City Council Work Session Transcript – 11/01/2016 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 11/1/2016 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 11/1/2016 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:09:39 AM] >> All right. We have a quorum. This being the case, I'm going to call to order today's work session meeting. It's Tuesday, November 1st, 2016. 9:10. We're in 301 west second street in the board's commission room. We have some items that have been pulled as well as some briefings or presentations to be paid. Pull items are 29, 49, 51. Potentially also 53, which would be the historical item. We'll get to that later or last. We have today council member Gallo is not feeling well so is not with us today. Council member troxclair would like to participate potentially in the sh-45 briefing electronically. We'll talk about that off line. We have two folks, capital metro with us today. I want to get to that briefing pretty quickly. We have a guest with us. Wade cooper on the board. Ed to with our board members that are council members. We have also had a request from public safety to discuss the forensic lab issue. [9:11:39 AM] They have training programs. So I would call them. I don't know if they're outside right now. You're in training clothes today. So let's do this. Let's have this so you can get to your training exercise. Then we'll go to capital metro so we have those people. And then we'll get to the -- >> Mr. Mayor, I hope this will be quick because we have our guests here. >> We do. We have to get them to training too. >> Okay. >> Both of those things. They both needed to go first. Chief? >> Good morning. I guess I could just briefly we've got the item going before you all this week. Item no. 29, this is going to be the contract interlocal agreement with the forensics lab so we can start moving forward with your DNA backlog. We've spoken to you all before on the backlog several times, and we have currently looking to dedicate $1.6 million from the department's forfeited funds that we have been awarded towards clearing up the DNA backlog. So this is going to be the most important step in getting this agreement in place so we can start sending out the kits to be examined. I do believe council member Casar had some questions. >> Thank you for bringing that back to us so expeditiously. In the rca, there's a mention that this is going to be specifically used for the sexual assault evidence backlog, but my understanding from you is that that is the intent. The reason I ask the question now is it will hopefully save us time on Thursday because wi got a lot of calls from the community looking at the rca asking if this is the money that's going to help clear up the sexual assault backlog. I want to clear up publicly if that's the case. [9:13:41 AM] >> Sure, this is going to go toward the backlog to clear up the kits. We wrote the agreement in the case we had a serial offender in a similar type crime or a homicide. We wanted to have the ability to do that. That would be the exception. The purpose of this money is to clear up the backlog that we've been speaking to the council now for many months. >> And I think we'll submit a budget question just to get an update on the number of kits. During last budget session we were at a certain number. I would assume we have new numbers. So we'll send that question to you. If you can have that posted on budget Q and a by Thursday, that would be helpful. And we've been hearing a lot from community folks. What sorts of metrics might be assigned to this contract or what expectations should people have around how quickly this evidence gets processed through this interlocal agreement. >> When we get this interlocal in place, we'll start having discussions with the lab as far as how many kits they want to take. They're going to put us in queue with the ability to prioritize cases if there's a need to do a rush on any particular case at that time. We're going send them in batches because we obviously expect our lab to open up at some point early to mid-next year and we'll process the cases. We don't want to ship everything to them. I assume they're going return those to us in industry standard. 30-90 days. We'll work this out after the interlocal is approved and we start shipping the cases to them. We'll get the time lines for both the number of cases they want and the expected return on these cases. >> Thank you, chief. I know there's conversation about the lab reopening and we gave direction to the management to review current practices and to continue to work with the council and the department on those issues. I know that in the news we've had some continued attention to why the lab shut down. That's, I think, a bit of a separate issue from this. [9:15:42 AM] I appreciate that this is moving forward. I, and I think other council members have gotten in touch with city management to make sure that there's trust in the lab and its future operations and that the public knows and that we know whether any of the issues at the lab in the past led to any wrongful action because, of course, we would want to know that as well. I appreciate that we're addressing this issue and thank you for finding money in the existing budget allocations to deal with this. Thank you, again, for coming out of your training to answer these questions for us today. >> Again, I would reiterate the thanks to find the resources to deal with the backlog. Obviously as we went through the budget process, it became clear, if it wasn't before, how significant of a public priority that was. The next question, do we have a feel at all with the lab going forward indefinitely there av? The council had asked for a recommendation to come back to council to make the decision and the council could make the decision of whether it would be in-house or independent. I know you're in the process of gathering best practices for that and recommending it to council. I think the da would like to express an opinion and who knows the people that would have an opinion on that. Do we have a feel on when you will be coming back with the recommendation on that? >> I think you hit on key points, Mr. Mayor. I would expect one the da is in place, that will allow us to have the final conversations we need to have. We're working internally to identify the best practices and the best options we can bring back to council. Once we feel comfortable with what that is, we'll work with city management to discuss further with them and, again, with the expectation that we'll be able to come before you sometime early next year to discuss what we've identified. [9:17:45 AM] >> Great, thank you. Ms. Kitchen? >> Just one quick question on the turnaround on the rape kit analysis. Is there an option for expediting those faster than the 30-45 days that's the standard turn around that you mentioned? >> That's the standard. What we know is this lab will allow us to expedite some of the caseses. In other words, they will allow us to take one of our cases and put it ahead of other cases in their lab prior to ours getting there. If there's a need to do that, we can. And we can also have dps if there was a need to do an emergency case like that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Ms. Garza? >> I'm sorry. >> Anybody have anything else they want to say on this. >> Thank you. >> Mr. Mayor, we're all fair and impartial police training, the entire executive command team is going through that tomorrow. I appreciate you moving us to the front. I didn't want to miss that. Thank you. >> Great. Thank you. >> So let's move forward with the cap metro presentation. Do you want to lay this out, Ms. Kitchen? >> Yes. I want to thank cap metro. I want to thank our board chair wade cooper and fellow board member Terry Mitchell for joining us. The thinking behind doing this was twofold. First, to give us all an opportunity to talk about how connections 2025 is -- how it relates to major planning efforts of the city. For example, our imagine Austin and our strategic housing plan. As we all know, transportation is a system. The transit services that cap metro provides is an integral part of our community, and it's important as a city we be sure and coordinate with cap metro's efforts. [9:19:52 AM] So I also thought it might be an opportunity for council members to ask questions and to understand connections 2025 perhaps a little better. I know you may be hearing from your constituents. Thank you very much for coming today to spend some time with us. >> Council member kitchen -- try that again. Mayor, council members, thank you for letting us present today. I'm Todd Henson, planning and development. As council member kitchen said, we want to give you a brief overview of connections 2025 and also discuss how we believe this plan relates to some of the city's efforts, specifically the strategic mobility plan, the transportation efforts and the housing plan from the housing department. We have been under way for around a year on this effort. We've done extensive public out reach. We've had more than 5,000 survey responses. Numbers of open houses. We've gone to a number of meetings. We've done a lot to gather the input from the community. We also have a consultant team bringing best practices from across the country to help us improve public transportation in the Austin area. So some of the things we've heard from the community, which fortunately are consistent with best practices across the country are that we need to improve the frequency of service. That's one of the things we've heard resoundingly. We need more frequent service systemwide where possible. Of course frequency costs resources. It costs money and buses and additional operators. So we can't do it without trade-offs. That's one thing we heard consistently, number one by far. [9:21:54 AM] More frequency of service reduces the hesitancy of people to use public transportation. It's easier a to walk out and know a bus will be there soon. Coverage, that could be a trade-off between frequency and coverage. The more you spread out your service, the less often you can run on certain routes. Reliability is a key one. People want to know that the route will be reliable. Service will be reliable. That has to do with traffic congestion, which, of course, is a significant challenge in Austin. And then speed, making the service faster where possible so people don't have to spend too much of their time on the bus trying to get to where they want to go. Some of the key things we've worked with over the months with both the public input, the community input as well as the technical input are the design principles that guide the planning effort. Just briefly walk through those, we wanted an easy-to-understand network. The frequent network we've started with several routes that run every 15 minutes or better, which is kind of a benchmark. We want to dramatically expand that. We want to match our service to the markets, concentrate on what we hear customers value in terms of the attributes of service. We want to use technology and partner with transportation providers, car to go, be cycle, and others. To make a comprehensive program, it's not about moving on buses but providing alternatives to driving alone. We want to prepare for the future in terms of how we design the system. I think the most important part for today's presentation is this last bullet point on the bottom right. Card land use, housing infrastructure. That's essential. One of the reasons it's essential, research shows how houses that live in walkable areas are spending 9% on transportation. [9:23:58 AM] Whereas if you're in a drivable suburban area where you have to depend on an automobile, you may be spending up to 30% or more on your household income on transportation. This is a huge factor in affordability. 20% of your household income swing depending on how we develop, where people choose to live, what options are available to them. So that is really the crux issue, I think, of why it's so important that we link transit, land use, housing, et cetera. Some of the things we've looked at as we went into the planning process, and these relate to the presentation. The imagine Austin comprehensive plan, critical to our planning efforts. We looked at the city's list of emerging projects. We looked at the medical school and other things of that nature. The eastern crescent initiative and the various projects that are popping up across the area. Some of these are not within the capital metro service area at present, which presents a challenge, of course. Others are. So we have adopted the plan to try to accommodate these new developments that we know are coming, but in some cases, they're not ripe yet. So we do not have service proposed for them, but this plan is a ten-year plan that's updated every five years. So if we're not showing service to an activity city in the Austin plan, which is a 30-year plan, or some of these other developments, that doesn't mean we won't ever serve them. Particularly if they grow in ways that are transit supportive, we can add service in the future. Some of the things in the toolbox that we developed, these are different types of services to meet different type of community needs. We've identified six that we're focusing on. I would be glad at a different time to go into them in much more detail, but just in short, they're rapid transit, metro rapid. [9:25:59 AM] We have two routes. We'll be adding additional routes. The highlight is the frequent local service. The traditional local service, community shuttles and things of that nature, and then express routes, which are basically for commuter type functions. Our plan, again, is a five-year and then a ten-year plan. Really two phases that we fleshed out. We have the draft plan completed. We've been shopping that out with the public over the last month or six weeks, gathered a lot of different input and are in the process of responding to the public input we've heard. Again, one of the highlights is the frequent service network. On the left, on this graphic, are the routes that we currently operate today every 15 minutes or better. On the right would be what we would expand to over the course of this plan, which is a dramatic increase. Again, we believe that this is one of the most important things we can do to make transit more meaningful and relevant for the community and, in turn, grow ridership. Some of the stats are here. Today, for example, we have about just over 300,000 people body walking distance of bsh people are within walking distance. We're looking at an additional 300,000 people. 50 probable cause of the population area would be in walking access of that frequent service. Again, national research, what we're seeing across the country, is those routes, those systems that are growing ridership, this is the type of service that's accomplishing that. So that's where we put a big emphasis in this planning effort. Some of the other things we've looked at, of course, are anytime we do these plans, there are trade-offs involved. We wanted to gauge what kind of impact are we having on the public and the community. You're probably going to be fine-tuning the system and in some cases reducing service in other places to make change. [9:28:05 AM] What we found was pretty positive. More than 99% of our ridership would be in walking distance of service under the new plan. A very small impact on our more vulnerable folks that use our Ada services, metro access service. In terms of budget, that's also a key thing. Can we afford to implement the plan. We found over the course of the plan, we would need about 7%. We did not come up with a plan that was financially impossible to deliver. In terms of the summary -- and then I will get to how it relates to the city's efforts -- we think the plan creates a more useful convenient mobility options for the community. More people with more access to frequent service and, again, learning from what other cities have done successfully. Houston and many others across the country are applying this proven recipe for success to increase transit ridership and make transit more relevant for the public. Just a few graphics to think through how these pieces fit together. These are our connections 2025 plan. We're talking about today the Orange circle represents that on the vertical access. It's geography. If you go from the city center to the entire region at the top and on the horizontal access is the type of service we're talking about. On the left is more traditional service. On the right would be light rail, more commuter rail, things of that nature. This plan really focused on the bus service and related services. At the regional scale, we have transit development plans where we're working beyond our service area in our communes. We've worked with Georgetown, huddle and others. They're not part of capital metro but are recognized as a growing area. [9:30:08 AM] They will need transit in the future. We have project connect, hopefully we'll have a chance to come back in the near future and talk to that in more detail, but that's more the high-capacity service. More intensive in terms of resources, both financial and otherwise. Corridor studies like the north Korea corridor -- corridor. We think there's the strategic housing plan and