City Council Work Session Meeting Transcript – 9/26/2017 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 9/26/2017 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 9/26/2017 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:15:32 AM] >> Garza: Good morning. I'm Delia Garza. I'm the councilmember for district 2. The mayor pro tem and the mayor are out this morning. They are both at the inner city visit for the chamber. The mayor will be joining us in about an hour and the mayor pro tem will be back tomorrow. So I'm going to call the meeting to order at 9:15 for the work session and we'll start with the briefing on boards and commissions task force. >> Good morning. My name is Victor Martinez. I chair the boards and commissions it task force many years ago. This task force was created by the previous -- by the last seven-member city council to give the council a plan for transitioning to the new 10-1 government structure as well as make recommendations for improving the work of our boards and commissions. Joe was my vice-chair. And we'll get right on it. If we could get the next slide, please. Okay. We had a top diverse group of members in the task force with a significant number of years under our belt serving on the various boards and commissions. And it was a real pressure working with them because they have so much knowledge about how the boards and commissions operated. So we'll go quickly over the tasks on a scope and we'll talk about the methodology that the task force followed. We'll go over the recommendations we put together and then we'll go into a little bit more detail on the planning and development and review work group recommendations. I think those were some of the most important work this task force did and some that unfortunately was not addressed by the previous council because they wanted you all to make those decisions. [9:17:41 AM] So we did a survey -- I'm sorry, the task and scope. The city clerk was tasked with creating a task force of current and former board members of the commissions. And we had an average length of service of eight years, and combined we had over 130 years of experience serving on the boards and commissions. So it was a very experienced group of people. And they wanted to -- they wanted us to make recommendations for a transition plan for appointments. The number of members. Because of course also the boards and commissions before you had seven members and now most have 11. The appointment process had to redistribute more responsibilities if it made sense and according to chapter 2-1. The first thing did she was survey existing existing chairs and vice-chairs to get their input. We basically asked them what do you think your board or commission does? What's the value they provide to the city? What do you think about merging your board and commission with another one with a similar responsibility? Do you think that the appointments should be by district or at large? What kind of skills do you guys need to do the work of your commission? What about diversity and recruitment and quorum issues. How often do you need, how much staff support do you require, that sort of thing. Twenty-two of 60 boards and commissions responded to our survey. We also created several work groups to focus on specific parts of the request that city council had made of us. One work group worked on the transition plan, another on work group development and review, another one was on what I was just describing and another one on diversity and recruitment. The city clerk staff benchmarked some of cities from around the country that have completed a similar transition to help us educate our recommendations. [9:19:47 AM] We looked at Seattle, San Antonio, Portland and Dallas and we included those results in our deliberations. We also had Greg Guernsey come and give us a presentation on imagine Austin because again we wanted to take a holistic approach of the whole thing. So for the transition I think we're going to skip through this because it's a moot point. You guys have already transitioned to the new system, so to save us all a little time we'll move on to the planning, development and review. So a lot of the discussions we had were about -- and you guys are aware of the planning and zoning and all that. It's a very, very complex and convoluted process with several boards and commissions that often have a say on some of those things. So we as citizens have to go to multiple boards and commissions to get their issue heard. The pdr work had a really impressive list of members, Dave Anderson, Jeff jack, Dave Sullivan who thankfully we have in the room in case you have questions that Angela and I may not be able to. >> Absolutely. >> So they focus on understanding the boards and commissions roles and membership requirements and how the number of appointees of those impacts the ability for that board or commission to operate effectively. They looked at the board of adjustment, the bond oversight commission, building and standards commission, codenext citizens advisory group, construction advise I have commission, the sign commission, downtown commission, electrical, board, solar, historical commission, planning commission, the compatibility commissioners' court the sign review board. Waterfront planning advisory board and zoning and platting commission. They had a summary of their recommendations on the tables -- there you go. [9:21:50 AM] So they recommended the board of adjustment be left as it was with 11 members, but incorporate the sign review board into it. We didn't see a need to keep the sign review board as a separate entity. The life safety board of appeals would be one that would incorporate three boards, the building and fire code, electrical, fire and solar boards and we also recommended that the members appointed to that board would have very specific technical expertise in order to address the issues before that board. The design commission we were going to keep with 11 members and incorporate the residential design compatibility commission. The construction advisory board keep the same. It doesn't meet regularly, but it's the only commission