City Council Work Session Transcript – 08/08/2017 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/8/2017 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/8/2017 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:10:04 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think we have the folks here we need to gear us up. So on today's agenda we have four items pulled on this week's agenda, two items pulled for the following week's agenda. We also have an executive session where we're going to discuss small cell wireless, and also some of the confidentiality issues associated with the new manager search because there were questions about that. We can do that in executive session. We have a briefing here today on the manager search issues, which are set for the agenda this week. We have our task force leadership with us and our consultant, and then there were some questions that were raised with respect to the homelessness issue that the mayor pro tem had raised, and we have, I think, Ann Howard is going to be here today to be able to answer questions relative to that. So let's go ahead and start with the pulled items. If I say that, let's -- we could do the pulled items or we could go to -- let's go to the manager search issue, I think, since we have some people here that could leave. So let's call up the manager search issue. [9:12:20 AM] All right. To our chair and vice chair, let me say again thank you, and please convey the thanks to the task force. I got a chance to see you all doing work. That was a mammoth task you all did in an incredibly short period of time, so thank you both for that work. And staff and the search team. This is scheduled to come up this week. There are two issues, I think, that are presented. One is the profile and the other one is the expansion of task force duties. Do you want to address those? >> If you don't mind I'll start. What you have on your agenda -- is it on? >> Mayor Adler: It's on. >> So what you have on your agenda is the work products that represent what the task force has been up to for the last eight or so weeks, and those work products include a profile. It includes a summary of culture survey that was conducted of about -- the survey went out to about 800 senior staff. It was responded to by, I think, just under 300. One of the work products is the raw data that we received from 500 surveys that were filled out by citizens, and then an executive summary of that, so that if you don't want to sort through all of the raw feedback you can see a summary of that. So those are the four work products of the task force. Just to give you a sense of how we structured our work, we wanted to make sure that we reached into the community in a number of different ways. We held four citywide public hearings and then each task force member collected information either through a public hearing -- or not a public hearing but a public meeting or electronically, and you've got all of those district communications summarized, and then we did the surveys that citizens could complete and surveys of the city staff, and we had a 311 option. So there were a whole variety of opportunities for people to weigh in on the survey. I think Steve -- Steve has a [9:14:21 AM] presentation if you want to hear it today, that summarizes kind of what we heard from the community. You're going to see that there were some pretty tightly wound themes around leadership, communication, inclusiveness, what the community feels are the important issues facing Austin. And then the second thing on your agenda is there is a recommendation from the task force that the task force be included not in an interview process per se but in a conversational interview, in which we wouldn't rank candidates but we would provide feedback to you on the short list of candidates which we would expect to be the final two or three candidates. So that -- that piece of the process and the source of that recommendation is to extend the community component of this process and advising the city council, but we wouldn't rank candidates. We would simply provide feedback and a cross-check against how candidates were comparing to the profile itself. >> Mayor Adler: And then I think so -- we'll ask for that presentation. Three things in front of us this week. One is the profile approval. Second is the extension of that work of the task force, and then I posted on the bulletin board some suggested language that builds on language that's already in the profile, but adds a little bit greater focus, I guess, on the issue of the relationship between the manager and staff and council to make sure that that's something that gets discussed. Steve, do you want to talk to us about the work? >> Thank you very much, mayor, and I do also want to extend my thanks to the task force. The council members selected a great task force, worked effectively together and there was a tremendous amount of outreach as outlined by the chair a moment ago and yielded very interesting results. As you -- as you heard it was very important for us to collect views from city [9:16:23 AM] staff as well as from the community. We administered what we call our culture analyst survey to approximately 800 of the senior staff members, as many as -- close to 300 responded. We consider for our purposes that to be a very high response rate, coupled with very high response rate in the -- in the -- the free form questions that were asked of the city employees. And so that was a very important bit of information, and then secondly, of course, the outreach in the community also yielded quite a bit of results. >> Mayor Adler: So Steve, as you go through this, there's going to be a presentation that's going to be made on Thursday? I don't want you to be put in the position where you're doing -- >> Two. >> Mayor Adler: Two of the same thing twice, so just as a really high level and then council during work sessions, they want to focus on anything in particular in anticipation of Thursday, they can certainly do that. >> All right. So I will -- I will try to very quickly then summarize what we heard from the -- from both the community and the employees, and I will say to you that it was very consistent across both groups of population, city council -- city staff as well as the community. There's a tremendous desire to focus on the core issues affecting the city, most of which come from the hypergrowth that the city has experienced around transportation, mobility, equity, housing prices, more or less in that order as being very, very important. A lot of discussion around diversity of the city. Less specific discussion around the environment and sustainability because our conclusion is much of that is included in the other issues that were discussed. We have from that drafted a job profile that you will have in front of you today for review. We believe that it captures the essence of this. This document is not a legal [9:18:24 AM] contract. It is not meant to be a job description. It's really meant to give a very strong flavor for what the next city manager will face in their new position. It is something that we will use for both marketing purposes and for screening, but it is not -- it should not be implied it's a contract or anything of that nature. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Council members, we're going to go in executive session and talk about confidentiality issues related to the extension, because that was something that had been asked. We made sure we were able to do that. I've set out on the message board some language that I would recommend or suggest we consider adding, that again speaks to that relationship. My hope is that we can talk about it a little bit here. I'm not going to be here on Thursday. Neither will councilman Renteria. If this is something that is controversial either on accepting the language or the performance or the extension, then I'd ask that it be postponed a week for actual action but take the testimony and we can take a look at that later. Does anybody -- and by the way, I would support both the work of the group in accepting that, adding that language, and I would also support, since now we've seen this task force, it's a really high-level task force. I think the council collectively did a really good job appointing people, so I would also support the extension of that -- of that role. Anybody else want to say anything else on this subject? Yes? Council member pool? >> Pool: Yes, I also appreciate the good work that the panel is doing and appreciate the efforts of my appointee Walter muse to communicate with me. It's working really well and I also support the expansion of the work that you are involved in and appreciate the ask. >> Mayor Adler: Anybody else have anything else on this? [9:20:27 AM] Yes? >> Mayor, I appreciate your addition, and I think it is important to have that very clear in the statement, so appreciate the work that went into adding that part about the importance of the relationship between the city manager and the council moving forward. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Thank you, mayor, and I appreciate that as well. I'm going to hold my conversation about expanding the task force until after we have executive session. >> Mayor Adler: And I understand. Yes? Vice chair. >> I've been remarkably silent during most of this, and I just wanted to say what a privilege it was for us to serve together. This was indeed a remarkable group of people. I think we collaborated well from the beginning, and one thing I just wanted to impress on you all, that the profile is the result of a tremendous amount of energy that a lot of you got to see when we had the district meetings or we were particularly honored and impressed that the mayor attended one of our open sessions to the general public, and so you know how dynamic this input was. So this -- this profile is the result of a complete buy-in on the part of the public that we need these qualities and these characteristics in our next city manager. So I wanted you to know how seriously we took this as an objective, and also how proud I am to have served in this capacity. So thank you so much for entrusting us with this responsibility. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. And I also -- it worked really well but it also worked really well because the two of you got into this real early in the process and set up a structure and a timeline that ultimately people followed, so it's great leadership. Do you want to talk to us [9:22:28 AM] about the timeline for the manager search? >> Actually Russell Reynolds has established a presentation that will take you through the timeline, so if you all are interested in hearing that now he's prepared to take you through it or we can talk about it in executive session. We're ready for the presentation now. >> Mayor Adler: Well, let's hold off because it will be part of the presentation at the -- that the public will see on Thursday, but I'm excited to see that it actually has us concluding the search with a candidate by the end of the year, if we skip to the last chapter. Anything else on this? All right. Thank you all very much. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: All right. We also have -- that was item no. 15. Are we ready to go -- let's do no. 10. Mayor pro tem, you pulled that one? >> Tovo: Yes, mayor. As I indicated on the message board, it is going to be my request of council on Thursday that we postpone the aquatics master plan and I may have down here resolutions. I think probably you've all seen the resolution that I posted along with my co-sponsors for next Thursday to establish a task force to really look closely at the aquatics master plan but also to invite the public to come and comment on it. We've had a lot of community engagement throughout this process of developing the aquatics master plan, but the public would really, I believe, benefit from having an opportunity to weigh in on the specific recommendations that are contained within the master plan, and that was the recommendation of our parks board. They suggested -- they [9:24:28 AM] decided not to take action on the aquatics master plan. They voiced some concerns about it and they talked and made a recommendation to us that there be a working group established. In talking with several of the parks board members and some other community members it seems like the best path forward would be to establish this as a task force to allow -- and I can talk more about that. I think that's also been pulled for next week, but again, my intention on Thursday is to request a postponement of that, and I think it would be very helpful to the public to get some sense from our body of whether or not that postponement is likely to be granted. There are, as many of you know, you know, many, many people in the community who are raising concerns and questions about the aquatics master plan and if it's our intention to postpone it on Thursday it would be great to signal that so they don't come -- come down to testify. >> To respond to the mayor pro tem, I will be supporting that postponement. >> Mayor Adler: If I were here I would be supporting it as well. Council member alter and then council member Houston. >> Alter: I'm very much in support of that. I think that we definitely need more input from the parks board, which thought for an hour and more input from the community and clarity on what the plan means moving forward for our resource decision, so I would support it. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston, and then Mr. Flannigan, because you also pulled item 62 on next week's agenda so it might be appropriate to talk about the aquatics now but Ms. Houston you're up first. >> Houston: I'm probably not going to be supportive of a postponement. Parks department is one of the few departments in the city that does community engagement extraordinarily well, and they've been working on this for years, and based upon my feedback from the person that represents district 1, there have been community engagements and although it's not perfect, no plan is perfect, and there's maybe some misunderstandings about [9:26:29 AM] what the plan actually says, it's not a decommissioning plan, as some people have indicated. There should be another way to try to get to that clarification other than yet another task force, which is going to put us even further behind and what do we actually do with our parks and the lack of funding that we have for our parks. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Flannigan? >> Flannigan: I'm fine with postponement only because two members will be absent, and I hate to move forward on very visible items when there are people who are not present. Although I do concur with council member Houston, I have some questions about more so kind of technical and intent questions about the task force being proposed for the aquatics master plan. When I read the backup it doesn't say how many members or who appoints them or anything like that. I also concur with the frustration that -- I don't know that another task force gets us anywhere farther or closer to the realization that we have very hard choices to make, but for today I just wanted to have some clarity on the technical details of the task force. >> Tovo: Thanks, council member. So I am using the ability to have a couple weeks of getting feedback to sort out the task force so when we post it on Friday we still had some queries out to people how to move forward. I think the parks board has a strong interest in being involved and so the task force, and I'll update this language and put it into the revised backup, but the task force as I propose it will be -- will include a representative from each council member, so each council member will have an opportunity to appoint somebody and the parks board will have an opportunity to select three of their members to serve on it as well. I will also just point out, sometimes it takes us a while to make those appointments and so we're working with law to try to put a stipulation in that the task force can begin immediately, as soon as they can reach a certain number, [9:28:30 AM] and we're working with law to see if there's any way if council members take several months to appoint their task force, if that task -- if we can adjust the quorum such that the committee can be -- the task force can begin absent those other members and it won't impact their quorum, because it will take three months to -- for people to make appointments, that task force will be severely hamstrung, and the intent again is to provide some opportunities for public feedback to come in and talk about the plan, as I mentioned, I agree, there was extensive community engagement, but we're hearing from a lot of those people who were engaged that the plan doesn't -- raises lots of questions and concerns about some of the values they believe they were expressing throughout the community engagement plan. So, you know, there's always a difference, I think, between a report and kind of the feedback that people might have made, and it is -- and there's a strong interest, I can say, in looking at what some alternatives are for -- for finding some funding sources to keep those neighborhood pools open. You know, when we have a plan before us that has two of our most popular, most used pools, potentially, you know, on a closure list, you know, I think we have -- we need to do a little bit more work thinking through what some other alternatives are. Does that answer the questions about the task force? It was extremely general because we were trying to work out those details. >> It does answer the technical questions, but I do just want to agree with council member Houston one more time. I think what I -- the presentation I heard was not a closure list, in -- there's been some confusion in the community about that, but on a -- kind of a broader perspective, I'm not sure that I support the creation of the task force because it enables the community to only focus on one item and not understand the trade-offs. It's challenging enough that the parks board only talks about parks issues, but if we then siphon off pieces of it, then inevitably the recommendations we will get is spend all the money, and [9:30:31 AM] not every commission and task force can give us a recommendation that says salesmen all the -- spend all the money. We will have wasted community's time going through this process. It would be my preference that the parks board at the least lead on this issue because they know if we put money in aquatics it takes it out of maintenance and there may be parts of the community that would understand that there are difficult choices to be made and that having all of these things at once may not be a fiscal reality. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? All right. Thank you. We'll move on to the next item -- >> Mayor? >> Renteria: I guess I just better want to understand, you know, the -- the community input that had that input into the document and clearly there's some folks -- even if everybody's input comes in, ultimately the staff has to sort out potentially conflicting pieces of input and bring that forward to us. So I guess what I want to understand better is, you know, for example, under the first be it further resolved, the council would be asking the task force to review the plan with considerations, geographic ac wi access, fiscal sustainability. My understanding is the staff has tried to take a hack at that, so I guess my question is, is the goal here to try to get -- I'm just trying to understand if we're trying to direct the task force to review this, is the goal for the staff to go back and work on the plan again or is it comments for the plan that are supposed to come back to us? I'm just trying to understand sort of like the -- the back and forth process of sending it back to a task force and coming back to council as opposed to us debating the plan, direct council now. That was not an articulate [9:32:32 AM] question. I think what I'm trying to understand is, you know, the usual process is, you know, community input, the staff kicks it over to us and then we have to make the hard choices, and -- and I'm just trying to understand what we're asking the task force to produce. >> Tovo: Sure, and I think we can certainly have some more discussion about what our expectations are. Let me just point out in that first be it resolved, that was -- those were certainly considerations in the development of the plan, and so I don't see that as adding -- like now we want you to look at it through this lens, but we do -- that was kind of our expectation that, you know, continue to think about the broad context as you analyze the plan. What we really need is from the -- from our parks board members, and if it's preferable to the group to have it to stay at the parks board, I'm certainly open to that as well, but I do believe that we need -- we now need a group to really dig into that plan, provide us with some feedback, look really closely at it, see how that -- and really see -- I think we have a new section coming forward from one of the co- sponsors, council member alter, asking for some more just expanding on the language, looking at some more financial options. We really -- we want to see this group dig into the master plan, look at it more closely and determine what some other alternatives might be in terms of funding, but also to question -- you know, to really help us better understand some of the assumptions, and I think this is some of the conversation that you had -- now I've forgotten whether it was last week's work session, two sessions ago and I wasn't present but I listened to it, some in realtime, some afterward, but there was -- I think you looked at some of the criteria, for example, that looked at the ability to expand, you know, the ability to expand particular pools factored greatly in the weighting and the ranking of those pools. Historic significance was not something that factored in, and that's something, you know, that is really important, I think, as we [9:34:33 AM] move forward in this. We have some pools that are very historically significant and they are low on the rankings and they're highly utilized. And so, you know, we need -- we need a group and we need some time to kind of look at that stuff more thoroughly. Now, whether those tasks -- I think it would be a question to staff whether that group and its focused analytical work would be -- would be appropriate for them to review and potentially make changes before it comes back to council. That would be my preference about how it works, and the same way the parks board provided some initial feedback at its meeting and park staff said, you know, we'll take that into account, and they may have made some edits. So I'm fine if that -- if the staff feel at this point that those recommendations are things that they can embrace and make revisions before it comes back to council, if they want it to be two parallel processes and those recommendations come and potential edits and revisions come separate from the staff recommendation and the staff draft report, that would be fine with me too. Is that what you meant about process? Like what the interface is going to be and the interaction between those recommendations? >> Renteria: Yes, sounds like there's three things that I would like to mull over between now and when it comes up. One, what that interface is, second, I think it is an interesting question about whether we need a whole new group or if we just essentially need the parks board to continue working on it. I don't have a gut feeling on what the best option is, but I think that's a good question to have. >> Tovo: Yeah. >> Renteria: And then -- and then third I do appreciate what you mentioned around this list of values and lenses being geographically and environmental sustainability, fiscal sustainability. I think my preference might be to make it clear that we aren't picking new lenses or directing this group to do something, that we aren't critiquing the staff lenses and coming up with new ones, [9:36:34 AM] if that makes sense. I don't want to -- I wouldn't want to give the impression that we're saying this plan doesn't comply with a specific set of values that the council has and we're sending it back, if that makes sense, because I know the staff worked really -- now, again, some of the values and their weights might be something we'd want them to look at and review, but I guess I just wouldn't want to get into wordsmithing here, specifically which values we want this group to specifically be using at the exclusion of others. Does that make sense? >> Tovo: Yes, and I think I -- I think I should also -- yeah, I think I should also clarify that while some of these are absolutely things that I think guided the plan, geographic equity and access and environmental sustainability, fiscal sustainability, I do think there are some that didn't necessarily factor into the description -- the discussion, and that is current residential density and future population projection. So we may -- if it seems important to kind of distinguish what is -- what were criteria that seemed to guide the process but other considerations we want them to be aware of, then we can work on that between now and next week and try to draw a distinction there. >> Renteria: That would be useful to me because I would want to know if we're asking them to do something new. So if -- if we're asking them to take into account residential density and the current aquatics master plan doesn't take that as directly into account, I would want to hear from staff and understand why that decision was made before taking a vote on that. So that would be very helpful to me. So I appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? Yes? >> If I may, Kimberly Mcneely, acting director for the parks and recreation department. Just for your consideration so you're as informed as possible, we will send a list for your consideration which were individuals who were appointed to a division -- I'm sorry, who were appointed as district members, so we have district [9:38:35 AM] representatives who are part of this engagement process, and certainly that's your -- your call as to whether you'd like to consider that same individual to be a part of the task force or if you'd like it to be someone different, but we just want to make sure that you have as much information as possible to make the decision that's most appropriate for your office. And also, from a parks and recreation standpoint, we welcome the opportunity to be able to perhaps provide additional clarification to all of the criteria and how those criteria were weighted and perhaps through this process there will be some decisions as to whether that was weighted in a way that people can certainly understand or maybe there will become more clarity as to the weighting. And so this is certainly an opportunity for us to better -- better define and better explain how we -- how we came to the conclusions that we came to. But I just want to make sure that you had the information you needed to make an informed decision. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I'm glad you raised that because that's a question I had. Who selected the district representatives? I don't recall. That's certainly not something our council offices did. >> It happened maybe a year and a half ago, maybe even two years ago, and it was a direct email from my office to your offices asking you to -- asking your office, so I'm not sure exactly who in the office provided us a name and then that name was given to us, and then we contacted that individual to participate. So it was -- it was quite some time ago, probably a year and a half to two years ago those individuals were put on the -- put on the team. >> Tovo: Okay, I have no -- absolutely no recollection of that, but I'll go back through my email and see if I can -- >> I'll look and see. I don't know if I still have the email but definitely I'll look and see as a refresher but we can send you the names -- >> Tovo: I think they're in the aquatics master plan. I guess I would say that if, you know, we have a completed plan -- a completed draft plan now, and to me it's important to have -- whether it's the parks board or a different group that we put together [9:40:35 AM] as a council, it's important to me to have different eyes on it than eyes that were involved in developing the plan, because I think if we have some -- if we are hearing concerns from our constituents about elements in the plan or the weighting or other considerations that didn't factor into the discussion, I'd invite the same people who helped draft it to be involved again, doesn't seem to achieve that level of broader collaboration and analysis that I'm seeking. But I welcome thoughts from my other colleagues. >> (Indiscernible). [Laughter] >> Mayor Adler: Kitchen and then alter. -- I'm sorry, pool and then alter. >> Pool: So I'm just -- council member alter had her light on first but I wanted to respond directly to that item, so is that okay? >> Alter: Sure. >> Pool: Okay. I remember getting the email and talking with one of my constituents who had already been pretty involved in the pools and the development of the aquatics program and had a strong interest in it, so that was the name that I submitted and she has done a really good job. She is also one of the people who has raised some red flags about the result and some concerns on the impacts of some of the more beloved and well-attended pools around the city. So I'm happy to be a co-sponsor of the mayor pro tem's initiative because I think that we all need -- we've got a lot of raw material. I think this is the master plan with like four or five appendices in it and lots and lots of good information, but I don't -- I don't yet have a sense of clear policy direction to move in. I know that we need some more money. I know that there are different avenues to find that money potentially and provide it, but I don't think we have a consensus on [9:42:35 AM] this dais to really understand the depth of the issue. I also remember that when I asked a couple times in the past when we were doing budgets, should we add some money to the pools, and because the master planning activity was under way, the recommendation was no, wait for the master plan. We know that we need more money, but it will be significant. And so let's deal with it when we have something to underpin those decisions. I think we're moving in the right direction to get all the information that we need to underpin those decisions, but it's a lot of raw material, and I don't have, with all the other large issues that we're working on and contending with, it will be really helpful to us, I think, as a decision panel if we can get more of an implementation and a strategy from this additional effort that the mayor pro tem is proposing. And then I just wanted to ask our staff, there is a reason why we have so many pools in one part of town, and the age of them all being at about the same, 50 years old, when the city underwent a fairly significant infrastructure kind of development to bring pools to our neighborhoods, but we also were looking -- I think it might have been kind of an -- I don't know if it was considered equity, but there were significant populations that were being addressed by putting pools in certain parts of town. Do you feel like you can just give us some background or history on why we have pools where we do, considering the older parts of town, which is where most of these pools were first built. >> So just very summarized, and I would need -- I have a staff member who will help me get all of the details, but very summarized is that at a particular point in time pools were segregated, right? There was only certain individuals were allowed to go to certain pools. So you would have pools that were fairly close to one another because only African [9:44:36 AM] Americans went to a particular pool and only hispanic individuals, hispanic and Americans went to other swimming pools. But the exact pools and all of the history of those, I have somebody who's helping us get that information to help provide some clarity or some light on that -- shed some light on that situation. >> Pool: And the reason why they're mostly on one side of town as the other is generally they were easier to build there, the land was cheaper or -- >> There are more swimming pools on the west side of town than are on the east side of town if we use I-35 as the divider, so I -- we have to look at the history as to when each pool was built and for what reason and actually the aquatics assessment gives us a little bit of that, and we can provide you the summary, but just for that -- that particular -- if we're using I-35 as the divider, there are more swimming pools on the west side than there are on the east side. >> Pool: Okay, thanks. I think that information will be really helpful as we make decisions, and I do hope that we're able to find a way, a path forward to make the repairs that are necessary on our existing pools so that they can continue to be the community asset that the community really values. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Council member alter. >> Alter: Thank you. Ms. Mcneely, I would welcome your sense of when you would like to elaborate on the criteria and what format. I know that we had a conversation after the work session, and I think you have a lot more to share about how that was constructed that would be helpful to us. Is that something you'd want to share now, or you want to provide us in a memo or what would be your preference on communicating that? >> I think that a memo would be most appropriate. It could be a conversation that could last quite some time, and so I'd like our team to do their best in summarizing that in a memo and then answer direct questions as -- whatever we weren't able to provide in the memo. [9:46:37 AM] I think that would be the most efficient and effective use of everyone's time. >> Alter: And I know there were a couple other things where we might have misunderstood exactly what you were saying last week, and I would just invite if there are other pieces, like I know for the zero entry, that you were not talking necessarily about making it like a surf area but rather more like a deep eddy where you have kind of a route -- so you can walk down, which is a different kind of conception and I think having some clarity both for council members and for the public on what was meant by certain elements of the choices, I'm still uncomfortable with the notion of expansion, but it does help to better understand what you were talking about with the zero depth, and I think there may have been some other things where just as we're trying to digest a 150-some page document and you're trying to express it to you we might have missed some things in translation, so I'd invite you if there were other things that you felt that we may have misunderstood, to please convey that to us in your memo. Having served on the parks board until last August, I will say that, you know, my understanding is that the parks board really hasn't seen this master plan. We saw the -- there was a prior plan that was kind of an assessment of each of the pools that we did have presented to us, but there was not a huge amount of engagement by the parks board to understand this plan. I can't think of another plan where we would have a board that's responsible for that area and not give them a real opportunity to get into the nitty-gritty and provide their insight. So I would very much agree with the idea that we need to move forward with having the parks board have more of a role, talk to some of my former colleagues on there, and they think that there are some opportunities that we may be missing to be more [9:48:38 AM] creative, opportunities that we're missing to engage with the community in the discussion about whether we want to fund pools, and if that's someplace that we want to put our money as we go forward with the bond. We have to decide whether the request that's on the table right now is the -- as the initial starting point is the sufficient amount of funding, but, you know, the community needs to understand the broader scope and the choices that we have to make, and we have a decision, and there may be a significant part of the community that decides that they're willing to spend a couple extra cents in their property taxes so that everyone in the city has access to pools so we can build the new pools where we need to and that we can maintain the pools where we have them. So I think we need to do that. So far as I'm aware in the master plan, there's not enough discussion of alternative funding opportunities, and so that's why having these people who care deeply about this looking for options, we need to be more creative about a more permanent source of funding, not just for pools but for parks in general. And so I hope that we will be able to move in that direction with this conversation. My office is going to be working with the parks board and Austin water to see if Austin water can help us to resolve some of the issues of our leaking pools, just like they help businesses when they have leaks as a conservation approach. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: I wanted to thank mcmcneely for reminding us, it's now coming back to me the district representatives and I found the list and they're stronger and I hope they will also be involved in providing us with feedback about the plan now that it's drafted. So thanks for the reminder about it, just in looking at the names, they are great community representatives to weigh in on this. I think what -- what we should all be thinking about, those who support setting up some kind of analytic P process, is -- analytical process whether it's best to move it back to the parks board or have a separate group. I'm undecided about that and I've had feedback in either direction. It would certainly be something that the parks board could do to have a working group. [9:50:39 AM] The action they need from us is to postpone it pending that process and so the action we take on Thursday I think is -- I hope to postpone it one way or another. The challenge that I see with having it be a work group of the parks board is that I want to be sure that most working groups don't -- aren't required to be subject to open meetings and they may not necessarily -- I'm hearing from some of my commissioners that they don't always receive the level of staff support that a task force does. And so I would want to guard against both of those elements. We really do want to invite the public to work through this with the parks board or whoever we select to do that work, and it's important to me that that happen in the context of a public meeting, and I would want them to have the kind of staff support that a task force would. But as far as the composition, I could certainly go with a group of just parks board reps. Ms. Mcneely, do you see that as a challenge to have a work group? And they could even maybe invite some of those district reps to participate. >> I believe that your point is well-taken based upon the regulations that are written for council-appointed boards, there is no staff support for a working group of a board. They can include as many community members as they want, but I think that this particular process requires perhaps some additional education or additional opportunities for individuals to get clarification about the master plan, so a task force, you know -- what's in a name, it's just -- it may be a better -- it may be a better option because of the regulations that are set for working groups. >> Tovo: Thank you. So I guess this would be a good thing to continue to discuss between now and the 17th on the message board, if people have feedback on how best to proceed with that. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Garza? >> Garza: Did you say that you were working on like a historical profile explaining the -- >> Historical profile actually exists in the -- in [9:52:39 AM] the aquatics assessment that was in 2014, but what I'm asking our staff to do is to summarize that for you, because otherwise that's another 25 pages that you would be required to read through, and so I thought it would be better for us to provide you a basic summary of certain information. But there is a lot of information in the aquatics assessment, and if you'd like I can email and direct you to the exact pages if you'd like to read all of them. But as a -- as an opportunity to provide a summary we thought it would be best to do that, if you wanted more information you could do that. >> Garza: What you're going to send, is it, you know, this pool was a -- an African american-only pool, this pool was -- is that the information? >> It should have exactly that information when it was built, how it was used, any sort of historical significance to that particular space. >> Garza: Okay. Thanks. I just wanted to chime in about the feedback. I like the idea of it being parks and rec. I agree with council member Flannigan. If -- if this is just a pull advocates group, they're going -- pool advocates group they'll say spend more money. If it was health & human services, they would say spend more money on health healthand human service the. So I like the idea of the parks board, if we're going to have this task force, for it to be the parks board. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. I just want to reiterate, this is a near impossible issue to be dealing with, communities have been dealing with it for a long time, and I think that you and your staff and the folks that worked on this did a really good job of helping to present the -- the tough choices and the issues, so that the community can make a decision. So thank you for that work. >> Can I ask one last question? Could the parks board create a committee that would then have -- would then have -- just like we have the land and programs committee, could we create a pool committee that would then [9:54:40 AM] have staff support? >> I would need to -- if they create another committee, then that goes through the entire process of getting approval, because the land and facilities and those committees are approved through the clerk of courts -- they're -- don't quote me, they're approved through some process, which is at the auditor's office, so that would require us to go through that process of going to the audit and finance committee to be able to get that approved. So that would -- that would take longer. The task force is something that council can create and we obviously have multiple examples of that, and then the working group is a working group within the -- within their own -- within the rights of the parks board but it doesn't -- it does not get staff support, based on the regulations. >> So isn't there an audit and finance committee meeting on the 22nd? I mean, is that a feasible direction if we chose? >> Tovo: If it comes after the council action I suppose it could be. And we can work -- I see actually some of the attorneys we worked with last Friday here in the room, so we can work and talk about what those options are, whether it needs to be a committee or whether we can have a task force just comprised of parks board members, even though that's a little unusual or, you know, what the other options are for us. But thanks, that's a good suggestion. Then it would be a standing committee, though, and then we would need to either remove it or -- I'm not sure if we can do a short-term standing -- a short-term committee, but we'll sort it out. Thanks for all the feedback. These are good options. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. All right. The electric utility resource. This is set for public hearing on Thursday. Yes, council member pool. >> Pool: I know that the mayor will be out of town and I think council member Renteria as well, and so I [9:56:44 AM] am supportive of what the mayor and -- I think the mayor pro tem may have mentioned on the message board about holding any action on the dais. So we'll just do the public hearing. When I was looking at the agenda for Thursday, it's possible that it may be a fairly short business meeting up until we get to the public hearing, so what I would like to propose, and of course we can agree to it on Thursday or adjust it, but there are a lot of people who are planning to come to speak, and in order to kind of manage all of that I would like to propose that we go ahead and continue to start the presentation, like that our staff would give at 4:00, and allow those speakers to come and make the presentations, and then we'll start taking any speakers at that point, so we can kind of get a jump, rather than waiting till 6:30, which I think was another proposal. So I'd like to start the work of it a little bit earlier, get that word out to the community but still allow people to come in when they get off of work and later. >> Mr. Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> So a question that -- that sounds good to me. So I just want to make sure I'm understanding. So this Thursday, the 10th, we'll have the public hearing, and then my question, actually, -- I assume that that means that then we will close the public hearing and then we will take action on the 17th. So as part of talking about all this, I would like to set a time certain on the 17th that's during the day, that's not at night, if that's possible. >> Pool: Okay, and I was only talking about item 28, which is just what we're doing on Thursday. >> Kitchen: Yeah, I was talking about -- I was talking about looking forward to also what the expectations are to the 17th so everybody understands how we're going to proceed. >> Pool: Yeah, I wouldn't have that he problem with [9:58:44 AM] setting a time certain for the following week for that dais discussion and action. >> Kitchen: Or I don't know if people need more time than the following week. All I'm suggesting is that if we do it the following week, the 17th, if possible -- it's possible that I may have to take care of a personal matter that night, so that's why I was -- and I don't know what's on the 17th, so I'm hoping the 17th is not a late meeting, so.... >> Mayor Adler: It looks like we should be able to do it on the 17th and since at that point it's just the action on the item, we ought to be able to take care of that during the day as a regular call of business. >> Garza:so are you asking for a time certain at 4:00. >> Pool: I think it's already listed at 4:00 but there was interest to pushing it out to 6:30 but when we looked at what was on the agenda that we may be able to look for quickly, we didn't want to have a large gap in the afternoon where we were in recess because we couldn't take a matter up. >> Mayor Adler: At this point it can't be called any earlier than 4:00. >> Garza: I'm wondering if we can move that up if there's people available during the day because I think we are going to have a huge gap because we can't get to things until 2:00 and then again until 4:00. Giving people the opportunity at any time when we have those gaps to be able to stay and listen at least instead of having to -- because I'm thinking we're going to have a gap, come back at 2:00, have a gap and come back at 4:00. >> Mayor Adler: As a practical issue, we need Ann Morgan on this one. This is a public hearing set fore4:00. Since we've noticed it at 4:00, I don't think we can call it any earlier than that. >> Pool: And there's a significant number of people who have been told it would be the 6:30 time actually so that's why if we take the reports before 6:30 and some of the testimony that can -- that people who are here at 4:00 will -- the gap won't [10:00:44 AM] be so big because we also have -- I think we have music and dinner, but we don't have proclamations on Thursday. So our different recess is going to be shorter than Normal. >> Mayor Adler: As we do these meetings, though, councilmember Garza, I think you raise a good point on efficiency. We can certainly consider something -- when we have public notice hearings like this we could post it to say that debate will be taken potentially no earlier than 2:00 but that the hearing will remain opals through 4:00. We could notice it that way if we wanted to that would allow the council to take people that could only be in the afternoon, couldn't be there in the evening but mandating that it would at least be open through 4:00 so we could -- if we wanted to consider those kinds of -- not on this item, but on future postings, we can do that kind of thing. Anything else? Yes. >> Tovo: So if we could just spend a minute talking about -- since you've raised, it kind of the pattern of the day, I agree that we're going to have big gaps. And I want to just ask a question. Sometimes there are proclamations that aren't listed on the agenda. Does anyone have any proclamations for Thursday that aren't on the agenda? As we try to sort out what to do with this item. I'm not sure why we have no proclamations on this week's agenda. >> [Off mic] >> Tovo: Mayor, do you have any idea why they didn't schedule any? >> Mayor Adler: Just the -- >> Tovo: So it sounds like for -- >> Houston: Let's just be thankful. [ Laughter ] >> Tovo: There are weeks you try to get a proclamation and it's all full. It's a curiosity. I don't know if there deliberately weren't any or just happened that way. >> Mayor Adler: No. >> Tovo: At 4:00 we're going to pull up the item, councilmember pool, you're suggesting we would have the briefing from staff, we would invite testimony at [10:02:45 AM] that point, but if I understand what you're saying a significant number of people are not able to come until after -- so then we would just go ahead and take our dinner break, hear music, and then come back no earlier than 6:30? Okay. >> Houston: But if people are there, can't they go ahead and -- >> Pool: Yes. >> Houston: -- Give their public testimony? >> Tovo: At 4:00, that was what I was saying, we would invite public testimony at that point. >> Houston: But I thought we would do the briefing. >> Pool: And any testimony of people. To be even for informative, there would be a public rally at 6:00. People who come at 4:00 to hear the presences and maybe testimony at 4:00 or 5:00 will then go outside for a rally and then come back in and also speak with us. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> I suppose it's possible that bell have all the people speaking before the rally so I would suggest that you not say we're definitely going to come back at 6:30 and hear people if you have everybody who has come and spoken who signed up then you would be able to finish your meeting. >> Pool: I agree. I just wanted to make it clear that if we take a break for dinner, we will -- and people haven't completely spoken that we will hear them. >> Mayor Adler: I think what's being discussed is how the public hearing is going to be handled on Thursday related to the generation plan. And my understanding is that it's going to get called at 4:00 and what I understand you to say is that if there are still people who want to talk that have not spoken at 4:00 it's your intent to give people opportunity to be able to speak. But are you -- the question I think -- so we don't have any ambiguity, are you [10:04:46 AM] committing to keeping the public hearing open through 630? Or are you saying that that's a possibility that could happen based on the call of speakers? >> Pool: It's actually both. I know that the organization efforts have been underway for sometime and in the past we have held public hearings mostly after 6:00 in order to allow people who work during the day to be able to come and and speak us to. We didn't know until friday/monday what the agenda would actually look like so mayor pro tem and I had a conversation yesterday to manage the time and expectations. Because we thought it had been noticed for 4:00 we thought it it would be a good use of our time to allow the prepared presentations to take place at that point, any people who come early, who wish to speak at that time, it's a public hearing, it's open, acknowledging that there will be a fairly large rally on the plaza and those people who haven't spoken will be coming in with the expectation to then address us. That was where the 6:30 time frame came from. >> Mayor Adler: So my sense of -- Ms. Morgan, is that what councilmember pool is saying is that it's her intent to have convene the -- to have the council convene at 6:30 to see if there are people who appear there for the first time but want to speak that may not have been there at 4:00. So that's what I understand Ms. Pool to say. >> Pool: I don't think it needs to be noticed any differently than it already is is. >> Mayor Adler: Doesn't need to -- and you can't decide anything and I won't be here Thursday night so I'll be thinking about you guys. Councilmember troxclair. >> Troxclair: Considering that we had an agenda of only 30 items, I did not expect that we were going to be coming back after different break so I have [10:06:46 AM] another commitment. I'm going to be leaving at 5:30. I didn't get the memo about would say as much as possible if we can get it done, you know, before -- at 4:00, when it was noticed, or before the different break, that would be great. I am concerned about a habit or -- I mean, we've struggled with long council meetings and it's one thing when we have 130 items on the agenda but to have a 30 item agenda and to still have a, you know, potentially ten-hour council meeting is just concern to me at and some point it's not a good use of, you know, ours and the community's and the staff's time. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Houston. >> Houston: May I ask the Austin energy representative a question? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Houston: Thank you for being here this morning. Can you give me an idea of how long the briefings might take on Thursday? >> Yes, certainly. Khalil, vice president, strategy and market operations. The presentation will take about 20, 25 minutes, but questions will probably determine the length of it. >> Houston: Thank you. I was just trying to get a feel for how much time we had from 4:00 to 5:30 or 6:00 to hear all the public hearing. >> Pool: I think we have music so we're breaking at 5:00 for music. >> Houston: We're breaking at 5:00. >> Mayor Adler: 5:30. >> Houston: 5:30 for music, 4:00 to 5:30, 20 minutes, then we'll go to the public hearing and let people talk because we're not going to be saying anything until the following week so then we could start immediately with the public hearing. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Let's move on to the next item -- mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I would just [10:08:46 AM] encourage members of the public if they're able to come down, just to pick up on what some of my colleagues have said, if they're able to come down at 4:00, we will have time to hear them before the different break and that would really help us be efficient in our time on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? All right. Let's move on to the next item. This is the mayor pro tem's temporary short- term shelter issue. Ms. Troxclair, you pulled that together with me. Did you have an issue that you wanted to have raised and discussed with that? And the mayor pro tem, I want to give you the opportunity to kind of lay this out as well. I was wondering -- I thought that if Ms. Troxclair had a question she could tell you what that was and you could incorporate that responding in laying it out. >> Kitchen: Mr. Mayor, I have a question too but I'll wait. Maybe the mayor pro tem can incorporate that when she talks about it. >> Mayor Adler: Why don't you go ahead, mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Sure, thanks. Does anybody need a copy? I know this is on the agenda or it may or may not have made it into your books. If anybody needs it, I have copies down here. I also distributed a media alert that went out last Friday and I want to just mention and acknowledge executive director of ending community homelessness organization Ann Howard is here. I know it's not our practice to hear from members of the public at work sessions but it's my understanding that she is prepared to answer any questions if my colleagues have any and are amenable to inviting her up. So throughout the summer, echo has convened a group of downtown stakeholders as all of us know the situation in the area around the arch has grown really concerning over the last couple years, and echo has convened a group over the course of the summer to meet every week, included members of the mayor's staff, I've attended [10:10:47 AM] most of the meetings with -- along with my staff, but it's importantly included lots of the social -- all of the social -- well, many of the social service providers in that area, members of our police force, our housing detergents our health and human services department, other downtown stakeholders like the downtown Austin alliance have been very involved and this group has met weekly to look at really how to disrupt what has become a very unsafe situation, where individuals who are seek services, housing services and other services, are being prayed on by people who are trying to sell them drugs and it's, again, become a situation that is overcrowded and of great concern. And so this media alert, again, went out Friday. I think actually the mayor's office helped distribute it. It is describing some of what this group agreed to try for a short-term period of time to see what works, what doesn't work, and how to iterate moving forward. And you see some of those bullet points. The police department has committed to having more police presence during this period of time and to continue their anti-dug initiatives. There is already, I believe, temporary lighting that's been installed as of August 15, when the initiative starts there will be some temporary restrooms, not to be confused with the temporary restrooms of that long been in progress, which I think are going to move forward, along soon. These will be installed in that area to try to address a growing public health concern that is then precipitated by, you know, the volume of human waste in the area. There will be increased street cleaning, and you see some of the other things here. But really importantly, the intent here is to really transform how individuals who need services are receiving them and, again, to try to disrupt what is -- [10:12:51 AM] what has become an unsafe situation down there. I think I'll pause there and just ask, I don't know, mayor, if you'd like to chime in here and then I can explain the temporary shelter piece. >> Mayor Adler: First I want to thank you and your staff for the leadership you've shown on this generally and then on this interim solution to go in so thank you for that. I'm encouraged by the conversations that seem to be going to on associated with this between the various stakeholders at a deeper level than has occurred in the past where they're looking at each other's operations, as you mentioned. I think that is an evolution and conversation that's going to be really important as we deal with this challenge in this part of town as well as the overall challenge we have in the city. So thank you. >> Tovo: So if I could jump in on the temporary housing piece. So, really, you know, my role in this has been to attend the meetings and be supportive and learn. The social service providers under the umbrella of echo have really come together to really look at innovative ways to combine and better collaborate together and I think they do a great deal of praise for the work that they've done over the last couple months. Again, thanks to eco for initiating this process and bringing in a consultant from Houston who did a day long workshop with participants to really look at the situation differently. The group identified that one thing that would be very helpful would be to have some temporary shelter during this period. In the same way that our community responds to other kinds of emergencies about public facilities that can serve to take in individuals who need them after a hurricane, after a flood. The idea here is to look at this situation very much the same way because it is an emergency, given the numbers of people we have who do not have a safe place to sleep at night and who are not able to access shelter beds [10:14:51 AM] at night because we don't have enough. And so this resolution is an exploratory one. Our staff have done some looking at this. Several of the facilities that would on the one hand be used for this purpose are actually kind of on hold because it's hurricane season and the thought is that we might -- we hope not, but they might need to be utilized in that way, so they're not able to consider them for this purpose. And so the staff said, you know, without further direction from council they had gotten to the point where they were done with the exploratory research they could do on their own, again, absent council direction. The thing I want to really make a distinction between here, last year, around last fall, I brought forward a resolution that this council passed to ask our staff to look at our public properties, to identify public properties that would be appropriate for, one, emergency shelter. That was a long-term emergency shelter. Two, live-work space. Three, family friendly development. The staff are I think including their research on that and that will come forward. This is different in that it's asking our staff, do we have any public facilities that could immediately be used for the purpose of supporting this initiative, this short-term initiative? So that is the purpose of bringing this forward today. It may be that the group decides, you know, that that's not a solution that needs to happen or it may be that we don't have a facility that could work, but it is asking our staff -- we had hoped we would be able to get that research back before the initiative started on the 15th. It just didn't happen that way and so the idea here again is to ask our staff to go forward, to come back. There would be a fiscal impact, and so the timing is such that getting it on the 17th didn't lose enough time to get that information back before we were adopting a bubble probably. So it's a very short time frame and that's the reason for bringing it forward as a quote unquote emergency [10:16:51 AM] resolution here today. So I hope that answers some of the questions. Again, I know Ann Howard of eco is here to provide information if you have questions I can't answer. >> Kitchen: Mr. Mayor, should I go? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: First off, I really want to applaud eco and the other organizations that have been meeting, as well as the mayor pro tem for her leadership on this issue. I know she's been working on it for quite sometime and has been helping bring forward different approaches. So this sounds like an excellent effort, and I'm really thankful and appreciative for all that you all are doing. And I think it makes sense, you know, as a good step and a way to proceed. I might be bringing an amendment. I want to of course talk with the mayor pro tem via the message board and also are Ann Howard before I do that for certain, but I think that although our most visible and most urgent or emergent, actually, I degree with what mayor pro tem was saying, that this really is a community emergency, is with the downtown area. We are also experiencing issues in the neighborhoods, and these are issues for folks that don't go downtown or would never go downtown and don't spend their time downtown. I'm talking about individuals who are experiencing homelessness. And so I'm thinking about an amendment to this that asks our staff to also look for places on a later time frame. The priority obviously is this temporary shelter downtown for this initiative, but I think at the same time it would be important to go ahead and charge our staff for also looking for places for temporary shelters perhaps in other parts of town and [10:18:51 AM] to bring that back to us so doesn't duplicate the work they're doing and allows them to also, as they're looking at locations to think about about other parts of town also. Because I'm assuming that -- mayor pro tem, I'm assuming that what this initiative is looking for is probably a location near the downtown, maybe yes, maybe no, but in any case, I want to also suggest that the staff use this opportunity to also look at locations and bring that back to us that we consider on -- we can consider on a later time frame. For other parts of the city. We have -- I also -- just to let y'all negotiation not as part of this resolution but as part of our budget process in the concept menu, I will be suggesting that we consider some dollars to support navigation centers, which is something that I know that -- navigation centers in different parts of the city so that we're not so concentrated downtown, which may or may not require resources from us. It's something that I think our social service agencies are looking at and I know that eco is looking at. But that's just to give you a heads-up on a concept menu item that I'll probably be bringing forward. I also want to finally say I'd like to really give some recognition to eco and to our police department and our ems and other social services departments. We have started meetings in the -- in my district in the manchaca, particularly for the manchaca Ben white area, an area unfortunately there was a stabbing a few days arbitration but it's an area and a neighborhood that's really started feeling some issues. Again, not as emergent as downtown, but still serious issues. And so we're starting to work through a series of things that might work in [10:20:52 AM] that neighborhood, might be helpful for other neighborhoods. I know other councilmembers have been working with their constituents and dealing with issues in their parts of town also. So, mayor pro tem, again, I will post on the message board some ideas and will make sure that this fits in a way that doesn't take more time for the initiative that you're bringing forward but I think it might be a match for this resolution so thank you. >> Tovo: Thank you. If I may, mayor, I think your -- I think that sounds like a very interesting and important -- and I completely support navigation centers and I believe that's really critical to our success as a community and that's an idea that eco and the other stakeholders have really identified as a critical step. And I think what we're -- where it connects -- it reminded me that I probably need to clarify. Part of the intent of this initiative is to look at the reasons why people are coming downtown and if they can be served in different areas to serve them in different areas. And so my expectation is that the -- our staff, if this resolution passes, will be looking at areas other than the downtown for potentially shelter so that we can try to reduce the overcrowding down there. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Tovo: Part of transforming housework when, where food is being served during this period of time is to make sure those receiving food are on a housing plan and connected to services but also pointing people who may come downtown just for food back to other areas where they can have that need met, which may not be downtown. So really trying to -- you know, trying to reduce the numbers of people coming downtown so we can better serve those who really need those services. So what's unclear to me and we can maybe talk more about this on the message board, it sounds like the navigation center could be the right -- a resolution coming forward on that could be the right place to address the other idea you were talking about. I think the -- between this [10:22:54 AM] resolution and the one we initiated last year, I expect and hope our staff are looking city-wide at other opportunities for shelter. >> Kitchen: Okay. Then there's two concepts I'm thinking about, is -- one is the location of temporary shelters wanting to also recognize that we may need more than one, that we may need temporary shelters in several different parts of town, and that this process of looking at a location for a temporary shelter also bears that -- keeps that in mind in terms of locating shelters. So with the priority being one that will be of -- that will help the issue that we're experiencing downtown. So that's the language I was thinking about for this -- as an amendment to this resolution. The second item, the navigation centers, navigation centers are not necessarily -- they're not shelters, per se, necessarily. So I was thinking of that more as a budget item to the extent -- and there's still more conversation that needs to happen, but to the extent that some dollars from the city would be helpful in getting those navigation centers up and running. The other thing I would just say is one of the things I've learned -- we have learned from working with eco and ems and police and the other community organizations, churches that are working with folks, is that people experiencing homelessness don't go downtown necessarily. There are a lot of them that never go downtown for lots of reasons, safety being one of them. But it's not -- it's not a matter of all homeless folks coming downtown for services. There's a lot of them that will not go near downtown because of the danger to them as well as the community. So anyway, I think what I'll do is I'll post language on the message board and then we can talk about -- again, [10:24:55 AM] it's not my intent at all to slow down this process. It's just my intent, if the staff is going to go through a process they may as well look at it with regard to the needs in our neighborhoods. >> Alter: Thank you. Mayor pro tem, perhaps you could just give a little bit more background on how we've done something like this before. You mentioned the hurricane centers. This seems like a very reasonable way to move forward to address the emergency, and I will also add that I think it was a perfectly appropriate way to approach adding something given our switch to the two-week agenda. But could you speak a little bit to how we've used this in other circumstances that might be analogous to this, please? And if it's staff -- >> Tovo: I can tell you sort of my high-level understanding as a policy maker, but I'm going to look to our assistant city manager air yano to take us to situations in the past that have been crises of natural disasters and things. What I've seen as a policy maker is that it's all hands on deck, we identify some public facilities, we have staff from a variety of departments who come together and agree to put forward resources that -- to focus on addressing that initiative. >> Good morning, ray Arellano, assistant city manager. Councilmember alter, members of council. So generally we do have the framework, the resources in place that should there be a casualty or emergency situation like a flooding event and more remotely like a hurricane event that might occur on the coast where we have arrangements with in this particular case city of galveston, county of galveston to house some number of people that must [10:26:56 AM] be evacuated from the coast in that event, the ability to stand up preidentified facilities, typically the rec centers located close to the event of the emergency, but it is an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation, in terms of when it does occur we essentially stop what we're doing in order to render assistance. We have a list of, for example, emergency managers within homeland security emergency management that know how to stand up certainly within the emergency operations center to bring departments together to help those that -- public safety departments that are on the ground in the particular area to devote resources or to reallocate resources to assist the community and the first responders that are in the area and then to help the community that might be impacted to relocate to a different area for a short term, some sort of emergency shelter while the emergency that's happening resolves itself and some additional assistance, volunteer work and so forth, can be brought to bear. And so it does have an impact in terms of the facility that we might select in terms of if it's a rec center, certainly the programming that's there for the rec center has to cease for a time certain. During an emergency situation, we have staff resources that serve as emergency shelter managers, as an example. And depending on the facility that's identified, somebody from that department has -- as the facility manager has to be present 24 hours around the clock and so forth. So there is a process that we do have in place to be able to stand up an emergency shelter, facilities that we own. As I understand the resolution that is going to be brought forward to look at different places will broaden the scope in terms of what we might be able to look at, given the criteria that's in the resolution, and I think given some of the information I've seen [10:28:56 AM] from eco in terms of the temporary shelter and the time and the number of beds that might be required, and so we'll come back with some implications in terms of cost for the facility. One of the concerns I might have in addition -- and I'll resolve this in discussions with the mayor pro tem's office, in terms of is there an expectation of staff resourcing to be able to provide the shelter? In other words will we have to find the volunteers that we normally would for a period of time, whether it's 30, 60 or 90 days or beyond that in order to staff such a center. So those are some of the considerations that we would have to go through. >> Alter: And do we have an expectation of how long temporary short-term means in operating this? I mean, the problem doesn't seem -- until we have an alternative, I'm not sure we can move away from this once it's in place. And so I would just like a better sense of the timing that we're envisioning with this. >> I'm not remembering what the criteria is, and I don't know if it's stated within the resolution. I'm not recalling if it is or not. What I seem to recall from the eco white paper, if you will, for the requirement is something like 3/6 months, something like that, as a pilot before considering whether we extend such a shelter. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. And then the other thing that I just wanted to mention, I know sometimes folks wonder why we're focusing in on poem who are experiencing homelessness who are downtown. The whole network is you know, a crisis downtown. But as we also admit that there's a crisis downtown, I think it's important to understand that homelessness issues are spreading all through the city. And while the immediate crisis is downtown, the end goal is to address people who are experiencing homeless throughout the city and so I look forward, mayor [10:30:59 AM] pro tem -- we haven't really had a chance to talk in detail about the homelessness issues, but I look forward to working with you on a broader scale than just downtown for these issues. >> Kitchen: Mr. Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston was next. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. And I want to thank everybody that's been working on this. The issues of people who are living in our streets is one that's very complex and very complicated, and although I think it's wonderful that we as a city take this on as ours, I want to remind everybody that some of the folks who are on our streets have been discharged from the Austin state hospital and have no way to go home or don't go home because there are very limited resources in the 39 counties that serve that area for the adults with the behavioral disorders. And so I think it's time to reach outside of ourselves because we have limited resources, and perhaps get in touch with the state of Texas. I know there's still some vacant units at the Austin state school where people could be housed. I think we need to be more creative than just to see what city resources are there. I know that's a good thing to do, and I think that's what we're supposed to do as good stewards of people who live in our community, but there are also other resources that we could utilize and I'm not sure whether we've reached out to the state of Texas to see if perhaps some of those facilities on the old state school campus could be used. I also have some concerns about the 24 hour staffing, about access to health care, because people who are chronically on the street have health care issues, and we've got to be able to deal with those health care issues while they're in our care and how old that the be managed. I'm not sure. That may be in the packet. I don't have that but that's something that as I think about -- and I was here when Katrina folks came in and worked down at the convention center so I know [10:33:01 AM] what a massive undertaking. Of course we're not talking about that number of people all at the same time because as councilmember kitchen said, many of the people that I talk to don't want to be contained. But those that do need housing do need to be off the streets so that they can get stabilized either via -- off of alcohol, sober, get sober, or get stabilized on their behavioral medications. There will be some number. We don't know what that number is but I just think we need -- this is a -- the state is in our city and because it's in our city, then I think they have some responsibility to kind of help us think through this. And I don't know whether they've been a part of those conversations. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: Thank you, councilmember Houston. I think that that's exactly on point. And one thing that I think it would be helpful for our city staff to do, again, not to slow down this process, but to look at this as a community emergency. And actually that may already fit with your process as I'm thinking about. As councilmember Houston, with ca teen narcotics I participated in that process. I was executive director for the coalition of health care entities, the icc, and we participated in setting up the emergency processes and the emergency shelters for Katrina. So I think that that maybe part of your process already to reach out to other -- other folks in the community, other entities like the social service agencies, like central health, like, you know, the county, other places like that, because we're not going to -- the city is not going to solve this alone. And it is a community-wide emergency. And we need to look at all of our potential resources. So -- so mayor pro tem tovo, I think I may look at language as part of the amendment to suggest that our staff also, in addition, look beyond our city resources. Again, not in a way to slow [10:35:02 AM] down this process, but in a way to set in place a conversation throughout the community about temporary shelters. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Garza. >> Garza: I'm sorry if I missed this because I was gone at the beginning part of it, but is there also discussion about support services? Because we can provide temporary shelter for three to six months, but if that's all we're providing, we're -- we're not solving -- we're not even beginning to solve the problem. So is there a plan for that? >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem, do you want to respond. >> Tovo: Yeah. Again, this might be an appropriate time to have Ann Howard if the group is willing to have her provide a little bit more information. I think both assistant city manager and I both used the term hands on deck and that's kind of the attitude and approach when we approach other kinds of crises, and the idea here really is to approach this as the public health and safety crisis that it currently is. So the social service providers have agreed to allocate more resources during this time period to focus and redirect them. I mean, they are working, as you all know, hard every single day, but they will be particularly focused and supportive of this effort. There will be additional -- as I understand it, additional caseworkers out at the arch, outside the arch, talking to individuals. If it's all right, mayor -- >> Mayor Adler: I was going to say without objection. >> Tovo: Ann to talk. Absolutely the intent is to try to -- to try to wrap those individuals around with services and help they will move forward in their housing plan, whether they were in shelter downtown or in a temporary shelter elsewhere and really to serve them as effectively as possible, and that may be more effective if it's not in the particular environment where we have overcrowding right now. >> Thank you, Ann Howard, [10:37:02 AM] executive director of the ending community homelessness coalition. You guys have great questions and that's why you're where you are and I'd like to have a monthly appointment in here with you and talk to you about what we're doing, what we need, and the progress we're making. The question you raised, councilmember Garza, is at the heart and soul of our dilemma, is that we've got a lot of clients already on a list that need housing, right? And so our vision is that if we were able to bring more folks into shelter, these would be people that most likely aren't already -- going into the shelters we have. Maybe they're folks -- because of a new place to offer them, we're able to engage with them, you know, differently. They've resisted and now they're open. And at that point, without additional resources, we would then treat them sort of business as usual. We would do the assessment. We would get them in the mix. And they might end up working their way into a bed at the Salvation Army because somebody else at the Salvation Army got housed that day. I mean, we're not looking at this with false expectations that we're going to just have immediate additional resources. We need resources. We are, though, committed that if additional -- let's say we attract a private donor and they say here's $50,000 to help with that pilot. We could consciously dedicate that money to the folks that we were, you know, getting in off the street during the pilot. We're very mindful that -- we've already got people waiting and these folks that might end up in the temporary shelter aren't just going to jump in front of them. So it's a pretty complicated effort of our best, you know, just bringing it all to try to make this work. What we know is that without additional shelter beds, it's very complicated to try to make some difference. [10:39:07 AM] >> Mayor Adler: You want to follow up. >> Garza: When you say we need resources, though, are you saying the resources being the shelter or the resources being caseworkers? >> So I look at it as a five pointed Texas star, right? We need shelter and outreach. We need the case managers and service that's go along with housing. We need the ability to really dig into the data and look at disparities. We need resources to make sure our collaboration is running at the highest and we need a better platform to bring in the public. People -- you know, it's a crisis. You see someone slade out on the sidewalk yet as an individual you don't know what to do. Working to figure out what's that platform to engage people? So we need a lot of resources. >> Garza: Okay. But the resolution just addresses the shelter. >> Absolutely. >> Garza: Is that all that you need from the city? And the reason I ask is because the comparison to the emergency response is not an apples to apples comparison. I agree that it's a -- both are crises, but I also worked in the shelter during Katrina as a firefighter and that is a very different -- some of those people, there was no hotels to go to, there was nowhere to go to so they bussed, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people in. When it comes to, you know, the shelters for flooding that have happened in my district, those, again, are people just waiting a couple days to get to family. They have other places to go. And during those kinds of responses there's significant overtime that was being paid for police, for fire, for all kinds of -- and so I just want us to be careful. I just want to understand exactly what the resolution is asking for, and I guess the budget implications and so what we asked -- excuse me for butting in. We asked if city staff could help us identify places that we might use. This is very much an iterative process, you know, sort of quilting together what resources we can bring to the table. And so we need to do an [10:41:08 AM] assessment of city resources and assets to know what's available. And, you know, we got sort of excited about the possibility of using a rec center that -- for different reasons maybe looks like a pretty good option, but then there was the determination needed that council approval needed to help the staff move further with exploring things like that. And so, you know, it's just really to advance that ball to see what options we have. I think that I've talked to the Austin state hospital for months now about using facilities there. I haven't thought of the other -- the state school? >> Houston: I think it's called something else deploy but that's definitely something we can look at. The mayor and I had a conversation last week about are there access nursing home rooms that might be available. I mean, we're all in with whatever might give, but we certainly got to look at city assets. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem and then Ms. Troxclair. >> Tovo: Just very quickly, I wanted to say clearly we need more resources, not just to support this initiative but in the long-term, and I do plan to bring forward for our concept menu several items related to echo's plan for ending homelessness so we will have an opportunity to talk about that in the budget but we do need money for all of those elements of the five- point star. I'm glad one of them Ann mentioned is community because that will also be a piece of this initiative. Echo has provided a link on the website so as you hear people who say what can we do? We want to help. They will be directed -- it would be great to direct them to that site where they can both donate and be in touch with volunteer organizations that can utilize their energy because it needs to be a community solution. But that's -- you know, we will need resources in the short-term but we will -- I'll be asking you, my colleagues, to consider [10:43:08 AM] expanding our resources for the long-term as well in this next fiscal year. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Troxclair. >> Troxclair: I think that you have answered my question, but just to be clear, my -- I mean, I have heard a lot of people ask for the city to have a conversation or at least consider other possibilities for relocating the arch, and I -- it seemed that this might be a way to possibly start that conversation but it doesn't sound -- it sounds like from everything that you've said that this -- all of these centers or resources or whatever would be in addition to what is already -- to the arch and we're not talking about changing anything with arch. >> Tovo: I would say it's not about closing the arch, no. It is sort of about transforming and attempt to go really reduce the number of people who are seeking service there's so that we can reduce the overcrowding. But, no, this -- absolutely, yeah it's not about closing the arch. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes. I think that this bears a much broader conversation, and I'm not sure what the appropriate time is, but maybe as part of the budget process. I don't know. But this is a community emergency and it needs a community -- community-wide response. So as councilmember alter said and as we've been talking about, there are -- there are needs throughout the city. So we've got to start talking about how we're going to address these needs throughout the city. And, again, I don't have an answer today, but, you know, we've been thinking about it. A lot of us have been thinking and try to talk about, what with we do? How can we approach this in a ways that a systematic way, that we're not just [10:45:09 AM] doing one-off solutions. Now, those are important because of the nature of the issue so we've got to do these more directed solutions as we get to them but we also need a bigger picture response. And I know echo has a plan, but we, as a public body, need a bigger approach about how we're going to use our resources and how we're going to use our resources in combination with other bodies in the city so that we are looking at this throughout the city. So that we're not just focusing on some parts of the city, not all the parts of the city. So I will try to think about this. If others have thoughts on how we address this, I'm open to thinking about them, but maybe -- maybe it's a conversation as part of our budget process. I don't know when it is. But we need a community-wide solution for a community emergency that impacts our neighborhoods as well as the downtown area. >> Mayor Adler: I agree with everything that councilmember kitchen just said. This is how I look at this, and I hope it's consistent with what's intended. We're in the middle of a budget process in the next four weeks we're going to be making lots of budget decisions and setting priorities. There was a question about were there temporary shelters that we could open that we could access and the staff in essence said this is going to be a little bit more involved question than we first thought. Would you take it to the council and see if there is the interest along for us to actually figure what options might be. So in some respects this to me feels like almost like a concept menu that the staff has come back and said do you want us to look at options? In that respect I really support this. I think ultimately spending on this issue is something that I will probably support as well but at this point in the process I think you're exactly right. We're in the middle of a budget process. There are several resolutions coming up that are asking us to spend [10:47:10 AM] money. Quite frankly I'm looking at all of them as kind of like concept menu items and I hope that they migrate on to the concept menu Ed has prepared but the specific question in front of the council on Thursday I won't be here but I would ask that you go ahead and vote on this, is to ask staff to identify what those options might be and to let us [indiscernible] So they can be considered as part of the priority setting and budget conversations we're having over the next three weeks. If we don't initiative it we're not going to get that information in time. Florida Ms. -- Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you for that clarification, mayor. I, too, have been out to the Austin state hospital last year and talked with staff about opportunities. And the senator was talking about about the brain institute was there a volunteer option for people to come in and get stabilized. Once people are stabilized we can see whether we have housing for them rather than housing and then get them stabilized and we disagree on that, and that's okay. But I see it as a three-legged stool, one is we have to have people sheltered so we can in fact either get them dry, sober or stabilized on their meds, then we need intervention and then we need supports to be able to ensure that they're able to maintain that kind of sobriety or that mentality health status as -- mental health status as they move to wherever they go next so that's why I think it's broader than just the city of Austin because many of the people that -- again, I talk to under the 15th street bridge, not from here, they were here and then they didn't go home. And so -- then they didn't go and get the services from integral care. So then they got off their meds so then they medicate themselves with alcohol. So, again, it's complicated. As councilmember kitchen has said, we have pockets of people all over the city. I don't think we've ever at [10:49:10 AM] that point in time captured how many people we actually have living in the city limits of Austin who don't have a place to call home. And so I think it needs to be a broader conversation. I'm sure that the veterans affairs people are part of your coalition, but they, too, feel like they're kind of hamstring -- hamstrung because they had some option that's now I think they have to go through the case management process so that we know who is declaring themselves as in need of supports in case management, but -- and I need to get back with the va folks to see if there's any way that we could help speed up that priest for the people that are veterans to be able to get some kind of services from -- va. I don't think there's enough money in the world to figure this out except we have to start with that having a start. There's a reason people are homeless and we're focusing on how do we grab them out of the river instead of how do we stop the flood Gates? So when we redirect our priorities to how do we stop the flood Gates on education and employment and job opportunities and health care, then that river slows down. But as long as we keep pulling them out of the river, we're not stopping the flood Gates up here at the top. So I just say all that because I'm frustrated, as you all are, because I see things that we've tried to suggest that might have happened. In Phoenix there was a pilot program but nobody wanted to do that. I mean, everything other than let's do housing first, that seems to be the mantra and there are other things people have tried in other cities that we have not tried here that if we tried we might be able to get a handle on getting people a job so that then they could go and stay in a hotel and then they could start rebuilding their lives and stuff. So that's just my frustration and I'm sorry I had to vent that but it's more than just the city. It's more than just downtown. It's a lot of people, a lot of places, and we're seeing [10:51:10 AM] more and more of it because we as a city have prioritized some things over the people that live here. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this topic? Great. Thank you very much. That gets us to the last item, which is the item number 55 on not this week but next week's agenda. Mr. Flannigan, you pulled this one. >> Flannigan: Yeah I had some questions about some of the details let me pull my notes up on this. Although I think I had a similar thought about it being appropriate for the concept menu since it's a spending request for the future it, seems like it might be a concept menu item more so than a resolution downtown to respond to that. >> Pool: Because of the timing of lining things up with the university of Texas, the professor we're working with for the interlocal agreement is looking for an affirmation that we plan to do it if we happen to have $60,000 in the fiscal '17 budget, as we close down the books, then I would like to pay it out of fiscal '17 monies but I do intend to put it on the budget concept menu for fiscal '18 but we need to firm up the fact that we want to do it first and then we will -- what this is is a negotiate. It's not an execute. So the execution would happen later. And the date that we're looking for, you'll notice on page 3 there's a blank in there, and I was looking for feedback from professor Mueller on what date that would need to be, and she advised my staff yesterday that that date would be September 15. So we're still in fiscal '17, although we're getting close to '18, and it does put us toward the end of our budget deliberation so I think the timing works out. >> Flannigan: Okay. I think there are a couple other items on the agenda [10:53:10 AM] that talk about us giving staff authority to execute pending the monies being included in the budget. >> This is only negotiate. This is not execute at this point. >> Flannigan: Okay. Is there a source for the $62,000 number? >> Pool: Well, as I said, I'm looking for monies that may be left over in fiscal '17. >> Flannigan: I'm sorry. I used the word "Source" incorrectly. I mean where did that number come from? >> Pool: That is the number that came from the professor and her colleagues on what it would cost for the research to be conducted up at the university of Texas. And she does have a proposal. I don't know if we've put that into the backup, but it outlines it, and I'm happy to share that. >> Flannigan: Sure. So this is the conclusion of a infectious? Not the initiation. >> Pool: She has given us a number of what it would cost for her to engage her students and herself and her colleagues -- there are three professors that would be involved in this effort over a year period, and they are saying that it would not be more than $62,000 for that effort. >> Flannigan: And this may be common practice, but is it -- did we select this as - - this person as a vendor in advance? Was this an rfp that we took solicitations for? There are other universities and experts. I'm just curious. >> Pool: Sure. It's a professional services contract and interlocal agreement so it follows a different array of requirements. But this is specifically engage the efforts and the professional expertise of professor Mueller and also professor Wagman and Wei at UT. >> Flannigan: I'm sure I'll have more questions but thank you for answering my questions. >> Pool: Sure. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else on this item? I'm sorry. >> Garza: Mayor, I don't have a question on this one. I meant to pull five but I forgot. Concerns about this interlocal not going before the public [10:55:12 AM] safety commission and I -- the question I want to daylight to staff and they can get back to me later, if there's any concern with this being postponed until next week? It's an interlocal -- ems interlocal that didn't go before the public safety commission. Because I was going to request that we postpone it until the following week. >> Ray Arellano, assistant city manager. Let me check. I know that the county was very interested in making sure we can get this calendared, certainly on our part, as well as on their side. We're still actually in the negotiation process. This only is for I think this week and it is to I think negotiate and execute so we are far enough along that we could postpone it. But I can get back to you with specific information if there's a county concern about that. >> Garza: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Let us all know the answer to that question. That would be great. Ms. Houston. >> Houston: And I want to just let people know that item number 24 on 500 montopolis, the staff recommendation is pending. The planning commission don't recommend until tonight so I've checked with councilmember Renteria and I will be asking for a postponement on item 24. 500 montopolis. On Thursday. And then just to highlight a couple of other things, on Thursday, if I don't have time to get those answered today, I'd just -- items number 2, three, four, I'm not sure I understand -- and I'm sure we've done this before, the formulas that [10:57:12 AM] are used to determine the city's tax -- I mean, the contributions. Some I understand because it's a tax- exempt property and so we give them a contribution, but then we sometimes get contributions like in item 3, it's not because we have tax-exempt properties in there, and then we get the largest two downtown Austin alliance, but we also have given it to pecan street so it seems likes that double taxation so I just need to have more clarity about, first, how do we make those decisions about the formula to what we provide the taxes. I think that's good that the city offers a tax -- I mean, a contribution to those tax increment finance districts, and it would be helpful if the state of Texas would consider that as a model for how they -- since they have so many properties in the city that they don't pay taxes on, of course, that they would give us a contribution. I think it was a great model. Those just were confusing to me about it seems like sixth street and downtown were the staple place and so we gave them more money. If you want to tell me now -- you don't -- >> We'll get some information and put it the q&a, the backup. >> Houston: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? So you're going to move to postpone item 24 this week, Ms. Houston? >> Houston: I will make that on Thursday, mm- hmm. >> Mayor Adler: Those are all the items that we have pulled. Those are all the briefings we have so we would now go into executive session on two items pursuant to 551.071 of the government code, council is going to discuss legal matters related to item e2, which is the small cell wireless facilities issue and e3, which is the new manager -- city manager search. E1 has been withdrawn. If there are no objections we will go into executive session on those items. It's 11:00. There will be no further [10:59:15 AM] business -- I can't say that necessarily. So we're now going to into executive session. We stand in recess. It's 11:00. [ Executive session ] [1:25 PM] We are out of closed session, in closed session we discussed legal issues related to E2 and E3, it is 1:25 p.m., and work session is adjourned.