the strategic mobility plan. These plans overlap. They're meant to overlap so they're talking to each other and working together. At the same time they're also covering different ground. I think, in whole, they're working fairly well together. There's also room for improvement, of course. With regard to coordinating efforts, the connections plan that we're talking about today will feed into the project connect effort, feed into the strategic mobility plan. We've had ongoing discussions with rob and anek about these plans and making sure they're talking together and working in a coordinated manner. The project connect plan and the strategic mobility plan are running pretty much in parallel. We've been working with those to try to communicate with the public as well as elected officials and others to make sure these plans are working together to achieve common benefits. A little more specifically, this is the imagine Austin map on the right here. And then if you look at the activity centers that are identified and some of the other key growth areas that are known and projected and then you look at where our plan puts the freak service, which is in the gold here, it may be a little difficult to see. I apologize for that. [9:32:09 AM] We're connecting up a couple of major activity centers with the frequent service proposal. So not all of them, obviously, but many of the activity centers would be connected with frequent service. Then here in green -- again, a little difficult to see -- we would be offering 30-minute service under the plan. I moved too fast. As I mentioned earlier, the imagine Austin plan, of course, is a 30-year plan. So some of these activity centers are not within the capital metro service area. So we're not serving every single activity center. Ideally, if we have unlimited resources, that would make a lot of sense, but, as mentioned, we know that in the future, as these develop and hopefully with coordinated planning, we can have them develop in ways that are transit supportive. We expect when we come back and revisit this plan in five years, that we can add service to more of these activity centers, providing that connectivity we know will be needed. In terms of the strategic housing plan, I think we sat down with both -- well, first we sat down with rob and his team six or more weeks ago and discussed this in detail to make sure we were on the same page to the degree possible. We recently sat down with planning and housing to have that same discussion. I think the general findings are shown here on the left. Our plans are generally in alignment. Most of the low income sites will gain better, more frequent better service with this plan. An important kind of check on what we do is we have -- because we receive federal funds, every time we go through and ask the board to approve changes, we have a title VI review that's required by the federal government to make sure we're not having a desperate impact on lower income communities when we make changes. So that's a checks and balances in place that to make sure we're not having that impact. [9:34:14 AM] We took a look at the city's community housing plan and goals and targets. Here, this plan was from may, I believe. They left it blank at the time. At least some percentage of new housing units should be within Austin imagine Austin corridors. We would encourage that number to be as high as possible. You want to kind of put low income housing in all parts of your community, but at the same time from a transportation planning perspective, it makes sense to put those in the centers in the corridors so they can be effectively served with high quality transit. That's a trade-off and a balance that we have to strike, but this is one, again, we would encourage as high of a percentage as possible to make the two systems work together to the degree we can. Another goal or target we found in the plan is really laudable that's obviously linking housing with transportation. 25% of affordable housing created or preserved to be within a quarter mile of high freq city transit. That's a great start. Again, we would probably encourage that number to be even higher. We think back to that number I cited earlier, if you're spending less on transportation, that's more you can spend on housing. The more we can put those affordable housing units in direct proximity to high quality transit, that seems like a community win. So where we are in the plan over the past couple of months, as I mentioned, we've shared the plan with the public. We're currently in the final stages of digesting the feedback we've heard. Next week we'll be presenting a revised plan that responds to the public input to our board. There are certain routes, some that we proposed to eliminate because of low ridership or other reasons that we've heard loud and clear the community has concerns about. [9:36:17 AM] We'll be addressing that with the board next week, see what their feedback is. Ultimately we want to get back to the board in December for the final plan and potentially an adoption and approval at that point. And then, implementation, that's 2017 and beyond. So we want to move as quickly as possible because we do believe the plan has a lot of benefits for the community and will increase ridership. So our intent is to move quickly, but some of these pieces can't happen until other things fall into place. One example was improved service on mopac (phonetic) Where we can wait for some of those routes to take full advantage of transit in terms of reliability and quality of service. So with that, our tag line sums it up. More frequent, more reliable, and more connected. That's what we're trying to accomplish with this plan. I think the closing comment would be just in terms of our discussions with your staff and transportation planning and housing is that while absolutely we're not 100% in sync. I'm not sure that's even possible. I think generally speaking, what we're proposing in this plan is very consistent with what the city is doing in terms of imagine Austin and with that, thank you very much. I will be glad to answer any questions. >> Does anybody have any questions about the presentation? >> Yes, Mrs. Pool. Could you go back to slide 29. That's the one that has the map with the imagine Austin activity centers listed on it. I'm curious on a couple of things. The copy that I have shows it's darker on your screen, the green lines and then the yellow lines. >> Right. >> Could you remind me, again, what those are? [9:38:19 AM] >> The yellow is where we propose to run the frequent service. Those are routes that operate seven days a week, running every 15 minutes or better. So that's really where our best service will be. From our perspective, we want to advocate for if you want to be where the good service is, that's where you need to be. The green are routes that would run every 30 minutes or better. So that's kind of the next tier of service levels, if you will. >> Also seven day? >> Yes, ma'am. >> I'm curious. I don't know if you can answer this. This may be for our staff. Looking just west of mopac, we've got the big destination center, which is gateway, the big dark Orange one up toward the top. >> Yes. >> And then we have -- that downtown that is the next one, directly south? >> I think there's highland is the smaller one and highland and then downtown -- >> Off to the east? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. And then we have a couple of -- I'm trying to read -- neighborhood centers are the lighter Orange? >> I believe that's correct, yes. >> So directly west of mopac where we have, for example, spice with springs and far west, there's a lot of development there, but those are not identified as any kind of a high frequency transit corridor or for development. Do you have any information on why that would be? >> On the development side, I would defer to city staff. On the transit side, we have heard from the community and the oaks and some of the other interests in the spicewood area about service. We did propose to eliminate that route because of low ridership. That's one of the things we've taken back under consideration and are reviewing internally and next week we'll be presenting a recommendation to the board. [9:40:22 AM] >> Are those routes 21 and 23? >> 21 and 22 do not serve that area. >> Where do they serve? South? >> 21 and 22 serve the central loop. It's a combined route. >> That's for students going to UT and to the high schools? >> It serves a vast variety of trip purposes, but it serves them as well. >> Every time I see the maps from previous councils and from cap metro, they've designated the areas where we want to, from a policy directive, encourage development and density and know wring we're actually placing it and how there's a gap, which you are describing very well with our transit options, it makes things pretty challenging. >> Sure. >> So I'm always on a rhetorical plane, how can we encourage the development where we want it to be so we can also support what cap metro wants to do on those corridors and get density on those corridors. I know we talk about that, but point in fact, when we have proposals in front of us, we stray from that focus. I can see where that makes your work more difficult as well. >> Correct. >> Thank you. >> Mrs. Houston? >> I want to thank you for your presentation to members of the district one. >> Yes, ma'am >> You came out to MI madre's. It was a robust conversation, to use Mrs. Pool's words. A lot of bus riders were there. There was a lot of good questions. I can't see my map. At some point I will have to get a copy of your map. It's very tiny. What are the purple lines? I could see on, again, 29, there seemed to be some purple lines. [9:42:23 AM] >> The purple lines are the routes in the system -- (indiscernible) >> Okay. Thank you, Lawrence. Lawrence clarified. The purple lines are corridors identified in the imagine Austin plan for -- I believe they're transit corridors as identified in the imagine Austin plan. So, again, I acknowledge that we're not 100% synced up. So that's one example. Like Parma, for example, when the imagine Austin effort was done, it said that may be a future transit corridor. In our analysis, we said it's not ready yet. Maybe at some point in the future it would be. >> Thank you. >> Okay. There was one more. I used no. 20 to get downtown to city hall. And I use 21 to get to HT. >> Gotcha. >> A lot of people use it. >> Anything else? >> I have a couple of questions. Thank you so much for being here to walk us through this. The first is feedback we've received from the Miller municipal airport plan advisory commission. They sent a recommendation to the council with regard to the alignment. Have you heard from them? Are you aware of their concerns? >> Absolutely. >> I know you intend to revise the plan in parts due to feedback. Is that an area where you intend to make some revisions? >> Yes, ma'am. That's one of the list. I would applaud them. They wrote a 19-page paper that was quite impressive in terms of their findings with regard to the plan and what they recommended for that particular area. We are cognizant of the city planning effort and role in developing Mueller and many years of discussions about how transit factors in. So that is one of the ones we definitely went back and are taking a hard look at. Next week we'll be presenting a revised recommendation to the board. [9:44:23 AM] >> Okay. Super. Thanks. And, as they point out, it's a factor not just for Miller but the neighborhoods in that area and surrounding Miller and the density was conditioned on great access to transit. In fact, they have an opportunity for more density there in transit continues to grow and serve that development >> Right >> So that's really important, as you said, the vision of really what that was supposed to be. And then I wanted to talk a little more generally about your real estate holdings and kind of how you envision working with other partners in the community on land that you may be using for capital metro purposes but might also serve other community needs, such as affordable housing. This actually relates to discussions I know all of our entities have been having, but it relates to the resolution we have on this agenda asking our planning group to really work with our partners in seeing how we can collaborate on projects of that sort. So it's my understanding that there have been discussions of that sort at cap metro among your board. I wondered if you could speak to that. I would regard that as a really high priority,s ado for the city of Austin and ISD and looking closely at how to meet some of the community needs, in particular, affordable housing. >> Sure. I won't speak for the board or Linda, but I think I can say in general that we want to see the best and highest use for the properties that capital metro owns. In some cases, that may include affordable housing elements and other development opportunities N. Many cases, capital metro years ago acquired relatively big, 20 acres, for example, pieces of land and built surface parking for a park and ride. What you see across the country and just as a best practice is that over time, surface parking is not the highest and best use. How can retransition so rather than just facilitating driving to access transit, we can have people living near transit, working near transit, et cetera. [9:46:31 AM] So we have active discussions under way at our Lee Ander facility. We've expressed interest to see what kind of development opportunities might be there. Lakeline as well and then north Lamar transit center is the oldest park and ride in the city of Austin. It used to be on the edge of town. It's at Lamar and 183. Now obviously that's not the edge of town anymore. So that's another one we've had ongoing discussions for some time about how can we repurpose that site, explicitly in that case, looking at a possibility of partnering for affordable housing at that location. >> That's great. I think that would be a great location. I think all of our entities need to think about this because they're always options where you can sell off that extra land or use it for a benefit. I would just encourage cap metro to do as I hope aisd and use those lands to recognize community benefits as the highest and best use. So thank you for that information. >> Okay. Sure. I would be remiss if I didn't mention plaza -- developments are soon to break ground. We're excited about that one. >> Anything else on this report. Mrs. Houston? >> Just one thing, just to say one more thing as it relates to comments Kathie tovo made. It can't be a one size fits all. I'm close enough to walk to the station. I could drive to M station, get on the red line, come downtown, but if I go back at night, there's no place for me to park my car there. So I can't walk home after I get off the train. So each -- I think each location is very specific in context. So that one would have been a nice place to have a park and ride because it's close enough to have access to many things, but I can't walk home late at night from one of these council meetings to get home. [9:48:34 AM] >> I would agree. It is about the context and specifics. >> Mrs. Garza? >> I know since we're all here together, we're getting feedback on the different routes and people having concerns with them. There are parts of our community that don't have the ability to write a 19- page report. I think that's great, but if you're receiving -- I guess I want to ask law first. There's no quorum issues in my capacity as a board member to hear from different council members? Okay, just making sure before I ask council members to e-mail me. If you're receiving that feedback, please forward them to council member kitchen. I'm building a spreadsheet of all the concerns with the different routes so we know we address those as we're having these discussions on the possibility of some of these lines being cut. Please forward those to us. >> Mrs. Kitchen and Mrs. Pool. >> I just wanted to invite Mr. Cooper and Mr. Mitchell if they wanted to say anything. Feel free to jump into the discussion. >> Well, first, thank you for having us. As a person who's been involved in transportation on the periphery for a long time since my days on the da board in 2004, it's been a -- I spent a lot of time dealing with the red line and where it would go and what that route would be. I can safely say that I have not seen that time period a better cooperation than we have now between city and cap metro, which is a private citizen to me. It's really important that we're collaborating. It is a network. We can build -- or buy buses, run buses, build trains, but we can't build roads. We can't build dedicated right of way. So our two organizations Kolb lab rating is -- collaborating is really important. [9:50:37 AM] Thank you for the chance to spend a little time together and talking about that. We've got broad visions for cap metro, not only being a great provider but also being a catalyst for bigger thoughts in the region about how we solve transportation issues regionally. So we look forward to working with the city and with the other cities in the region to develop better ideas about how to serve our growing region. The other thing I would say is a compliment to the staff of cap metro. When