City Council Special Called Meeting Transcript – 1/11/2017 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 1/11/2017 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 1/11/2017 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [4:04:26 PM] >> Mayor adler: Y'all ready? >> Pool: We're ready. Let's go >> Hello, hello. >> Mayor Adler: Hey, Susan. Hi. >> Pool: Let's get this roll on the show. >> Mayor Adler: You need -- >> Mayor adler:all right. Are we ready to do this? It is Wednesday, January 11, year 2017, new year. It is 4:08. We are in the city council chambers for a special called meeting of the Austin city council, joint meeting with the cag. I call this meeting to order. I want to thank the cag. I understand that this is not your first meeting this week. [4:06:29 PM] So I want you to know that the council and the community, again, appreciate the time and dedication and help you guys are putting to this issue. For the benefit of the city. So thank you. We have an agendas that been noticed and posted. So we'll proceed to have staff -- you're kind of like at the corner of us in the way that we've set this up today. >> So, mayor, council, audience, I'm Greg Guernsey. Director of the planning and planning department. I don't know if the slides are -- slides are coming up. We have -- this is, I think, the last scheduled joint meeting of the cag and council, but we also are joined by representatives of the planning commission and zap. >> Mayor Adler: If you would hold the microphone a little closer. There you go. >> Did you. We're gonna go through an introduction of our overall schedule, I'll talk about our outreach tools that at our last cag and council meeting was something that you wanted to hear about. And a little bit of an overview of our public meetings. And so these are the three topics that we plan to cover today. Briefly, we'll go through the educational opportunities that we're going to use to help austinites understand the basic parts of our land development code and the new code. We're trying to get a diversity of feedback and so we have multiple tools that will cover how we're going to [4:08:31 PM] go out and basically interact with the public property owners, those stakeholder groups, and then talk a little bit more about the dialogue that we'll V at different meetings -- have at different meetings and we'll go through the different type of meetings that we have. I'll turn it over to Peter park first, who is our consultant, one of our consultants working with opticos, Peter park consulting, and he's gonna walk through the consulting again, some of the changes you might see on this version. Not a change in time line but just to kind of highlight some things about the schedule. So Peter. >> Thank you, Greg. Good afternoon, everyone. So I'm gonna provide a bit of an overview of the time line again and provide a little bit more specifics, but then I'll be followed by Lena carnihan who will give us more detail in her presentation about some of the activities happening. Our work at this point is organized into basically four phases. The first phase is what we're describing as the free draft phase, and the good news is we only have a couple weeks left of this phase. The slightly unnerving news is we only have a couple more weeks in this phase, but it's going well. So don't worry. This has really been about meeting with the planning commission and the zap, meeting with each of the city council offices, really getting everybody up to speed before the rollout of the first draft of the text. And so we've been making rounds are city council and we've been making rounds with the PC and zap because these are the entities that obviously are going to be [4:10:31 PM] acting upon these codes and this map, and we wanted to make sure that you're all up to speed with the great work that the cag has been doing, that you're all up to speed with the progress on the project. And so that's pretty much what our work is, and at the end of this phase one, as we're calling it, is the delivery of the first draft of the code. And that's if you can follow down this -- won't work here -- on the second to the -- from the bottom row is something called deliverible and you'll see a document icon there which will be delivered at the end of this month, and there will be a series of events that Lena will talk about in that first week in February. The second phase of the work is what we're describing as the public review phase. Now, this is seven months of review. This starts in February, where the draft, the first draft of the text, is released. And it -- the first two months after the draft rolls out we will be doing public meetings around the city, in February and in March, to talk about and describe and explain the first draft, one of the text, right, and get a lot of feedback and people's comments about that text. We'll continue doing working sessions with the PC and zap and the city council and the cag around the new text, to get everyone familiar with what is this new draft of the land development code mean and how is it structured. And then in April, April 18, there will be the release of the first draft map. And so for those who don't know, this work includes not [4:12:34 PM] only updating the text of the land development code but also preparing a new zoning map for the city, that is remapping or rezoning the entire city. So it's a pretty big effort, but there are many advantages of doing it at the same time. Because we'll have the text out for a couple of months, and that will give people a chance to get an idea of how the new code -- because it will be new. This is a rewrite of your existing code. This is not a slight amendment, this is not a language amendment of small proportion. This is replacing it. And so it has a new structure, to make it much easier to navigate compared to what you have today. There are a lot of elements that are different. So we feel that it's gonna take some time to get everyone familiar with how this new structure works. The good news is -- and this has been our experience in other communities -- when you make an improvement to the legibility and the navigatability of a code people can understand it sooner, right? That's the whole idea, to make this much more transparent, much more understandable. But what the new zone districts mean and how they work is really understood best when you can apply it to the map, when you can actually understand it relative to a particular geography, a particular part of the city. >> Pool: Excuse me, mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Pool: Sorry, Mr. Park. Is this on? Before you get too much farther, you said about a minute ago that you are rewriting the code. Could you talk to us a little bit about what you mean by rewrite? It may mean different things to different folks, but in the context of this. How far or not far does that go? >> Okay. So your land development code today is comprised of multiple elements, the zoning code is unof them, the transportation, [4:14:36 PM] watershed, a number of other elements in the regulations that relate to the development of land in the city of Austin. This work, the whole package, the whole suite, is being updated. Now, the consultant team is primarily working on the zoning. The new zoning code portion of the land development code. The other portions are being prepared by the particular departments who are the ones responsible for those sets of regulations. So together with the consultants, various departments and staff across departments have been contributing to this draft that will be coming out at the end of the month, right? So that's what we're talking about in terms of the whole set of regulations related to development in the city of Austin and developing a new format, developing a new structure and organization so that it all is, as I mentioned earlier, just easier to understand and to navigate. >> Kitchen: I think I'm understanding also just for clarification purposes, this is all done within the context of existing policy? And within the context of imagine Austin. So it's a rewrite in the sense of a reorganization, but not a rewrite in the sense of redoing the policy that was adopted. >> That is exactly right. This is one of the major recommendations in imagine Austin, and so this is an exercise in really implementing and delivering on the aspiration and the direction that we get from imagine Austin, from neighborhood plans, from the whole range of existing policies. This is not about creating new policies. [4:16:36 PM] This is about implementing your vision. Okay. All right. So the map that comes out in April will be a chance for people to understand and see how the new Zones that appear, for example, in the new code, in the text, would play out, how they would work in different parts of the city. And so right now, the staff is beginning to develop the maps with the draft code, and that takes quite a lot of time because you've got a lot of area of your city. There's a lot of complexity in the way the zoning is today, and so that's why there's sort of a space between the delivery of the text and the delivery of the map. But as I said, in the first couple of months, before April, we will continue to have a public dialogue about the text that rolls out in the first part of February. From April to August, the remainder of phase two, we will be taking comment and continuing to do presentations around the city. When the map comes out in April, in April, may, and maybe possibly into June, but hopefully we can get these done in April and may, we will be -- we're working with each of the city council offices now to do a public meeting in each of the ten city council districts. About the maps. All right? So there will be opportunities for property owners to come and see the maps and have [4:18:36 PM] direct conversations with the staff, with the consultant team on the map and the text. And so that activity will go on from April and in may until June. Now, first week in June, about June 7, is the time when the comments that we're collecting on the text, it's sort of -- it's a bit of a cutoff line for receiving public comment that is going to be going into what we're calling draft two of the text. Okay? It doesn't mean public comment will continue to be received. It's just that June 7 becomes an important date because the response and the input that we are collecting starting in February needs to be processed, needs to be interpreted, needs to be discussed in terms of how it informs the second draft of the text. And to make those changes, obviously, the team needs time to respond. In order to reduce the second draft, which gets delivered in August. Okay? Now, that second draft of the text is also the second draft of the map. All right? So what -- so the delivery of the text is staggered with the map delivery for the first drafts, and then in the second draft, which we're calling the