well as you know, the amount of impervious cover and how would these -- what would be the impervious cover proposed in the transition [4:02:47 PM] Zones, and how would that ensure there's still enough open space in the missing middle for storm water infiltration? So there are a lot of key questions that are still outstanding that we will all be looking at, you know, as the new code may come out and also within the mapping process. So because we really haven't -- we don't know what that's going to be yet until it comes out in January or until maybe even March, how that might be synced up. So I think those are some of the key questions. >> Great. Thank you. Any questions for any of these folks? Yes? Council member Garza? >> I don't have any questions. I want to thank you for that presentation. You know, as we're learning about all the prescription papers and what is in them, I think it's great to have the perspective that you just gave. So, thanks. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> And I guess I also want to -- it was said before, and I said this at the cag council meeting is that we really do have parks deserts in certain parts of town, and we do not have currently the amount of parkland dedication for the density along quarters. And we're talking about adding increased density on these quarters. It does seem that we need a more aggressive acquisition program for pocket parks, which may be all we can afford along these corridors. And so look at this in a comprehensive way, not an after-the-fact way. You know, where we've mapped for density on the corridors, but we don't have the parkland to support that. So that is also just a big piece to me. It seems -- I don't know. [4:04:48 PM] It seems to be kind of not as coordinated as we might hope at this point in time. You know, to really look at aggressive acquisition, one of the things that I actually did a study with the aia on burnet road that are in single family that could be acquired for pocket parks. That might be less expensive than trying to acquire commercial property for pocket parks as we look at the transition zone, and supporting the parks department and whatever methodology we need to for them to be able to free them up to acquire these properties. Right now we might not be able to enhance the properties, but at least we need to be able to acquire them. That might give an opportunity for a private development to say, okay. We might not have open space on our parcel, but we would enhance and continue to maintain that open space in a nearby pocket park. Right? So we have to be able to acquire it now or we'll never be able to acquire it. >> There's also some conversation with cat metro about locating the transit stops in pocket parks so that the stops would be farther away from the street front. They would be safer and possibly more welcoming, and that might increase the number of people who would use the mass transit. >> Right. We just need to look at it all in a comprehensive way. That's what concerns me, is that it's kind of isolated. Here's the land development code. Here's parkland. We're not quite looking at it in a very comprehensive way. >> Yes? >> I just wanted to comment. Thank you very much for your comments about the need for additional park land. The park department is keenly [4:06:49 PM] aware of that. Budget is always a concern, but having that as part of the planning efforts for the city as a whole is certainly the right approach. So thank you for sharing it. >> Do you have any questions? >> I had a couple of questions. I wanted to check with staff as far as addressing, like, specifically the three concerns that Elie had raised. Is the prescription going to be edited to focus more on green infrastructure? Her comment that it was a really broad number of topics, and so we really didn't get to drill down. >> Yeah. So, as Elie mentioned, it was a very broad number of topics in the prescription as far as the first go, the overview of what people could expect for the new land development code. We do not have any plans at this time. What we'll be doing is releasing the public review draft in January, and that will incorporate any changes that would be reflective of the comments we received as the prescription was out. >> And those are the comments that you are responding to council member Garza's question about whether you would answer some of the questions that were submitted as comments? >> So we're not answering the direct comments line by line, but it would be more of using the draft code as our response in terms of things that may or may not have been incorporated into the draft. >> And then would there be some kind of a crosswalk to people who are reading it and have some familiarity to know this change here in the code is driven by the comments that were submitted in response to the natural built-in environment prescription paper? >> We don't have a plan for that at this time, no? >> So how would people know their concerns have been acknowledged? If you were, it would be something we would want to point out to the public. >> One idea we talked about is, you know, looking at things schematically. We heard a lot of pushback on a particular idea or another one [4:08:50 PM] and addressing them in that way. At the moment, the idea of the comment by comment response reaches a little bit of a capacity issue on our end and an ability to actually be able to address them all