Terry and I got on the board, they were just coming out of a pretty difficult period in terms of rebuilding cap metro. So all of this, what I think is very exciting growth in our realignment of our network is possible because we've now solved a lot of the financial issues related to cap metro. Over the last several years, we've built up our reserves appropriately. We've now deployed capital that we have to building up the network to working on the train station, which is another important cog in what we're trying to accomplish here. So a lot of great things going on. I think you would be very proud of metro if you pulled back the covers and looked at the finances, looked at the efficiency and looked at the entrepreneurial spirpt and the desire to make this a cutting edge organization. So with that, we look forward to further opportunities to collaborate with the city and city staff in particular to try to build up a regional network that we would all be very proud of. >> Mr. Mitchell, did you want to say anything? >> There we go. Thank you for having us here. I just want to, from my perspective. I'm a housing guy. I build housing. As things start changing, for me, in my mind, I wonder why it's happening. I think the council needs to be that aware of everything that we're addressing. [9:52:44 AM] Austin's urban jobs, defined as a 3-mile radius from the center of town, there was a city observeatory report in 2015 that 29% of our metropolitan area jobs are located in that tight circle. That's the lyingest cons -- highest concentration of -- jobs in the country. Houston is 8%. Dallas is 9%. What that means is there's trepidation pressure -- tremendous pressure on people to get downtown. We've been adding about 20,000 housing units per year at our rate and more than half of those are locate 20 miles from where we're sitting right now. We intuitively know, gee, there's more people on the road. It's happening daily because we're putting half of our housing out here and 30% of our jobs are here, if that makes any sense. Does that make any sense? Also, for council member Houston and others, that, for me, explains why house prices in our urban core are driving up. If you can afford it, you want to live close to those jobs and not have that commute. As we go forward, strategically thinking about where jobs should be located and where housing should be located next to jobs becomes critically important because I think that, suspects what capital -- -- as much as what capital metro is doing is a major tool in managing traffic and congestion. >> Thank you. >> Ms. Pool? >> Let me go back. That prompted me to have thoughts about what you were saying, Terry, but I wanted to go back and ask Todd the question I had Teed up before we went that direction. A number of people have noticed -- and this goes back to, I think, what council member Houston was saying about where the park and rides are and where the train stations are. A clear issue has been crestview station where there's a lot of people who would get on there, but they don't have anyplace -- there's no place to leave a car. [9:54:52 AM] I know where cap metro made the plan for crestview station, that was before this council was seated, you must have had conversations about that. Could you just give us a history lesson and fill in some of the back story on how that came to be and what recommendations you all may think you may offer for future -- because if we're going to have more lines and rail, which I do support, at some point we have to address the fact that not everybody is able to walk to or cares to for many, many reasons. They will need a place to safely leave their car in order to get back, for example, late at night. So maybe some background? >> Sure. >> Thanks. >> Well, first the specifics of midtown commons, which is the development at crestview station. We did over many months forge an agreement with them to have bus access and the station within and adjacent to their development which overall is a good thing. From a broader perspective, in terms of planning and stationary planning and so on, it's a tough trade-off and balancing issue because the general best practice, if you will, is in dense urban -- relatively dense closer-in areas. Also, funding. Parking is very expensive to provide. So closer-in areas that are generally more walkable that have bus access, the best practice would be that you don't provide parking with the idea that more of your riders will get there by a bus connection, maybe a tnc connection, a bicycle, or by walking. And then in further out suburban areas that are not so walkable that are more autodependent, that's where you typically provide the parking because they're not going to be able to get to the station otherwise. [9:57:00 AM] We're kind of in the middle in some of those cases. So I think both crestview and mlk stations are kind of ideally perhaps again from a best practice in transit and planning, you would do it with minimal to no parking. I think when we were planning them, we said, what's the best practice. Let's follow that. And that's what we came up with. In the real world, perhaps in hindsight, we might have provided some parking and had a transition plan so we could change that away as the development happens and density and walkability improves. But I think probably not that short of an answer, that's the answer. >> And I understand about best practices. I've certainly heard that in a large part -- and a large part agree with that. But then at the triangle where you have bus rapid transit, which I've used, there's free parking. >> Sure >> And the parking garage is there. It's advertised. It's available. And that's for a bus. So when people who are not as deeply embedded on conversations in transportation and urban planning look at the situation, the perceptions are that it wasn't planned properly. I know you've heard that as well. So I'm not sure that saying some way we'll all walk or take the train is sufficient for the public to hear. Now there's a sector of it that want to hear that, and they support that, but that does not -- that's not the majority. So I'm looking for additional ideas on what we can do. If we want to move forward with rail, for example, we're going to have to address the fact that midtown commons don't have a place to leave the car at that point and go wherever rail may be, including some day, I hope, up to the airport. [9:59:06 AM] Because that just makes sense. I guess what I'm saying is I just want to strike an early note on that piece. That part of the conversation won't go away. It hasn't been officially answered for the majority of the people in Austin. It doesn't matter what my policy maker position is. I've said I support rail many times. So I'm going to work toward that. When that day arrives, we still have all the calendar days in advance of it. We still need to move people, which I'm hoping, you know, will take a big crack at in calendar 17 and 18 forward, but it would be helpful, I think, to engage a more public conversation on how to address. That's a real gap. We talk about gaps where housing is, and we talk about gaps where we want to line up housing with transportation options, but we have transportation options, and we haven't actually -- and there's gaps there to get people to those sites. >> So within the transit discussion, what you're pointing out is a huge issue. Again, not just for us, but for cities, it's the first and last mile issue. You don't have a place to park the car to get on the train or the bus. If you do get on the train or the bus, when you get off the train or the bus, you obviously don't have your car because you just drove that in. So how do you get from there to where it is that you're wanting to go? So to add on to the comments that you made, I'm excited that this spring we'll have more things being tested in our community that address that first and last mile. Right now Kansas City has bribj operating. [10:01:07 AM] It's one of the ways to address that mile. We'll get here this spring. I'm looking forward to that as a lot more innovative and creative solutions to really hit the first and last mile conundrum that we have. >> To take the history even further back, 2004 we were fighting about the scope of the red line project. It was built on the cheap. If you remember, it was advertised to be $90 million, and we had an existing track, and we didn't have real estate around it. So your point is well made, but the comment I would make is we have a red line that we got very inexpensively, relatively speaking, but it relates to a further point that I want to make in terms of collaboration. When the city, for example, is thinking about things like, for example, if you were to expand the convention center. That's a way to collaborate on the resources downtown. Aster tree said, an awful lot of the pressure we're feeling in the community is getting people downtown on the limited arteries that we have. One of my concerns is whether we have the infrastructure downtown to really deal with folks once they get here and the best possible fashion. You can go to Denver, for example, and see a really interesting development where they've collaborated and they have used surface and below surface and created development around it. We talked about building a courthouse in the community with little thought on how that would relate to transit. We're relying on our park systems, we're relying on our streets to deal with the infrastructure of folks coming into downtown. I just want to kind of put a bug in your ear that as we collectively think about the downtown and the changes to downtown or outlying areas, we really need to be thoughtful about how our governmental structures, how what we do correlates with transit. [10:03:14 AM] As I said, this red line was sort of built on the cheap. A number of us -- how I got involved in transit was arguing that it should have come all the way to C home. It should be a robust transit center for us. Well, the decision was made to go otherwise. We need to keep a weather eye on how as we're bringing people efficiently into downtown, where the resources are in our downtown area to get people into downtown, out of downtown, and around downtown and the city, obviously, plays as big a role of that as we do. From a forward looking standpoint, I think we all need to work together to make sure we've got the infrastructure to support all of this. >> Ms. Kitchen and then Ms. Pool. >> Go ahead. >> I just want to note we have our staff here also. So at any point, if they're interested or if it's appropriate to our discussion, we've got our transportation staff, our planning staff. I don't know if the housing -- the housing codes are here also. >> Ms. Pool? >> I did want to respond. I also wanted to get back over to Terry Mitchell on the piece that you said about the courthouse and there was no conversation about any kind of transit in that area, I think -- I thought, at least, there was quite a bit of transportation. There was quite a bit of bus lines that went into the area where the county has its campus. Can you respond to that? >> That is correct. I believe board chair cooper was referring to the actual property on which the courthouse would have been sited. >> Right. >> And potentially could there be a missioned use with the transit -- mixed use with the transit. >> I think there was conversation about all the lines and all the people coming because it was centrally located. >> Right. >> Okay. All right. >> I've live in Austin a pretty long time. [10:05:27 AM] Even before gateway was built or the arboretum and now the domain. We have tried to move centers -- IBM was built in a cattle field. I think because the council has limited to direct, we can encourage, but we can't tell big employer where is to build. Apple is north. So there's a cache to being downtown. And a lot of that is because that is the center of government. We've got the capital. There's a natural magnetism that brings people here. I think we have tried to have work centers further out and encourage people to live in those areas, and then they become densely populated as well, and it continues to push out even further. I think the conversation that sometimes is talked about was sprawl. That's actually an affirmative action on development and business decisions on where to build so they can have space to have their employees live around them and it's not necessarily something the council has encouraged but we're responding to market forces we can't control. I do know that the city has made -- to encourage development further out, making it easier for people to get into work. They can have a yard, parks nearby, maybe the schools are better or who knows? So I just wants to draw a circle around the things that this council can actually, as you know, the things that we can control and the things that we can encourage and -- and kind of through our rhetoric have -- have -- have -- urge people to do certain things. But we're limited on what we can actually do. >> I agree, I think your imagine Austin plan with the series of notes is a great step to encourage some of that growth to have in those places so that if you have a density node as I think on south 35 if I saw the map correctly, then people living in that area may have the choice to work there and not try to commute downtown. [10:07:46 AM] You're not going to control everybody. That's not the intent, but you can try to put some planning techniques in place that will help disperse some of that demand. >> Pool: I think we have, I think previous councils have, I think this council is alert to that and sensitive to that, too. But we also have to acknowledge that people don't always stay with the same employer. >> That's right. >> Pool: Then they find themselves having to commute across town, which they don't necessarily want to do, they start thinking about well should I move? They don't know if they're going to stay with that. So it's very -- it's very moveable. Thank you. Mr. Casar? >> Casar: Thank you all so much for coming. Obviously I think that the primary focus from the community on this has been about -- about route changes and increasing frequency, which I think is really important, but as far as laying the groundwork for the -- for the future, especially on dedicating right-of-way for transit and eventually getting more rail lines, can you all just talk to us very briefly about how this sets us up better for that. Of course I know on the city's side, if we talk about floating bonds and dedicating right-of-way, doing better land use planning, but as far as connections 2025 goes on the capital metro side, how is this getting us closer to that future of having more dedicated right-of-way for mass transit? >> I think two responses. First is that the best way to get there in terms of the planning that we are doing with this effort is to put in place the types of service, the frequencies, that will generate strong ridership, in corridors. Strong ridership, full buses, packed buses where we have to add more service, where we're getting cases, you know, you don't want to have this, but potentially what we call pass-by, where the bus is so full that it can't even pick up another person, those are the types of corridors where the next steps are made to do the things that are needed to take transit up to the next level. [10:09:48 AM] So our intent here is to build the ridership demand and provide the types of service that will generate full buses and well utilized service, then we have a much stronger case to go to rob and others and say, hey, we need help. We've got demand out the doors, we have to have some travel time advantage, priority treatment, other things that will help transit again move to that next level. Second part of the answer briefly is that the project connect effort, which is underway now and will be gaining more public -- public exposure, so to speak, early next year, is really focused on what you are speaking to, laying the groundwork for the high capacity potentially rail additional brt, et cetera. So it's really a combination of the two planning efforts, this one does call for additional metro rapid lines, three additional lines, including I think some exciting opportunities like a -- like a cross-town coming right through the heart of the city. From -- from the west to the east. Manor road Mueller area. So this is part of it, but part of it will also be in connections -- I'm sorry, project connect. >> Casar: And you have obviously we're all working off of a comp plan which is very helpful, but do you all have or will you have at some point good estimates for us, especially as we go through the mapping, processing codenext, about how much additional housing that you would need in order to get to that place you don't want to be at but where the buses are so full you are passing by people. >> We have in formative stages now. Absolutely. That's the objective that we've had for some time to be able to go to the city and other partners and say if this level of density, this level of walkability happens, then here's the level of service that we can provide. [10:11:58 AM] That we're confident can be supported. They are so intricately related. Synching them up is one of the ongoing goals we are trying to work towards. >> One last question. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, Ms. Houston, Ms. Kitchen, Ms. Pool again unless somebody wants to give up their spot. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Thank you, again, first of all I want to thank Mr. Mitchell for addressing something that's so obvious to so many people for a long time. But you were able to say very succinctly and very powerful and people will listen to you when you say it. We continue to have that disconnect with having the jobs coming in a central area, yet the people can't afford to live here, so they are being pushed or moving because of the economy out further. I had a report from txdot that 29, almost 30,000 traffic trips come in on 969 every day coming into Austin and going back out to places like webberville, Austin's colony, you know, places east. But I don't know we're talking about synching up the ridership and the housing and the jobs. And it seems like we're working against cross purposes. Because we are trying to put housing on the corridors but we don't have the jobs there to support the housing. Which comes first? The housing or the jobs? My contention is that we need to put the jobs there, then have the houses go around them. But you all need the houses and the ridership there. But the ridership is only going to be where the jobs are, the jobs currently are downtown. So can you help me think through how is a better way to do what I think we're both trying to do is move jobs out to other places so people in those areas can -- can live there, work there, play there, worship there and they don't have to bring their cars into downtown. So can you help us kind of strategize how that would happen. You all are depending on the people to get the ridership numbers before you will put routes there. [10:14:05 AM] No. We get the jobs there, we will just keep putting the people there. With no transit options. I think that's a disservice to the people. >> Job 1, that's what we need to do. I -- I -- I don't want to answer anything off the top of my head because, you know, if you -- if you go to a suburban area, historically you have seen housing come first and then immediate service jobs, you know, convenience, retail, medical office and then you start seeing some multi-family and then finally you see critical primary jobs as the last phase. We're talking -- what we're talking about is trying to put some primary jobs like councilmember pool said, IBM out north in a field which really dramatically changed which is one of the reasons that north Austin, I'm going to tell you wells branch probably occurred because of IBM. You know, that area where success was tied to that. So it is, you are exactly right, putting a primary job at some location will -- will become a magnet. It really will. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: Thank you, councilmember Houston. When I was -- when I was thinking was was related to that. Of I wanted to hone in again on what we were saying about affordable housing and, Todd, you highlighted for us a key issue for us, you know, two different policy issues that are not in sync, I don't know if they ever can be. That is our efforts to make sure that we have affordable housing all over the city. Which is one of the policy, you know, tenets that we have talked a lot about. That juxtaposed against what capital metro needs to look for in terms of extending transit service. You answered that a minute ago to councilmember Casar about looking at the density and the kinds of, you know, factors that you need. So my question is another step to that and that is other kinds of services that capital metro provides. Like that are more first and last mile. [10:16:07 AM] And in other words if we -- if we're talking about affordable housing out to the west, for example, or even further to the south, where at this point in time anyway it doesn't make sense for transit, a bus, what -- what is the thinking of capital metro at this point in terms of first and last mile? I know a lot of these are policy questions. We also have some services. For first and last mile. Could you speak to how those kinds of services help supplement the bus, particularly in areas where it's not yet there in terms of the ridership? >> Yes, ma'am. The -- I think there's two pieces. One is what capital metro has done. We are seeing other transit systems do, which is provide what we might call flexible service, dial a ride, demand response, things of that nature directly from the transit system. So we have a few routes like that today. The service plan, connections 2025 calls for some additional and then one of the -- I think fairly innovative approaches that's been proposed here is to have mobility hubs which ties directly into what the city did with smart city initiative. At those places you can have not only capital metro provides its service, but that's where new, as the mayor mentioned, brj, chariot, other providers, microtransit is sometimes referred to, could help supplement the traditional bus service. So it's probably a combination of things that capital metro can do directly and things we can do through partnership. Which could again run a gamut from tncs, electric bikes, B cycle, up to brj and chariot and some of these pooled microtransit type of services that can help make that connection from these places where we're trying to focus on that high frequency corridor type of service to that first and last mile or perhaps a couple of miles in some cases. [10:18:13 AM] >> Might I mention just one addition to that, which is our van pool service. We subsidize van pools, that's a pretty efficient way to help folks. One of the great things that technology let's us do now is aggregate riders quickly and efficiently. And so we've got a program where we subsidize folks who can get-together and collectively get in the van and come in from the outlying areas and that's another way, I think, supplementing doesn't make sense always to have a 40 person bus going through the neighborhood. But if we can aggregate people and then help them with the transportation solution. In a variety of ways. >> Kitchen: Just as a quick follow-up, Mr. Spiller, if you wouldn't mind talking for just a minute about the mobility hubs. I think this is a good example of where our staff, through our strategic -- our strategic transportation plan is -- you know, on the ground kind of thing that coordinates with capital metro. And I know that we may have -- people may remember this, but maybe only slightly from we talked about this somewhat as part of the smart cities application, but I think it's a factor of what you all are looking at in the strategic mobility plan; is that right? >> Right. Robert spiller, director of transportation for the city of Austin. And I want to thank capital metro for making this presentation as well. During the smart cities, councilmember, I think is what you are referring to, we really tried to define sort of the next generation of park and rides or transit center. Trying to come up, understanding there's new technologies coming that may lend themselves to different regimes of how to get to and from those transit centers. Especially the ones closer into town and trying to develop a broader range of access menus for our citizens. So, you know, we've got about -- we've thought about the coming of the automated vehicle, if we have automated transit pods circulated in and out of specific areas as -- as futuristic as that might sound. [10:20:15 AM] There's places in -- in Europe that are deploying those technologies now in limited spaces. Deploying more shared services like bike share as well as various car share models, certain mobilities of service, trying to build in more opportunities. We had also gone to the level of trying to think about how we could use these mobile hubs to solve some of our other challenges like food deserts and the like by allowing farmers markets on the weekends or during certain periods of the day at a parking platform, if you will. So those are all things. Park and rides, parking access, is an ongoing discussion between Todd and me all the time, about how close is too close versus not close enough. You pointed out the triangle is well used and certainly just as close as the mlk station. So although it's hard to go back and reretrofit previous decisions that have been made, I assure you it's an ongoing discussion every time capital metro thinks about putting in a transit facility or something. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, Ms. Pool. >> Pool: I just had one last thing to ask you about crestview station and mid town commons, sort of bounces off what rob just said. [Laughter]. It's my fault for having my chair pushed back. [Laughter]. >> Mayor Adler: Looked like the debate there for just a second. [Laughter]. >> Pool: It could be a cartoon. During holidays when we have special events like during acl or south-by, is it possible to talk to the owners at mid town commons about having some kind of special parking offering for folks who want to get on the train? And then that would zip them right down to the convention center. >> Yes. >> Pool: Are you doing that and I just am not aware? [10:22:17 AM] >> We have not done that as of yet, but that's something that we could certainly undertake. We have had multiple occasions, discussions with the various owners at highland mall, now highland A.C.C. About that same kind of concept. >> Yeah, because there's a stop right across the street, yeah, yeah. >> That's something that we can keep -- >> Pool: That actually might be even more -- more productive. With A.C.C. Then we could advertise it right there on airport and it might even be easier for people to get in and out. >> Right. >> Pool: Yeah. Well, I would like to follow that conversation and let folks in district 7 especially know that's something that maybe possible toward the end of the year when we have all of the winter holiday celebrations downtown, might be a first opportunity for people to try it out, also certainly new year's eve coming back so people can be safe while they're out having -- celebrating the new year. Could you keep my office advised. >> You bet. >> Pool: That would be traffic. Thank you so much, and thank you, Mr. Spiller. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? All right, thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thanks. Terry, thank you. >> Mr. Mayor? If it be -- okay, if we could do 49 next, which is the age friendly Austin plan. We have some people presenting. It won't be a long presentation. >> Mayor Adler: That would be fine. Let's call out number 49, people waiting to do that. We have other people waiting for the open government partnership as well. So we have other people waiting for stuff. But this is quick. >> Kitchen: Huh? >> Mayor Adler: But this is quick. >> Kitchen: Uh-huh. On the age friendly plan, action plan, you have a resolution on the agenda for the 3rd. For the council to adopt the age friendly action plan. And support that as part of imagine Austin. So we have a very brief presentation about what that is. [10:24:25 AM] >> Mayor Adler: We will do the open government partnership one next. >> Thank you. Thank you council woman kitchen, mayor Adler and the rest of city council, although I think we've lost a few. >> Kitchen: They'll be back, I'm sure. >> We appreciate you inviting us to come and talk to you about the age friendly Austin strategic plan. We have three specific asks. >> Mayor Adler: Would you state your name for the record, too, please, introduce yourself for the people watching on TV and the like. >> Sally van sickle, I am the district 9 appointee for the commission on seniors as well as the chair of age friendly Austin work group. Which is the commission aarp Austin up and a number of community partners. We have three asks today. We would like to ask city council to adopt the plan that we've put in place. Act as a sounding board for us, because it is a living, breathing plan that will change over time. And be a resource to us. I would like to give a little bit of history about the commission on seniors Austin up. Thank you, for those people that were not involved in city government possibly back in 2010, Austin in the 2010 census, Austin had the nation's fastest growing population of ages 55 to 64 and second fastest 65 and over. Between 2010 and 2014, Texas presented to people 65 and over increased 50%, so it's not slowing down. It's actually increasing. Austin is still key in that. In 2012 mayor Leffingwell putting together the mayor's task force on aging. This was a 23 member group spread across the community. We had government, we had non-profits and the public sector involved in this. [10:26:27 AM] As well as a 15 member advisory council, out of that year-long task force came a report entitled embracing an age diverse Austin. A number of recommendations came out of that, for the city specifically, to focus on age-inclusionive policies. Integrating those policies into the city decision making. I think we added a great step in adding those two amendments to the imagine Austin plan and then joining the aarp world health organization age friendly communities initiative. We did get that designation because we had the mayor's task force on aging. It's five years later, they are looking at us and asking what have you done since? So that is why we put together this strategic plan as the next step for the city of Austin. We focus on affordable housing. As you know, this is an issue for everyone in Austin, but it is a key issue for a large portion of our senior population. And integrating older adults into civic life. We really want to be engaged and I say we because I'm heading into that age group. But we want to be engaged in what is going on in the city. We to be involved -- we want to be involved, we have a lot of experience that we can bring to the table. I will say while you always hear about the silver tsunami, it's not a tsunami, it's a reservoir, something to be utilized. Try not to think of it as something that's going to come in and wipe everything out, but something to be used. For those recommendations there were two for vehicles of implementation, one was to create the commission on seniors. Thank you, you've been doing this for me. So the result was our commission and we have had -- well, let's -- all right. So we put a mission statement in place. The commission has been implemented about three years ago. First we're to focus on issues related to the senior population for the Austin area. [10:28:33 AM] Evaluate and recommend programs, practices, policies, the create -- to create a positive impact and reduce the burden on seniors. Look at the needs of seniors in our community and advise city council on what those needs are. And then promote the contributions of seniors. To -- that are cultural, economic and historical, of value to Austin. So accomplishments that we have made as a commission in those three years, we supported ending the homelessness for veterans. 