pc/zap draft, they're coming together. Right? So they've had the benefit of a significant amount of public dialogue, both on the text and [4:20:36 PM] on the map. And Eileen in a will describe more in detail what happens. I'm giving you kind of the big picture view of it. In phase three, from September to October, is the time when the PC and zap will do their deliberations, do their public hearing, take public testimony and take action on the draft. From there, the draft with their recommendations, would then be forwarded to the city council with their recommendation. The map and the code will be noticed in November, and then that would start the fourth phase, the adoption phase, with the first reading in December of 27.all right? And then right now on the schedule we're showing the February -- or March -April 2013 as the second and third reading. Of course the speed at which the adoption occurs after the first reading is of course gonna be a function of how much change, how much additional time is necessary to get approval. But at least for now, that's where we are on the schedule. Okay? So with that I'm gonna hand it over to ilena and she's gonna describe the tools involved in the public meetings. >> Thank you, Peter. Lena, planning and zoning department. I'm going over our feedback tools. So these are the exact same tools that are mentioned in the outreach plan, which y'all should have gotten a copy of. It was in the backup so I'll go through these one by one in [4:22:37 PM] a little more detail just so we can talk about it. So the first tool is our survey tool, which is focused on how our draft code implements the imagine Austin priority programs. This will be designed for anyone, even if they've never hand of a land development code, to be able to take and to be able to give feedback, even if that's the extent to -- they wish to participate in this process. There will be available in English and in Spanish. The next thing is our code comment tool. So for those citizens who want to get more involved,. >> Kitchen: Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry, yes. Excuse me. >> Kitchen: It just occurred to me would you rear wait until you go through all of these for us to ask questions or which would be better? >> Whatever is preferable for you. >> Kitchen:go ahead? Okay. So I just wanted to understand the languages. You said English and Spanish. I would just be curious about other languages, like the Asian languages, for example. Just my question would simply be what might be the plan for reaching that community? You don't have to answer that now. >> We can definitely work on other languages as well. Those English and Spanish were the two default that we were presenting to y'all. >> Kitchen: That's great. I think we need to recognize that there are other language needs. >> Certainly. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Our next tool is the code comment tool. Like I was saying this is for citizens who want to read the actual code itself, this tool has been used all across the country, most recent in San Marcos and it allows for people to comment on the code itself, reply to others as comments, up vote and down vote so it gives a little more interactive way for people to discuss the code rather than individually marking on it and it allows us to consolidate these comments in a way that's useful for us. [4:24:38 PM] So this is a little bit more detailed view of how that will look. The next tool, which we'll be rolling out in April, not needing is going to be the mapping tool that will show people how the map looked before and after. We're still working on a vendor for this one so we're not certain exactly all the features it will have but what we plan to have is a bit like what you see up here, there's kind of a landing page and then if you type in an address you see the existing zoning and new zoning with little guides at the bottom and then an area for your comments. The next aspect is group position papers. This isn't something we'll be doing but we do anticipate getting a lot of position papers from different groups across the city, and maybe even the country. So we're going to post them all online in the interest of transparency so that everyone can read what every group wanted to say about codenext. The next thing is our outreach tool kit. So this we've talked about a little bit before. This tool kit is going to be comprised of slide decks, scripts, handouts, I will strayings of basically how to use the guide itself, and these are materials that anyone in Austin can pick up and bring to their community meeting or to a neighborhood meeting or something along those lines if they want to share some basics about codenext with their constituencies and with their groups. So this alone doesn't quip you to be a code expert but it definitely starts that dialogue so even people who have never heard of codenext before can come to one of these meetings led by anyone in the community and can start getting interested and involved. This is an introductory video from Denver, not ours, and we're planning to do something hopefully similar, may not promise the production value, but will give the basics of [4:26:39 PM] codenext in a way that anyone can understand so these could be shown at the beginning of some community meetings that we -- won't have to be introducing every single time. We'll have this kind of basic introduction. This will be available also in English and in Spanish. And then potentially in other languages as well. Our website is going to be revamped just so it's easier to navigate. If you go to our website now, I'll admit, it's a little bit confusing, but this will be updated so it's very clear, people can find exactly what they need when they need it. And so moving on to the next segment, we have our public meetings. >> I was curious about when you're revamping the current website, the community position papers on that website now, are they going to be placed on the new website so people are still able to see them? >> We'll continue having those former position papers up with the new one. We'll probably segment it out so it's easier for people to understand which things are where. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. Moving on to public meetings, these are the subheadings of it. I'll go through them one by one. We'll have two major events, the code text release, public open house, or just the release event. That will be on February 1, and then we'll have the code map release event on April 18. These will be big public events so people can come out and get some basics and, you know, get some of their questions answered and begin to provide feedback. In addition to that, we have open houses. These ones are specifically for the text. Their purpose is to just inform the public gentle what's in the -- generally [4:28:41 PM] what's in the new code, we'll approach our outreach and feedback mechanisms. These events are designed mostly as educational events rather than feedback events, but you will still be able to provide feedback at these events. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: These are the ones that you referenced earlier about working with the councilmembers to schedule. Is that right? These -- >> So there's two sets of open houses. We are working with councilmembers, these ones are the combined district ones so they'll be splitting some. >> Kitchen: Okay. Are these the dates, then? So we have the dates for them. We just don't have the places yet? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Thanks. >> The date may change if we can't find any open, but it should be the same. Yeah, these are for text only. Obviously they come out before the map does. And so the next thing we'll have are topic talks. While open houses were designed more for any member of the community to attend, if there are members of the community very interested in a certain topic, which are those five major themes that we have, they can attend one of these topic talks to get more information, get into a more deep discussion about those topics than maybe the average citizen would be interested in. So we're planning to have five of those, one for each of the major themes between late February and early may. >> Kitchen: I'm sorry to keep asking, but what -- which are the five topics then? For the topic talks? >> Those are the process and procedure, environment, community character, affordable -- >> Kitchen: Okay. They track to the papers? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: The prescription papers? >> Not exactly but moistly. These are the five major themes that have emerged throughout. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> John will talk about it in a little bit. Our third type of open house is a map open house, which will allow the public to view [4:30:43 PM] the draft zoning maps, learn what the Zones mean for them, see how we got to where we did, and provide some input on those as well. These are the ones that we'll be specifically working and we are working with councilmembers to find a spot in each of their districts for this. We'll have them April through June. We haven't decided. We're still working with y'all and with the community to figure out what the best days and times are for these. The next thing we're planning is conversation. Some of you may be familiar with this. This is a cpio initiatives that been going on for a while. This is November of our origin. Corporation cores where trained facilitators talk about a topic with members of the community in a more casual setting. These aren't designed for feedback so much as starting a decision. So the conversation cores will have codenext as one of the topics when they start back up I believe in February. Finally, we have -- we will have office hours for the mapping section so starting in April, rolling through at least July, if not later, we'll be hosting weekly office hours to answer questions that individuals may have about their specific home or what -- whatever questions they have regarding the map and the code text in a more one on one setting than they would get at a bigger event. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Mr. Flanagan. >> Flannigan: The office hours, where would they be held. >> Some centrally and some out in the community. >> Kitchen: Okay. So I have a question about a couple of different types of groups, what the plans are for reaching out to them. >> Okay. Ongoing and those are the other boards and commissions, other than, you know, the planning commission and zap. The contact teams, neighborhood contact teams, and then of course there are a number of key organizations in town and I'm wondering if [4:32:45 PM] they -- if they requested a speaker to come speak, will that be possible? Can you speak to each of those three different kinds of groups? >> I can speak to them more generally because all three are very big priority groups for us. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> However, you've already seen we have a lot of meetings already set up so while we will be meeting with some of those groups we encourage them to come to these bigger events as well just because there is some limit to staff time. But we're still working through exactly how we're going to meet the needs of each of those groups. >> Kitchen: The suggestion -- >> Flannigan: I would like to add to remember that not all parts of town have neighborhood contact teams. >> Kitchen: Yeah. >> Flannigan: One of the things I will be looking for at the conclusion of outreach is how many people you successfully engaged, not how many meetings you held. I'm hoping to see a distribution of engagement, and that will arguably be more intensive, more difficult to achieve in parts of town without neighborhood associations that meet monthly. In my district they don't meet monthly. So that's gonna be the metric I'm looking for. >> Thank you. >> Kitchen: Perhaps there's a way we can help or, you know, the cag members can help or others, the planning commission, zap can help so that, you know, it's not just you guys. But I think that -- I think working on a group of folks that can be speakers might be helpful. >> Definitely. And that part of the purpose of having that outreach packet, too, is to allow y'all to allow PC and zap and the cag and other groups to go ahead out and talk about that as well. Mr. [Indiscernible]. >> Yeah. I just -- I had a comment about the open houses, especially the map open house. It says ten meetings, one in each council district and it seems to me, based a lot on [4:34:46 PM] what Peter park was saying in his presentation the other night about the mapping process, that that might not be realistic number of meetings for some neighborhoods. Just one for the whole council district. It seems to me that maybe we need to build into the plan more flexibility for those specific neighborhoods where there might be more contentious or in depth conversations needed or more iterations of the map as Peter park described last time rather than just saying we're only gonna have one per district. I think we need to have the possibility of going back to some neighborhoods over and over again, even within districts, so there might end up being, you know, some districts might have more than ten -- I mean, more than one meeting, three or four meetings, other districts or other neighborhoods might not. Seems like that would be a little bit more kind of realistic to think about. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I appreciate that comment. When I met with the staff earlier this week, I mentioned a similar -- along the same lines, a comment along the same lines. You know, in district 9 the land use patterns are pretty different depending on whether you're downtown or in Miller or in Hyde park or in Travis heights and so, you know -- and there are lots of other areas that might fall -- so, you know, my intent is within district 9 probably to at least hold our own discussions of it just to give people who are in very different areas an opportunity to participate. But I do think, especially in districts where the land use patterns might be very different in one area of the district verse another I think we need to think very carefully about how we hold those conversations and get feedback about the different elements of the plan even within that district. >> When staff presented this to us Monday night I was very [4:36:48 PM] impressed because it's almost a national best practices of public involvement, what you presented here today but they do need to be refined. One thing councilmember Flannigan commented, I pointed out that office -- open office hours 8:00 to 5:00 in one Texas center is not going to really help districts 10 and district 6 but you have an office out there and I would like to also see 8:00 to 5:00 helps all the architects and engineers and attorneys but it doesn't help the average person in this community. After hours and Saturdays is a lot better. I'd like not only the office hours but a lot of these is to target the other 9,200 austinites who are going to be interested as we continue to get press on this process and I think everybody agrees on that so it's not just cold come downtown and sit down and ask us what's gonna be zoned on your property. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. I'm delighted to hear that conversation because we had that same conversation with staff about when we have our town hall meetings, and we said on Saturday and they set consultants are not here on Saturday. I said but that's when people are available so we need to be flexible enough to have it when people can come, not when consultants are available so thank you all for supporting that idea. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Guernsey. >> Staff is open to having additional meetings. We talk about these formal meetings because I think the public in each district needs to have basic overview and we want to make sure that each district we go out to council offices, as we're working with you to find those locations that are best and easily accessible for your constituents, also for the councilmembers to attend. I wanted to also say that the cag is already preparing to have some additional meetings, as well, particularly the cag inviting boards and commissions in and also to have a separate meeting with the zap and the zoning and zoning and [4:38:50 PM] platting commission and the planning commission so they are also working to have additional meetings. But I think we've already been contacted about other boards and commissions asking for information so we'll be working with them. I'm not sure in what capacity because we have a lot of boards and commissions but I know we'll be reaching out to them as well. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool. >> Pool: I think it would also be helpful if when looking at the city, rather than looking at it broken down into districts, we look at communities of interest like central Austin. I have in district 7 I have some central Austin neighborhoods below on 83 and different below 183 but my below are some of the eastern and northern neighborhoods that are in district 10. So when I was thinking about how to cross-cut for beneficiary efficiency and effectiveness as far as reaching the neighbors literally where they live I was going to recommend a combined meeting that might be with nine and ten and seven, for example so we could get that central part of the city that has housing stock, that was built around the same time. It's about the same size, mostly. And the infrastructure in these central Austin -- the early suburbs of Austin, pretty much at the same level as far as age and extensiveness like as far as sidewalks and that sort of thing. I thought we might even look when we're setting meetings to cut across the districts, look more for commonalities in the neighborhoods rather than aligning with frankly arbitrary district lines. Like six it may make a lot of sense to have one or two meetings just in six but part of my district can actually accept with district 6 so I would like to have a shared meeting with Jimmy to pull in my neighbors that connect because the thing that separates us is just balconies woods, right? That's actually a neighborhood kind of split in half. I wanted to look at it a [4:40:52 PM] little bit more in that way. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar. >> Casar: And I think that Mr. Guernsey just addressed part of Mr. Heyman's point which I think it might be good for us to clarify that while there is intention to have one district town hall style meeting, that it wouldn't be correct to say we're only gonna be having one meeting per district during the public engagement process because most of us on council have days in our week we'll have three separate meetings in our district just in a day. I think just to lay out that it's clear that when we say we're gonna have one of these district meetings or potentially topic meetings that incorporate particular areas of interest, that we're not just talking about one meeting per district. I don't want that sort of word getting out that's what we're doing when indeed that's not the intention. And then also, to councilmember Flannigan's point, do I think that getting lots of folks to those meetings is important, and we know that there's gonna be groups of people that will show up to a meeting that is posted but, you know, I think that the councilmembers will be working on this but an essential role for cag members will be to help us get the folks that normally wouldn't come but aren't very interested but just wouldn't know. We'll be relying on y'all for some additional assistance because we'll need it. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Valera. >> I was gonna -- in reference to councilmember pool's comment, when we're looking at similar areas, I feel that the best time to group those areas is in meetings addressing mapping, right? If they're truly similar areas, then they're probably gonna be similarly mapped and I think that's the optimal time to do that. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> I'd like a little more clarification on the role of cag in this period and what our expectations are for them? My understanding they bring great expertise and knowledge that will be different from what zap and planning commission bring, and I would like to see us leverage that [4:42:52 PM] expertise and that knowledge for as long as necessary to get this right. And I'm not fully understanding at this point what the expectations are for cag from this point forward, and sort sort of this kind of dead stop that happens at the beginning of July worries me a little bit and I'd like to understand that. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Guernsey. >> Directly to that point, the code advisory group is really an important tool to help deal with outreach so I imagine the 18 members will be participating not only with their constituent groups which they lep but also going out to meetings with staff, probably with the council district offices, and trying to get that input. They certainly have expertise that they have in nothing says that they stop at the end of July. I think there are members of the cag that have that expertise that you discuss or are in contact with those groups, and they may be coming to commission. They may be coming to the 00:00. Or working with those particular groups on those papers that we're talking about coming forward, position papers, to make sure that those voices are heard. So although it may say on the actual agenda as a group being the cag, I would expect -- early on we had a version of this calling them ambassadors, that they may be working just as the planning commission and zap, that they may participate beyond that. We show that formally as a group they may end. Just like at the time when the zoning and platting commission when they make their respective recommendations those are passing the ball then on to city council. Cag kind of passes to the zap and plantation, zoning and [4:44:54 PM] platting and plantation, which pass that's ball on to city council and then city council will ultimately make that decision. But doesn't mean the individual participants of either the commission or the cag, that their roles end. So just wanted to point that out. Mr. [Indiscernible]. >> This is on? One of the things I'm thinking about as we get into the second phase of feedback are how we explain and discuss trade- offs and, you know, the red flag issues that come up that are very important to people so I'm wondering if there will be materials developed that help to frame, explain, and, you know, explore trade-offs in the zoning. >> So we worked on that a bit with our prescription papers. That was one of the focuses of those, was kind of showing what we would have to give and take to get what we want as a community. But that's definitely something moving forward I think, especially the conversation corps type of discussions, having smaller sit down discussions among community members who may have different priorities and talking about well if you want this and you want that we have to reconcile and find something in the middle, that's definitely gonna be one of the folks among some of these other meetings. >> I just wanted to -- I mean, one of our major priorities is outreach around both text and mapping for the cag. And a smaller subset of us have met to talk about outreach, how to do the most effective outreach within our own communities, whether geographically or areas of interest and we're gonna continue those conversations. One of our priorities is really reaching underserved communities, people who may not be fully engaged and know about codenext or know about imagine Austin even, so how did we get to where they are rather than having them councilmember tovo us so we [4:46:55 PM] certainly anticipate that we believe a resource for councilmembers, boards and commission, staff, however we can be most effective. And I know, Liz had some -- >> Let me add to that since I'm sitting next to Mandy. So I'm also going to be asking my students to do some things to help support this so I'm gonna have -- I'm teaching a qualitative research methods class in the spring and I'm going to be putting the students in teams to do research on the issues in each of the districts that we think are likely to be concerns people will have and help prepare materials that cag members and others can use when they're going out to talk to the community about the code and about the mapping and about how codenext and imagine Austin might apply to some of the things coming up there. So they may be reaching out to certainly people on the cag, maybe council offices as they're doing this research and trying to put together some things that will help in this process. >> I just want to reiterate my comment from before about I understand that there are constrained resources for y'all to do public meetings, and I know that I'm learning that all of us operate our offices differently. But at least as far as district 6 is concerned, please feel free to lien on my -- lean on my office to set up venues, do event promotion to get people in the room. If taxicab help save resources you can apply to other parts of town that will want four, five, six meetings, we can knock out d6 in two meetings please do so so we can make sure the resources are used in the highest and best way. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar and then [indiscernible]. >> Casar: I have to leave here in a moment so I'm gonna excuse myself but thank you all for getting together and doing this work. I do want to express before I do get out that I know we've been talking about the schedule for a few meetings now and I know that it's ambitious but we are hearing about this project drawing itself out, and so I -- in thinking about sort of next [4:48:57 PM] steps, getting it -- more and more I think about folks in at least from my community that I've been talking to this about, knowing where it is that they plug in is really important, knowing how and when these open houses work, knowing that planning commission, property owners -- there's a planning commission meeting about this, knowing that, okay, you're not gonna screw up because you didn't go to environmental commission or didn't command talk to the cag about that, knowing there's a place where that work is being done and that there's a group of individuals that are going to be taking a vote on this before council I think is really important, and so looking at the schedule and to councilmember alter's point, I don't cag members conclude. You're going to be hearing from us, probably be getting phone calls from us and asked for advice. So I think that, you know, obviously people that want to stay involved and have so much invested in this, everybody is going to be participating across boards and commissions but finding a way to make sure that there is a planning commission is able to hear from everyone but people know that that's the place you have to go and that there's not some secret sauce about who it is you have to talk to to get your voice heard I think is really important for the process. And so that's gonna, you know, be critical with outreaches that done once the code is out and the maps are out, that's gonna be critical for y'all's reports to planning commission so that they get, you know, ahold of a lot of the work you guys have done but I do think it's really important that we do get that work to them and that people -- that there aren't lots of different places where citizens have to go and try and figure out who to lobby to -- that they know that planning commission is the place and then that the decision at the end of the day. But thank you all for your work on this. >> Thanks very much. >> Is this on? Yes. >> I think it should be working now. Okay. So we're working really [4:50:59 PM] closely with a few of the cag members and staff to understand -- to figure out how we're going to target underserved populations, and I had a few concerns when I was looking at the engagement plan around - - you know, a lot of the tools that we're using seem like they're very much like online, you have to have access to a computer, you need to be willing to get on the computer and do this type of -- you know, to supply your feedback, even if you come to a meeting. And so I'm really concerned about that because I work exclusively with low-income communities and especially older communities also are not -- I don't really think that that's going to be the best avenue, and I just would like to maybe do a hard copy of the survey, if we could do that, have that as cag members at our meetings to fill out at the end of the meeting or also thinking about any other qualitative information that would be allowed to -- as part of the feedback. I know that there cobblers from organized groups, but I have spoken to some of the -- some groups that are interests, fair housing and community inequality and especially renters' rights. If we could organize a group of renterrers to do an in depth interview about how the zoning code may affect them or a focus group around these type of things, how would that type of information from other organizations in the community, how would that other -- you know, kind of qualitative feedback be accepted by the staff and this whole process? I'd love an answer to that from staff. >> That would be good. Why don't you go ahead. [4:53:00 PM] >> There we go. One thing we were definitely planning for the in person meetings, every time a staff member is present, there will be a laptop where they can take the survey, where they can look at the actual code document, but definitely taking into consideration that some people may not come out to the meetings or have access to a computer. We can definitely work on figuring out how we can do a printed survey and input that. >> So I know there's gonna be a lot of meetings and I appreciate certainly councilmember Flannigan's offer about reducing the actual number of meetings so we can put our resources in other areas, but we will be having a lot of meetings so it's very helpful, I think, for council, cag, commissions, to kind of identify as quickly as we can those dates that we would try to schedule these. There are only so many days when these upcoming months that staff can be in ten different districts or multidistricts, and so we're very sympathetic of trying to be as transparent as possible, to try to have staff available when we can. I'm basically having a meeting tomorrow called all hands on deck of my staff to explain our mapping process because that is did -- as much intensive as it's been to a point to release the public code or draft code to the public at the end of the month, the mapping portion, people want to know where is it gonna apply on my property, my neighbor's property, how it's gonna affect my neighborhood. And so as we gear up for that, it's just gonna be a great demand on my staff. Peter has already told me I should buy a pair of shoes just for this event because I'll wear them out. I've already done that. I look forward to an engaging couple months, actually the whole tear year to make some rounds. I'll turn it back over to Lena. I think we still have part of [4:55:00 PM] the presentation that John Mickey is going to be present to. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. King. >> I would also like to see a hard copy, especially for my district, I'm district 2, I'm out in del valle. They're not gonna come to the meetings so I'd like -- what they do come to the homeowners association meetings, do come to the neighborhood meetings, and we could have fliers or go door to door. We do a lot of door to door out in del valle so I would need hard copies to explain to them what it's all about because a lot of them have never heard of a land development code and some of them if they do know about the land development code they need to know how it's gonna basket their neighborhoods or their property. I also would like to see some type of reference table attached to this code update. Maybe on the second draft, where they can see this was the old code, this is the update of this code, this is the name change. They need some type of reference so they'll know what they're dealing with. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool. >> Pool: Along with what Ms. King is talking about as far as references I'm going to ask if staff could provide us with a map of -- an actual map of the city with the zoning laid on that and then show where the new zoning, how it's -- what the reference will be so that we have a map of the entire city with zoning and then it would be helpful to have types of housing stock where you have single family, multi-family, where the short-term rentals in the city and what the ultimate effects of the new code would be. And I'd like to see names of the neighborhoods and the contact information for the neighborhood leaders in either the neighborhood association or the contact team or whoever the influencers are in those parts of the city that maybe don't yet have any organized association or contact team. [4:57:04 PM] I think this information will set a baseline for us to adopt and adapt the existing source code help give a visual aid to folks who may just now be learning about land development code, how it affects them directly on their street. It will also help us in explaining it to our residents and I think it will help no matter what level of understanding people have with the code if we could see it on an actual map. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Alter do you want to respond. >> Alter: At least the first point, for the mapping tool. The plan is to have the two maps side by side so if you type in 123 main street it will show what the 08 zone was depending on the platform we use there will be some kind of link to what that means for the types of housing you can build there and then on the other side it will be 123 main street here is the new zoning. >> Pool: Will we be able to have large copies or maybe large -- like on a board? >> That would probably be -- >> Pool: Or around it? It's hard to group around a computer screen. It just doesn't aid to understanding, I don't think. That's great for somebody who wants to noodle up on it later and we can give them links but as far as having a conversation in a room with people I think they would be happier to have either something lying on the table they can look at and write on or have it on a board that they can interact with that way. >> I think we can certainly do something on a -- probably a larger scale. It gets difficult if you try to provide a map of your entire district, you would have to be so large it might -- >> Pool: I know. Almost real size, right? >> As, you know, folks are trying to get information on the actual neighborhoods, I think that is something when we go to the district meetings and we have conversations with neighborhoods that we can probably provide a better map that might look at that. [4:59:05 PM] I think it just becomes difficult, give me a map of 325 square miles of the city of Austin, that's difficult. >> Pool: Right. >> You get down to the neighborhood level in particular I think this tool that people will be able to use at libraries or at their home if they have internet available or they have office hours, part of the reason why we have those office hours is so people can understand -- I understand you've got this on the internet. Tell me how this is gonna work in my little area, that they have someone to talk to. >> I'm happy to see so many residents of district 10 here tonight. I also want to echo what Ms. King mentioned and ask for a disposition and derivative tables be included. We have in my district many, many neighborhoods that are extremely activated over zoning yours. I think that council is aware of that. And they are going to be looking at this very closely, and there is a need to have these kinds of tables that tell us where did this thing in the new code come from, where did this thing in the old code go and they will be looking at it with a fine-tooth comb and in the interest of trust and transparency, I think we need to understand that. Also, from a legal perspective, as we move forward and we deal with matters of interpretation down the line, if we understand, well, this was just supposed to be marked out this way and really comes from this code, those tables can be helpful. Hopefully it's clear and concise and we don't have those problems but in the real world we will have those problems. So to avoid situations where we have conflict or to find those conflicts before they get enshrined in the code I think that some version of a [5:01:06 PM] disposition and derivatives table could be very useful for all of us to understand that. Now, for some people that will be more useful than for others but we have both people who have no knowledge of a land development code and we have people who are very knowledgeable of land development code and we have to meet both of their needs with respect to outreach and so I think something a little bit more detailed in that regard would be useful. >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to respond to. >> I think one of -- last meeting councilmember pool actually talked about having a crosswalk and we understand that there are certain issues, compatibility, mcmansion, parking, impervious cover, drainage, that have come up, and staff will be prepared to say in the new code, these are the areas where these sections speak to those issues. We probably will not be able to get down to a line by line, text by text, the sparring space was 9.5 feet wide, under this section, it didn't change, it's now under the new code in this section. We probably will not get to that level. In fact we won't get to that level. If we were to do that the code and the work to derive that table for each of the drafts would be more than the creation of the code itself. But I understand that people want to know -- how is the compatibility standard applied, people want to understand did the parking change, go up or down or what happened? Where is it in the code? We can certainly do those type of things. So we've asked the cag. We've asked planning commission and zap. I've reached out to some organizations and what topics are those that are important because most people are not concerned about maybe the width of a parking space but want to know how mcmansion standards change, how they're gonna be applied, where are they in the code, and I know when you see the code in a [5:03:08 PM] couple weeks, those will probably be in several sections. The way they're in one section right now they're gonna be baked in several districts. So you'll see them but they won't be in a single place. They'll be in multiple places. So we understand that. It won't be a line by each for each individual minute section of the code. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Flannigan and then Ms. Kitchen. >> Flannigan: I frequently will be bringing up constrained resources and I want to make sure we're being very thoughtful about -- whenever word we end up choosing this morning, effective collaboration or efficient collaboration we're cognizant of what the trade-offs are. If we spend additional resources are resacrificing a couple public input meetings or is there gonna be a budget rider showing up on the dais that we have to spend more money on the process? So I don't know the answers to those questions. Obviously I have not spent as much time as you on the table but I want to stay cognizant of this because I don't want to see this get out of control either. If I were to guess you could probably say less than 10% of the city easily knows anything about the land development code and the vast majority of the city doesn't know what the hell it is. So I think that's important to remember, to are we representing just the people who know the stuff or are we representing the whole city? Originally, councilmember pool, if you would help me understand what you meant by adding the names of neighborhood people and/or influencers? Can you help me understand what you mean by that? >> Pool: Sure. Florida so in those parts of town that don't have organized neighborhood associations and neighborhood plans or contact team, there are people who are on a block or who you used in your campaign to kind of organize people in your district. They're influencers, they have the networks set up. And I think those are the people that we tap into and they help us to get information out to the [5:05:08 PM] farthest reaches of our districts. >> Flannigan: You're talking about an informal process? Because I thought you said you wanted their names listed somewhere. >> Pool: What I was looking for is all the people we know that are out there so we have a compendium of people to contact so when we're sending information out we're not only using the networks we've established through various means but also make sure that we have all the up to date information that the city has. >> Flannigan: When you say we, you mean council or we as the city? >> Pool: I'm only talking for myself really. We would be my office so when my office wants to contact people in district 7 I make sure that I have as many people as possible to get the word out to. Every day I'm aware there's another part of my district that I -- you know, that I don't yet have on my newsletter list or something like that because we won't ever have everything but I think if we bring all of the -- all of the information that we all collect together -- and I didn't want to just leave it with the established groups. I wanted to make it a bit wider than that and I just called them influencers. >> Flannigan: I appreciate clarification. That falls into what I was saying about my district office being willing to coordinate outreach and that kind of thing. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: Two questions. The first one, let me circle around to the boards and commissions. I just want to make sure that I -- that I'm clear on that. I want to make sure that the other boards and commissions gnashes what their route is -- understand what their route is to provide feedback, whether that's -- what their route is and when. So my thought would be that the other boards and commissions could adopt resolutions or give us information, just like they do now on particular subjects, and they vote and they provide -- they provide information to us. Or there might be individual members of boards and commissions that want to give us feedback just like anybody else would. But I think there maybe -- what so what I'm looking for is how is it that we're gonna communicate to them, to these boards and commissions, so that they know what their process is -- what the [5:07:09 PM] expectation is, what is their process, and when must they do it by? So that's what I'm looking for. Have we done that cigarette is -- done that yet? Is there a >> Council member, I know we talked about this at the meeting Monday night. The meet something going to advice all of the board commissions to a meeting hosted by the cag. I initially thought we would have special called meetings with all of them. After a lie doing with them, the very thing, they came back and said, have a representative, one or two, that might come to this meeting, bringing forward those comments from all of the other boards and commissions. I don't think that stops the board and commissions asking staff for some information certainly, but to get that and collect that, I think the cag stepped up and volunteered to kind of be the conduit for other boards and commissions to bring that information forward. The cag also is going to invite the planning commission, and the zoning and planning commission and also so have a conversation what they heard and that information as well. I know that is one conduit, the cag is stepping up and going to go forward and do that. I fully expect every board and commission that may have an interest in this probably to render their resolution or provide recommendations. We want to make sure that all of that information gets to the planning commission in a timely manner. If they provide information, that would come in, before, I think it's like June 7th, then that may influence the planning commission. That second draft. That is a key date. We'll let board and commissions know of this. [5:09:09 PM] We'll also let council member Poole, the organizations which include the contact teams they be aware of the calender that we have. Boards and commissions, there is a deadline. Yes, we'll make them aware of the dead lines, working through the clerk's office in the that information. >> Just for clarification, that's on the to-do list, so to speak. That's not something that's been done yet but the intention is to inform them all. That's all I was asking for. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay, and I think the cag is -- >> Cag is actually involved in that. To gather that information. >> I see people want to say something, I have a second one, second question. Should I do that first real quick. This going back to something other council members had spoken to, that's a table. I guess we're calling it a derivation table. I can't say that word. I wanted to understand what you said, Mr. Gernsey. I would not be thinking of it line by line but as a section. I have my attorney had on. Obviously the code is organized around chapters and supplement chapters and sub sections and that sort of thing, so when I think of a crosswalk, I think of chapter "X" is here. Subchapter under that is here. The sub section under that is here. That's the kind of -- the kind of crosswalk that you see now, now, I know that what you're saying is that it is not going to one place, so that adds to the complications, so -- but it is something that we -- that I have seen done in federal law, and other places, that, you know, and perhaps the law department should be reined in -- not reined in. Brought in, maybe the law department should be brought in to help with that exercise, so -- >> Council men, I think we are [5:11:11 PM] in a position certainly doing what you are suggesting, combatability is here, here, and here, parking requirements went to this section. The regulations went here and here and here. We can get down to that level but to get line by line, it's very difficult. But if we're talk about those topic areas, what is compatibility, if we want to say where is compatibility height, we will have a table of contents that will be clear, that we'll talk about different things. >> I wanted to get clear on the difference between what I'm saying and when you say line by line. What I mean is section -- chapter, section, subsection, not line one of sub section 2 went here. But sub section 2 went here. So, that's -- because I'm not quite understanding what you mean when you say line by line, and that's why I wanted to ask this again, because obviously, we don't need to know that this word went here or didn't go here, but we do need at a level, because the chapters break down to details and sub sections have details in them, so -- am I making sense? >> You are. I'm sorry, John Mickey. With opticos design. I think what I would remind everyone as we look back at the co-diagnosis, in general, at the section level, I believe this is possible. I will caveat, in our code diagnosis, one of the things about your code is, it is all kinds of layers, right? Sometimes the section is detailed you this enough. I'm sorry, high enough level that we can easily tell you this moved here or here or here. And sometimes it's not. Right? So, what I will say, we will do our best to get as drilled Dunn as much as we can. [5:13:12 PM] It definitely won't be a line by line, but I can't guarantee it will always be at the section level but what we will strive to do is be as detailed as we can. . Council men kitchen, first of all, I agree with you 110%. However, I think that -- let me say this briefly. As I think some of you know, I have been a career and drafting coach for a long time. I never heard the word deriveration in disposition tables. I think we need to know what we're talking about in transparency tables. There is, whether it's right or wrong, a suspicion in any community about when change comes about. We need to make it really clear to everybody exactly when we're even thinking about change in this process. All right? A lot of that, when you're doing a code in the old days, I may disagree with you in bringing the law department in. That's usually part of the problem and not the solution. In the old days, you took strike-amounts. We don't do that anymore. Our codes are much more graphic, easier to read. I hope this document is currently organized because our code is hard to find anything. We need a group thing. It's going to be really hard to go line by line. I think the key is -- let me give you an example. Everybody is probably familiar with level graphic and compatibility standards. If there's any change this that, we need to see if the line is lowering or hiring. That we need to understand. If the tall buildings are get egg closer to your house, you want to know that. I have seen a lot of text and codes and I read it three, four times to understand it. That's why you have to hire an [5:15:13 PM] attorney. I can assure you my 17 colleagues and I, that's going to be our primary intent, is to make sure the citizens in this community, not just those people that use it every day, understand if and when any change is suggested. And we agree. I think everybody at this table agrees that's imperative. >> Miss alter? >> I have not yet had my briefing on codenext. So please keep that in mind and I'm looking forward to learn more how we can make this more transparent. But I don't need that briefing to know that the devil is in the details in this code and not everyone can follow all of the details with the same amount of clarity. The other thing that I don't need from the briefing is to know that while not everyone knows what codenext is, or knows what the land development code is, every single person in this city and beyond is going to be affected by the choices we make in rewriting this code. So, if it takes a little longer, I'm not advocating it take longer, we need that transparency. We started off this discussion saying this is a rewrite, it's making things more simple. It's not changing policy. Well, you can change policy really quickly if you don't know what the policy was before and you got something new and you can't follow that. And I think it's a great idea to take big things like mcmansion policy or park land dedication, or whatever those pieces are and say, okay, these are really big ones that we're going to make very clear we're not changing or we are changing in a particular way and be very transparent about that but to the extent we can within our resources drill down further on those details to help us through this process, I think there's value in that. Does it have to be every word? No. But we need that transparency. And we need it now and we need it five years from now when we have the code and we have a developer standing before us and telling us, no, it's this way. [5:17:15 PM] And we know. We've seen it when we've seen the pods. They have one table that says this and another table that says that. You though what happens? When they go to site plan, they do whichever one they want not the one council said they passed. The same thing can happen when the code writ at large. We need people beyond us who are looking at that, because this code affects everyone. >> I think these concerns have been talked about for the past 12 moss. I think everybody shares these transparency concerns. Honestly, it wasn't until Mr. Sullivan that our last meeting infused for me a little optimism in this process. If we need detailed derivative tables and detailed crosswalk, we have failed at our goal of having an easily understandable efficient code. So, it's a little bit about let's get the cliff notes before we get a chance to read the back so we can understand what's going on. I want to, as the cag members know, I've echoed these concerns. I want to inject a small bit of optimism, thanks to Dave Sullivan, that we will get something that's more easy to understand and maybe some of these concerns will be allayed. >> Miss Houston? Hs thank you, play yore, I know we're here to discuss the outreach efforts. We have gotten deeper into that and now I'm going to make my segway. Council member, this code is going to affect everyone, so my question, and this is not about outreach, so, please forgive me, is that when we talk about the form-based code, is that citywide or just central in east Austin? I thought I heard that last night. Where did you do a presentation last night? We went to zoning and planning commission. [5:19:15 PM] It was about an hour presentation. Really, that's the part where the code, when it comes out, will address form base and not form base. But where it's applied comes through in the mapping, so is as we go through and we map the city, basically looking at the -- where the zoning districts apply, that has not been pre determined at this point. We are going to do several passions of the maps, of the code and take a look at those areas. The first may be looking at existing zoning. What is the land use. There may not be a designated neighbor plan. Those are simple. The district name may change but the overall might not change that much. There will be a second pass that we'll look at. What are those things out there. Do we have a neighboring plan? What are those characteristics, things that exist on the ground, flood planes, topography, what land use exists. What buildings exist. What is zoning in the past and we look at that as that also applies and then we'll get to a third pass. That's probably when we take a look at that. Who other cities may have form-based code and what areas may not. So, I cannot give you a distinct answer. Form-based code is not going to apply to the entire city of Austin. It's going to be an entire portion of the entire city of Austin. Where is it going to apply. On a lot by lot basis I can't tell you that right now. >> I'm not asking for that. I thought I heard and I'll ask staff to go back and look at that tape again to see, I thought whoever the staff was doing the presentation said central and east Austin. That's why I ask the question. >> Let