with oversight of construction issues so it's important to have around. Building and standards, no changes envisioned. Codenext, well, it's ongoing, no changes to that. Planning commission, we recommended to keep, but with a little modification on their responsibilities. Change in focus to do with planning oriented activities including the comprehensive plan, neighborhood plans, area plans, codes and ordinances. Whereas zap also keep -- modify their responsibilities and change the focus to the zoning and planning oriented activities including rezoning, site plans, conditional overlays, et cetera. And there was a final list that we're working to agree on what the final thing was. We recommended as well the creation after joint subcommittee, a series of subcommittees that will be filled by both the planning commission and zap. We envision four committees, codes and ordinances, area planning, economics and capital improvements -- and the comprehensive plan. [9:23:54 AM] So potential new boards and commissions and commissions for us would be the board and adjustments, the codenext, citizen advisory group, scientist commission, historic landmark commission, life safety board of appeals, the planning commission and zap. And do you guys have any questions about those recommendations? We have Dave here that can answer. We had obviously some questions about how do you balance the workload. As some of you know the boards and commissions meet for many, many hours. And they have a lot of work to do. When we suggested boards and commissions mergers, the intention was never to just reduce the number of boards and commissions. Our intention was to improve communication by removing silos. We saw that, for example, we had the environmental board and the urban forestry board that tackle a lot of the same issues but heathier had no formal way to communicate amongst themselves. So issues have to go to both boards to present their case and be heard. And that was one that I think that the previous council did merge, the urban forestry with the environmental board. We wanted to make it easier to interact with the government. When citizens have something that requires action from multiple boards they have to make time out of their busy schedules to come to the meetings to multiple boards and commissions to address their issues and that of course hinders the ability of some members to participate in their government because the board meets during office hours, then some of us with nine to five jobs have a hard time coming to them, especially if you have to go to multiple meetings to be heard. We wanted to optimize the limited resources support is the boards and commissions, not only staff time, but meeting space. As you know, meeting space in this building is extremely hard to come by. [9:25:55 AM] Some commissions have to be floating around town finding places to meet and some incur extra expenses because of that, like the immigrant affairs commission, if it meets outside this building they need to hire police officers paying overtime to secure the meeting from the crazies. And we wanted to align the boards and commissions with imagine Austin whenever possible. Another thing we did, we recommended an annual board and commission conference where we could have all the boards and commissions come together, learn from each other, hear from speakers, maybe like the mayor. Leadership Austin, commissioners, to talk about what it is that we do, how do we exercise good leadership as representatives of citizens to our city government? Parliamentary procedures, perhaps have some training on that because that's something I hear a lot especially with new board members who don't really know how the Robert's rules of order operate. And even though we have a little training it's not really as comprehensive as it can could be. Avenue and we just ask for communication. It's important I think for members of boards and commissions to meet with other boards and commissions to talk about best practices, problems they encounter, how do you engage the community. That's an issue we're having right now in lgbt committee that I chair. There are those who don't feel that their voices can be heard because they say what do I have to contribute? Every everybody has something to contribute. It's just a matter of finding who they are, where they are, how we can engage them. People of color who perhaps, like I say, they work two or three jobs to be able to support their families and they don't have time to come all the way down from pflugerville or -- from north Austin somewhere or far east Austin if there's no good transportation. [9:28:04 AM] Do we want to have meetings out in the community, go to where they are in order to be able to engage them more effectively? Another thing that we discussed during our meetings was a common issue with a lot of boards and commissions is quorum. We have quorum issues because a lot of our bylaws, and I believe that comes from the city ordinance, defines quorum as a minimum -- a majority of seats available in the commission. It doesn't take into account the fact that perhaps four or five of those sites are unfilled. Which means that some boards and commissions just cannot meet because they don't have enough people to constitute a quorum, so that's something that perhaps you guys would want to talk about and look into, see if you can change the rules of quorum to be only those members who are actually seated so that to enable the boards and commissions to do the work that you guys have charged us with. And I think that's all we have. Do you guys have any questions for us? >> Garza: I think we do. This presentation was requested by councilmembers Houston and Renteria, so I'll recognize councilmember Houston if she's ready. >> Thank you all so much for all the work that you've done and I'm really sorry that we didn't have the comprehensive report as we got started. Of the recommendations that you made, how many of them were implemented? I'm trying to find that page now. >> I don't have a specific -- their decision plan was mostly implemented as we made it. There was the creation of a joint inclusion committee