45% of the homeless veterans in Austin are over the age of 55. We reviewed the tax swap proposal for aid and we support the conclusions of city staff, that it would negatively impact our seniors. We've advocated to you on behalf of the older adults for improvements in the sidewalk, mobility, signage, signals and lighting. And expanding social service contracts. We've formed a number of work groups around the domains of what constitutes an age friendly city. In order -- and we've included community stakeholders in that to move us forward in building that age friendly Austin. We have also at our commission meetings hosted a number of presentations. We had a very interesting presentation on cooperative housing. It's the boomer collaborative. Really focused on the boomer generation and doing co-op housing. Motel has come in several times -- mobility has coming in several times and then a great presentation from Jackie [indiscernible] At the UT school of social work about the wrap around models for seniors. That tells you what we have been doing the last several years. Community goals that came out of the task force were to focus on healthy living, transition coalition, alliance to -- develop a health outreach program for low income neighborhoods and food availability for older adults. [10:30:43 AM] Food Independence, caregiver U is a great support, home based support services, home modification and repair services, making it easier for our older folks to find those people and get assistance and then focusing on an informed community. Ensuring that information is available, whether it is via website, phone, print material that is a central clearinghouse for information about senior services and activities, what activities are available to them that they would be comfortable attending. And developing public awareness campaign for a lot of issues. There are several listed here, but also business continuity planning around our older population. The second vehicle of implementation was an crease and planning organization for seniors as well as creating a robust aging and disability resource center. From that we developed Austin [indiscernible] It is a non-profit that is helping and Theresa Ferguson here with me today is the Ed for that, she graciously volunteered her time for a number of months and Austin up can now pay her a nominal amount of money, it is progressing. We are very excited about it. With that I will turn the rest of the presentation over to Theresa. >> Thank you, Sally. I'm Theresa Ferguson. Back in the early 2000s I served on the music commission as its chair. So in 2003 we moved my husband's parents here, here I was supporting live music and promoting music and musicians and then I saw my city, my cool city through the eyes of a couple of octagenarians with health challenges. That changed my opinion a little bit. Still a cool city, I think we need to pivot just a little bit to view urban planning through a different lens. [10:32:44 AM] That's why I'm so excited to be here, thank you. Austin up we are raising the profile of our senior population and we are preparing the next generation for the future of aging. This is not a front line service provider. We truly are an organization that connects the dots between the non-profits, the state agencies, seniors, boomers, caregivers, just kind of moving Austin forward. We're also working with our technologists, entrepreneurs, people in their garages maybe developing wearable devices, apps and services for the aging space but maybe don't have a voice. What I have found from talking to these folks, when they want to talk to vcs for venture capital, aging is not sexy. So we are putting a spotlight on those folks, too, to give them some recognition in our community for the good work that they are doing. Our motto at Austin up is: Aging, everyone's doing it. [Laughter]. We have early sponsors, non-profit formed in 2014, lots of great community advocates, wonderful people supporting our work and one of the key areas that we're working in is livability and thus the age friendly Austin five-year plan. Just a little bit of background, the age friendly, the network of age friendly communities is something that the world health organization and aarp have devised and have nurtured since 2012 the network has grown to 102 communities representing more than 51 million constituents. In Texas, this is very important, mayor and city council members, Austin is leading the way toward becoming age friendly. So we're very, very proud of that. The process is outlined in this next slide. We talk about -- about entering the network, I think someone mentioned earlier back in 2012, 20032013 when the mayor's task force was doing its report, we earned the recognition of an age friendly city, however since then nothing has been done, so we are at risk of losing that designation. [10:35:03 AM] So this is the process and it is a process. I'm happy to say that aarp, especially aarp Texas, has provided the tools and the best practices to help us along the way. So what we did is we worked on our age friendly Austin plan, we used a little bit of a -- of a framework, devised by the world health organization, the eight domains of livability. So things like housing, transportation, things that you have talked about so much, it's like looking at those areas through the eyes of an older -- an older community member. And civic participation in employment, communication, respect and social inclusion, it's -- it's been a framework that has really worked for this effort. Worked for us. Moving on, let me tell you a little bit about the process. The city of Austin commission on seniors, they different community members. And what we did was we studied plans from other cities and best practices from other cities. 7 we created strategies and goals under each domain, along with many community partners. We hosted public events and this, I think, was the -- just the best part of the whole plan. Maybe Sally you agree. So we went to Anderson mill limited district in far northwest Austin. We went to the Gus Garcia recreation center on east rundberg and also a session at the states man building on south congress. We invited people from the community to come in and say, okay, we have this plan, we think this plan outlined some serious goals and strategies under each of these domains all right what do you think and what did we miss? The picture on this slide indicates that people who filled out these little stickies, they went from station to station to tell us exactly what they thought. We captured all of their feedback and we built this into our age friendly Austin plan. [10:37:10 AM] So we hosted the public events. We led the outreach to other commissions to get their input and we did. We cross-checked with our age friendly Austin plan with the imagine Austin plan and we were so excited to find that there were many areas of overlap. And we even, you know, did a little work to establish some first year objectives. Maybe some easy wins that we thought could be part of an assessment, you know, to -- to determine where we are and then things that, you know, would be easy, that wouldn't require a lot of financial backing. So the early support that we've had, again, from the different commissions, aarp Texas, the Texas alliance for retired Americans, one of the things that has grown from this effort is I did a presentation about the plan and a group of lgbt seniors came up and said you know you think that you have some issues, our community has major issues. So now they've formed this elders coals underneath the -- coalition underneath the Austin umbrella. So good things are happening. Good things are happening. Then the most exciting thing, the milken institute is a think tank on aging. They liked our motto, they heard about a lot of good things happening in Austin, we are now being considered a best city for successful aging. One of the things that we also did, we hosted a 55 plus in atx job and volunteer fair. I truly think this will be a legacy for this whole effort because we had to turn away, cut registration at 275 people. We ended up with more than 350 people attending. 53 employers who had jobs, paid jobs and volunteer opportunities at this event and people calling me and saying, I desperately need, maybe I've retired from a job, but I need extra income. This is going to be crucial as we move forward. [10:39:13 AM] So austinup is already making plans to hold several of these similar events around the city in different geographic areas. So that's going to be crucial moving forward. We're also talking to -- to some venture capitalists and some entrepreneurs and we're planning a boomer, calling it a boomer venture event to kind of get those folks together for early 2017. And south-by-southwest, last year I attended with, you know, looking at -- with an aging hat on, maybe 20 to 25 panels related to aging innovation and Austin definitely needs to be part of that whole, you know, process. So we have been accepted to present next year. We're presenting the emerging senior care and technology at home panel, austinup and a couple of my board members. So we are with this age friendly Austin plan, we are moving Austin into and -- right front and center with the longevity marketplace, the longevity economy. So the next steps, this is something that we are going to do. We are going plan, do some outlines, you know, process and resources, identifying a broader list of task leaders, communicate. We anticipate that we will present a report and an event related to the state of aging in Austin every year. Just to tell you how we're doing on this plan because it's going to evolve as we get more people involved and more organizations. So then prioritize. Our committee, our working group anticipates a horizontal prioritization of all of our goals and strategies as we move forward. Again, aging, simply another lens that we have to include in all of urban planning. So, again, our request. Our request of you is to adopt the age friendly Austin action plan at your Thursday meeting and support, promote and work toward Austin, not only becoming age friendly, but age Progressive. [10:41:14 AM] We need feedback from you in what's going on in your districts and identifying key constituents who could help us along the way. And if -- if anyone asks, well, why should the city of Austin support this demographic, this particular group, I say to you, first, many programs that are good for older adults, for example, safe streets and sidewalks, benefit people of all ages. And, second, making Austin age friendly not only serves today's older population, the effort also supports younger generations. The elders of tomorrow. Because when you think about millennials, they're the first generation in human history who can not only anticipate reaching the age of 90 in larger numbers but will spend about one third of their lives in what we now refer to as old people. So thank you very much for letting us present to you today. >> Mayor Adler: Very good presentation, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anybody have any questions? Ms. Pool? >> Gallo: Thank you, both Sally and Theresa. I remember listening to you on Kut, a long time ago. [Laughter]. I would like to find out if I might be able to have you all do a presentation in district 7? And I would like to talk with you about the impact for our folks who are aging at home, aging in their homes, and how they on their defined budgets that come -- for example, like I mean we talk about property taxes. But specifically the effects of the new FEMA flood maps. I have a significant population around some of the tributaries to shoal creek, the creek. Who are on fixed income, they are elderly, they were hoping to age out in their homes, but they are finding that now they have to buy flood insurance and so they are looking for different ways to address that and just kind of have a conversation maybe provide some -- some support. [10:43:24 AM] We've already had some conversations with our watershed protection staff and everything but I think maybe you all might find not only some additional people who would be interested in ageup, but you might be able to expand some of the things that you talk about and would also benefit some of the folks in the southern part of the city who are on the southern creeks who are also have similar issues confronting them. We have a fairly active group of folks in district 7 who are trying to work through all of this to help people who are hoping to stay in their homes and they don't have the ability necessarily to take on another job, but it great to know that there were job fairs for older folks and I -- I really, really appreciate what you all are doing and I was really honored to have the ability to be one of the co- sponsors on this, as I completely support and -- I'm one of y'all, too. [Laughter]. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: I'll echo that. I would love to see a presentation in south Austin. So we can talk about that. But I just want to congratulate you all. The commission on seniors is really a young commission. You all are really active and this is an exam perfectly the kind of work that the commission can do to help the council with these policy issues. So this is a roadmap for us that is just wonderful that we can think through. So I look forward to continuing working with you all. I want to congratulate everybody. I know we have some more members here, raise your hands if you're on the commission, yes? So thank you all for your work. It's very, very impressive. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Report is impressive, the numbers, demographics are overwhelming. >> Houston: Thank you so much. Sometimes as the oldest member of the council, I feel left out. Sometimes when they talk about folks, they don't think about us as active, vibrant participants in this community. [10:45:28 AM] So I appreciate it. I would love to have you, to introduce you to the folks the conley-guerrero where we have a huge senior population that's there on a daily basis and family elder care has a living space right across the street, so that they are aware of this and also have you reach out to the gray panthers. >> All right, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. We will now have the open government partnership briefing. >> Good morning, mayor and council. We would like to talk to you today about an initiative that came before us last February -- >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead and introduce yourself for the record. >> Thank you, I'm [indiscernible] O'connor, the city of Austin's chief innovation officer. We are going to be talking about the initiative open government partnership that came before us last February. The quick presentation for you today, we'll be giving you a brief overview of what this initiative is, talk about some projects that we would like to make commitments on and get your feedback on -- on those particular projects. And just like other presentations that I have given to you, the innovation office here is really channeling the voices of many on this particular initiative. We have been working with the law department, [indiscernible], who leads our open government division, Brian oaks our chief equity officer working on open government, we'll be working closely together, we have Jeanette Goodall from the city clerk's office and Bob [indiscernible], in addition to the innovation office. We have been partnering with leadership Austin, open Austin and vision zero atx. [10:47:31 AM] As community members have agreed to hold us accountable through this process. So what is the open government partnership. It is an international coalition of 70 governments and their communities who work together to commit to make their governments more open. And in recent years they've decided to come down to the local level and I want to speak a little bit to what openness means in their frame. It involves technology and innovation, which is about -- not just embracing the role of technologies and making sure those technologies are open and accessible, but make sure that citizens have the capacity to use technologies and that we're not leaving anyone out. Transparency, publishing information on government activities and decisions in a comprehensive timely and free manner. Accountate, sort of being able to justify government actions and act upon criticisms or requirements and expect and accept responsibility for our actions and civic participation. Mobilizing citizens in public debate, providing input, make contributions to responsive and innovative and effective governance. These -- these principles are really what we have started talking about as a means to an end. Openness gives us better outcomes. And what we like about this partnership is that it gives us an ability to focus on those qualities that help make us effective. The -- the open government partnership pioneer program is a way to join in partnerships to commit to projects that advance openness and -- in our governance. This is a one-year, two-way pilot. It's both a pilot for the open government partnership and a pilot for us. And such as the pilot, we are doing this in order to learn what it would be like to make commitments to these principles and advance them in one year. And we're also -- the open government partnership is learning how to support cities, regional governments and localities like they've been doing for national governments. [10:49:37 AM] In February, we passed a resolution to compete to be one of the first cities in local governments to join this partnership. We were selected in April as the U.S. City to join the partnership. And we're about to talk to you today about five projects that we have selected to advance our commitments and those projects are something that we want to up our game. We're amplifying ongoing efforts. We're not creating additional requirements. These projects, these commitments will be selected and announced internationally in december-atmosphere the open government partnership -- at the open government partnership summit. So we are one of 15 local and regional governments who have been selected. Here's a list of all of the other governments. Ontario Canada, Scotland, Indonesia, buenos Ares, Madrid, France. You can see we have quite an international stage here. We met with a lot of this government in Washington D.C. Back in September. While it seems like we don't have a lot in common, when you are struggling to make commitments together with your communities and implement those commitments, that's where we sort of join together and learn from one another. So our projects that we are looking at, we have selected them in order to solve for pain points that are common. You know, this morning like many mornings has a lot of talks about networks and strategic plans and coalitions and people who are trying to solve for the tough challenges before us. And we, too, are tapping into a network and coalitions and we're using this to solve -- to do in order to think. Right? So get out there and to get to action so that we know what the next steps are. So these projects are co--created with the community in the -- in the hack-a-thon we went and found pain points, back in may we've been talking to a number of community members, looking at all of our efforts that we have done from imagine Austin to the spirit of east Austin to the quality of life initiatives. [10:51:44 AM] We are welcoming participation and additional participants at any time. Not just in the creation of these projects, but throughout the development