me get this over to Johnny. >> In last night's presentation, [5:21:16 PM] I had an opportunity to present, Lisa wise consulting who is in the audience had a chance to talk about the non-transsection Zones. It's using form-based tools and it's really based on existing use-based zoning. In the discussion last night there were a couple things we talked about. One of the things we talked about were a lot of standards that we have today, that we're preparing to release, are based inherently on the characteristics we are finding in the city of Austin today. And so in that case, some of of it came from alandale. Or crestview. Some came from Bolden creek. We found these patterns that happened across the city. In that sense the Zones had been infused into them some of that DNA. But what we also recognized and what we talked about last night, this is our first framework. This is the first draft. And as we do the mapping, as we start to question, which of the tools that we have, the transsecretary and not Tran secretary Zones. Which tool works well here. Which affects the policy us have on the ground. As we do that, we learn a few things, maybe we need to tweak the standards that came out. Maybe we need a whole new zone district. Because, as we get into mapping. We are going lot by lot and we will find situations that maybe are unique in one neighborhood, but as we look at the rest of the city, we realize this pattern shows up in east Austin but it also shows up in the far northwest, and -- in council member Flanagan's district, because these are patterns that we're finding. I think as Greg mentioned, we can't tell you specifically today, Tran secretary Zones where it will be applied because we'll be looking across the city [5:23:16 PM] and finding what is the best tool to implement the existing policies you have, matches the zoning you have and land uses. Sometimes the land uses and zoning don't match. We're going to look at a whole series of things that inform us, what is the best tool and when we come out with that, that map comes out in April, then we have another opportunity to talk with community, either on a district basis or smaller neighborhood settings or open office hours to dive deeper again and ask, you know, based on everything we're seeing, we think this is an appropriate tool. So, the other thing I'd love to just emphasize again, and we tried to say this as many times as we can. One of the things we've heard in the community is, if we see everyone, transsecretary Zones or form-based code, equal upzoning. I want to emphasize this, one of the presentations last week we gave to cag. We started talking last night, the Tran secretary Zones provide a whole diversity of Zones. Some Zones will essentially be a more refined fs-3 which is not enough zoning. Some will give you more fine-grained tools to implement some of the scale of buildings that you're getting today along your corridors. Again the Tran secretary Zones are not upzoning. It's a matter in the way any of the tools are applied on the ground. Even the use-based Zones you have today depending how they are mapped could be upzoning as well. I did want to add that one thing because I know we've heard that many times. >> Thank you. >> Mayor? >> Hold on. Miss Houston? >> Houston: There it is. Just to follow up, in that conversation last night, there was some comment, several people made comments about 12 story buildings across the east side, or 1120-feet tall buildings throughout the east side was inevitable. Can you give me some kind of [5:25:16 PM] context for that? Because we have a pattern here in Austin, about saying those kinds of things about east Austin but not about other parts of town because other parts of town already have some protections like save our springs ordinance which protects parts of town from things that we get as a default. Could you give me some context? Because I was coming in late and didn't hear it all. Yeah, so I would it clarify one thing. We had a meeting, a joint session of -- well, supposed to be a joint session of planning commission. I believe it was only a quorum. Of PC that ran from 5:00 until 6:00, so it was before the standing meeting. I believe the comments you are referring to actually happened at the PC meeting because I do not recall a question being directed about 12 story buildings particularly in east Austin. Again, what I can say is, we're working with existing policy you have today, so, both in east Austin, and ncdds that you have, they talk about height, the existing doaning you have today talks about height. I will say my recollection is that 12 stories is not generally found in all of east Austin. I I know there are, as we toured with you. There are some properties on I-35, large projects in the past. >> Colleague, I point out, we are down to the last 30 minutes and we have a third session to talk about framework and theme. So we want to make sure we are able to get to that as well. Council member pool and kitchen. >> To talk about two things, how does codenext propose to handle land parcels currently not zoned and how does the code next [5:27:17 PM] propose to handle initiatives that are under way? For example, we're real concerned about the pace of demolition, particularly on the side but frankly it's in my district 2. We're pulling double perfect perfectly fine older homes and putting up larger whatevers. And they are more expensive. Anyway, how are we handling land that is not yet zoned, since it's the capital city, we have a lot of state on land that will eventually become into private hands. And what are we doing to indicate those parts of the city where we have historic landmark concerns and demolitions are a big concern to us, we just had an east Austin historic survey. What are you doing to absorb and adopt and reflect both of those? >> Sure. So, I'm going to leave the zoning of unzoned land for Greg to answer. Actually, I may ask Greg to answer both of these. >> When the draft comes out, we're still looking at the issue of the unzoned land that is in there. I told the cag that I am looking at it on Monday night, and that's not something that we have quite all figured out. Because it's not a simple thing. I think as we've kind of discussed on a recent pud. But that's not to say there won't be something that might come out later in the second draft. >> This is also -- I mean, we might as well start with city-owned land that is not yet zoned, because we have some park land. We have land that's parks but it is not zoned as parkland. That's the easiest entry point, I think. >> Historically, we have zoned park land public and zoned public to remove it from being park land. The second question, I guess, may be a little bit -- well, the [5:29:18 PM] second question is a little bit different. I don't know if I could give you a real clear answer right at this moment on that. >> That's okay. I'll give you a bye. The point being, though, that we are continuing to pursue initiatives that affect the fabric of the city and affect the zoning and what our streets look like, so, we don't want any of that to get lost in the wash behind the speed boats. >> I think the character analysis that we did as part of the codenext process, and we're looking at those things, are important, and may address part of that. The demolition part, I think, we did east Austin historic survey, which kind of laid the ground work or possible local historic districts, and that will probably be a tool that could be used to address, I think, some of the questions that you have, trying to maintain the character of our older neighborhoods. So, I know there will be tools that are in codenext that may get to that. How they are applied will be addressed to that mapping process about where those things could occur, I know there's certainly equity issues of how we apply the map and where those tools are used in different parts of the city, but I don't have a quick answer. I'll think about that and get back. >> And then the last thing I would say, there are also parts of the city that don't yet have a neighborhood plan, and there are a lot of the parts of the city without them. I think this process is also including those parts of the city or are we only focusing on those parts of city that already have neighborhood plans? >> Codenext applies to parts of the city. It should not be confused with planning. We could have better tools that come out that would allow us to look at planning more for [5:31:20 PM] different areas and may change the tools that would apply in the future to certain parts of the city because we'll have that opportunity. But codenext applies to the entire city of Austin. It's more of a regulatory tool, not so much of a planning tool. But those tools we have adopted. Austin, are going to be important will influence the mapping process that we have. >> Okay. Council member, kitchen and mayor pro tem, and I suggest we go to the last item on this agenda because we only have about 25 minutes left. >> I'll be quick and you don't have to answer it now. So, I'm hearing -- I'm hearing that the code applies to the whole city. I'm hearing that you have decisions to make on mapping about where Tran secretary applies, so, that's inherently confusing, and maybe it's just me that's confused. But in any case, we can talk about that offline. I want to get some card on that. And then the other thing that I would say is if we're deciding where -- what parts of this -- I'm going back to what council member Houston had asked about. If we're talking about only applying parts of this to parts of the city, then I want to say in parts of the city where there is rapid growth. It continues to perpetuate what you don't want for the city. We try to make this a liveable city, a walkable city, et cetera, et cetera. Parts of town where you don't have to go downtown for everything. So, I'm hoping that's part of what is being factored in to what your considering when you decide where it applies. >> Mayor pro tem? I appreciate others will be invited to participate and provide comments. I want to say, somebody holding [5:33:22 PM] voting it will be critical for me to hear from a commission like the environmental commission and landmark commission and probably the parks commission as well. I say the landmark commission and environmental commission, is really critical voices in how the code -- how the code will be implementing the parts of Austin. The preservation of historic structures and sustainable development throughout the city. Et cetera. >> Mr. Duncan? >> I want to thank commissioner pool for your question, I asked the same question Monday night. We do need to address that and need policy from the council. Austin is a little bit unique. We're sort of pock marked with properties we can't control by the state or federal government, many of those are transforming with an example of the 75-acre tract as we all know. We need to have some type, maybe