City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 04/12/2017 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 4/12/2017 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 4/12/2017 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:16:34 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. Council. We have a quorum. Today is April 12, 2017. We are in the boards and commission room here in the city. We had posted on the message board the questions, since we have four Bs we're trying to get out in the morning, whether to what extent we want to have a presentation made, as opposed to getting into questions. Jimmy was the only one to reply that said, hey, let's get into this stuff. So my suggestion would be that we call these folks up, have them do an ever so brief kind of orientation, maybe five to ten minutes tops. And then let us get into discussing what are the real issues, the drivers. Let's go ahead and start with neighborhood housing and community development. We'll do the same thing. We'll kind of rotate around. Everybody encouraged to ask their questions as quickly as they can and since we'll have a presentation and then probably 30 to 40 minutes' worth of questions. >> Good morning, mayor and council, interim director of neighborhood housing and community development. I'm joined here by Alex zamora, our chief financial officer, and Rebecca and our assistant city manager. Is there a clicker I should have? So housing is comprised of 59 ftes, all very skilled and are various pursuits. You'll see a number of our performance measures here on the slide. And in the interest of time at the mayor's request, we'll not get into that level of detail. [9:18:34 AM] I did want to spend some time talking about how we operate. Because we're both neighborhood housing and community development and also Austin housing finance corporation, I want to walk you through how that relationship works. We have our operating budget of $28.3 million and a capital budget of $14.1 million. A piece of that budget slides over for our neighborhood housing and community development -- community development program with activities such as financial empowerment and public services. A portion slides down for our housing program, which is deployed through the Austin housing finance corporation and a service agreement approved annually each year at budget time. That funding includes our capital appropriation, which was $14 million. Homebuyer assistance, homeowners assistance and renters assistance. When you see items coming before council a great number are coming under the Austin housing corporation, due to our contractual relationship with the city. So our budget at a glance, it's a $20.3 million operating budget with 59 ftes. We have tax supported funds of 31.5%. Housing trust fund is 13.6%. And other funds with 2.2%. We have major grants of community development block grants of $7.1 million. And our home investment partnership grant of $2.6 million. That comprises about 55% of our budget. For the population that we serve, it's very diverse. We serve first time homebuyers at 0 to 80%. We have low and moderate income renters and homeowners, persons experiencing homelessness. We serve vulnerable populations such as children, seniors, and youth such as small businesses. [9:20:37 AM] All of these are captured largely in that category of contractual services on the chart on the left. Our capital budget is one in our capital program is one that I am very proud of for the amount of work we are able to do. You'll see on the map that our 2006 bund funded programs or developments are with the blue triangle. And the 2013 bund funded developments are the green circle. And the 2013, in particular, the 2013 developments that were approved in 2017 are with the yellow square. We have some geographic displacement but largely along the eastern crescent. I want to talk about how we are able to leverage these funds, because I think that's the most telling story of our capital program. For our bond program we were seeing a four to one ratio and with our 2013 capital program shows us 7 to 1 leverages ratio. For projects at the top left where you see lake line station, that's a $26.4 million construction project. Our Austin housing finance corporation investment was a little under $3 million. So they were able to take our little under $3 million and leverage that to get $23.4 million in additional financing. That's a tremendous feat and one that I'm very proud of. Some factors impacting housing affordability and investments for the city of Austin. Young adults and baby boomers are comprising 70% of our 2000 to 2012 growth. We are seeing a reduction in families, down to 25% in 2014. We are seeing a decreasing middle class in growth and higher income households. Renters earning above $75,000 are up 4%. [9:22:40 AM] And we are seeing poverty coupled with lack of affordable housing. I know everyone has seen this slide before but I think it's a very telling slide that demonstrates how 55% of Austin households are renters and 33% of those earn less than $25,000 annually. But unfortunately only 10% of rental units are affordable to them based on hud standards. And that leaves us with a gap of 48,000 units per households at 30% median family income and below. >> Mayor Adler: 33% earning less than $25,000 annually. Is that 33% of the 55%? Or is that 33%? >> It's 33 of the 55%. A third of the 55%. Sorry. So this chart depicts what we're seeing for our home prices and our rents. The Austin median home price has risen over the last ten years. The median home price and the median rent price has risen drastically while the income levels have remained flat. So over the last ten years rents have risen 50% and median income has risen only 9%. I want to spend some time -- >> Mayor Adler: Can you say those numbers again? >> Of course. Over the last ten years rents have risen 50% while the median income has risen only 9%. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Sure. I wanted to spend just a minute on some noteworthy prior council actions. We have some key policies underway that address affordability that we're leading. Council has passed several resolutions specifically to identify funding for repairs related to manufactured homes, to explore partnership opportunities between the city, aisd, and Travis county for affordable housing and other housing projects. [9:24:44 AM] To create a housing lending group to promote home ownership opportunities. A resolution to achieve affordable housing. Code next, affordable housing options and fair housing choice, and relocation requirements for developments that will result in the displacement of tenants. These are very time consuming for staff and while we continue to make progress on them, we're not able to close out the ones we have entirely all the way. And I want to particularly note for two of the resolutions, the two in the middle, the 201606 -- sorry. 20160616-035 and 20151217-074. Those specifically call out amounts that should be transferred into the housing trust fund. And we are currently, as a city, not complying with those resolutions that were passed by council. For our key indicators, the chart up in the upper -- >> Mayor, can I ask questions now or wait? >> If they're really quick now. >> I want to know why we're not complying, but that might be a long answer. >> That's probably a long answer, but I'm happy to answer it when we get there. The chart at the upper left speaks to the number of services provided through all housing and community development services. The chart below that is the number of affordable rental units constructed and/or preserved through capital investment. You will see a dip from 2012 to 2013 that we're back on an upswing. That's largely due to the closeout of the 2006 bond program and then the gap year and then the building up of the 2013 bond. When you look at the number of repair services provided to homeowners, which is on the upper right, these are housing repair through our general obligation bond program, architectural removal, lead and emergency home repair projects. [9:26:50 AM] Those are all contracts that we have to provide those services. And then the last one is the total number of housing related services. Again, you see a dip in 2011 -- between 2012 and 2013. That's largely attributable to a decrease we had in funding from the federal government. >> Mayor. How is the lead program going? Are y'all finding enough homes? >> We're still finding that we're striking out more than we want to be when we go to test homes to see if they would -- that we can find lead to do the remediation. We're employing strategies to look towards multi-family to find lead in existing multi-family complexes. But we're -- it's an area that we're struggling in where we're not seeing as much as we were expecting to be seeing. >> Thank you. >> So some of our horizon issues. The first one I know you guys have heard a tremendous deal about that lately and more coming tomorrow, which is the implementation of the strategic housing plan. As far as legislative constraints, we have limitations that have been imposed on what funding sources are available and what tools we have for neighborhood affordable housing. Including fees for affordable housing. And we continue to work with our intergovernmental relations team. But we still have legislative constraints there. And we would like to see an investment in technology for enhanced services. We have a number of systems in neighborhood housing that are home grown that we have worked very actively, and to Alex's credit, that allow us to be able to keep track of our housing inventory. But it's something that could be improved and taken into the next generation of technology. And we look forward to that opportunity. I'm going to turn it over to Burt. [9:28:55 AM] >> These are some topics we wanted to identify and council may have others and at this time we are open for questions. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> If you could go back to that page 10 and help us understand why those are not in compliance. The two resolutions that you mentioned. >> Sure. In particular the direction to increase the percentage of tax revenue derived from properties within the desired development zone that were formally city owned to be transferred to the affordable housing trust fund. That policy was set and established in 2015 and through the efforts of balancing the budget for the operating budget, those transfers have not been realized to the extent that council desired with the 100% transfer. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. Ms. Houston and Ms. Garza. >> I'm sorry. I was distracted. >> Did you want me to repeat that? >> Yes, I'm sorry. >> It's been a factor of creating a balanced budget. Staff was made the decision and it was enforced by the action that council took to lower that transfer into the housing trust fund and able to fund other priorities. >> Mayor Adler: Do you recall the last budget -- >> We have two inconsistent things. We have a resolution on the books that our budget decision was inconsistent with. Is that what we're saying? >> Yes. And I think Ed can address that. >> Prior to those resolutions we were transferring about a million dollars, just rough numbers, short of a million dollars, that was 40% of city owned properties. The two resolutions said take the 40% to 100%. That was the primary one that changed the dollar amount. And the other one, which would be longer term, was applied to all properties, not just city-owned properties. [9:30:57 AM] That would have required an amount of about $3 million in fiscal year '17. Staff proposed taking it from a million to $2 million because we can't get to the $3 million with all the other priorities. Council, when you got the budget, you approved a change to the budget before you adopted it, that added an additional $500,000 from one-time funds to get it to $2.5 million. Council's final action was short of what the goals that the resolution set forth. And, again, it's important to remember that $500,000 of that increase was from our [indiscernible] Funds. That's the history. >> So that was a resolution, not an ordinance to increase the percentage of tax revenue? >> Those are both resolutions. >> Okay. All right. >> I have a followup, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> I thought, and not having the resolution in front of me, I thought the resolution said was kind of going forward. I'm still confused. So it's percentage of the tax revenue derived. I'm confused. I guess I thought a property that buy -- a developer that buys a formerly city owned property. They pay taxes. And now 100% of the bucket goes to the city. I don't understand why they had to use their budget to make that change. I thought it was outside money being funneled 100% as opposed to 40%. Can you help me? >> At the end of the day it's all property tax revenues that get collected from the developers. And council has adopted this approach to putting money into the housing trust fund. So we could just choose to transfer dollar amounts. Say transfer 2.5 to $3 million a year, but council is choosing to take an approach where we want to take all the incremental revenues from those city-owned properties. [9:32:59 AM] The largest one is the W. Hotel. It's the single largest valued property that is one of those contributing housing trust fund members. But, again, it's not really like there's a direct transfer or anything. It's property tax revenues. They don't pay one check to this and one check to this. They pay their property tax bill, staff tracks that, and per this formula we are able to determine what the transfer to the housing trust fund should be. In 2017 we weren't able to get to that dollar amount and stay within balance. Council struggled with it as well and fell short of what the formula would call for. >> I'm slow. Say the W paid $100 in tax revenue. The old rule said 40 of those dollars go to the housing trust fund. Where did the 60 go? >> Well -- >> To the general fund? >> All of the $100 goes to the general fund. It's property tax revenue and gets posted to the general fund. We transfer money out of the general fund, we transfer it to the housing trust fund based on that 40-dollar formula. The new formula said not 40, we want all 100 to go. But, again, the budget restraints didn't allow for that to happen. And so it fell short of that. >> What I'm saying is I thought 40 goes to housing. 60 goes somewhere else. Now we're saying 60 goes to housing. Why did housing have to adjust their budget for a change in that? Maybe it's too early and I haven't finished my tea. >> I don't know that they had to adjust their budget. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't hear housing. So as you recall, we passed the resolution that said we would like 100% to go. When we got the budget from the manager to us, the manager didn't do us. He only -- he moved a smaller percentage of that money as extra money into the budget. As a council, when we were going through the concept menu, there was an item that said we want to increase the amount that goes to housing. And we did that. [9:34:59 AM] But we didn't increase it to the full extent of 100% because it's just general fund money. So it's kind of like what we were saying when we were trying to do it with the development outside of Austin. The council, each year, decides how much of that really -- of that fee money into the general fund or the tax money into the general fund. We decide each year how much to budget toward these folks. >> When I was out, I was listening to you on tape and I think you asked a question about whether it was prospective. And it was with regard with the other publicly owned land, not the city land. It was my understanding the city land went to 100 with the next cycle. But we didn't go back and capture other lands that might have been county owned or school district owned from the past. That's only happening going forward. So the resolution that expanded it to all publicly-owned land is just going forward. >> With the exception of the bull creek site. Because that had already transferred. >> Yeah. >> Correct. >> When you were saying you had to adjust the budget it was more that you thought you were going to get more because of the resolution, but you didn't get as much so you had the use -- got it. >> So the amount that's coming to the housing trust fund is not something that we calculate that we rely on financial services to tell us what that dollar amot is going to be. And then the adjustment cames, as the mayor was indicatin with the changes that were mad wi the adoptio of theudget and E adoptionf tt once menu item. D that wassing one-time money from reserves. >> Okay. Thank you. >> But there was a significant increase from a million dollars to about $2.5 million in this fiscal year. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. [9:37:04 AM] Okay. Questions from council? Mayor pro tem. >> I wanted to just talk a little bit about what programs we might have that would benefit property owners who are -- who own properties, especially multi-family housing that may be out of compliance with our health and safety standards. So there's a long ago resolution that was aimed at really trying to make sure that our code department as aggressive as they ought to be in enforcing health and safety standards within sub standard housing. But there was a clause in that resolution that talks about working more closely with housing, so if you have a property owner that wants to bring the property in compliance but may not have the funds to do so that we are making them aware of any resources that might exist. I think that's keeping with the our community. Because if that housing flips, if the property owner has to sell it, then, you know, it may be more likely that the housing that comes in its place is more expensive. Can you talk a little bit about what resources we might have and whether they are being used for that. We have, for example, someone on our -- well, that may not be a good example. But we certainly have other examples where a low-cost loan or a forgivable loan might help that property owner if it was tied to some restrictions, that it remain affordable. >> Sure. We could use our Austin housing finance corporation fund to perform services such as that. We could do that using general obligation bonds. We have our lead program. If there's a way we can tap into those fund, that would be some funding available for that. I can go back and visit with staff to find out the utilization rate for multi-family. [9:39:08 AM] Because that's not one that I have any details on. Rebecca might. But I don't have the breakdown on that. >> And I would be interested too in knowing whether that coordination is happening. Whether code is giving housing a call when there's a situation like that. You know, again, I think we have the council direction that's needed for that to happen. I'm just not sure that it is happening. And that's really the substance of my question. >> Mayor pro tem, the coordination is happening. It's happened with most recent properties. I think there's one that's going before city council or may be a bond already. I lose track of the dates. It's coming to city council. But even on previous properties where we have had multi-family problems with health and safety code does contact not only neighborhood housing but we pull together all of the departments that have areas of responsibility. So we talk about everything from the legal issues related to that property to the code issues that are pending to available resources. Austin public health steps in on the social service side. So there is a coordinated approach to looking at the situation and trying to find the best solution for that property, depending on the circumstance and depending on the condition. So that is currently occurring. >> I think you may be referring to a slightly different resolution that asked for that kind of coordinated approach with potential tenant dislocation -- relocations in the neighborhood of code action. But maybe not. I mean, I guess the question would be whether that group is also looking at available resources that could -- or resources that could be made available to the property owner. And if so I would be interested in knowing how many property owners have availed themselves of it and what programs they are utilizing and if we have enough funding to meet the need that you have identified. >> And each one is -- as Burt is referencing, each one is kind of its own unique animal when we get that big interdepartmental team together. [9:41:20 AM] Our funding can be used for things like emergency, you know, getting folks emergency housing through extended stay hotels. We'll use the housing trust fund for that and things of that nature. >> What would be the best way to get some information about particular projects and whether there are loans and other things? >> I don't know what Ed would prefer, but I'm happy to just take that as a question. >> That would be terrific. Thank you. And if you had some specific examples. Again, I think the other question would be whether there's a need for more resources in that area to really help those property owners who want to do the right thing and bring their property into compliance, to be able to do so. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: On the major grants, you said that 50% of your% comes from the community development block grants and the partnership. Are those the funds that are being zeroed out in the budget? >> Yes. We have been asked. So the budget that the president proposed does eliminate those two funding sources. But the direction we have received right now from hud is to go ahead and prepare our action plan, which is basically our application for additional funding for the next year based on last year's allocation. So we have out on the table an elimination, and then we're getting direction from hud to assume the status quo. So we can assume the end result will be somewhere in the middle. But we don't know anything about that yet. Typically we have more information by this point in time about our potential allocation for next year. But we just don't have details right now. >> Was there a cut in these grant sources during the sequestration period? [9:43:20 AM] Back when the budgets were cut, were these grant fundings cut? Do you remember? >> We did see a dip in funding several years ago, specifically in 20 -- where did I write that down? In 2010 to -- or 2011 to 2012 we saw a decrease in cdbg funding and from 2012 to 2013 we saw a decrease in home funding. But other than that they have been relatively stable over time. >> Mayor Adler: What happened when you got the decrease in the block grants and the home funding? >> At that point -- and I'm going to ask staff to correct me if I'm wrong or to elaborate further, but at that point we took an approach of if we have ten sub recipients of cdbg they all went down by the same percentage based on their contracts. That's certainly an approach we could look at taking if we see a similar situation this year. We might also take an approach of more equity, which we have been talking to Brian oaks about, which is to look at who is being the most effective in their service delivery so that we're not -- so that we're maximizing the potential of our limited dollars. But that would be -- that has the potential to be a very meaningful cut to nonprofit that rely on these funds. If you look at one of the discussion points which were laid out, is this concept of all of these subrecipients that we have for our cdbg funding have largely been just designated subrecipients and have a long standing contractual relationship with the city, sometimes more than 15 years. And so to go through a process of -- and I think it would probably be healthy for us to do this. To go through a process of looking at those contracts and the effectiveness of those contracts and how we're achieving the mission. [9:45:25 AM] I think that would be beneficial. But to do that, it's also going to be an uncomfortable conversation as well. If they have relied on the city of Austin funding for 15 years and all of a sudden we're potentially talking about, you know, if that's the most effective use of our dollars are we, you know, helping as many people as we can with our limited resources, then that might mean some decreases in funding for some of them. We're working on what that looks like. The trump administration's kind of statement of we're going to eliminate home and cdbg has lit a little bit of a fire under that conversation. But we're still having it. >> Mayor Adler: I would suggest having that conversation irrespective of what happens in the budget. That would seem to be a really valuable conversation to have. >> That is our plan. We are just accelerating it a bit. >> Mayor Adler: The report you said you are striking out. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it good that we're not finding lead where we thought we might? >> It's good, which means we're not finding as much lead. Hopefully there's less lead out there and our abatement programs have been successful. It's bad because it can mean we're not expending the funds as quickly as we want to. We're trying, through our outreach, to bring in more areas of town. Bringing in different communities that might not have been part of the outreach plan in the past. So we're working with the dollars that we have in trying to expend them. And I'll say this, because there might be people listening, if you think that you're living in a condition that might have some potential for exposure to lead, please contact the housing department because we would love to go out and try to work and do the testing to see if we can do the abatement. >> The other thing I would add is -- and it's actually noted on the slide, the demographic shift. [9:47:27 AM] One of the eligibilities of the lead abatement program is that you have children 6 and under in the home. And so for the older housing stock, sometimes there's not the children in the home. Sometimes we're seeing first-time homebuyers in the houses or even more senior individuals in those homes. And so that is a precluding factor as well. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston and come back. >> Thank you, mayor. And thank you for that. I was going to say there's some specific guidelines, because we were trying to get more people to get that testing. But if the child's not there or if they don't visit on a regular basis in that home, they're not eligible for it. We know there's lead out there but just for that program it's not available. On the second slide, downtown -- downtown. Down payment assistance. [Laughter] >> It's been a long week. >> It's only Wednesday. >> And it's just Wednesday. >> 21 people participated in that. And could you all get me -- do you have any utilization of where those 21 people are and what parts of the city? >> I can get that for you. I don't have that with me today. But I can look at it. >> And the amount. When we talk about that, how much would the assistance and are there restrictions with that to make sure that the person doesn't get the assistance. And then turn around and flip the house. >> Sure. I can answer some of your questions right now, just maybe not the location of the folks that have been -- that have participated in the program. Our down payment assistance program is zero percent deferred. For a standard loan, the completely forgivable zero percent forgivable loan is a maximum of $14,999. For the shared equity model, which is up to $40,000. [9:49:30 AM] But then when you go to sell your home, eventually whenever that might be, then the Austin housing finance corporation receives a portion of that equity that may be achieved through time. Does that make sense? This is available to 80% and below mfi. And you have to be a homebuyer in the city of Austin. It's not something we can use for homes outside the city. And I'll get you some information on geographic locations. >> Thanks. For the 14999, do you get some of that? >> There's restrictions on the number of years if you sell within a number of years you have to pay a portion of that back. But if you have achieved the affordability period in your home, then there's no restrictions. >> What's the affordability period? >> That, I don't have off the top of my head, but I can get you that. Unless you guys know. >> I want to say 15 but we'll double check. >> Thank you. >> And the only reason I ask, because remember when the city had a buy a house for a dollar program? Somebody next door to me did buy a house for a dollar and there was a five-year period that you had to stay there. They were out in a year and were renting, leasing the house. And there seems to be no monitoring to those kinds of things. So that's why I'm wondering. We don't know if they do, you know, after two years if they go ahead and sell it do you all still hold the lien? >> We do place a lien on the property. And there is monitoring of our down payment assistance receivers. And I can include in my response to you what that looks like so you get a sense of what that is. >> Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Renteria and Mr. Flannigan. >> Thank you, mayor. [9:51:31 AM] The question I have, I had a call where it was a situation -- and y'all took care of it -- where a homeowner that refinanced it to a lower interest rate. When you refinanced your home it came up to repay the down payment assistance. How do y'all handle that situation? What happened was they refinanced the home loan for a lower interest rate, but because it went through the process of refinancing it the city sent a notice out to them saying they needed to pay back that loan. Have you run into any of those situations? >> I don't know that that's how that is intended to work. >> Okay. >> I think there's typically -- we typically resubordinate our loan underneath yourriginal or your modified loan. And so I'm not sure what the situation was that was causing that to happen. Because I don't think refinancing your primary loan would call the note on the down payment assistance lien. >> I'll get more information. >> That would be great if you could, because that's not the way it's supposed to work. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Flanigan. >> Mr. Mayor, as a time check, you posted on the message board you wanted these to happen at 45 minutes each and we're almost at time clock. So I'm willing to postpone many of my questions. I'm going to run through many of my issues and you don't have to respond, but just to get it out. But I think we want to move things along. The budget slide that talks about the increase in the budget. In other department presentations, city manager, it noted that the shift of cost allocation happened in '15. In this presentation says it happens in '16. There's an inconsistency amongst the departments. [9:53:33 AM] There's a number of places that talk about partnership with aid and Travis county. There are more in the city of Austin. I want to make sure those are accessible to folks in Williamson county and other school districts or if there's a reason we are only partnering with certain jurisdictions. This is more of a conversation were us is I see a lot of charts in these budget presentations that talk about the number of people served. But it doesn't really tell me how much impact we're having on the problem. And I don't know if the metric needs to be percent of need addressed or something that we can get closer to that that would either tell us we're way behind, we're on track, or approaching a point at which the city doesn't have to do this anymore. Some type of metric, and this should apply when we get to our strategic outcomes situation that will tell us that. On the activity pages versus the presentation, when I add up the number of ftes listed in the activity pages it falls short of the number of ftes listed in the presentation. So there's a missing what are those other people doing that I think is a good gut check as we look at the numbers in these presentations. And more generally getting a better understanding of the impact on this budget as we look at strategic housing plan and code next. But I'm willing to move on. >> Mayor Adler: Anybody else want to day light questions before we go to the next presentation? And then if you can respond to these questions that would be helpful later. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> I want to make sure you mention the technology needs and I want to make sure you guys are plugged into the smart city strategic road map process that our cio is leading, along with -- so that's a yes. >> I'm having regular conversations about our technology needs. >> Okay. I want to make sure they end up in that plan. [9:55:33 AM] So in the strategic road map plan. Smart cities strategic road map plan. I'm curious about what bond money we have left. I have heard reference to that. If that's something you can share, what bond money we have left and what it's planned for and when it is planned to be issued. And then you can provide me with information. I'm curious about why all the indicators have been dropping from 2011. You mentioned one of them, but all of them have -- and so maybe it's the same reason for all of them. I would just like some information about that. >> Sure. >> Mayor Adler: Daylight questions. >> It was about the cdbg that the mayor asked about. If those funds were to get cut, I know some programs are -- are there any of those programs that there's people that depend on monthly, you know, kind of help? Or they would be able to serve less people going forward? >> It likely is a combination. Our public services come to mind, specifically. So in our public service dollars, we have been funding that with cdbg for a very long time. To the question asked earlier, what happened when cdbg was cut a few years ago. The city council infused local funds to make those contract whole. To your question, there would be a direct impact to families and child care vouchers is a critical example. We all know that that is a driving factor in our cost burdened conversation with low- income families. The other would be senior services. There's a bill paying service that family elder care provides. [9:57:35 AM] And that would likely be something that impacted specific households. So we would want to bring that conversation forward to have the previous conversation we had, which is, you know, not necessarily cutting the funds but how do we shift those to a local funding source before we just looked at it and didn't fund it at all. >> How much notice will we have of possible cuts that would require us to amend the budget or something to take into consideration during the budget? >> It's something that we should definitely -- and it's on the discussion point for that exact reason. We'll be teeing it up in our budget. You ask a good question and there's not a solid answer. We could find out. We typically have our numbers, as Rosie said, when we submit our application in August. And we typically have our proposed numbers when we're building our budget in June. But during, for example, the years where we had the continuing resolution and we saw the federal government shutting down for longer periods of time, we didn't get those numbers until toward the end of the year. So it was problematic and we were building a budget, you know, based largely on the what IFS. >> Thanks. >> Mayor, just a quick one. We went through that whole process around 2002. Because when George Bush got elected he cut the budget by 20%. And it was devastating. At that time the city wasn't in a position to finance. So a lot of these programs did go away. They just died. So that was what the city had to finally come in and say we're going to save these programs and fund it locally. >> I guess what you directed the city manager to do was come up with a contingency plan. Is that what you meant by that? Is there an emergency fund we need to create? Obviously if we have the federal funds we want to use the federal funds and not our own, but in a case we didn't have that. [9:59:35 AM] >> Mayor Adler: At one point do we need to start planning that contingency. We'll have some notice. The president submitted a budget now -- it's been a long time since we had a budget like that. But even when we had them, what happened when it got to congress was very different than what was in the president's budget. We probably don't need to go through a fire drill at this point, just be aware of that. It's not like it will happen overnight. We'll have lead time because we'll be able to watch what's happening at the federal level. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Any other questions to daylight before we go to the next group? Ms. Houston. >> On slide 10 where we talk about permanent supportive housing and 200 dedicated to housing first. Do we ever get a report back that talks about how much the cost per square foot is like we do in other developments, how much is this going to cost per square foot. Do we get that for permanent supportive housing or housing first? If not, that would be something I would be interested in. >> Mayor Adler: Very good presentation. Yes. >> I wanted to address maybe two of the questions, because I think I can do them in two seconds and I think they are important. One has to do with the fiscal year 15 versus 16. When did this switch happen. It's only different for these folks. And we tried to make that clear in the note. They didn't join the general fund until fy16. For that reason that department's allocation continued to be held at the general fund fund level. But as soon as they joined the general fund we put it in there, and that was in '16. And there's a disconnect between the ftes. It's notable here because we have not been doing to details for our support activity. So your financial staff, hr staff, even the directors and assistant directors get lumped into this support activity and given it's not a direct service function it didn't work that well in these activity detail sleets. [10:01:41 AM] Activity detail sheets have been >> And then neighborhood housing and community development, they have a number of support staff. That's why you're seeing the obvious difference. If we did a detailed activity sheet for the support function, it would really just like like our purchasing functions, our computer technology functions and here's how many staff they have in the budget. We just chose not to do those sheets for better or worse. But that's what the disconnect is from. Sorry for that confusion. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much for the presentation. Planning and zoning? >> Good morning, mayor and council. Greg gernsey, planning and zoning, I'm joined by two of my staff. We'll go through our presentation briefly. Our staff is made up of 51 staff and we're committed to educate, advocate and provide planning services for all of Austin. We are the lead department on imagine Austin, but we're certainly one that does the implementation that's carried out by many different departments and other agencies that we partner with. Our biggest project, as you're well aware of is codenext and you'll be hearing more about that next Tuesday at the work session when we introduce the maps. We work with you every Thursday on code amendments and zoning cases that we do almost every week that you're here. We've annexed almost 2000 acres over the past year. We've completed about 14 cases last year that were property owner or city initiated. [10:03:46 AM] These historic cases, they work to preserve the character of our neighborhoods, of buildings, of specific sites. We have ongoing right now almost 1900 neighborhood plan recommendations, that are either ongoing or been completed. We have a great streets program, which is a program that is mainly in our downtown area. I'll talk a little bit more about that in our presentation. We completed about 17.5 block faces downtown that we partner with private property owners, working with our public works department and coordinating with our utilities and transportation department. We have something called our neighborhood assistance center, not to be confused with the development services, development assistant center, and we have two individuals that specifically work with neighborhood organizations, contact teams and provide outreach. They average over about 200 calls every year that we respond to. Our neighborhood plans, currently we're working in the north shoal creek area. We've almost completed the assignment that was given by council back in the late '90s to do our neighborhood plans for the central Austin area and east Austin area. We'll go to one more in rosedale after this, and then we're going to take a new tact and working in small planning areas, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in my presentation. So our budget is about $7.8 million. We're -- our program is divided up, our budget is broken up into four areas. Comprehensive planning, which comprise about 27 staff. Current planning, which is about 20 staff. Support services, about four staff, and then we have also part of that our transfers and other requirements. Some of our program highlights, we have our imagine Austin speaker series, we have partnered with other departments and other agencies to bring in speakers to talk about those things that are relevant about imagine Austin. [10:05:55 AM] What's happening around the United States, some of these actually work towards bringing in topics that result in amendments to imagine Austin, so you have the age-friendly program that was brought in, and that was part of imagine Austin last near. And we actually had a speaker that addressed that. Codenext, the draft came out on January 30th. Draft map comes out next week. But there's actually three separate drafts of the text, three separate drafts of the map. [Lapse in audio] -- commission zoning plan commission and that will be out probably the end of August for their review in September and October later this year. We do something called the small area plan report, and this is just about to come out. We'll make sure that council offices have copies, but it kind of tells you where we are in the implementation of these small area plans, neighborhood plan, and those things that have been completed, those things that are underway, so we'll be providing that to you shortly. And also this is the five-year update for our comprehensive plan. We do annual reviews of the plan, but this year's a little bit different. We'll be coming back and basically saying to you what items have been completed. Those things that have may have been long-range have been moved up to maybe three to five year, and actually my staff is working on various departments on the measures. Remember, imagine Austin is led by many different departments on the priority programs, and we're kind of checking in to see how we're doing in implementing imagine Austin. Our budget overview, primarily is -- our budget is represented by wages. [10:07:55 AM] And city transfers that makes up 85% of our budget. There's about 1.2 million that's attributable to contractual services. The department was split in two departments, so the planning and development review department split into planning and zoning, and the development service department early in 2015, so by that split, as I said before, we have a staff of 51. There are -- some of the highlights under the contractuals, there's 90,000 $578 that's spent on the capital area planning council of governments, and this works with 9-1-1 coordination and training, in particular for public services, addressing service, additional services of gis mapping that we work with them on. Also there's unallocated amount, if you recall, for $49,500 that was for lone star rail. That money is sitting unallocated at this time for high capacity commuter rail. It's not spent because I don't have anything to spend it on. So I'll talk about that in a little bit. Our capital budget is primarily in two areas. One is our great streets program. The great streets area downtown was decided by councils in the past. It takes in the area of 11th street to the north, I-35 to the east and Lamar boulevard to the west. And these work to improve our downtown streets and sidewalk network, transforming our right of ways downtown to be truly great places through the use of trying to complete tree canopies along the streets to entice people to be more walkable downtown. You can see street furniture that is of uniform design and use downtown. Trash receptacles and whatnot. We've primarily been working between Colorado between seventh and tenth street and along third street between Guadalupe and nueces. [10:10:01 AM] Other projects, engineer studies, 1.3 million, and this is something we bring in outside consultants to help us focus and bring in best practices that are in other areas and help supplement our staff in doing projects, and the big project we have right now is codenext, although we use similar type of services when we did our imagine Austin plan back in 2012. So Austin's growing, you see it every day, we're the fastest, largest city growing in the United States from 2012. Current population is 939,587 people. That's gone up, over 5700 people since January 1st of this year according to our demographer. And by 2020, we're estimating to be over a million, officially crest that mark. So we are growing quickly. We are expanding mainly by immigration from other areas within Texas or beyond the state boundaries. We do annex. We have a three-year municipal annexation program where we would annex more than 100 residential parcels, but there are two I'll point out in particular that have already been negotiated and there's not work to be done on these. One is river place, that would come in in 2017, and then shady hollow that would come in the year 2020. Normally when we do annex in those other years other than what might be this year and in 2020, we're usually annexing less than 100 people. We're looking at -- [lapse in audio] -- Annexation policy discussion later this year. Two other things that I'll point out, one, again, is the progress on codenext. There will be a budget item deal with the completion of that project. [10:12:08 AM] And then 2014, there was a council resolution that dealt with a historic resources survey. Money was allocated in 2015 for that, and we completed the Austin survey, but we have not gone on and as suggested by the landmark commission to look at Bolden, solker and terrytown. Some of our prior accomplishments, the 17.5 blocks in eight streets. It doesn't sound like a lot but when we partner and get those done. I'm very proud of that. We've had the annual Austin report, basically the imagine Austin report. We've hit that every year and brought you updates of that, those usual liquor in the fall. -- Usually occur in the fall. Out of a total of almost 5,000 recommendations that are in all those plans. We have two small area plans that have been adopted since imagine Austin. Those were the south central waterfront, which actually turned in amendment to the imagine Austin plan, just south of woodlake and then we're also working -- and that was the south Austin plan, that was the other one. But we're working on north shoal creek and as I mentioned we're coming to rosedale in the near future. We've done several outreach and educational events that we've hosted in addition. So that brings us to our horizon issues. It's the implementation of imagine Austin. Obviously this is a project that affects everyone in Austin, whether you live, work, play in Austin. We're working with the S D and C tm, our communication technology management department on expanding our system to accommodate when the new code comes into effect, and then there's training that needs to be done. Not just of staff, but also the public, my department, other departments, just to make sure that everybody is aware of how the new code would work and how they would work with it. [10:14:09 AM] That won't take place on the day of implementation of our approval of the ordinance for codenext. That will probably take place in the months afterwards. We have an imagine Austin implementation. And this is really something I'm excited about. This is something we've actually discussed about moving forward and how we will do small area planning. It looks at those corridors and nodes that are imagine Austin, but also looks at those areas where there's growth that might be occurring that there's pressure that needs to be done in taking a role with our community in trying to identify those areas where we would plan next. As I said, council laid out the groundwork to do those 57 to 60 something different neighborhoods back in the '90s, we've almost completed that, but we really need to kind of look forward to where those areas where there could be growth. That would be part of working with the strategic mobility plan and our housing plans to really look at where that need is necessary. And finally to improve our -- the consistent use in communication with our citizens. It's always a challenge. This is something that I think it's probably seen across all the different departments, whether we're using Twitter or Facebook, Instagram, our websites, but we are constantly trying to update and to reach out to our different communities in Austin, making sure that we're understood, we're heard directly, and that we're correctly hearing back from them and what they want to tell us. So that's something we'll be looking at on the horizon. We're doing it now, and that's something that we continue and work better on. >> Mayor, council, these are the topics staff as identified and as we've done with the others, we're open to questions. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmembe R kitchen? >> Kitchen: Okay. Just a couple of quick questions. [10:16:09 AM] So on the small area plan, so that all sounds very interesting and good as a next step. Or not a next step, but as -- you know, it fits with codenext and all of that. So can you give us -- at this point, do you have an idea of timeline? I guess what I'm hearing, I'm thinking I'm hearing that what will come back to the council is a resolution, an ordinance, I don't know what's appropriate, that outlines the criteria for where the small area plans would happen? Is that the expectation? >> Right now like I said, we're finishing north shoal creek. We'll go to rosedale. But we envision when codenext is done, we'll have a -- [lapse in audio] -- My staff is working with hr and pro and we're trying to come up with that criteria that we would use to move into those areas, but we're guided by council policy. >> Kitchen: When do you expect to bring that criteria to us? >> I think probably by towards the end of this year. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> We'll probably have that figured out. I can certainly come back for a briefing and kind of apprise council of what that is and we'll certainly do that with the commissions as well. >> Kitchen: Okay. I think -- my thinking is, and I think this is in line with what you're thinking, is that that needs to be adopted by council, what the criteria is? And because that's -- I mean, y'all have been operating off of what council did a number -- you know, that's old, so I think it's real important, a number of us have had requests from our communities that weren't -- didn't fit the previous direction, so I really think it's important for us to, as a council, to work with you guys and establish in a resolution or ordinance -- it's probably resolution, not ordinance, what that cry criteria is going forward so we can prioritize. [10:18:10 AM] And I think you mentioned, you know, one of those criteria, obviously, is where growth is occurring. So, for example, we've had a lot of growth in south Austin, and that -- those areas were not part of the original direction that you guys received. So there's been no planning in those far south areas and those neighborhoods have been frustrated and concerned, seeing all the growth around them and not having any opportunity to participate in plans, and have asked for that. But obviously you guys have to follow the previous direction. So I just really think that that's going to be very important to bring back to us, preferably, if it fits with y'all's timeline, you know, the fall would be great, because I'm sure it will be something we'll have to talk about for a while, so it may be that -- my thought would be that you bring us back an update sometime in the fall before you start your process of getting the board and commission review and then it would finally come to us, I O es, in the spring or -- guess in the spring or something like that. So does that fit with what you guys are thinking? >> I believe so. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> We're certainly going to work with zap and PC, the joint commissions on working through that, because, you know, they also have a very big interest in that. >> Kitchen: Okay. All right. I have other questions, but I'll let others go first. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anyone else? Mrs.houston? >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. On slide 2 you talked about the neighborhood assistance request and that's 400. Is that for this year? >> For this past year in 2016. >> Houston: Past year, uh-huh. >> And that's the calls that we follow up on. Certainly, they actually appear at meetings, they accompany us on some of the different events that we've had on codenext. They reach out. As I said, they are mainly oriented to dealing with neighborhood organizations, although they have assisted individual issues on properties that have come up. Their main task is to work with neighborhood organizations. [10:20:11 AM] >> Houston: Thank you. So there is no -- because we get the calls. We have about 400 last year from neighbors who have gotten a notice, and they don't know what to do with the notice. So are they able to help just neighbors that -- who are within the 200-foot radius about a developer? If that's no neighborhood contact team, no neighborhood association, who do those people call to get assistance when they have questions about development? >> So typically, if there's a notice that's been sent, whether it's for a zoning case, subdivision, site plan cases, the notice usually contains the case manager's name, and that's who my staff would actually -- on the neighborhood assistance center would contact, have them follow up with. The citizen could reach out as well. If it's on a zoning case, it would go to someone on my current planning team that handles zoning cases, and they would be the one that they would be directed to. >> Houston: And that number is on the notice? >> That number's on the notice. Just in general, just so you're aware, Austin, we far exceed what the state law requirements is for public notice for subdivision site plans and zoning cases. We do 500 feet instead of 200 feet, which is typical for some subdivisions and zoning cases, but we send them for all our site plans, all our subdivisions. We also notify the registered neighborhood organization which I think are up to 500 that register with the city, and also basically those property owners that are within an area that's being affected. So both within the area, within 500 feet of that area and the registered neighborhood organizations, and we do one more step. We actually contact utility customers that are with Austin energy of the different development that might be occurring in those applications. >> Houston: Thank you. That was a lot of good information. [Lapse in audio] -- [10:22:15 AM] >> Subdivisions and site plans, but it's those staff that do the review that can make the administrative approval or commission approval for those items. >> Houston: So some of the complaints that I'm getting is that people are not calling back. So if you only have five case managers and they may have a caseload of I don't know how many, is that an issue? Because the citizens are saying we called that number and we get a voice mail, we leave a voice mail and we don't get a callback. And at some point, then they call us and we have to intervene. So I don't know what the case load is, and that may vary. I don't need to know it now. Greg, you give a lot of conversation here. I just need to know if you need more case managers, is that in here someplace? >> I don't believe so, but I'll follow up with my staff to check and I'll follow up with Rodney's staff and we can check on the subdivision and site plan case manager. >> Houston: It's important that the people who call that are not part of that neighborhood association also get some good customer services when they've got some concerns about what should we do now. And that's what the problem seems to be, nobody's helping that group of people. >> And they deserve a callback. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Flanagan , then the mayor pro tem. >> Greg, you said that you'd notify Austin energy customers, but I'm sure you meant all utility customers, not just Austin energy companies. >> I probably need to clarify, I know we do Austin energy customers because we have that database. >> I have a lot of pedernales, but they're all water. >> They should be getting that. >> I just wanted to make sure people watching this later don't get confused. On the municipal annexation plan, when I pull up what's on the city's website right now, there are no future annexations listed. Is that accurate? >> Yes. Although on that map it still should show the two that I -- >> It doesn't show shady hollow, unless it's called something different. [10:24:17 AM] And maybe I'm reading it wrong. So can you help me understand what the two ps ps -- two ftes do then. >> They help coordinate the reviews, they work with the water utility and fire, Austin resource recovery, police about those areas that might be created in a municipal utility district, there's usually a plan development consultation that comes in. Because that's part of the council policy in creation of those muds. But muds are usually those areas that will eventually be annexed into the city. So there's a long- range study done with annexations but we basically look at those muds. They also look at the public improvement districts, the pids, for those as well. For those various things. If there are an sex -- annexations that occur, we we have citizens in the etj that ask to be annexed for various reasons, so there's a property split by the city of Austin. Sometimes they want to have certain services available to them, utility services that are available to them, sometimes they'll ask for annexation, but in general, we follow some of the principles in imagine Austin to identify those areas that we would bring in. We look at an annexation plan every year, but usually they're for smaller tracts. You'll see these typically in public hearings that are towards the end of the year in October, and then they're brought in. We have working with you trying to make sure that you're aware of those as they're identified later in the year, so you're not surprised when we start having the hearings. And so that's something that council identified last year. >> Flanagan: When we use the phrase small area plan is that the same as neighborhood plan. [10:26:17 AM] >> A neighborhood plan is a small area plan. They chowld be along a corridor, they could be at a future center that's identified in imagine Austin, but, yes. >> Flanagan: On the urban design activity, there's nine listed for that, is that just about great streets, is that just about downtown, is that only in the urban corridor, which is obviously bigger than downtown. Help me understand that a little bit. >> The urban design activity actually does several different things. They might be looking at the transit orient development, the tod areas. Similar to our long range planning, they may also do the planning for those station areas, they're a little unique because of the infrastructure that's there, usually transit, whether it's rail or maybe rapid bus. They're looking at certainly the great streets program downtown, they're looking at different infrastructure that might be installed and how we would work with utilities or Austin transportation department on the street infrastructure that might go in in various parts of the city. [Lapse in audio]. Group that was done by Alan holt that served that purpose. So they do some of the small area plans as well, but they're for particular areas of our city. >> On activity page a-4, it talks the key out come is the number of small area plan recommendations that are completed ongoing, but it only lists two years. >> So the one you may be talking about is our new measure that we created that was started, I think, in 2015. >> Okay. That's always very frustrating when we create new metrics and you only get to see two years of it. And really two more questions, and they're quick. The historic resources survey, it's listed in the activity pages, and you've -- you're focusing on east Austin now. Is -- is the implication on the future funding impact that we're going to roll forward the funding we have now and slowly do that survey, or are you anticipating we need to expand that funding to do it faster? [10:28:23 AM] >> Well, there's a council resolution to go forward and do it. I don't have the resources in my budget to go do another survey. It was funded in 2015 for east Austin, but the other four -- other three areas that were identified, and also backed up by the landmark commission have not been funded. So we're not -- >> So is the east Austin -- the funding that happened for east Austin, is that finishing, and then go on to the next one? >> That has been completed. >> Okay. >> And then the idea is where we would go next if funding is provided would be Bolden, zolke erk and terrytown. >> Commissioner, we have spent the money that was allocated. There is no money at this point. >> But if we maintain the money we have now, you could do the next plan in the next budget, if the dollar figure was the same? >> Yes, if there was another allocation of money, yes, we could go forward and do those. But there's not. >> I think we're saying the same thing. And then generally speaking, and this may be a question we don't answer now, there's a lot of places in here where we've identified codenext as an activity or job that an fte is doing. Is there a point at which those ftes are no longer necessary because codenext has been finished? >> So this is actually an exciting part. Once codenext is finished, although I'm not sure if code being amended is ever finished. There's always additional work and things that happen, but we'll be able to do probably more planning than actually creating the code. So what I mean by that, those small area plans, before codenext, we actually had additional teams that we could work in two different areas. Right now we're down to one because we've kind of transferred staff. There's some temporary staff that we will no longer need, so those temporary ftes would go away. The consultants' work would go away, but we'd still maintain staff to help keep codenext going forward, but we will actually be doing and reallocating those staff to do more small area plans where we need them the most and where we have that demand. [10:30:26 AM] >> So that would be the more substantive conversation that we have as we get to the budget, there may be a point where we're not funding a full 12 months of certain staffers in the next budget? >> Yes, there will be a point after codenext is adopted. >> Thank you. >> Tovo: So I guess my comment/question sort of apply to something we were talking about earlier with councilmember Houston, so it's backtracking a little bit, but I just wanted to say that it was my understanding that if I'm a community member, I can call the case manager on a zoning thing, but I can call the neighborhood assistance center and work with one of those -- and talk through the process with one of those staff members? I mean, part of the concept of those positions is that they could be a liaison to the community and explain, you know, what do you do when you go to a board, how many minutes do you have, I mean, they are there to offer assistance of that sort? >> Is that correct. >> Tovo: Too -- to the community? >> That's correct. >> Tovo: So if I were counseling somebody in my district I would say call the case manager but call the advise Sers and get information about how the process works. That is something that a lot of community works if they've not been up here and they don't watch channel 6 regularly, they just don't know how it works. I remember when I started, I didn't know if I could contact anybody on the planning commission, I didn't know if it was okay to e-mail them. These are not things that most people know. And so it's one of the real benefits of having the neighborhood advisers there. And we had -- I think the expectation initially was that there would be four, and we now have two. And is it -- am I also right in thinking that one of those two is also -- also allocates time to website development? >> Yes. So, yes, there are only two. There was discussion of four. >> We had four in the budget briefly. >> Ftes in the budget, they were never funded. [10:32:31 AM] [Lapse in audio]. >> Tovo: Since the topic came up, I think absolutely having a website with information is a value to those in the community, but I do think -- and I'm not sure if you've got a clear allocation of how much time is spent on that activity, but I just want to say that that's kaish -- I think that we need those neighborhood advisers to be working with the community most directly. And having that allocation cut into that person's -- into that staff member's time is just unfortunate, especially since we went from a community expectation of having four to a hiring of two year after year, you know, those positions not getting funded, and then they were eventually eliminated, the ftes were eventually eliminated from the budget. I think we're a big city with a lot of community members for whom those positions could really help them navigate the city processes, so I hope we can -- I hope we can continue to look at that area as in need of additional resources. This was, you know, a long -- a long, long, long time goal to get those positions and I'm really glad we have them, but, you know, I see the need for more time in that activity. Thanks. That's really it. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> I have some questions in the similar vein. When we talk about the neighborhood plans, we have to recognize that the vast majority of the city doesn't have neighborhood plans, and I'd like to know a little bit more about what resources the neighborhoods -- that have neighborhood plans are getting that the 70% plus that don't have neighborhood plans don't have access to. And I'd like us to consider whether we need to have something more along the lines of council district teams to supplement what we're already doing for parts of the city that don't have neighborhood plans, district 10 has one neighborhood plan, and if rosedale decides to complete it, they will have two. [10:34:42 AM] And the vast majority of the district doesn't have those plans, but yet development is taking place and they're not having access, as I understand it, to the same resources. >> We -- I have a staff person that works with neighborhood contact teams, helping provide training. But neighborhood planning areas with adopted neighborhood plans, they're able to make recommendations on changes to the area plans. Basically those future land use maps amendments that you see, and that's what they work with. But just in general, I have one staff person that works with them, although I have other staff that work with neighborhood organizations and contact teams. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything on this before we go to the next one? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Yes? >> You had raised the question about the high capacity commuter rail, this is just a place holder. I think that -- I think we all understand or hopefully we remember that project connect is underway right now. Project connect is the capmetro effort to plan for high capacity in the future. And it's on a timeline, so I would think that these dollars might be helpful for that. So before we turn them back in, we should have that conversation and understand that there is a high capacity commuter rail planning process going on right now. So... And then the second thing is the great streets program, can you remind me the boundaries for that? >> Yes. There 11th to the north, labor lake to the south. >> What's the southboundry. >> Lady bird lake. >> Cesar Chavez, I-35 to the east and Lamar to the west. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you. >> Before they go? [10:36:44 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Yeah? >> Houston: Just a quick -- one more quick thing. Last budget cycle, I tried to add department of neighborhoods to -- in the budget process because, again, as Austin continues to grow as fast as it's growing, there's so many parts of Austin that won't connect easily into the -- either the contact team or the neighborhood planning area, small area plans. And those people are still not having the access to the kinds of services they need to respond to the development pressures in their neighborhoods. And I think that's unfair, and unequitable. So I still think we need more people to be able to talk to citizens about what their issues are as they're having to deal with the development. And they don't understand the process. And they need more than just a case manager, they need somebody that will help walk them through the process. >> Mayor Adler: Great presentation. Thank you very much. Let's call up development service [lapse in audio]. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Rodney Gonzales, I'm the director for the development services department. So we'll go quickly through our presentation starting with slide 1, who we are. We broke down the types and services that we provide within development services, and you'll see that categorized under development hub. About nine% of our staff provide consulting services. 57% of our staff provide review. Another 22% of our staff provide inspection services and then 12% of our staff is allocated to our strategic operations group. These are some quick info graphic data points that we've collected, for example, through our service center. We've done approximately 75,000 permits in the last year. [10:38:46 AM] Of interest in tote, there is 278,000 building inspections that were performed last year. Some really great things that we do through our program are the urban forestry program. We've planted 3,150 trees through the tree funds and we've preserved 7300 trees through the development review process. Quick budget overview, our current approved budget is roughly 45 million. We have 362 full-time equivalent positions and another 46 temporaries. Our funding sources are varied. Primarily our funding source are the fees we charge our applicants, our customers, however we do, and this is a holdover from years past, we do collect a transfer from the drainage utility fund about 15 million that equates about 7 million of the drainage utility fund that comes to our department. In terms of activity, we've put together a pie chart. You can see the primary services, even though we use the moniker one-stop shop, that also is a holdover because we are only one department of many departments in the review process. So I would say that's a one-stop shoppish for our services. It includes strategic planning, customer service. We have, as I mentioned the department reimbursements primarily from the drainage utility fund for our environmental review inspections, and we use a portion of the tree mitigation fund to support some of the urban forestry programs. Looking at our budget by expenditure category over overwhelmingly the primary expense is personnel. We do have some contractual expenses, roughly about 20% and of course we have to supplement our regular staff with temporary employees and overtime. You may recall, council, that the planning and development review department was reorganized into our department, development services and planning and zoning. [10:40:50 AM] That was in fiscal year 2015. In terms of new positions in both the current fiscal year and the previous fiscal year, we were allocated new ftes, combined total of 74. There are some specifics in there that I'd be glad to go over with council. Some of our major contracts that you can see in that pie chart include pavement testing and then also third-party contract review services. An overview of some of our primary projects that we're working on, and we've got a number of projects that we're currently working on. Just like every other department, we are participating in the codenext process. We are focused on implementation. Codenext is scheduled to be adopted in April of 2018. We're not going to wait for adoption to focus on implementation, we're doing that now. We are going to work with the planning and zoning department, as well as all other city departments talking about implementation, what does that mean, what are the timelines anticipated? Electronic plan review, we anticipate that that will be completed by the end of the year where folks can submit online, pay online, we can review their plans online, much more faster process. It's completely electronic versus the manual paper process that we use currently. Austin build and connect is our portal to our applications and our customers. We have certainly increased the number of applications and services available through ABC with great success. We've had double-digit increases in use, which means that there are fewer people that have to come to 1 Texas center to do a transaction. They can do it from the convenience of a remote site. Speaking of other great success, qless, we implemented this in areas that we have with great success. Currently the service center is seeing wait times less than 15 minutes. Some demographic and operational factors that we face, director gernsey was mentioning earlier, we have -- [lapse in audio] -- you can see the bar chart on the left, application submissions, the dramatic increases that we've seen in residential and commercial and land use review over the last few years as well as our inspections. [10:43:14 AM] Those are a factor of the population increase and the number of business increases that occur in Austin. Some noteworthy council actions, we've got a list that we had intended to send with our presentation, and we'll give it to Ed to circulate with council, we looked at council resolutions from 2006 through 2014. There were 318 council resolutions that we identified. 27 of them impacted regulations that we have. And so we're passing that out to council just as informational material. Since January of 2015, there have been additional nine council resolutions that request an initiation and change of regulations, and I think that's important to note, because we do deal with regulations every day. That is what we do. We implement the regulations and the policy that council has adopted. So from time to time, of course, those things will change. The impact specifically on the reviews that we do can be across the board, whether it's residential, commercial or subdivision review or zoning review or urban forest planning. Some key indicators that we track, inspections within 24 hours, that's very important to our customers, residents and commercial. Councilmember alter, you had mentioned inspections specifically last time in February. We are actively working towards an online mobile inspection tracking app for our customers, so that way they can track the inspectors where they're at a and the likely time they're going to show up for an inspection. We also track on-time performance in both residential, commercial and subdivision site plan review. Of course the on-time performance is predicated based on the number of staff that we have for doing those specific reviews, and as identified in the analysis and as we've talked about we are short the number of reviewers to meet our ontime performance goals. You will see some fte increase in our proposal to get to what we want to do which is a 90% on-time review. [10:45:23 AM] Looking out towards the horizon, some issues that we certainly deal with, and I'm certain that this is across the board, across the city, hiring and retaining highly skilled staff, recruiting and retention of subject matter experts, specifically with regard to the land development code and the other codes that we deal with has become a challenge, and we find it increasingly challenging to hire the -- to be able to recruit and retain the highly skilled staff. It is a competitive job market across the country, across Austin, that's for sure. So we want to, of course, retain the highly skilled staff that we get. In some cases, we can't find the talent, and it takes time to train the staff. By our estimates, it can take up to six months to train staff on the codes that we use. Another key challenge for us is the appropriate work space. You've heard me mention that 1 Texas center, we're out of space at 1 Texas center. Additionally, it's just not the right building for excellent customer service so we have talked with council about new facility. Council did authorize to move to the next step for the negotiate piece of that and we're working with the finance department and real estate department in that endeavor. We continue to work with the 12 partner departments and Travis county to identify the resources that they need to support the board on-time review. We want them to also have a 90% on-time target and we need to identify the resources that they require to meet that goal. Training is critical to the work that we do, not just for the existing staff to keep them up to date with changing regulations, but new staff that we have. Our benchmark for training is approximately 2% of our total personnel cost, which is just over 700,000. Our total current budget for training is 380,000. And with regard to our action plan, which we put forward to council in July 2015, we do and pate completing all nonresourced actions by September of this year. [10:47:26 AM] At which time we would sunset the dsd action plan and move forward with our strategic plan. E and topics for council consideration, we looked at some things that we wanted to bring to council's attention. One key -- or the key areas that we looked at were those operational matters that we currently do not recover through our fee schedule. Currently there are a number of fee waivers that are processed through our department, total an excess of 1.2 million, we do not recover those through our fee schedule. There is also a portion of our -- [lapse in audio] -- we wanted to bring those up for council consideration as topics. And that's the conclusion of our presentation. We're certainly available for questions. Maipt maipt I -- >> Tovo: I have a couple questions about the line item. Some of these are quite old. I see that it said dated prior to January 2015, but when did they start. >> 2006 to 2014. >> Tovo: So almost a decade. >> Uh-huh. >> Tovo: Thanks. Can you help me understand what services testing is, please, on the line item budget. >> Certainly, services testing, I think it's about $380,000 is by our site and subdivision inspection. We have private developers who will construct what will eventually be a city asset, such as a road or sidewalk. And what we do is we test the material that they use. That cost in our budget is approximately $380,000. >> Tovo: I see what the cost is. I'm just not clear on what it is exactly. >> So, for example, the asphalt that a private developer uses or the concrete that they use for constructing that to be -- that asset that will be turned over to the city, whether it's a sidewalk or whether it's a street, we test the material, we send it off to a lab to ensure that it meets the requirement that public works has established for us. [10:49:47 AM] >> Tovo: I see. So those are -- if we're asking them to double the size of the water infrastructure or things of that sort, we have -- we do the private -- we cover the cost of the private testing? >> Yes. We have that cost of the testing in our budget. Yes. >> Tovo: Is that possible -- is that a cost that could be attributed instead covered by the developer who is providing that infrastructure? >> Absolutely. One thing that we've done throughout the two fee studies and this third one we're embarking on, we're looking at the costs that we can charge as overhead, and that certainly is a cost that we would look at as overhead that we would recoup through the inspection fees. >> Tovo: I'll have to look the next time we have one of those on our agenda, I'm not sure that -- I mean, this is the first time that I can recall that we've had this discussion, so usually we talk about, you know, that we're -- that the developer is bearing all the costs associated with that, except for the piece that is being expanded. But this is a pretty big -- it's a pretty big component. >> It's a large component, and that's one thing that we've done in this current fee study that we're going to to be bringing forward is making sure we've captured everything that we can capture as overhead. >> Tovo: Great. Including this cost? >> Including this cost. >> Tovo: Can you talk a little bit about educational training. I think you said that education -- you aim for 2% of the budget. >> Yes. >> Tovo: I'm looking at a line item of seminar training fees of 385,000. >> Yes. >> Tovo: And those are? >> So the training dollars that we have, I believe they're probably about two or three different line item categories that capture it. So it's my understanding that we have about 380,000 or north of that. >> Tovo: Well theium line item I'm looking at is 385. >> Combined, our total, yeah, we'd like to have 2% of our personnel cost, which is just over $700,000. And that comes from the analysis recommendation which we agree with. [10:51:49 AM] >> Tovo: Help me understand -- I understand the need for certain questioning, I guess this would be a question for our city manager, do we have other departments where they are able to allocate 2% of their personnel cost on training. I appreciate that it's a recommendation from the Zucker report, like any other report should still be tested with regard to the resources we have available for the city at large. >> And one thing I might offer is that we can actually recoup that through our fees similar to that materials testing that you had mentioned. That is the cost of doing business that we can actually pass on to the applicant, so it's different in that regard from other departments to where they may not have that ability to change that cost to the applicant, but we have that capability. >> Tovo: But we are not currently passing those costs along. We're bearing those. >> I can't say we've done that in the past but it's our goal to do that in the fee study these year. >> Tovo: I guess I did ask the city manager a question, but since you're responding, how has that training budget changed from previous years? >> Well, what we've been able to do differently is -- as acm Perez has mentioned, we are now reimbursing our staff before the licensures and certifications that they need to do the work that we've asked them to do. So in the past, that cost was carried by the employee themselves. So the bulk of the cost that you see there is for our -- [lapse in audio] -- A city employee to be the most trained person. So in the last year, we implemented that program. >> Tovo: And I remember having a pretty thorough discussion about that, and that seems -- that part of it makes sense to me. I think I'd like to -- if you would consider as a budget question breaking down that 385,000 and any other educational costs that are within this budget, and explaining what cost can be attributed to what you just described, the licensures and certification that are required for those individuals as part of their job versus other kind of training, and then if you could track it back several years and show how that's changed. [10:54:03 AM] >> Sure. And some of that -- our staff is, as part of maintaining their licensures and certifications, they have to maintain continuing education credits. And so they may attend a seminar or a session or something like that to accumulate the ceus that they need to maintain that license. >> Tovo: And so I guess then this would be an appropriate time for our city manager. It would seem to me that every employee at the city benefits from educational training but I'm not sure I remember seeing dollar figures along these lines in anybody else's budget, or a goal of 2%. >> I don't think we have a city wide standard for a 2%. I think the 2% is -- as Rodney said came from the Zucker report. But certainly we do have training dollars in every department. They allocate those based on what they can afford. And in this particular case, they can include those in a cost of service fee -- fee proposal, but we don't have that ability in all cases, so I think you're going to see a wide variety of how our departments budget for training and seminars. And I don't believe that we do meet all of the training requirements for cpas, with 40 hours a year. >> Tovo: Right. >> Lawyers have required training as well, and I don't know that we're able to meet that across the board, but we do try and provide some training, but we have not had a city wide policy, and part of that is affordability across the departments. >> Tovo: Sure. I think I would like for that to be treated as a budget question as well, and I can submit it if I need to, but I do think that we need to have some understanding of what -- you know, we can't set a goal for one department and then have people in other departments bearing the cost of their own training. I think it needs to be a more equitable distribution of training dollars, and so I would be interested to know -- you know, I know that we even have a piece of training built into our council budgets, but it's pretty -- it's pretty low. [10:56:05 AM] So... Okay. Thanks. >> And what I would say, of course, part of our goal is to make sure that we're providing the customer service that was