that we recommended that was done. The urban forestry and the environmental boards were merged into one and I don't know off the top of my head any other -- perhaps the -- [9:30:08 AM] >> Garza: The clerk may have one. >> There was never an analysis done after the task force gave their recommendations and then the seven-1, the seven-member council adopted the changes. If you would like we can go back and look at the ordinance that the previous council passed and compare it against their recommendations and identify which ones were accepted or modified or not accepted at all. >> Houston: I think one of the questions was regarding the life safety board of appeals and the integrating three different boards and commissions into one. Did that happen? Because I understand having been one of those residents who has to come before a board, it makes a lot of sense to try to coordinate like functions so you only have to make one trip. That's the sort of things I'm interested in. How do we make it interfacing with government easier for the common person, not the person that's paid to do it. So that's why I was interested in having this presentation to see if there are still some inefficiencies that we could get from the work that you did that was not implemented. >> We can go back and confirm which ones were accepted or not. Off the top of my head I don't. I'm not remembering it about the life safety ones. >> Houston: But we did do the joint subcommittee. >> That's right. >> Houston: And I think we still work in silos. >> Yes. >> Renteria: Was there a report on the recommendation that you made for consolidation? Or did you recommend any committees to be deleted? >> Yes. It is on your -- on the full report that I believe you all have in your handouts. [9:32:13 AM] There's a comprehensive list. Some of the recommendations we made were fairly controversial, so within the task force itself as well. So we basically gave two options to the city council to consider. >> Garza: Councilmember pool, were you done? >> Pool: I'm interested in the work that you did on the quorum issue. Can you give us a little more information about kind of how that conversation went and the recommendation was to look at either reducing or changing quorum. And if that was it, did the legal staff weigh in on whether that was possible, given the sovereign nature of some of the boards? >> Right. So this conversation came from the survey that we put out to all the chairs and vice-chairs. And we also -- norm actually went and researched a lot of the minutes from the boards and commissions and we found that there was a large number of them that were canceling meetings for lack of quorum. And when we looked into it we saw that some of those -- it was basically impossible for them to maintain quorum because they had several vacancies, like back when [indiscernible], they couldn't form a quorum at all. We said there was a way to change the rules of quorum so it's only those members who are actually seated on the commission that count towards creating quorum. And no, we did not consult with legal about this. >> Just to bear upon what Victor said, during the transition time when lots of new council people really coming on there was lots of traction that was lost in terms of work that commission were doing because there weren't sufficient members appointed. >> Pool: Although our rules allow people to continue on until they're relays R. Placed are, including if their time has expired. >> And there were cases where that happened, but the new appointees had not yet been appointed or some people had removed themselves from the commission process. [9:34:22 AM] So I can speak for the immigrant affairs, the year of transition I think we met four times that year because people were appointed and people weren't able to make it to the meeting because life happens. And then there were also vacancies. So even if we had enough people to meet the quorum on a quorum of seated members, we didn't have enough people to meet the quorum on a quorum of appointed members. >> Pool: Right. And that's a long-standing issue. I served on I think four different city commissions and ran into that from time to time and it seemed like a good way to resolve that issue is to take the quorum from the number of people who were actually appointed. I think you were using the way seated. I don't know if our staff, our legal staff are able to offer some insights or structure around that point, why we haven't ever moved in that direction. >> So I'll look that up, but I think the sovereign boards you need to have the number of boards so there has to be a majority of the 11 on some of the other ones I'm not sure if the council could change it, but I'll find that out quickly. >> Pool: Let's see if we can dig into that and offer up some additional framework around that. Are you all still meeting or following, monitoring what's happened. I would be interested to hear what you all think about where we've gone in almost three years since -- yeah, almost three years since you guys committed some report. >> I believe the ordinance that created this task force indicated that -- we actually had a deadline. I think it was April 30th, because it was my birthday. It was the last meeting we had where we basically ceased to function. >> Pool: Sure. And that's typical because you had fulfilled your mandate. So maybe we'll think about it and it may be that we want to do something official. But I would be interested in an unofficial capacity because I know Angela Joe newer still on the immigrant affairs? >> I recently transitioned off and I will be honest it was around the frustration of not being able to meet quorum for so long. [9:36:26 AM] >> Pool: And that was due to appointments. >> To vacancies either due to people not being appointed or due to people not attending meetings and - - motel attending meetings for up to six months and there being no action on behalf of council to replace that person. >> Pool: And we do have some rules on that too that if you miss three of a row that are unexcused then you're automatically off, but then that -- that is still a vacancy and there still does