an interim type of control in our code where people can't say well, you weren't zoned so you can't notify the neighbors. We have to address that. I don't think that's something anybody faced before. Those things willing be left out, I assure you. >> Mr. Parking, you want to close us out on this section? >> Yes. Thank you. I guess I want to end, maybe again sharing some of our experiences from other cities, and what success might look like. You know, you, as a community -- Austin has recognized that your code is broken, which is why you committed a lot of resources and time, and got a lot of folks to volunteer their time to make it better. You have great aspirations in imagine Austin, and your adopted plans, and aspiration of the city. Better. And, I know, the way you all know the code today and how it [5:35:23 PM] works can somehow be the source of frustration for a lost of people. Right? So what we look forward to is working with you, and -- relying on your leadership to help set the tone. To accept set the tone for how the conversations, when the roll-out of the code and when the roll-out of the map occurs to help as Mr. Sullivan said the other night, very eloquently, really set the tone and help folks prepare for a better future, a better code. A better way of dealing with the development in your city. I can tell you in the case of Denver, Denver, we had all of the same issue that and all of the situations with the functional code we have that was updated in the 1960s. Is all the same as we have here. It was the same technique and same kind of complex its. So, what we're looking forward to have all of you in your very respective roles, and constituencies, helping the community to -- there's transparency, but important, openness to improvement. But openness to seeing -- what is better. >> I guarantee you, there will be things that are not quite right and we hope you can help set the tone to engage in constructive conversations about what is not right. I guarantee, draft 1 is not going to have it all right. It's not done. That's why we have to do this extensive kind of outreach and have these conversations across the community, but, the important thing is, who is going to set the tone for the conversation. Right? [5:37:25 PM] And change people have some anxiety about change, and sometimes fear about change. But this is the kind of major structural change that is a significant opportunity to move your city forward. I can say our experience in Denver was -- we had all of the same anxieties leading up to the draft but when the draft came out, people could better understand zoning and we had more ordinary citizen, reading the text, coming to the mapping sessions, understanding how it worked and they were like, fine, done. Right? And then there were other places where, yeah, we had to have a lot more conversations, and there were more meetings, so that's why we certainly are going to be open to how many meetings are going to be necessary to get the maps right. But, I guess from a consultant team and your great staff team, we're all looking forward to working with you on helping set the tone and opening folks' minds to the possibility of a better code. >> Thank you. We have 20 minutes left. Do you think you can get through the framework and themes in the next ten minutes so that we leave a couple minutes for people to make comments? >> I'll turn over to John Mickey and see how he can do it. >> So, I think what I'd like to do is focus here on this slide that Alina presented earlier, to the five themes. These are themes that have recurred throughout your city over the last decade. Imagine Austin in that process, the concept of the city really needing anything on the environment. Thinking about affordability, thinking about the character of the community, thinking about the mobility and all that's entailed in that. [5:39:25 PM] Those are themes that as we went through phase one and did extensive listening, those themes came up again. Constantly, always, these came to the top. In our code diagnosis, some of these came up also. In particular, permitting and processing, and the fact your zoning doesn't meet really the character that's found on the ground or laces that you have in Austin, or mobility, a lot of your standards are oriented to the thinking of the city where you need to accommodate the car everywhere. It's been a theme that came up most recently in the prescription papers that's been presented by the cag and opportunity for council to review as well. They are some of the main themes that we will be coming forward with in the materials that we will provide in the tool boxes. So, we'll have specific five topics, topic talks that will talk about those themes, but then all of the material that we provide, both for you as council members, for you as cag members as you reach out to the community, planning, for anyone to access, as Peter said, what are those things that we have worked with staff to move the ball on, to move us closer to that better city, what have we done in the code to get us close to that. And so, I think we had a lot of discussion in the cag about they want material to help them explain the code to the community and so these themes will show up in that material that's provided to all of you. We will also have more technical information that dives deeper into the code and we'll have the opportunity on the website to dive into the actual text language of the code. Again, just going through those themes, and you've heard this before, mobility, affordability, the environment, community character, and lastly, really the permitting process and the whole kind of clarity of the whole code, we will have stories [5:41:27 PM] and material for you all to be able to discuss prepared, with a roll-out of the code. I do believe the second part of this. Is request by the cag to talk about some of the key things to come up under those themes. And they would like to be able to express some things they've heard from the community. So, this is an opportunity to open it up, maybe, chair Duncan. If you would like to coordinate cag member whose might have comments they want to talk about in regards to these public concerns they talk about. >> These are public concerns that have come up on these additional -- on these new airings of public concerns that would be important to daylight. >> Correct. >> Mayor, I have a list here from the executive working group that I could just read what we have put together at your request. Okay. So, this is the list. Site development standards, character and compatibility. Tree protection, mcmansion parking requirements/redrukzs. Affordability, drainage and water quality. Permitting and processing, historic preservation, small business, music, art and culture, subdivisions and connectivity. Commercial design standards, use tables and basically the new Zones, for example, sf goes from -- sf3 goes from one zone to five Zones or whatever. So, that's kind of what we have so far that have come up as key areas. >> Greg, could you please e-mail that list out to everyone here and all of the council members? [5:43:27 PM] >> Yes. Thank you for that. That's very helpful. Anything else while we're here? Yes, miss kitchen? &I want to say thank you. We had a lot of questions for you all, but this is really coming together and I just wanted to say thank you to our -- the staff and consultants and everybody that's done so much work on this. I feel it's coming together. We still have lots and lots of questions, of course and lots of questions about the process but I do want to thank you for where we're at at this point. >> I also want to add my thanks to that as well. I'm sure we're all feeling that. Again, you guys have done a lot of work and I think that you have started off this process well. Your job is clearly not over 0. You don't get to get away and you don't get to get away in April. So, I don't want anybody to have that expectation. I think it is important, just to echo what Dave said at an earlier meeting and what Peter just said, for the community to know that this really is a chance for the entire community to come together to leave this city in a much better place than it is right now. This is not a win-lose exercise that we are going through here. If we end up that way, we will have disappointed a lot of people, and not ended up in the process that we need or achieve the result that we want. This is really an opportunity, again, for the community to come together and to do this in a much better way. I think that the work that's being done with the outreach to the community, is real strong. I think given the comments that [5:45:28 PM] came at the table, we can make it even stronger. But for anybody that is watching this, and for people that are involved in the process. We really do want to have the community engaged and involved in this that has got to be a high priority as we go through this process for the year and I think that's one of the ways that we'll measure success and also ultimately decide whether we were in fact successful in this process. And then the last thing I would say, thanks for laying out again the schedule and the time line. I think it -- it's ambitious, it has us moving forward. It is important that we hold to that time line. I think that's part of the commitment we're making to the community and to the process. So we all have to be diligent with respect to that. Again, thank you. Miss Houston? >> Houston: One last thing. When we first became the 10-1 council, we talked about taking a bus tour of everybody's district so we can see the concerns and the assets, because each district has issues that they are facing and they also have wonderful assets that nobody even knows about. Well, we didn't have time to do that. And so I want to thank Mr. Mickey, and Jerry restover for going with me on a ride out this week in district 1 so that they could see what some of the very dysfunctional, horrible, how these developments have occurred in district 1 because of the zoning that we have now, and people are faced with having three story -- 2 1/2 story buildings and it cults out the light for the people who live next door and we have waste [5:47:28 PM] water run-off issue, so my hope is that because of the drive-out, or ride-out that we did, that will help make sure that this code is not like the one we're getting away from. Because if we do the same thing we've always done, we're going to be as crazy as we are now. So we've got to make sure that whatever this code is going to look like. Make sure we don't do the same things we're doing now, because it's horrible out in district 1. I want to thank you, Mr. Mickey, Mr. Restover, thank you for letting me drive your brand-new car. >> Mr. Chairman, do you have anything else to add before we go? Anybody else? Again. Thank you very much. I will stand in adjourn of this special-called joint meeting. Thank you very much.