fully. The idea would be at least when there's been enough density around something, we could systematically say, you know, we heard this, and things may have changed or we stand by the recommendation for these particular reasons. >> So do you think that you will adopt that approach? >> I'm not sure. I would have to circle back with our project manager and see what that might look like. At the moment, we're planning on having the draft code be in response to the comments and feedbacks we heard during the prescriptions. >> I think the second piece was line by line, so if the code is expected to hit in January at some point, but it's March for the piece Elie was talking about it. How are we going to match up those time lines so we can have good benefit? >> So the public review draft that comes out in January, we fully emphasize the word draft in that. There will be things that are not complete. That will be the functional green piece. We'll be incorporating information as more research and information is developed and so there will be tweaks to that public review draft. It would be the final word. So we'll be working closely with the function green team as we continue to develop the code, and we anticipate more changes as well as public comment. >> Can I add something? I would like to add something really quick. Functional green is one aspect of our landscape ordinance that we're drafting. It's a small part, I feel, that a lot of the elements of green infrastructure are built in now to the current draft. What we're doing with our consultant on this concept of functional green is going to be [4:10:52 PM] talking about more technical support that usually lives in our criterias and mind. This, how it all works will be residing in the criteria manual. So it will be in the ecm. The code next is not going to be revising the ecm at the same timeline. So usually it's -- you get the code together, and you have the support draft ready to go for the criterion manual, but it's not always syncing up at the same time. So I feel that there is time to add to the criterion manual in a well-thought-out method that we'll do with the public process. >> Elie, what do you think? >> I guess by -- I'm glad to hear that. So that's kind of the first thing. I'm more concerned about the physical manifest station on -- man fez station on a missing parcel. How would that affect impervious cover percentages? I mean, really getting down to that because we all know that's where the rub center going to meet the -- rubber is going to meet the road, right? How is the functional green or any other piece from watershed protection in their modelling actually going to impact the impervious coverage protection. So my understanding from watershed is that they will be ready, you know, for the -- by the final -- by that draft. And so in terms of the functional green, I'm not sure how it might impact or not. >> All right. Yes? >> Madam chair, good afternoon. Board members. I'm Jorge -- I apologize -- [4:12:58 PM] >> I see you votederly. >> It's open. I encourage you to take advantage. As far as these different timelines, as we begin to engage with the public with boards and commissions with the cag and so on, those inputs will be considered as we continue to create the adoption draft that will be created during the boards and commissions during the statutory period. For the tool set that you will see in January may not completely address those, being by the mere fact that it is a draft in and of its own, but we're asking the community to partner with us as to identify the gaps. Did we go far enough? Does it implement imagine Austin? Are we implementing division that collectively as a community we strive to implement via the code, realizing we may need to go back and tweak these codes as we go along. So there will still be an opportunity even though these are on different timelines for us to take into consideration that input to affect a certain amount of change on the code itself. >> So it sounds like we'll try to do the best we can, I guess. >> Right. I'm hoping that -- the cag has not yet heard the public engagement plan, right? And so I think once we have seen a draft of that plan and be able to comment on that, that also might be helpful. Frankly, I think that with certain issues we may need to have stakeholder groups that can focus. If it's a 500-page document, everybody is not going to be [4:15:00 PM] able to absorb all of it. You're going to need some groups around certain issues -- stakeholder groups around certain issues to work around that just like we always have in Austin. Just like the green infrastructure group that met for six or seven months and had 300 people involved in it and major stakeholder groups on that. That was amazing. We appreciate watershed doing that. We will need to just see that and work with the council as well to get your feedback on the public engagement plan and see how it sits with us and the community and with y'all. >> Jorge, do you have a sense for when the public engagement piece will be formulated or ready to roll out? >> Yes, as a matter of fact, madam chair, we're working on that plan as we speak. We're working closely with our consultant team to provide that. >> And they're in town today, I think. >> One of them is. One of them is, as a matter of fact. I'm late to another meeting for that. We're working closely with our consultant team, our robust consultant team