need to be an appointment. >> And those are typically -- that's a common complaint in y'all's consent agenda often times there's a long list of people who have technically violated those attendance rules and are excused from doing so. An easy way to solve that problem would be to perhaps change the wording in the bylaws. Previously I sat on the planning council and our bylaws are written in a way that says that somebody who misses three meetings in a row becomes ineligible to serve which means they're automatically off regardless of what anybody else does. So that opens up that seat. And if we do modify the quorum rules then that would also enable the commission to continue meeting. >> And did you think about ineligible to serve to a timeline? >> They would have to be reappointed. >> Pool: So they could easily be reappointed. >> They could, but they would have to go through the process. >> Pool: And would draw attention to the fact that we were developed off. And the people who serve on the commissions are volunteers. We don't pay anybody and we need people with particular approximate expertise and insights and training in many cases and certifications to serve. So the we really are asking a lot of folks to spend the time. And I really appreciate y'all following on the last three years and more on what's been happening. I'll just reiterate that if you have any insights or thoughts about how to move forward on any of the changes unofficially, my staff and I would be really open and would welcome the comments. [9:38:28 AM] >> Since a lot of new boards and commissions have been created since you guys came into office, I think it might be a good idea for a new task force to be formed to look at the changes that have happened since and make recommendations. Study are the changes working for the city, are we being engaging our public better to participate in their government or are we competing with that participation. >> Garza: Councilmember alter? >> Alter: Thank you. And if any of any colleagues might be interested in working with me on those next steps for that task force I would be interested in looking at it. Thank you both for your service on the task force. This may be a question for the clerk, but I'm wondering if we have a sense of the numbers now almost three years in about what's happening with the quorum issues now that we have 11 when you have to get six out of 11, it's different than four out of seven, is the situation better? Do we have particular commissions that are having more of a problem, and how are you communicating to particular councilmembers when they have a problem with their commissioner? If mine are just showing up or not, but I don't seem to get that communication. I was just wondering what the process is. >> So the process is when there's three absences, then the staff liaison to that board and commission reports it to the clerk's office. So then once it gets reported to us then we coordinate with the council office to either do a waiver or if the councilmember wants to talk to them and whatever process you want to occur at that point. So we're not involved until we get notified by the staff liaison that there's an attendance issue. [9:40:30 AM] So off the top of my head I don't have the stats for how many meetings since 10-1 haven't been held for things like quorum. I do know that like immigrant affairs still has that issue because I was just at one of their meetings a couple of months ago and they had to cancel their meeting because enough folks didn't show up at the meeting. And so the boards and commissions have a rule that if a quorum isn't present within 30 minutes of their posted meeting time they have to cancel their meeting. So that's what happened in this case with the immigrant affairs, but we can get you some data on what has occurred since 10-1. >> Alter: I think that would be helpful to understand if there are particular commissions that we're needing to be paying more attention than others. I think that would be useful. I'm wondering through the process that you went through if you looked at the role of the commissions in the budget process. So we just went through budget, we had a lot of discussions about the quality of life commissions, but there are other commissions that want to have a say in the budget process and there's no formal way to do that and I'm just curious if you spent time on that and/or if you have any thoughts that you would like to share on that? >> We did not officially discuss budgets. As you said most of the boards and commissions typically don't make budget recommendations. I was very interested to see the posting that mayor Adler made on y'all's board about moving the quality of life commissions under the equity office. And I think that's a very interesting idea if the equity officer's chart is modified because it was created to deal only with race and gender and some of the other commissions with diversity. [9:42:31 AM] So you would have to look at the equity office to include like sexual orientation or gender identity for them to really have the mandate to deal with those kinds of issues. There's a budgeting -- I think it makes sense to have a streamlined process through which boards and commissions can identify funding needs, start working early, not wait until the last minute like unfortunately my commission had to because we just didn't exist before the summer, but start early in the year working with the city manager's office to coordinate these are the priorities. These are the top three things the city thinks they should invest in. This is how much it's going to cost. And then have aay for all the different quality of life commissions and the other boards and commissions to see if there are synergies that can be leveraged. If, for example, we're talking about adding A.D.A. Compliant access to some part of downtown, maybe the downtown commission and the mayor's commission and people with disabilities can work together to have a united voice. And have that proposal put together in a way that makes sense to spend taxpayers' money on. .