and implementation of these projects. We're going to amplify and elevate but not duplicate city staff time and resources. We are going to complete a portion of the larger city effort in one year. We want to see how well we can do together to get to action. And this is providing an international stage for city successes. A lot of members of the open government partnership are very interested in what Austin has done in the past and will do with this initiative and they are looking very much to learn from us. So one project is about taking the homeless outreach street team, which I briefed with you last August. And demonstrate what a collaborative approach looks like to achieve a greater understanding and shared reasoning on a complex issue. This project would be geared towards strengthening collaboration and decision making and furthering the principles of civic participation and transparency. Leadership Austin, when we were having conversations, they said we would really love to see how we can make -- make sure that we get shared reasoning, not just positioning, around issues. And given where the state of this initiative is and that we're renewing for another year and we've said this homeless outreach street team helps us learn where gaps are in the service delivery system, that we feel like this is a great opportunity to up our game on civic participation and transparency. Project 2, and this is where we would speak to our chief equity officer, is about establishing an equity assessment tool. And this helps us address the pain point of tracking progress on something that's very ambitious and important, supporting decision making and furthering our commitments to civic participation, transparency and accountability. >> Hello, everyone, I'm Brian oaks the new chief equity officer for the city. [10:53:47 AM] Honored to be here today. But -- >> Mayor Adler: Welcome to you, by the way. We're all excited you're here. >> Thank you. I am too. Much when Kerry came to me and talked about the open governments partnership, I really thought that the work that we planned on doing around the development of an equity assessment tool fit really nicely in with, you know, the overall objectives of the initiative. In that -- even if the resolution that -- that you all passed, was really sort of the spirit of civic participation. As we developed this tool, transparency as well as accountability really being essential parts of how we sort of develop this equity tool that city staff will utilize in order for us to sort of have this lens of equity as we sort of budget, as we develop projects as we move forward. So I'm really excited that we can have the equity assessment tool be a part of one of the projects that was featured as part of this overall initiative and really look forward to working with you and your staff as we sort of engage the community in this process of beginning to develop the equity assessment tool. >> We'll go through the next projects and then open up for your feedback for any of them. The third project would be to adapt our existing open government operating board executive committee to oversee broader open government efforts including these projects. We want to improve collaboration with the focus on civic participation and accountability by doing this. Project 4, analyze city public meeting efficiencies. We want to increase our understanding and promote your ability to make decisions with a focus on transparency and accountability. Create -- create a project tracking website using our open government commitment as the first projects. We want to be able to show progress towards ambitious goals with a focus on transparency and accountability. [10:55:50 AM] And interestingly, this one came from some folks who participated on the hack-a-thon with us. They said why would you just focus on three to five. Why wouldn't you have a much larger platform for everybody to contribute their projects. So we're bringing that voice in here as well. When the open government partnership looks at our commitments, they're asking us to find the sweet spot of a commitment in a project. We have to find things that are impactful, relevant, measurable and feasible. Therefore we are looking for some ambition between being -- making an impact and being feasible. We are looking for it to be co-created and inclusive. If we're going to be relevant, we're going to be impactful, we need to make sure that we do this together. We want to be specific. We have one year to make progress. And that's sort of let's make sure that we know what we can measure and that we'll get there. When we looked at these evaluation criteria for evaluating our commitments, it lined up fairly nicely to the council manager form of government. Right? We can tell you what we believe is feasible and measurable and you all can hold us accountable. Are we being properly impactful and relevant to your districts and together we can be fairly ambitious on advancing our open government goals. One of the things that I believe that Austin is contributing to this conversation on open government is -- is this concept that openness is going to help us get better outcomes. When we talk about all of the issues, like you've been talking about this morning, whether it's mobility or affordability or end age a city to -- enabling a city to adapt with its citizens, we need coalitions, we need networks, we need relationships and we need to be able to do this work together and everybody that we've talked to in the open government partnership is looking to see what Austin does with this and learn from it. So they are very excited for our participation. And with that, we would like your feedback on these particular projects and commitments. [10:57:56 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Any comments or thoughts? Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: I wondered if you could help me understand leadership Austin's comment about shared reasoning. I'm far enough away from all of that language it doesn't -- that's not apparently -- it's not apparent to me what the distinction is between what they were describing as an unwelcome outcome and the shared reasoning outcome. >> Absolutely. I hope that I am able to speak confidently with their voice. But ultimately, there's a number of things that are highly complex, whether it's mobility, affordability, and oftentimes they see in the media nationally and locally a lot of positions represented. But not a lot of making sense. What is our shared reasoning, how do we all frame the problem and know what it is that we are solving and it was as much about our relationships with each other as it was our relationships with the media and with other organizations. And interestingly enough, some of the other partners that we have worked with in these 15 who were joining the partnership, they, too, are focused on understandability, comprehensibility and shared reasoning around the topics before us. So it's -- it's a bit confusing, but that's we want to know how we come together to frame the problems that are before us so that we tackle them in a better way. >> Tovo: Could you talk about it in relationship to the project where -- the number one on your list of the host program. By the way since you are here I know this isn't the immediate or the topic before us, but your office is doing a fabulous job really in providing leadership for the host team, so thank you. Can you talk about shared reasoning >> Absolutely. So the homeless outreach street team, by being deployed on the streets is uncovering gaps that none of us could see or imagine. Everybody is doing a lion's share of work to end homelessness, to provide housing, to get people to services, but there's still areas in which we're not quite closing those gaps. [11:00:05 AM] And by, you know, our front line police officers, our front line medics, our mental behavior health counselors and the coalition of folks who are providing services and working to end homelessness, we are all gonna come together to map out where the opportunities and the challenges lie. So we're surfacing those user journeys that we shared with you in the homeless outreach street team presentation to demonstrate what the citizen journey is, if you are a homeless individual or individual experiencing homeless on the street, we're able to say these are the specific gaps. You know, I came here for a job, the job didn't work out. I'm now stuck and I need help getting out. That was one of the stories. We want to make sure we have proper understanding of how people might slide into homelessness so we can prevent that while we're also planning to end homelessness. So through the efforts of what they're uncovering when they're proactively engaged in the streets we're gonna create a systems map, not only of the host experience but of the service provider experience, of the downtown Austin alliance business experience, and see how is everybody experiencing the pain points around this issue so that we can better inform our public policies to make sure and philanthropic investment as well, not just putting all of our money into one angle on this issue, but making sure all of the angles are covered because they're complex systems. >> Tovo: And so is the -- kind of the collective understanding of the pain points the shared understanding -- >> Exactly. >> Tovo: Okay, thank you. >> Business cans see the service providers, the service providers can see the businesses, the police can see the social providers, the social providers can see the police and everybody has alignment to everyone else's point of view. >> Tovo: Thank you for walking us through how that phrase has meaning within this context. [11:02:07 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Renteria and Ms. Garza. >> Renteria: When I was -- when the host came by, they have been asking for a couple iPads or laptops and I try to -- I had some surplus money that was left over and I was trying to give it to them but they said for some reason they couldn't take it because they couldn't get the software package installed, they didn't have it. I was wondering, have you noticed that they're having problems getting started or just something that they just haven't thought about it and, you know, they're reacting to it now that they have just formed? I'm hoping that's the case. >> Absolutely. We have had some operational struggles because of the multidisciplinary nature of the team, the police, medics, and non-city employees, that some of the it systems are other people's systems that are not run by the city of Austin. So that can create, you know, interoperability challenges that we're hoping to resolve over the course of the year. >> Renteria: Thank you for that information. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Garza. >> Project two, I'm very excited about. And I just want to make sure that we are -- it's kind of my comments also go online with what project five is, which is to track how we're doing things and the history of this. This has been in the -- I'm sure it's been in the queue like a lot of things are in the queue, for a while. But I just want to make sure we're reaching out to the original advocates who brought this to us and including them and making sure that their voice is heard and -- in any of this project because it was great to see a new group come and advocate for an issue and then I'd hate for them to get lost in the, oh, they're not listening to us and, you know, it to become a negative thing. [11:04:18 AM] We have been able to move on the health equity part of it which they were really excited about. So I guess comments on that os to please make sure we're reaching out to the original advocates of that. My second question/comment is, did we come up with the terms on slide 15, ambitious, cocreative, specific time bounds, who came up with those? >> Those are part of the open government partnerships' language for how do we know if our commitments are good. >> Okay. >> So they're gonna be helping us evaluate how well did we do this with our community? None of these commitments can come wholly from government or wholly from the community and so that was our sort of yardstick for judging whether or not we are setting the right commitments and we offer those descriptors up to you as well to let us know where you think we might evaluate ourselves so far on our efforts to set a commitment. >> Garza: Okay. I guess I just -- the word "Aambitious," it can be framed in different ways. You know, if women are ambitious it's a bad thing but if men are ambitious it's a good thing. So I guess I don't want it to be that we're -- because it's used in project two and I'd hate for us to be setting us up for a, well, that was an ambitious goal so we couldn't really do it, it was ambitious. So I guess with -- for project two, I think there's ways to set up the metrics where there are definable metrics, which you've addressed, [indiscernible] With regards to an equity tool, I just watched that 13thth documentary last night, which was great, and an example would be equity and policy making, the sentencing for cocaine is different from crack and that's an equity issue and I think we all understand why. And so I think if we set up metrics in -- make sure -- where we can, where we can set those metrics, set those metrics where it's clear and then obviously there's stuff that it's gonna be really hard to determine how that policy is applied and if there's equity in there. [11:06:35 AM] But I hope that made sense. >> Absolutely. And, you know, I'll add to that to say that I think the long-term vision, especially for the office of equity, is that we actually look at two sets of measures to really sort of evaluate our progress. One is what -- was what I would say are impact measures, right? I think if you look at gaps in income, inequality in the city or if you look at some of those sort of hard metrics around the health disparities we have, those really represent at the end of the day what type of impact are we having on communities, and they're going to be sort of measures that will take time for us to sort of change. We won't sort of see an immediate kind of change in those sort of types of stats very early on. But then I also think that we should look at a set of process measures as we adopt this tool to really sort of look at the effectiveness of how we utilize it, really sort of getting feedback internally from the staff that are utilizing the tool, and then also externally from the community, in terms of is that sort of civic engagement that is sort of a part and a spirit of this really happening effectively and really sort of for us to be -- to evaluate how where will we really doing it? I think that's why I was really excited about the opportunity to sort of have the equity assessment tool be a project of the open government partnership because it can sort of give us that process evaluation throughout this whole sort of journey as we develop it, to kind of give us that insight on how impactful it is, how relevant, and sort of evaluate that community engagement component of it. >> Garza: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen and then Ms. Pool. >> Kitchen: Also on project two, I wanted to make sure there was a connection to a related effort, and I don't think it's a different effort. I'm not sure how it's all working together, but we talked about an equity mapping tool as part of the regional affordability committee, and we also talked to our acm Lumbreras, I think, primarily about that, and I think that the last conversation I had was that these two things would meld. [11:08:57 AM] It's basically a mapping tool is an equity assessment on a -- geographically, and we had excellent testimony from professor Mueller from UT at our regional affordability committee meeting. So I want to make sure this project doesn't just go like this and doesn't connect to the mapping idea, because it's really -- it's a way to strengthen the equity assessment tool. >> Thank you definitely for the input and I think we can definitely sort of reach out and kind of connect and integrate the two together. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool and then Ms. Houston. >> Pool: Thank you for this update. This is pretty exciting, actually. I'm really happy to see the work that we're doing along these areas, open government is really important I think for the city in order to keep advancing the different policies that we support and make sure that the public hears what we're saying. Have you integrated the recommendations or read them, the recommendations from the community engagement task force? >> Absolutely. And, you know, that community engagement task force is gonna be informing how these projects move forward to advance the community engagement principles. >> Pool: And I see that on projects three and four. Those are kind of the -- seem like that would be a really good place to bring in some of the even the folks who were on that task force and see if they might be willing to help you with your efforts if there's room for that. And I'd also like to follow both projects three and four if there's anything I can do to lend support and help move things along if that's necessary. And then I just had one other question. When you were talking on your slide number 9 about the city projects would be cocreated with the community and amplify and elevate but not duplicate city efforts and staff and so far and you mentions the spirit of east Austin, so I was hoping to hear are either or both of you involved in the efforts we're undertaking? [11:10:59 AM] We had a briefing yesterday on a status for spirit of east Austin, and I was hopeful to know if you, Ryan - - and welcome to Austin. It's nice to meet you -- and Kerry, if there's a place for you at the table with our spirit of east Austin conversations? >> Do you want to take that first? >> I'll let you take it. >> Okay. I was hopeful in joining the team in the very beginning when we were setting up the facilitation process for the event and for analyzing the content that came out of the event and then it became, you know, a different process of identifying the projects that relate to what citizens had said that they wanted and community members had said that they wanted. When the innovation office is set up to support any multidisciplinary team work through a process of getting projects off the ground and, you know, running and if they need any technological help, making sure that we can get that. So we stand ready to support in any way. One of the ways that we thought we could of assistance is making sure that the sentiment collected at that event was represented through this open government partnership, that we -- you know, ultimately we want to continue to build and maintain trust, and by bringing a concept like the equity assessment tool forward and saying we are committing to this together as a community, then that's our way of ensuring the right feed back loops and right transparency and accountability and the openness that our community is expecting from us. >> I'm still getting up to speed on all the spirit of east Austin. I'm only two weeks into it, but I definitely think there's a natural fit and connection with what we're doing with the equity tool weapon, you know, my vision is that I would hope that the equity assessment tool would help council make informed decisions around the types of projects that you support through spirit of east Austin and how you may -- maybe prioritize some of the funding decisions to support those projects because those are the projects that really sort of work towards helping the kind of, like -- close some of the gaps in inequalities we've been able to identify through some of the initial assessments the city has done. [11:13:12 AM] So that's, you know -- my vision is that's the way I really see, the two fit very tightly together. >> Pool: It also helps in breaking down any silos we have between departments, that we really can have a fully collaborative and comprehensive approach throughout the entire systems that the city. I would really like to see the innovation officer fully engaged in the spirit of east Austin effort and also to support the work that the equity officer will be doing. Do you need any additional kind of support from council to have that happen? Or -- >> We're here to support a lot of these strategic initiatives, so no, we're good. >> Pool: Okay. Great. Hope to see you at the next meetings then. Thank you all so very much. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor, and thank you, both. Welcome. Welcome to Austin and to city staff. It's great to have you on board. I have a question on page 13, project number 4. What kind of -- can you give me a little bit more detail on what kinds of analysis you might be looking at to make our public meetings more efficient? And are we talking about meetings of the public engagement? Are we talking about city council meetings? What kind of public -- city public meetings are we referencing in this project? >> I believe that one of the pain points that was brought up during conversations with folks is one that you also brought up earlier, is the late-night meetings. And is there any way that we could ensure people get enough sleep. But it's the hard thing to tackle, and so the first thing we want to do is have more understanding. And because everything is already transparent and available on the website, a lot of our, like, open Austin, for example, is a group that would be very helpful, along with a lot of community members, and just seeing, are there any patterns? Are there any themes in the history of our meetings that might yield an opportunity for doing something different? So in this particular project, it's really -- again, it's about a greater understanding of perhaps some options that might help everybody with efficiencies and we're working closely with, you know, the agenda office and city clerk's office but ultimately this would be a research project of sorts as opposed to a more action-oriented project. [11:15:39 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any further discussions on this? Thank you very much. Exciting news. All right, councilmembers. Let's look at the calendar here for a second. We have three things that are set for executive session today. We can do that over lunch. We don't have a lot of people here with us, and we may miss some more people at lunch. We also have some additional items that have been pulled and some requested time certains for us to talk about on Thursday. We have a briefing concerning a drippings springs permit request that's set right now for 10:30. We're going to have some people from drippings springs here to watch that, the mayor, I think, mayor pro tem, so we'll do that -- it's on Thursday. Their mayor. So we'll do that on Thursday, have that briefing. I guess it's a public hearing briefing. >> Houston: Mayor, can you give us the agenda item you're talking about? >> Mayor Adler: 68. It's set on the calendar at 10:30. >> Tovo: Is that time up for discussion? My concern about that is that sometimes our meetings don't start right at 10:00 and I really would like to get through the -- I mean, it would just be my suggestion, we try to make it through the consent agenda and any other items for which we have a lot of staff present. >> Mayor Adler: And I think -- >> Tovo: If it's 10:30 we don't have many options there. >> Mayor Adler: It's not my intention to call it -- >> Tovo: Sorry, I didn't mean to talk over you but I was trying to finish my sentence. >> Mayor Adler: It's not my intention to call it at 10:30, but to call it before we break for lunch. Okay. Then we have a couple other things that were brought up, the champions, time certain request for 1:00, councilmember Garza and councilmember Houston has asked for the spay and neuter to be called up at 4:00 P.M. [11:17:51 AM] Okay so that we have those. >> Houston: Item 66. >> Mayor Adler: 66. And the champion is items 26 and 67 at 1:00. We have three items that are here and then we have the three executive session items, executive session items we don't get to today we can also call for Thursday. They've all been noticed for Thursday as well. And then, mayor pro tem, did you say that you needed to leave at lunch today? >> Tovo: I didn't figure I'd make it so I made other arrangements. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That eases that. Let's call the items then that have been pulled and then we'll break from here, go to lunch and do the executive session items. Item number 45, councilmember kitchen, you pulled this one. >> Kitchen: Actually, that was mayor pro tem. >> Mayor Adler: Looks like it was pulled by you both. >> Kitchen: I didn't actually mean to pull it. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem, item 45. >> Tovo: Really this was an item I sponsored along with several of you, and I just really pulled it to answer any questions and in part just to provide a little bit of context because it does relate to -- it relates in part to some of the other conversations we've initiated at council, but it is a little bit different. This is really an attempt -- and, councilmember Garza, I would say worked really closely on this as well, we're bringing this forward together. It's really an item that asks our staff to continue but to also more formalize -- to continue their process of working with other public entities but ask them to create a more formal process. And so we have a strategic facilities planning group. I don't think I've got the name quite right. Let me see if I can find it, strategic -- I would look to our city manager. [11:19:53 AM] What is the name of it, the strategic facilities management team? >> [Off mic] >> Tovo: Thank you. They've been working together for a couple years, including with some private help and they're working very closely right now with Travis county on potential options for projects together but also utilizing our -- the property that either we have or they have, and so I would invite them if they want to say a few words about how this resolution kind of fits into the work they're doing but really it is affirming the work that they're doing and asking them to expand it and to come up with a slightly more formal to work together, to create a more formal process. We have a lot of opportunities out there to work with our other public entities, and making sure that when we have surplus or underdeveloped land that offers potential for redevelopment, we're working closely with our public partners first before contemplating putting it out for sale on the open market. So thank you, Mr. Can canally the staff have provided a lot of feedback. >> Greg canally, interim cfo. As the mayor pro tem mentioned we have had a strategic facility governance team working in part on looking at the many facility issues that we have that we've been before the council on. As part of that effort we have been interfacing with the county and other entities to look for collaboration, and that was a topic I think we talked about this past March when we were here to talking about some of our key issues. I think what results from those conversations that as we look at solving some of our facility issues, there's opportunities then for a potential surplus land that comes as a result of that. And we had always envisioned, as we complete those facility efforts, now potentially in concert with other entities, we would then be able to partner with our economic development department and the law department to look at redevelopment opportunities in a way we've typically done them but make sure everyone is at the table, parks, housing, transportation, to make sure that all the community benefits would be included in those opportunities. [11:21:58 AM] So this does fall within kind of continuing our scope, and, again, the conversations we have had with the county specifically and the other entities have been very positive. >> Elaine hart, interim city manager. I would mention that the folks on that team are Greg canally, Lorraine Reiser, who heads up our real estate department, and Eric Stockton, who heads up our building services department. They have been working several years on the process with the assistance of an outside consultant. >> Tovo: I'd just add, on one of the sister city trips we heard a little bit about how the county and the city work more entity -- in a more formal way on land acquisition purchases and redevelopment purchases and, you know, I think there's some good models out there so I appreciate the work that you're already doing, and I'm, you know, really excited about the opportunities for the future and how those can really provide a framework for doing the kinds of things that we've already asked our staff to look at, such as projects on public land, whether it's city-owned or school district-owned. >> Mayor Adler: Yes? >> Pool: Following up on that we've had conversations with Ms. Reiser and also the past head of Austin energy about the Austin energy parcel of land on Ryan drive and the first thing that we need to, do because we're looking at developing that for affordable housing and a park, it's in the crestview neighborhood and that neighborhood has supported a park being placed there for sometime now, and in the last year and a half to two years, I've had some conversations with our real estate office and Austin energy about moving their laydown yard next to where the remanufacturing hub would be, something we talked about last fall. The nature head was supportive of that, Mr. Weiss. He has gone. [11:24:00 AM] I haven't had a chance to talking about it yet with Jackie sergeant but I wanted to find out from y'all where that planning process is. I know this is something that has been developing over a number of years, not just in the last two years, but previous to that. >> Mayor, city council, Burt Lumbreras, assistant city manager for community services. Just to give more context in terms of the issue that mayor pro tem brought up on the affordable housing and the focus on reuse and working with our partners, as you know, we're actively looking at the request for proposals on the bids that are out there with aisd, but beyond that we're looking at other partnerships with the county and the school on other tracts of land, which includes city properties. And one of those is the crestview site, but one thing that I did share with the mayor pro tem and the work group, is that beyond these two -- or these various resolutions that we have, the city manager has already authorized us to put together a high-level team focused on affordable housing. We are in essence gonna put a strong focus through a very robust interdepartmental team that's gonna look at each and every one of these components, whether it's land, whether it's buildings, whether it's sites that are adjacent to schools or not, but essentially just take a very comprehensive approach to this. So that's the first piece. The second piece on the crestview site, we've already actually been in active discussions with Jackie sergeant, the general manager at Austin energy, and so they are closely evaluating that site and determining what may be a good next step. Because we certainly believe, as you indicated, that there's an opportunity there that we want to take advantage. Just like we've already had discussions with another site that I know the mayor pro tem brought up, which was the winnebago site. So we're really pushing hard on those areas and working with our inner departments getting down to how we can actually work some sort of arrangement so they can be financially compensated and determining what that amount is. [11:26:04 AM] And then in the case with crestview, what is our next logical steps in terms of where they go and I think Ms. Sergeant is looking at that because that's an area she believes there may be opportunities that nearing may want to take advantage of. I don't have anything did he even ifative for you today but that is something we are actively doing. >> Pool: Can you expand a little bit on the last piece that you just said that Austin energy is looking at what opportunities they may like to explore? I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean staying at the Ryan drive spot on that land, or are they still looking at moving? >> I think they're looking at all their options. I think when Jackie came on board, she understood that we had a particular operation there and just today I had a conversation with her, this morning, because we actually had a meeting scheduled for tomorrow with her team, and she indicated that she's -- found out some additional information that she wants to pursue. So I think they're looking at the operation they have there and what is the next logical step, do they go somewhere else? What do they do with the recycling piece? How does that affect the enterprise itself or the department? So it's really just giving her an opportunity to look at it very carefully. >> Pool: Right. Well, would you please keep my office closely -- >> Certainly. >> Pool: -- In the loop on this? I had a question from a constituent just yesterday, in fact, about the status of that property, and I was able to give somewhat of an update. And I have not yet talked with Ms. Sergeant so I'm glad to know that you have been, that that is underway, but I would like to also have that conversation and see where we're at so I can stay closely involved in that -- in those discussions. >> Yes, ma'am, we will. >> Pool: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mayor pro tem and then councilmember kitchen. >> Tovo: Councilmember pool, I'm really glad that you're continuing to pursue this because I think that is a tract that has a lot of opportunity. [11:28:04 AM] And incorporation want to say that -- I just want to say I'm very glad it's going to be an interdisciplinary team because there's a considerable amount of work that happened with regard to that tract several years ago in response to a resolution and I know assistant city manager Edwards headed up that team and actually our former city manager had negotiated, as I understand, some financing options for that tract. So we had gotten to the point where a lot of that work was ready, but it was the community piece that was still ongoing, and so I want to be sure that we don't repeat -- reinvent wheels for which there may have been some really concrete proposals. >> Pool: Right. One of my aims, after coming into office a year and a half ago, was to try and get that effort back on track. So we have had a number of meetings with assistant city manager