indicated was not at the levels it needed to be. And our staff does need the training, and they need to attend the specific courses in order to do their job, because when they can't -- when they can't access the training, then they can't do their job. And that was a clear indicator from two years ago of what wasn't happening. >> Tovo: I remember that discussion, and I would say customer service is important across the city and so that's the substance behind my question about the kind of training dollars that we allocate in other departments as well. >> Mayor Adler: And I would both echo the need to look across the city, because we want everyone to be trained as much as we can. In this particular area, it was being identified as a shortfall with respect to the ability to do the assigned duty, and I would certainly give priority to those departments where it was an identified shortfall in people's ability to do their work. That might just go to where the greatest need existed at any point in time. Yes? Councilman alter? >> Alter: I had some questions about the urban tree canopy. >> Yes. >> Alter: And I understand that you're saying that you don't have any fees, so you're portion of it is not covered. I would like to know more about how that is connected up with the other departments? I'm concerned about our tree canopy and how we're maintaining it across the board, whether it's in parks, whether it's on streets, from both a safety and environmental perspective, and it seems like a portion of it is under you, but who is actually going and doing the maintenance then? Is that public works? I mean there seems to be some economies of scale on the tree canopy that we are not taking advantage of. [10:58:06 AM] I'd like to understand more about that. >> Absolutely. So urban forestry, as I mentioned, came to dsd as part of a council directive in 2014. Prior to that, urban forestry was approached by several different departments across the city and there was a concern for duplicate of services. So we have the bulk of the urban forestry -- [lapse in audio] -- The work that the team is doing, including the maintenance responsibilities as well. Andy, is there anything else that you want to add to that? >> Andy lensiesen, assistant director. When council moved, they consolidated the trees, as Roddy nen shunned, look -- mentioned looking for efficiency. The ultimate decision at that time was to console late the -- -- consolidate the care and maintenance of the urban treatment and the review all in the same department. The urban forest side of our tree group is working with departments to establish the standards. You know, if you're going to go out and do tree trimming, if you're doing those things, they're working with the for rest industry units, park, the Austin industry, the departments that actually go out and do the work, they're setting the standards working with them to make sure it's in compliance with the have been adopted. So we've consolidated the review and then the planning piece came with it when council made that move. So there is some duplication. I mean, obviously dsd doesn't have tree crews that go out and do maintenance. Those are by the departments whether it's Austin energy or whoever. But the standards, there's an -- it has a catch any name. There's a tree working group that I think get together monthly and discuss these things, but the standards in the plan is cared for by dsd through our urban forest planning group. [11:00:11 AM] If that helps answer your question. >> Alter: It helps answer it some and maybe the city manager, we can follow up and get more information. I'm just concerned that there are economies of scale that would allow to us do more for our tree canopy. I understand there are problems. Again, we go back to the retention and recruitment problem that we're seeing in department over department with respect to the arborists, we're training them and then they're going on and leaving the city and that's creating some problems for our ability to maintain the tree canopy that if we could retain those workers for longer, we would be able to do more because we wouldn't have to keep spending the time and energy on the recruitment and the training type things. So I would like to see more on that. My next point is really a comment -- it's first a question and then probably a comment. I understand that the Zucker report suggested you should have more of a customer-centric approach. Can you tell me a little bit about who you can see as your customer? >> So we have our direct customer, which is the application, that is looking to develop some parcel within the city. That's our direct customer. Indirectly we have city customers who are impacted by the development. Those are our customers as well. As councilmember Houston has pointed out, your offices probably typically receive calls from those customers who are indirectly impacted and who want to know information about that development. And the premise for that development and the impact that it has on them. And so that takes some of our time as well because we want to provide information to those indirect customers as well. And we do see that same shortage. We know that your offices are fielding those calls and helping to navigate to those indirect customers to the right answers. And we certainly probably will consider in the budget proposal some method for assisting with that. [11:02:14 AM] >> Alter: Yeah. I'm happy to hear you articulate it in that way. I think it is really important that we not go too far along the lines with our customer approach that it's just to make the developers or the construction folks happy. That we also understand that we have ordinances. Obviously that's your job is to help implement the ordinances, but there's a broader city public good that I hope is at the heart of the mission of your department as well. And if there are resources or needs you have to better meet that part of the mission, I would welcome hearing what those are. >> Absolutely. I will tell you the Zucker analysis did primarily focus on our direct customers and their needs. And so we certainly have paid a good amount of attention to that. However, we do realize that we do have incorrect customers who are affected by development. >> Alter: Sure. And of course you do have to meet the needs of the direct customers. I just want to make sure that as we're thinking about our mission and our goals that we don't lose sight of that. So I appreciate the way that you articulated that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Thank you. And thank you for the information today. On slide 10 you talked about notable council actions for which costs are not recovered through the approved fee schedule. Is there any way to tell us how many -- how much in fees we've waived for each of those subsidies? >> Most recent figure is north of 1.2 million. For all of them combined, yes. We can certainly provide a embryonic break down to council. >> Houston: 1.4. >> North of 1.2. >> I think it was the north of two that I got four. [Laughter] >> Houston: If you could, that would be helpful to see how much we're waiving in fees on these projects. [11:04:19 AM] And then under the our ban forestry plan it's about the tree canopy, but it's also about great streets. When I lived here you could look down congress avenue and you could see the capitol because it was a boulevard. Now with the great streets you see trees that kind of intercept it. Who takes care of the trees on congress avenue so that people can in fact see the capitol? >> That may be a split between both the downtown Austin alliance and either parks and recreation or public works. We would have to find that information out for you. >> Houston: Okay. I'll check with downtown Austin alliance and see if they're the ones. If not, I'll call you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Flannigan? >> Flannigan: Ed, as I look through these activity pages, the ftesed a up to the one in the presentation. So I'm not sure what the difference it some some departments or other departments. Also thank you for numbering the colors. >> Your very welcome. >> Flannigan: I very much appreciate that and I noticed it immediately. It's very helpful. I think the community is concerned about the ontime and our ability to provide those services. Is there any measure of how long it takes do this work as it impacts affordability? Has that conversation happened? >> You know, with regard to impact and affordability, there's two things. Number one, you have the regulation itself. There has been plenty of conversation in terms of what does it mean in terms of cost for a developer to comply for various things. What does it cost a homeowner to comply with the mcmansion ordinance? That is largely where the cost component is is modifying the development to come part with the city's specific regulation. [11:06:20 AM] Then you have the component of those regulations multiplied by the number that have been adopted. It's going to take some time for a review given the number of regulations that we have to review. So there's a factor cost in terms of that there. In seems like the average is about nine months and site plans are really where we have the complications of the multiple regulations, often times that conflict and can get a project stuck in the process. With regard to the building plan review side, the commercial and the residential, we believe that the expedited review process is going to help with speeding up that review. We think that we can save months off of the process with a single review session in that regard. With regard to the site plan process, though, we deal with a number of regulations. We deal with a number of city departments who come forward with their regulations that were adopted by council, that they have got to implement as well. And often when you hear us talk about conflict, it's because we have a tree ordinance that says preserve this tree, but then we have a sidewalk ordinance that says put a sidewalk there. But there's no priority as to which regulation comes first. So the development community is doing the best they can to comply with the regulations that have been put forward. Our review staff is reviewing each of those regulations and you will have different reviewers that are reviewing different regulations and saying sorry, but this doesn't work. And then an applicant gets stuck in the process. So of course codenext is addressing some of that. We want to bring forward potentially some other solutions with regard to the development process that might help. With regard to the organization process, we certainly want to bring forward what we believe on the staff side can be a true case management system. [11:08:30 AM] Right now we have a case management system, however the case managers do reviews themselves so they don't have any time for true case management. So we need case managers who don't do the review, but who can actually identify those conflicts and help to get a resolution to those conflicts. >> Flannigan: Are those conflicts something we're hoping to get resolved in codenext? >> Yes, we are. Director Guernsey is going to have to elaborate on what they're doing specifically -- >> Flannigan: But it's a pretty dramatic impact to what your department has to do because those conflicts exist and this is where we get the calls to our office that reviewer one told me this and reviewer two told me that. There's no direction from us on how to resolve the conflicts. Hopefully codenext provides that direction or eliminates the conflict. >> I think we will need a message from council to tell us what the hierarchy is and in terms of the ordinances adopted. >> Flannigan: I can talk to Guernsey about this later about is that something that we will solve with codenext or do we also need to be providing that direction as a council about did that definitive health and public safety comes first and then transportation and then great streets? Whatever that might be. I actually have a lot of questions and you have provided a lot of information and it's really fantastic and I'm going to look through it even longer when I'm not in a week where we have a council meeting. But the last question is really seeing all these technology improvements is very exciting and the community is excited to see that. Even if we're catching up to the year 2000 if we're not getting ahead of ourselves. To what extent do you feel that the technology improvements are reducing the need for additional ftes? >> That's a dramatic difference. For example, our service center on the first floor which has been attached to a fax machine for a long time and we still have some fax applications that come through for specific instances. [11:10:34 AM] The staff there clearly was understaffed based on a manual process. Due to the application of online applications, with the implementation of queue lists, through the implementation of changing of the facility itself, we now can run customers who in an efficient process and they're happy when they come through. Before they were upset because they couldn't find a parking space, before they were upset because there were 130 of them everyday waiting in a 10 did you 10 area which was insufficient for them. They were waiting in lobbies in the hallways, standing before they were waiting in excess of an hour and a half on average to see a city employee. And we've modified that through the use of technology, through revamping some of our processes, through increasing the size of our service area with great success. So we have not had to increase the number of staff in our service center because of those changes that we made. So we certainly see the use of technology as a way to mitigate some of the increase that we need in staff. It won't always mitigate the increase in staff, but certainly it will decrease the slope, if you will, in terms of increase in number of [indiscernible] Required. >> Flannigan: Given that, help me understand and help community understand to the degree that technology is helping solve this problem and to the degree that a new building solves this problem, and the conflict -- I see this in other departments too where we bag about doing something really, really great and then the very next thing is I need $100 million. So help me understand that conflict, please. >> So the conflict as I mentioned, we work with 12 different city departments and Travis county. Our side, and this is pure raw numbers, we have about 300 reviewers and inspectors on our side. By our tally there are another 300 in other departments in Travis county that aren't located with us. [11:12:34 AM] So all of these folks have a role in the review process, but they're not combined. We know that we need access to those reviewers and those inspectors and it would be much easier for them to be in the same building with us. We know that from a customer service perspective that the summer wants them in one location. -- The customer wants them in one location so the customer is not traversing in their vehicle across all of Austin to find access to those individuals. So we believe that it is the best approach to provide the highest customer service to our customers, not just our direct customers, but to our indirect customers as well. So a new facility is certainly a way that we feel is best approach for addressing customer service. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. One thing that I do here, Rodney, is that -- a lot of good things. Some of the challenges I think that still might exist that might be structural or institutional is a lot of the people that - - a lot of the departments that also have to give approval during this process don't fall directly under you. And I continue to hear that there's some disconnect sometimes between what you're able to order and run under you, and other departments. And I just urge again to maybe when somebody is in the same location, it will be easier to deal with that, but I hear that that is still an existing challenge. So I'm talking about energy and -- >> It is a challenge. It is a very substantive challenge in the work that we do. What will help, of course, is a hierarchy of the regulations that are out there. So if there's no change to the organization structure, if there's a change to the hierarchy of the regulations that are out there, that will at least know -- allow folks to know where they stand in line in terms of those regulations. [11:14:40 AM] We think through our case manager system with the right authority that we can resolve some of those conflicts with the appropriate staff, the ability to convene meetings of the different department staff, the ability to ensure that there is going to be resolution for some of those problems that they come up -- that will come up. But that certainly is the issue that we deal with in that the different regulations in policies that have been adopted are enforced by different departments within the city. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. And then the other one is just consistency among the folks. Okay. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Just one quick question. I saw you had -- how many outside inspectors do you have that go out and inspect -- >> In our buildings inspection group we have 42. We also have some site inspectors. We will have to give you the total tally on those, as well as environmental inspectors. This might give you a good indication. We have 80 vehicles in our department and they're used by our inspectors. >> >> Houston: As you know, we're calling you all the time about permits for demolitions that haven't been received and buildings that are going up that there are no permits for that. So I want to thank you and your staff for being as responsive as you have because people are just now beginning to trust that the city will respond, but so often the city didn't respond to calls that people made to 311 and they're just now getting to see some response and people are hesitant about calling 311 to report some building that's going on next door and, again, not understanding what the process is. So I want to thank you and your inspectors for coming out and good being as responsive as you have been. >> We appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: Good presentation. Thank you very much. [11:16:45 AM] Last presentation, municipal court. And we are right on time. Okay. >> Good morning. My name is Mary Jane rubb. I am the court clerk for the municipal court. I am joined by Pete Valdez, court administrator for the community court, Dave Coleman who is the financial manager for both courts. You all know ray. Also present is the presiding judge Sheri statman and judge Michael Coffey for downtown community court. Municipal court has jurisdiction over class C violations of state law and city ordinances and certain civil violations. Our department has approximately 180 positions. 114 of those are in court operations. 26 in support services. 26 at downtown community court. And 11 in the judicial offices. We have four locations. We have downtown location, we have a north substation located at the corner of Mcneil and Parmer, a south substation located at pancake and stassney and downtown community court where the address is -- [11:18:54 AM] >> 719 east sixth street. >> This past year we served a little over 462,000 customers. We docketed about 140,000 cases. Those are cases that are set on court appearances. We processed over 12,000 red light camera cases. And magistrated or arraigned over 91,000 cases. >> And our community service restitution units completed 15,700,000 square feet of cleanup for the city through partnerships with Austin resource recovery, code enforcement, parks and recreation, Albert and Austin police department. >> Our operating budget is $12.8 million. Of that there's about 7.1 million in tax are supported resources, 15.4 million in fines and fees and 3.3 funded by grants. We have about five different program -- five different programs in our operations budget, including court operations, dacc, which is downtown community court, support services, the judiciary and special programs. A couple of our program highlights include a new case management system. The case management system is the software used by the court to manage our caseload. The court has spent much time and energy over the last couple of years preparing for this, developing functional requirements, and we will be coming back to council probably in June with the staff recommendation for our new vendor. This year we did a huge outreach for -- they're is traditionally known as the warrant roundup. [11:20:57 AM] We didn't participate in the statewide campaign this year as we have in previous years. We didn't want amnesty. We went out and participated in -- we held community sessions at libraries throughout the city, invested a lot in advertising, reaching out to defendants to encourage them to come in voluntarily. If they came in voluntarily, they were not arrested. That's something we do everyday, not just during that campaign. What we did do in that campaign is we waived warrant fees if people came in voluntarily to address their cases. >> And the community court continued to develop an array of services through the enhanced funding that we've received from council over the years. Specifically social services that benefit the individuals. Our priority population that we serve, which are the frequent offenders. The community service res tuition program, as I said before, continues to partner with Austin resource recovery and Austin code, helping them with their work orders. There has been an increase in work orders with Austin code and we've been able to assist them with their gaps in services that they can't address. We also continue to help or address homeless camp cleanups that Austin police department identifies, and we help Austin public health with their grafitti abatement on an as-needed basis. >> Between the fiscal years of 2012 and 2016, we've increased the court -- the full-time positions by five and a half. And as you can see, the biggest bulk of our expenditure budget is in salary and fringe benefits, which makes up about 60%. [11:23:02 AM] We have a few key measures we'd like to cover. Our percent of cases set on docket within 60 days has remained consistent over the last five years. We've remained at about 96%. So once an individual pleads not guilty, they are set on a trial docket within 60 days. The percent of customers served in the downtown location within 10 minutes of arrival remains high. We help customers within 10% in a little over 96% of the time. And our customers responding neutral or better as indicated by the city of Austin survey has remained relatively consistent. We did see a slight decrease in fiscal year '16. I think that's primarily due to parking and accessibility of our downtown location. >> And for the community court, our frequent offenders, as you can see in 2016, there was an increase in completion of rehabilitative services that they were referred to. But there was a decrease in how many we served for that year, that and has to do with what -- we think it has to do with a decrease in enforcement downtown. In other words, frequent offenders aren't getting as many cases that they previously had. We've also decreased the overall amount of frequent offenders from over 400 to currently 374 individuals. And these numbers, beginning with 2013 to 2016, are rolling numbers, so somebody could have entered our program in 2013, but not completed until 2016 so that's when the completion is going to show up. >> We have three primary horizon issues. The top of our list is facility needs. As you know, we are in an old building. [11:25:04 AM] Our building was built in 1953. We had about 10 municipal court employees at that time. Right now it houses over 153 court employees. So people are literally sharing work space on top much eve other and there's not enough room for citizens to come in and we don't have enough rooms to efficiently process our caseload. In addition, we are very limited and any renovation efforts that we can do because the building contains asbestos. We are looking at opportunities with co-locating with Travis county. Those are just beginning talks, so no definitive decisions have been made on that. Technology upgrades and replacements, as I mentioned earlier we are looking to update our case management system and we also have a crowd queuing system that we are looking to replace so that we can collect better statistics on the number of people that we are serving and what the people are coming into the contact for. Our staff be turnover rate historically has always exceeded the city's average. And it continues to do so. However, what I would like to point out is that it is decreasing. In fact, from fiscal year '16 over the previous years we decreased that by 47%. >> I'd like to say specific to community courts facility, we have also outgrown our space. The space that we're currently in was planned to process 5500 cases a year and to house half the staff that we currently have. So we're also working with real estate to locate a larger space for our facility and our operation. >> And so with that similar to the other departments that you've heard today, this concludes their formal presentation. [11:27:08 AM] Here are a couple of topics that council may wish to explore. They're in community courts area, but are open to any questions that you may have. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council? Mr. Flannigan and then Dr. Alter? >> Flannigan: A couple of small questions on activity page 2 it references Travis county sheriff. I assume you work with the wilco sheriff's office as well? >> We work with Travis county sheriff's office, yes. >> Flannigan: And other county jurisdictions that contain the city of Austin? >> Correct. >> Flannigan: I always have to call it out whenever I see it, I have to say it. On activity page 5, this may be a typo. Percent of frequent offenders who complete rehab is 142%? >> Again, that's that rolling number issue. Because we have people that entered the program. It could be two fiscal year years before and stayed in case management for two years. So we might have a bunch of individuals complete in that fiscal year, which creates that oddity in the outcome. >> Flannigan: Probably need to measure that differently then. I do have questions. I'm collecting my thoughts. >> Alter: I think my question may actually be for the city manager. I notice on the slide number three it says that tax supported is 7.1 million, fees, fines is 15.4 million, grants, others is 3.3 million. In one of the earlier presentations also had the fees going to that department. When we were looking at this for parks on the parks board, they were always this question that the fees never really actually went back to the parks department. So is this just kind of an accounting mechanism to say that they bring in this amount of fees, but it's actually all those fees are going into the general fund and then back to them in the same way that parks is? [11:29:19 AM] Or if they -- if they impose more fines do they get more budget? >> No. In this case and in parks case and currently in dsd we are accounting for them separately, but all of the fees, property taxes, the sales tax go into the big general fund melting pot called revenue. And because they collect more fees or fines, it does not affect their expected budget amount. >> Alter: Thank you. And also I'd be curious of how wide the asbestos problem is for city buildings in general? I'm guessing that's not necessarily only a problem for the court. >> We can get that information. >> Alter: Thank you. And then similarly -- I was just wondering for the grafitti, I know that parks has been experiencing a large up surge in grafitti. Is there any way that your program can help them address that need as well? Do you have additional capacity for helping in those cases? >> We can certainly assess. If we need to connect with a certain individual at pard wick certainly do that and have that -- we can certainly do that and have that conversation. >> Alter: Okay. I think it's become a more and more recurrent problem in the parks and I know a lot of the maintenance staff is spending time on grafitti abatement as opposed to other maintenance in the park. So if there are mechanisms for that, that would be great to explore. >> We do have a limitation on how we address grafitti. Because we use probationners and defendants to do the work, we -- all with he do is paint over grafitti. We don't use chemicals or machines. So we -- a lot of times that's not helpful to some of the departments that need the assistance, but we're happy to paint wherever we can. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. [11:31:21 AM] >> And if I may add, councilmember alter, there's also an effort internally within all the departments involved with grafitti abatement to try to better coordinate those resources. >> Alter: I would love to know more about that so I can think about if there's some way that I want to plug that into the budget or support those efforts. >> Certainly. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor pro tem. Grafitti is a problem all over this city. And I think as the city grows, continues to grow, that's going to become an ever increasing problem. So I know the police department has a unit that talks about -- I don't know whether it's gangs. I don't know who is doing all the tagging of all the buildings, but it's everywhere. Bus stops. So that may be somebody else that you might want to talk to. Capital metro, we always are seeing things on bus stops that stay there it seems like forever. But I had a question on slide 3 when you talked about grants. Are those state grants or federal grants at 3.3 million? >> I think 3.3 is not all grants. >> The 3.3 is not all grants. Only about $132,000 is grants. The others are special funds. Other. >> Houston: Special funds, okay. Of the grants are any of those in jeopardy of being lost? >> So the 132,000 is related to the emergency solutions grant collaboration that we have with Austin public health. It is my understanding that they -- they are looking at other ways of using those dollars so that could be a possibility. But personalitily we're maintaining the use of those dollars through an fte that does housing location and housing stability case management. [11:33:25 AM] And also providing emergency assistance -- rental assistance for individuals seeking housing. >> Houston: So there are other parts of the city that provide rental assistance. Is there a way that you can coordinate those efforts so we're not duplicating services to people? >> Through this collaborative, yes. Again, it's a collaborative with one public health, ourselves, the community court, front steps and the center for -- the communicable disease unit through Austin public health. We also collaborate and in attempts to not duplicate services like you said. I don't know if a neighborhood housing has an emergency solution related to that component. But we do collaborate with Austin public health. >> Houston: Thank you. I hope we get some resolution in moving you guys out. It's been a long time. I mean, this is my third year on the council. We've been talking about the asbestos, the crowding, the exposed wires, all the things we talk about. So I hope we're getting forward to some kind of resolution on that with Travis county co-locating or if there's anything that I could go to help you all move out of that space as soon as you can, I would certainly be willing to do that. >> We certainly appreciate it. This has been in discussion I believe since 2006. >> Houston: Really? >> There was a bond election in 2006. >> Houston: So when I hear things that we need to do something really quick because the time is rate, you've been waiting on this since 2006 and sobriety center was started about 12 years ago. So -- oh, more than that. So there are things that we can take our time and get it right, but this is not something that we need to take any more time on. >> I fully agree with you. [11:35:28 AM] In addition, we are in an area of town that's not the safest. We have daily complaints by staff. We don't have dedicated parking. Staff has to park in parking lots that are often a couple of blocks from the court, so it's not just staff, but citizens who are coming into contact with the municipal court who encounter dangerous situations everyday and we have complaints everyday. So it is a very serious issue that requires the utmost attention. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Yes, Mr. Guadalupe began? >> Flannigan: One point of clarification. You mentioned your north substation. Mcneil and Parmer. I thought there's no substation in my district. That's on lamp light. I wanted to make sure that got on the video. On the activity pages there's a really sharp document in cases docketed and a similar drop in cases requiring a parent. Can you tell me what's cases? >> Yes. Not just in the city of Austin, but across the nation I would say since 2008 there's been a dramatic increase in case filings. Just comparing this year to last year the case filings have decreased 28% and that's primarily in traffic. So obviously you have less cases filed, you're going to have less cases docketed. >> Flannigan: You mentioned this earlier. Is that because we're doing lessen force. We're a growing city so it's always surprising to see numbers go down, and this is pretty dramatic. >> It is lessen force. I am not the one to ask about that. It's primarily APD, but again it's not just Austin, it's a nationwide issue. It's not that the offenses are not occurring. I do believe that laws are still being broken. I just believe that there's less resources to enforce them. >> Flannigan: I think it's really important for us to wrap our heads around that. [11:37:29 AM] When we talk about building a new building, are we building a new building for cases docketed two ago, 200,000, or are we building a building for a trend that's decreasing and that trend will drive the type of building we need. I'm also curious about how the stations are usedders versus the downtown court and then separately to that is that a way to address not building one building, but maybe building two buildings that are smaller that would be cheaper to build. We've seen this with some other issues where location is a key component of cost. >> Correct. To answer your first question, the stations right now are limited functionality, meaning pretty much people can go there to pay their traffic fines or sign up for deferral options, but there is no court, no judge or prosecutor present. What we would like to do in approximate the future is expand the functionality in the two substations to where they have court services for individuals. It makes them easier access to justice. In terms of building one large building, we are planning for a decrease in caseload. So we are looking at the trends and adjusting our numbers. But again, my preference I believe that we should expand our services throughout the city rather than one big central location. >> Flannigan: That would certainly be my preference. And more generally speaking, there's a single number about customers served by the internet, but can you tell me a little bit -- it's a pretty old system -- I did get a parking ticket awhile ago and I used it myself. As a web developer I thought this thing hasn't been updated in a long time. Is that trending? Are we seeing a significant -- is it steady, are more people using the internet to adjudicate their cases? >> I would definitely say over the last couple of years more people are using the internet to address their cases. But again the only thing they can do online is pay their cases. [11:39:31 AM] They don't have -- you can't have a trial online. You can't sign up for a deferral online or DSC. There are options to do that through the mail, but definitely more people -- the majority of people take care of their cases by payment and when they do that they do handle that online so they do not have to come to a location. >> Flannigan: All right, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: So just by way of comparison, we were talking about the training and amount of training budgets. And I think in the department we were just looking at, development services, their budget for training was 385,000, exclusive of educational training travel. Which I'm going to ask more questions about, but it looks like to me the training in the court division is somewhere under 30,000. So we had asked the city manager to kind of do a comparison. That's just a quick comparison I would do between the two departments that we looked at today. With regard to grafitti, I think I've never received more calls about grafitti than I have in the last several weeks in every part of my district, on private land, on public land, on park space. So this is really to assistant city manager Arrellano, if you are the point person for that coordinated effort, I would just ask you if you would coordinate with us. There are different programs and it's a little -- I think having informative memo about what those resources are and which programs -- which are the different programs that are working on grafitti abatement and what we can suggest to private citizens would be helpful, and that is different for whether it's on private land or not. But again, I just have had numerous, numerous phone calls, some really irate because they're calling back and the grafitti hasn't been abated. And it really is not limited. It is in every part of district 9. And I'm sure my colleagues are hearing calls about it in other areas as well. [11:41:34 AM] >> I was going to say that we'll be glad to follow up on that. I believe it's interim assistant city manager Sarah Hensley that is take the lead on coordinating and seeing how we might more effectively address the grafitti. >> Tovo: Thank you. And then my last question really relates to the downtown Austin community court, and the really successful important programs that you offer and my question is really one of capacity. How well are you meeting the demand for programs such as road to recovery and some of the other programs? Are you -- could you serve more people with more resources or are you meeting the demand that you're experiencing. >> The issue that we're having currently is that we have a weight list for case management because we can't meet the needs of all the people needing case management. Our model for case management is intensive and it's clinical, in its approach, so the maximum amount of clients that we place per case managers, 15, so that they are able to provide that intensive case management. Because of that we currently have a wait list of 29 individuals. >> Mayor Adler: How many? >> 29. >> Tovo: Thank you. That's helpful. And it would be helpful and maybe this will be in a horizon document at some point. It would be helpful to get a sense of what the needs are throughout the division and what the potential dollar figures would be on those. So for example, what would it cost and how many ftes would be looking at to resolve that case list? Just based on what you said, it sounds like two additional case workers at least. >> If we were to adjust the wait list, yes. >> Tovo: And how about with regard to things such as road to recovery? >> So again, if we hesitate to place people in treatment unless we can identify a case manager that's going to follow them through the process. [11:43:39 AM] And so we do put people into treatment if the provider can ensure us that they're going to have a case manager attached until we can provide the case management ourselves. So it's a lot of coordination and collaboration with those social service agencies and it can be done and we are doing it. But it's not an ideal situation. >> Tovo: And it sounds like more resources would be a help. >> Yes. >> Tovo: Thanks. I hope as we go through budget process we can get a real handle on what resources we can invest in this area of our budget. And just a last comment, I too share an interest in seeing the municipal court in a more suitable building. And I am aware of and completely understand the comments about safety in that area and I would say that really is -- that needs to really be a priority for the city. So when we have a presentation talking about it being unsafe for municipal court employees I think we need to recognize absolutely we need a more suitable building for the municipal court, but we really need to attend to the public safety issues in that area. And those are really tied to some very basic social service needs and some needs for housing and all kinds of other things. And we need to invest in those as well. It's not a public safety solution. >> Houston: Mayor? First I want to say something to councilmember Flannigan is that I would love to have a court in district 1 because it's hardly accessible to get downtown. And the bus routes from northeast Austin take an hour and 15, 20 minutes to get here. So I would love to have them there. I think the cost is going to be there anyway because the security issues that we are now facing, the buildings that we can't -- we can't put you in a school or put you in a place where you can hold community court or a vacant building because you will have to have those kinds of protections that perhaps in the past we didn't have to have. [11:45:55 AM] But now I think it's almost incumbent on everybody when we're looking at sites and building, that we put those protections in for our judges, our attorneys and the people in the public. So it's going to cost no matter. There's going to be a cost associated with building those protections in. I needed to ask about the homeless cleanup because I know that we have the -- txdot cleans up under I-35, all of the txdot roadways, they do a cleanup once a month. So where do you all do your cleanups? >> So we do collaborate with Austin resource recovery and public works who also assist in the cleanup under I-35. They contact us whenever they need assistance. Also like I said earlier, when APD identifies a camp, they'll send a notice or they'll post a notice to the individuals living in that camp letting them know that within 48 hours we're going to clean the camp and then we'll come in and remove anything that's left behind. And we do that quite a bit under I-35 and also along waller creek. >> Houston: So I'm interested in that because I went out on one of those cleanups and we have a lot of people out there. We contract with a group of people who had experienced homelessness and dps is -- not dps. Two police officers are there, code is there, txdot is there, there's a supervisor there. And the resources are so limited, if you all are also helping them -- because we're paying all those people to be there, if you're doing private camps someplace on the property or city property that makes a whole lot of sense or waller creek. If we're duplicating efforts there under the bridge, under the I-35, then I need to know what that looks like. [11:47:58 AM] >> So typically it's when there's a special event downtown when we're called to help under I-35. Usually the cleanups occur along waller creek, around the arch, in those areas. >> Houston: Okay. That makes a whole lot of sense. This is just once a month, every month they go through and do their major roadways. That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification. >> Mayor Adler: Yes? >> Alter: I'll be quick. So if I might I just have one sort of semantic suggestion as you're presenting your data. It seemed a little bit off to refer to customers in this case and I'm wondering if we could refer to individuals because if I was going in for a traffic fine I don't really feel like I'm a customer and I just semantically just didn't seem accurate. I just wanted to point that out. The other question I had is what is the process for moving forward with the municipal court facilities and the next steps? It seems to me that the way that you fund that is through the bond and we'll be having discussions about the bond, but I'd like to understand what the process is and who is identifying what those needs are and how we decide whether it's multiple locations, one location, how is that going to move. So that when we do get ready to offer this bond that we can make sure that that's what we want to do, that we can include it in there. >> We've been working with real estate services and I perhaps misspoke a little bit. I'm not sure that the bond that was passed in 2006 is going to be used for this project because it's been used -- it was for public safety. And there was a piece of property purchased, the old Home Depot location I believe off of I-35 and Rutherford -- St. Johns, excuse me. So again we're working with real estate. We came to council about this time last year to explore the possibility of doing a public-private partnership. [11:50:07 AM] And again, liza mentioned we're also talking with Travis county because they are also in need of a new courthouse, perhaps maybe co-locating with them. Again, part of the operation is again we are interested in expanding our services throughout the city rather than one large main location. We feel that that would best meet the needs of the citizenry. >> Alter: I guess I was thinking about towards a potential 2018 bond and actually, you know, if we decided as a community that this was a priority, that we would want to include it in that. And I just wanted to make sure that everything was on track so that when we are ready to make those decisions we have the information that we would need to do that, if that's the only funding source beyond the public-private partnership. If there are other funding sources that's great, but that was not the impression I was getting from the conversation. >> Generally all the departments are being asked for their capital needs. Of course the courts have identified these and other needs that they may have. And there's a staff team that's doing some of the legwork now in order to present a recommendation generally to the bond election task force, I think it's called, that will then go through the details. In terms of whether or not the municipal court then makes a recommendation as to one large or -- I think more logically, separate locations, would be part of the recommendations that they would make to the staff a that would then go to the larger process. There is a coordinated effort to try to identify all the needs within the city for facilities. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? >> Houston: No, not on this, mayor, but I thought this was great. To put together prior to impacting 2015 for the work that development is thes does. [11:52:07 AM] We pass resolutions all the time and we have no idea what the unintended consequences are or the amount of work. I'm hoping with this alignment of strategic priorities which I think is what Rodney asked for, we can say these are the things that we need to focus on and staff needs to focus on rather than this must be -- I don't know. I wouldn't count them all, all the things that we've said you need to do. That's just pretty overwhelming to look at it in this format. >> Tovo: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes, mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: And that was one reason why I asked what the time period was. You know, in looking at this I see things like the single-family compatibility, ie the mcmansion ordinance. Some have had a tremendous positive impact on really rectifying some of the challenges that people throughout the city were facing. So I -- while I appreciate point made by development services and others, I look at this and see things like the y'all educational impact statement, which I think too is of great value. I hope we don't -- I don't want to -- I want to make sure that we frame this conversation not as the council actions are bumping up costs and creating more work for reviewers and that tend to be how we talk about it. There are also provisions that I think have had tremendous positive impact on the city and people's quality of life and arability to plan and collaborate with the school district and a variety of other things. >> Houston: And all school districts. We'll try to get educational impact studies done in Williamson county too. >> Tovo: And I bet that one is on this list too because I brought it forward. It's somewhere on this list maybe, just never happened. >> Alter: I just wanted to add to that that we have four school districts in district 10 too, but aid is the largest. One thing that I wasn't fully grasping from the conversation with development services on that was is the problem that they're conflicting and so they don't know how to resolve them or that they have too many? Because I think those are two different questions. So if we have conflicting ordinances and they need to know which one comes first, that is a very different question as to whether we're opposing costs where we don't know what they are, which we may be. [11:54:18 AM] We may want to know that. But those are two different things and I didn't fully understand which was the problem. I don't know if anyone else understood that better. >> Councilmember, we'll be glad to follow up with Rodney, but I think he meant that there were two ordinances that were different and they didn't know which one took priority over the other, but I'll follow up with him and make sure we get that cleared up. >> Houston: That was my understanding was both and. Competing ordinances, resolutions, and then it's a lot of them. >> Tovo: And you know, I've been to presentations about codenext on -- by other groups and just comments, and it does sort of bleed into a discussion about an onerous number of regulations coming and ordinances, and, you know, again, I would just defend that some of them have been really critical. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? I think this is our very last one of these. I just want to compliment, Ed, you on this process. This was really helpful for me. And it filled in a lot of gaps that I've had even going through two budget processes and watching others in the past. So I really thank you for this process. It was very helpful. My understanding is that that -- that next week we'll have the forecast given to us and then the two weeks after that on successive Wednesdays we'll be having no set agenda other than to discuss some of the significant budget related policy issues that have come up. The staff has tried to extract some from the conversations, but I would urge my colleagues that if there are particular policy budget -- budget related policy conversations that you think would be good for us to have, in part to have the conversation, second to inform the work that the manager is going to do when she's putting together her budget, this would be now the time to do that. [11:56:25 AM] Maybe go to either -- to either let Ed or lane know directly or go to the bulletin board to identify that. But the last Wednesday in April and the first Wednesday in may I'm hoping will be really constructive time for us to have those kinds of conversations. >> Houston: Mayor, will that be 9:00 to noon meeting on those days. >> Mayor Adler: Yes those are all day? They've been set for all day. Okay. Did you have something you want to say. >> I appreciate the comments very much. I want to make sure you all know this, but you thanked me and there were dozens, maybe if not approaching hundreds of people in the city and people in my office that put together all this fine documentation. And just from the reaction I'm seeing from it, I think we probably would be planning on doing something similar to this next year for our enterprise departments, if that's council's year. >> Mayor Adler: It was very good. All right. Then with that we're done. It is 11:56. Work session stands adjourned.