>> To kind of piggyback on what Victor said, the joint inclusion committee, I served as chair, and one of the things that we did do is we did look at the recommendations from the different quality of life commissions to see the otoidentify the ones that specifically dealt with equity and to make recommendations about that. I think one of the challenges that commissioners have is they're not trained budget process. They don't understand how it happens. So going back to the idea of a boards and commissions conference, I think that would be a very useful and empowered way for recommendations to come from commissions that are actually informed and grounded in reality. Likewise going with -- echoing what Victor said about finding those synergies and making boards and commissions find those synergies because as he mentioned, when we went through this process what we found is we found that lots of the boards and commissions that worked on very similar issues, for instance, the commission on immigrant affairs never communicated with the quality of life commission or the African-American quality of life commission or other quality of life commissions, forcing them to have conversations. [9:44:44 AM] And moving them out of those silos. So if you're going to evaluate where the boards and commissions have gone since then, I think it would be useful to think about all these new boards what were created, who are they communicating with within their same realm and how are they creating those synergies? >> Alter: Thank you. One issue for their quorum and people not showing up. Another is people not showing up because they don't see that their work is being valued by the council. And it seems like we have some work to do in how we receive that information and how we use that information, and I know I think that there is a lot of frustration. We have amazing people on all of these boards and commissions. They donate their time and expertise and I don't think we're taking advantage of that knowledge and that expertise to the level we can. And part of it could be that they're in that silo and not seeing the larger picture and we do have a role where we see the larger picture and that means we're not always going to agree with everything they say. But I think it's a problem when they don't feel like that they're hurt, they don't feel like their work is being moved forward. And I think we would be well served as a city if we could harness that energy and that knowledge better than we are now and take this opportunity of having moved forward through the transition to say, okay, what do we do now and how can we make this work better for the city? Otherwise we just have staff, staffing the boards and commissions and we have all of this productive time that is wasted rather than being used for the good. >> And that was one of the discussions that we had was about we looked at not only were the commissions meeting, but what are they doing? Are they actually putting forth recommendations to improve the quality of life in Austin or are they just meeting for the sake of meeting? [9:46:49 AM] And perhaps they have one thing that they do a year and that's all they do. If so do they really need to meet monthly? Could we change some commissions to meet quarterly to save on staff resources, meeting rooms and those sorts of things and to keep those people engaged. Because if you're driving from north Austin or south Austin fighting traffic to get to city hall to have a 15 minute meeting of approving the last meeting minutes and then coming up with the agenda for the next meeting, that's a waste of everybody's time. >> I think we both appreciate what you said about valuing commissioners' time because one of the challenges that I know that I encountered on the commission on immigrant affairs is that recommendations were made and that they would -- we would never get any feedback on them. We would never know where they went. We would know if council ever took any action on them. On occasion it was about telling our -- the different -- during the 7-1 it was about getting on the phone and calling council offices and saying hey, did you receive our recommendation? Are you going to do anything with it? And as volunteers that is very time intensive. So you have to be very dedicated to the work that you're doing otherwise there is no -- there is no distraction. >> Garza: Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I want to reit indicate what councilmember alter said that were running through my thoughts, especially on the commissions feeling like their work is value and that leading to some absences. I really want to work with your office on what that looks like in the future. I also think there's a role on how our strategic planning process might overlay with the work of commissions and I think there might be opportunities to pick some of the indicators or some of the metrics that come out of that process and assign them to certain commissions to be monitoring in a closer way. I'm interested in thinking about how the boards and commissions can do more public engagement. [9:48:50 AM] I think there's an opportunity -- there are a lot of opportunities there to bring outside groups in and have more voices being heard, but there is still ultimately that disconnect between the work the commission does and the work the commission is doing. We get a lot of emails and we all have a lot of meetings and it's hard to see where the priorities lie. And I know when the lgbt commission was formed that was one of the first things I asked is to make sure when you make recommendations please include priority, some kind of way for me to know which things are more important than the other things. And we don't do a good job of doing that now so inevitably every commission thinks their stuff is the most important and we get 100 recommendations and how do you as a councilmember sift through which ones you go for, which ones you don't go for. Is it because you met with them personally. What was the point of the commission's work. I appreciate what you said about the phone calls. That's not how that process is supposed to work. And there's arguably the meetings at city hall there's no commissioners that have to drive farther