for that engagement plan. We have made commitments to provide a copy of that to the council in order to engage at the level to provide that input, also with the cag in terms of understanding are we reaching the constituency we need to reach out and how the public can understand how they can be most effective in not only review of the draft but providing comment from the why to the specific. What's of keen interest to us is what we do with that particular input and how that is classified, cataloged, and addressed. You can imagine the daunting task of revising an entire code, even more so receiving input on special portions of the code. So, as Ms. Todd was mentioning, [4:17:00 PM] if we can group these by theme, not as a way to say this theme was outvoted by another theme because that really wouldn't be conducive to the amount of input you got because we're not really looking by who wins by one vote or two votes. We're trying to understand the issue. Holistically how it affects not only one specific area of code, but how the domino affects the other area of code. That's of keen interest to us. Simple changes are easier to address. When you start to affect other areas of the code, it becomes increasingly more complex in terms of trying to resolve those conflicts in the code. >> How do you plan to signal to the public the fact that there's a lot here. It will take some time to break it down into adjustable bids and we welcome input of my shape or size and over what time frame? >> Once the code is released in January, we'll engage with the public, with the community extensively to give you a few examples that we're working on from the district base engagement, the districts can have open houses, town halls, et cetera. Specific workshops in the spring, we can invite the public. If you remember the sound check, the first community engagement we did back in November of 2015 where the community came out and actually participated in a series of workshops, it will all be in a way to educate the public in how to engage itself while also understanding the mapping approaches as to how this gets applied on the ground. So it's a two-prong approach by which the community will get to engage with both of those documents and start to get an understanding of where those gaps are located so we can go back and retool them. So it will have to be [4:19:01 PM] piecemealed and staff will be actively engaged in the community and with boards and commissions. We'll look to the leadership of the cag to help us in that outreach as has been demanded by council to engage with us and provide adequate audience interactions with the community so that we can take into consideration that input. >> There was a suggestion from a community member after the joint meeting that we had with the code advisory group last week. This was from someone who had been involved in code writing years ago. And his suggestion was that we identify a location in each of the ten districts to implement bits of the code or the same piece of it and show how on the ground it would manifest. So you can have an opportunity to see what it looks like in your neighborhood or adjacent to your neighborhood and how it's different from district to district depending on where that location happens to be and that it would be specifically cited in specific discreet places around the city. Is that something that you think -- that you're planning or you could plan, you could include in part outreach? >> We're working on that same concept as we speak. If you recall the sound check in November 2015, it looked at representative focus of the city. They were spread purposely wide-ranging, not necessarily with the intention of looking at one specific place, but it was representative of very different place types that you would find around the city. We'll be revisiting some of those and most of those and even looking outside those focus areas to demonstrate for the community what a mapping approach, how you apply the code in these specific areas. Not as a way of implementation just yet because the code would not be implemented at that time. >> Kind of like a test drive? >> Exactly. Some have kicked around the term, you know, you're testing the code. Well, that's one way to look at [4:21:02 PM] it, but specifically to demonstrate for the community as a whole what this new code does and how you can start to see different nuances as they work together on an actual place. We're not saying necessarily that's exactly what's going to happen to that particular place that we test, but it's a way to demonstrate if we were applying the code in this location at the intersection of street a and avenue B, you would see the code do these kind of things, and you would see the application of those Zones, bow the transit base -- both the transit based and the context and try to understand what the difference would be and try to understand the nuances of what calibration needs to take place as we continue to build and finalize the draft for your consideration. >> I would also like to see staff respond to the concerns that the code advisory group raised, if that's something that you can do? >> I wasn't here for that part. My apologies, but we'll look into that. >> Well, the cag has written -- there was a three-person subcommittee on this particular prescription paper. >> Sure. >> And they've issued a response back, and it's fairly detailed, and it took some time