Edwards and the real estate office, and I think it was just last month, members of my staff, real estate, members of the crestview neighborhood association leadership, and the property owner who -- the property owner of the property directly next to the Ryan drive site which fronts onto north Lamar all went out and looked at the site and also we had some affordable housing advocates there too, I think from foundation communities, and I think maybe habitat also went out on this tour to reengage the conversation. And the piece that has to happen first is Austin energy -- Austin energy's locating a new spot for their pole yard and their commitment and however the funding needs to be handled, I understand that's a little bit complicated but I do think there's a way forward on that, but that piece has to be -- head -- addressed first. Other than that, there is the willingness to have development there with a park and affordable housing. >> I would add to that, in terms of you hit on it exactly, where we do have opportunities for higher, better use of city-owned land, as we've talked about, Lorraine and Eric and I have talked about before, we have to fundamentally first solve some of these kind of key location decisions about facilities and how to finance them and how to move them and how to do them in an organized, structured way, which is what the team has been working on and then these redevelopments can kind of pass from that so it's exactly as you described it. [11:30:28 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: Oh, I just wanted to say, thank you for bringing this, and I wanted to ask, as part of the process, if I'm understanding correctly, the idea is to come back to us no later than February with a discussion of what the process is. Is that -- am I understanding that correctly? If I am, then I would like to suggest that part of that process include some method for letting councilmembers know about what the particular. Some of us are -- to my mind, that goes in conjunction with the -- the resolution we passed on October 13 about the list of properties. It's just a away for us to stay in the loop, you know, and to understand what the potentials are for our district. Because it's not -- I mean, some of us may be more familiar with particular properties in their districts and some of us don't know what's available out there so it would be really helpful as part of this process, however you come back to us with the suggested process, that it include a method for reporting back to or informing or briefing, wherever, educating the council on where those properties are. >> Councilmember, we'll be glad to do that. And I would ask Greg and Burt to look to the work that was already done on the Austin energy property. I even worked on it years ago as cfo of Austin energy. So look back to that work and pick up the thread of where it left off. >> So just to be clear, so really the issue that we're trying to work on right now is just the move piece, not certainly wanting to go back and address, change anything that has been worked on up until now because I know there's already been a lot of work. Really the piece is just the move and the consideration of possibly considering that site as a surplus site if a move is made. [11:32:35 AM] So that's the discussion with ae right now. >> Pool: Right. And I agree. That is absolutely the first decision that has to be made. >> Yes. >> Pool: So we've been waiting to see when that would happen. And what kind of financing agreement would happen, since it's still within the city, the city will still own that land. >> Tovo: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Tovo: I would say it was my understanding there were potential solutions to both those issues, both to where that site moves, the reclamation center, as well as the surplus pole yard. There were several options, as I recall, and I can't remember them off the top of my head but I've certainly got them in my folder, as well as some potential financing options that would make Austin energy whole. So I appreciate, city manager, your direction to kind of find what those preliminary ideas were at least so they can be brought into the discussion. And then, again, thanks councilmember pool for taking the lead on this because I think it's got a lot of potential. >> Pool: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Ms. Kitchen, you pulled item 51. >> Kitchen: Yes. I pulled this item just to give my colleagues a heads-up, and also to -- I may be asking to postpone it to the tenth to give us more time to work with stakeholders, but we don't have a work session next week so that's why I wanted to pull it at this work session. So just quickly, what this is is -- and I've been very pleased to work with our fabulous innovation officer, corrie stokes on this -- not Corey, I'm sorry, anyway, our fabulous innovation officer. What this is, it's a resolution to develop a smart cities strategic road map and basically what that is is to pull together the information about what we have been doing and what we could be doing to more -- to better use technology to improve our city services. We've already done a lot in this community and in our city. [11:34:40 AM] We've talked a lot about what we've done from a transportation standpoint. But we haven't talked as many -- as much about what we have done or can do in other parts of our -- of the city. So, for example, you know, this is really a way to use -- one of the definitions of the benefit is a way to use smart computing technologies to make critical infrastructure components and services work better for cost efficiencies and better service to the public. All the way from public health and emergency services, I think that you were asking earlier, councilmember Renteria, about information that hosts would be sharing. The ability for programs like that to actually be able to collect data, share data, and then analyze it and use, it is actually -- is absolutely critical to the effectiveness of those programs. Other examples are our community paramedic program, ems program. There's a whole range of examples. So the purpose of this road map is to bring stakeholders together within the city and come out of this with a list of projects. That the city can be working on in the interim. So that's -- I wanted to bring this forward in case people had questions about it or -- >> Mayor Adler: I think -- >> Kitchen: If you want -- if our staff wants to say anything else about it? >> Mayor Adler: I think doing kind of the inventory and then -- >> Kitchen: Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Direction of the strategic plan is really good. Obviously there's a lot of work that's going on on this already. I think the private sector is organized pretty well within -- with the university of Texas and with the private folks and the city has partnered with them with a global city challenge which goes beyond just transportation but to pull all of this in one place and give people a focus. I think a lot of the work has already been done but to be able to catch ahold of it and memorialize it and have a road map for people to find I think would be a really valuable thing, as well as bringing it back to the council to start adding priorities to that. [11:36:53 AM] >> Kitchen: Yes. And it also gives us a moment to say, well, what have we not thought of? >> Mayor Adler: Sure. >> Kitchen: Becauses there a lot of work that has been done but there are places where it hasn't made the list yet or maybe it's furnishing down on the priority or maybe we just need to understand, you know, and the example I gave about host, another example is our code compliance department, which is pretty much paper-based right now. So, you know, this is an opportunity to make the list. You know, what is the inventory so that we can all understand it at the council level and help direct resources where that maybe needed. >> Mayor Adler: I think that's good. Yes, Ms. Pool? >> Pool: Councilmember kitchen brought up November 10 and we don't have a work session because that's election day so we've canceled the work session and I was hoping if we have to have a council meeting on the tenth that we would have a very slim agenda. There's at least half of us who are really otherwise engaged and have been for some time but with the election on Tuesday, I don't know what our abilities will be, especially without having a work session, which I understand why we're not. And I support that. What position we'll be in to really take up complicated issues on the tenth of November. >> Mayor Adler: I think the elephant in the room is probably the grove. >> Pool: There's other things too that are gonna be on the agenda. >> Mayor Adler: The champions. To that end there's an indication that the applicant may be asking for a delay in the champions, a postponement on that. And I hope that if that happens that staff posts something on the message board or something that would be real visible for people to see with respect to the champions tract. [11:38:54 AM] I don't know if that would be the first request for postponement, but if that's going to happy hope that that service is public on the tenth, right now, the grove is set. Obviously we've all gotten emails with respect to whether that should be heard or not heard and I'm not ready to vote myself on whether or not that the grove would be appropriate or not be appropriate to come back on the tenth. I think the parties are -- some of the parties are working with each other on that. >> Houston: I have a public hearing on entrada the second of -- >> May I interject, we're not posted to talking about the agenda for November 10 right now. On Thursday we're gonna vote whether or not to cancel the work session next week. [Indiscernible] You are. And we can, you know, use the message board, always plug that message board to have conversations about whether or not you have to have the tenth meeting and we'll be happy to help on that. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: Can we talk -- when we do that on Thursday can we talk about what's up on the tenth? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: We can, can't we, as part of -- >> There's a preliminary agenda that's out there for the tenth. >> But, I mean, when we're voting on the work session can we not talk about what's up on the tenth. >> Mayor Adler: I would think so because to me it would be -- whether or not we have that work session may very well be determined on whether or not it's being considered or what's not being considered on Thursday. >> That would be fine. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Pool: Then along those same lines, I understand that the meeting for the 17th is cancelled. There's a national league of cities meeting out of town. But I think only two members are going. So I'm not sure why that one was cancelled. But, at any rate, maybe we could have a conversation on Thursday about the schedule for the rest of November. [11:40:56 AM] Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any further discussion on -- do you have something else? >> Renteria: Yes, mayor. I'm gonna be pulling item number 6. I wanted to get some information on -- my understanding is when this went before the city and they put it on the ballot for the board walk, there was some promise made that one of the peers were gonna be there on the -- just right there east of 35 there, and my understanding is it's being moved to the south side. I just want to know what the reasoning behind that is. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. From the north side to the south side. So we'll see if we can get you an answer to that, manager. With respect to number 53, mayor pro tem, that's the historical issue I think you have raised kind of the dysfunction of that group and if they can't take votes, and I want to work with you to try and figure out how to make that group functional. I'm not sure that the solution that was presented in the posted resolution is the best way to fix the ongoing dysfunction in that group. So it's a conversation that I want to be part of. >> Tovo: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: But that particular solution I think I have some issues with. >> Houston: Are we pulling that for today or for -- >> Mayor Adler: We had to go through all the pulled items so I'm pulling that now just to give notice to the mayor pro tem and to the -- and to stay out loud. >> Tovo: Sure. And I expect we'll have a conversation about that Thursday. But I would say this is -- there are some ongoing issues with regard to the landmark commission's process and in looking at some of the decision that's happened on last week's agenda in particular, but in the months before, the fact that it is an unusual commission in that what -- really land use decisions stop at the landmark commission if they fail to get a 2/3 vote. [11:43:20 AM] It's not true of the planning commission, it is particular to the landmark commission and I think it's long past time we evaluate that. In particular if there's a 2/3 threshold for initiating historic zoning or recommending historic zoning, the alternative right now, the only alternative right now, is that a demolition permit is released, and I believe there ought to be a 2/3 standard for the release of a demolition permit. And just to be clear about why I'm bringing this forward, they were -- they had so few commissioners and at -- at their meeting that they were not able to take up this issue. They had a majority vote for historic zoning. However, they didn't even have present at the meeting enough commissioners even if it had been a unanimous decision, they didn't have enough commissioners present to have -- pass that on. But their motion to demolish, they took a motion to demolish the structure, to release the demo permit or to direct staff to do so, and that motion failed. It just again because we had so few commissioners they couldn't reach any reasonable decision. So I guess, you know, again we'll talk about it on Thursday, while there are other solutions that might help, it has been an ongoing problem for long enough that I think it's enkim want on council to D incumbent on council to take action swiftly to help them do their job, one of them, for example, being you can't take a vote that requires 2/3 majority if you don't even have 2/3 of the commission present at that >> Attorney1:session. >> Mayor Adler: I join you on the problem as well as the urgency for it. I'm just not sure creating a nine vote to have a granted demolition permit, you're in the situation where you don't have majority to grant it and you don't have majority to make it historical, I mean, there are lots of other ways that you could ensure that this group, as it met last week, could have been able to make the decision that the majority there wanted to be able to make. So it's more which tool do you use in order to address what is the dysfunction that we all see in that group. [11:45:32 AM] Okay. Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: On a different item, if you're done with this. >> Mayor Adler: I'm done with this item, unless you want to talk about it some more, anybody want to talk the historical -- >> Tovo: My guess is we'll have plenty of time on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: But thanks. >> Kitchen: This goes back to -- and I'm sorry I just want to make sure that I'm -- okay. I think I have the answer, but just want to make sure that I'm clear because there's some annexation items that are up on the tenth that I need to be able to give people a heads-up on. So it sounds to me like I can't do that today. >> Mayor Adler: You can. We can pull items on -- if it's set on the agenda for this Thursday. >> Kitchen: No, it's not. >> Mayor Adler: Oh, is it that -- that one we really can't talk about. >> Kitchen: Okay. When can I talk about it? >> Mayor Adler: You can post it on the bulletin board immediately. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: And we can -- I think at this point it's on the bulletin board. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: On Thursday, when we talk about whether or not we need the work session on Tuesday, it might very well be one of the reasons why you argue for or against putting the thing on Thursday. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: And -- >> Kitchen: That's the teaser. Look at the message board a little bit later today. [ Laughter ] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anybody else have anything else they want to pull and talk about while we're here? Then we are going to move then into executive session to take up three items pursuant to section 551.071 of the government code, we're gonna discuss legal issues related to the following items. Legal issues related to e2, our Rogers V. Austin, item e3, Texas gas services rate proposal. E4, issues related to sh-45 southwest. E1 has been withdrawn. If there's no objection, we'll now go into executive session. [11:47:35 AM] And we'll gavel that in at noon so in 12 minutes. [ Executive session ] [2:45:30 PM] Mayor Adler: Are we ready? We are out of closed session. In closed session we took up and discussed legal matters related to items: E2, E3 and E4. That being all the business today, the work session is adjourned. Thanks.