and effort. And I think it would be useful for everyone to see how that conversation continues. So if staff were to take the concerns and the issues that were raised by the cag members and see what sort of a dialogue you might be able to have as a result of that. Would that be something that's possible? >> We're certainly open to that dialogue, yes. >> We would welcome that. >> Great. So is that something you need specific direction from us to do? Or can you just take it as an article of faith, if that's something that seems like a good next step in order to work through some of the issues? Especially in advance of having the code issued in draft form in [4:23:03 PM] January so we can kind of catch up with ourselves so we don't have a gap. We can kind of close the gap as best we can and lay the groundwork for the public to know how this piece is being received and how we might move forward with it and how it benefits the community. >> I can only speak for staff. We don't need specific direction. We can take the direction given us today to work with the cag. And you will see the fruition of that response in the code itself where we can point to sections of the code that themematically address those issues brought up. >> And Elie or Lauren, would either of you be the contact point? >> It would be Lauren. >> I will. And I can be the one to initiate that, setting up a meeting or something we can have. >> Okay. That would be terrific. Anyone have any other items on this topic? I had some other questions, but since I've already spent a good bit of time on these specific ones, I will just let them go. I may submit them to staff separately. All right. Thank you, all, really. Thank you, all, for all the work everybody is doing. Staff and our public, our advocates in the community, you guys are doing really good work. Now we just kind of need to draw all the threads together and weave them together so we have a strong fabric here because I think we have real opportunity. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you all for coming today. And Mr. King, you're listed as wants to make a comment. Do you want some three minutes? >> Not necessarily. Just a couple of minutes maybe. >> All right. >> Thank you. Thanks to the cag members for all the great work you're doing. I'm really glad to see -- and our watershed staff too. [4:25:05 PM] I really do appreciate this. It's very important to me. You know, these items we discussed, these strategies we discussed to try to integrate green infrastructure and the environment into our development, the redevelopment of our city, you know, a lot of these are focused on -- it's about the urban core where we're trying to redevelop. I know there's some components that address suburban areas of our city too, but a lot of the justification or rationale for what we're talking about is in terms of the natural environment and green infrastructure is to encourage density. That's the bottom line. It's really to -- it focuses on compact and connected. I reword that to mean density over sprawl. So we're really talking about having more density in our city and what do we give up for that? And we're here talking about maybe green infrastructure, maybe some of these things that are important to our environment and to the livability of our city. So, really, I think there's a more fundamental question we need to be asking. What is the goal of density? Why do we want more density in our city? I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have that, but I am saying what is the goal? If we're going to encourage that, what would be the goal or goals? I think one of the key goals should be how does increased density help our low and middle income families? If fundamentally that increase density is not helping those two groups in our city, then maybe we need to change the density policies. But I do think that there should be a fundamental policy from the council that says this is why we're going for increased density. I know we talked about affordability and how do you define that. To me, what's more fundamental than that is helping our [4:27:06 PM] low-income families and middle-income families or not. I just think that's an important thing. I hope the council will start talking about that to help inform code next. I know folks have been talking about how long this process has gone, but I just think we need to take our time and look at this code and try it out. And the public engagement process is essential to this. So I hope that in the process we've been through so far, it's not been effective. Most of the folks in our city have not been involved in that process. Yet here we are about to -- it sounds like -- repeat a lot of those same strategies in public engagement processes we've had in the past. Are we just going to be talking to the same folks that showed up during the previous engagements? I just think it's important that we do more to go out and reach out to these communities that have not been involved and make sure they have a seat at the table too. Thank you so much. >> Yes. Thank you so much. Was there anyone else who wanted to speak who may not have signed up? All right. Any future agenda items off the top of anybody's head? All right. There are none. I think we're done. Thank you for coming today. Staff and community, thank you for being here and giving us the benefit of your thinking. We're adjourned. It is 4:28 P.M. Thank you.