than mine. And so the idea that you would have to come from district 6 for a 15 minute meeting to approve the minutes or come down and the meeting doesn't happen at all, despite the fact that I've been able to get all my appointments made I worry about how long they will stay and the effort you've got to sit in mopac traffic for an hour for a 15-minute meeting that had no conclusions. I definitely am interested in working and really, really being creative about how we can leverage these commissions in a bigger way to reach communities that don't feel like they have access to city hall and not forcing everything to be in this building. This building isn't always accessible to everybody physically or emotionally. I think there's a lot of good that can be done and we can are more creative with it. So I definitely want to join you in that. >> Garza: Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: I wanted to provide a little context. We had lots of discussions and really recognized the challenge of making sure that as a council we were connecting better with the boards and commissions. [9:51:00 AM] So we set up some procedures a few years ago, I guess two years ago, but they were part of the committees. When the city council -- we as a council, our first council that came in, when we restructured our committee structure, our council committee structure, we made some connections with the boards and commissions, identifying which boards and commissions connected to which city council. And then we made some changes in terms of how boards and commissions recommendations made their way to council. So we did all that. I don't know that it was entirely successful, but we had a lot of -- I know it wasn't successful, but we had a lot of conversation about how as a council committee it was our responsibility to connect to the boards and commissions that covered the subject areas that our council committees did. But since that time as you all remember, we have made some changes to our council committee structure. So we made changes to our council committee structure without having the related conversation about what that did to our connection to boards and commissions. So I think that that's follow-up work that we need to do. I'm not remembering all the changes we made, but we did make some changes in terms of how boards and commissions' recommendations came to us. To make them a higher, you know -- easier for us to see as councilmembers and more proactive in terms of how they came to us so that they weren't just in an email. But I think it sounds to me like we need to revisit those changes that we made in 2015 or whenever it was, we need to revisit those changes in light of the fact that we don't have the same city -- we've gotten rid of some of the council committees that we have. We also talked about that -- at that time about inviting the chairs of the boards and commissions to attend our boards and committee meetings and I know that's happened to some extent. [9:53:07 AM] That all varies depending on the commission and whether that's something they have time and would like to do. I think we did that with the housing committee at least once and I know that -- open space did that also. So I guess what I'm saying is that we did have this discussion. We recognized it as an issue. We took some steps to address it and now we need to revise those steps both in light of what we learned that didn't work and in light of how we have -- the changes we've made to the council committee structure. >> With that, though, if you make those changes -- so I transitioned when we went from seven to 10-1. And there was no training that chairs or commissioners received on the change in council and like the council committee structure. So I think that that may have been part of the issue. So I think that one of the things that's very important is to -- if there are changes to communicate them quick, efficiently and in a way that maybe the liaisons are trained on the commission, the changes that are made, and then the liaisons come back and say we need to put this as an agenda item. You guys will be trained on the different structure. >> Kitchen: Yeah. No, I think that the recommendations y'all made about training is something we haven't followed up on and we should. >> Garza: Councilmember pool. >> Pool: And to follow up on what councilmember kitchen was saying about the training, we also noticed that there was a variance among the city staff who act as liaisons to the variety. I think 60 plus commissions. There's a different levels of understanding of all kinds of things, including Robert's rules of order. So we have a lot of work ahead of us and that the work hasn't diminished, I don't think over the couple of years that this council has been in place. And I'll also say that I think that everybody's intentions are absolutely on track and honorable and correct and that fulfilling the commission of each commission that they either serve on as a citizen or they are the liaison if they are staff that everybody is trying to do the right thing. [9:55:20 AM] And so the council and the rest of the administration of the city just needs to try to do everything we can to make sure that all the pieces are in place to support that, make sure we have training for everybody, that we have legal staff available at a meeting when legal staff clearly is going to be needed and you know that by looking at an agenda. And that all of the various paroles and rules -- protocols and rules and regulations are understood throughout. It will be a constant work. We will always have new people and things will always are changing, but it is definitely an effort that we all need to commit ourseles to. >> Garza: Councilmember Houston? >> Houston: Thank you. And again I want to thank you for this information. We would have been in a much better position if we had had this earlier so we could form differently, I think. When we started, you all had pareed us down to 60 boards and commissions. Do you know how much we currently have now? >> Sorry. I've kind of lost track with some of the task forces that have also been created. But I would say somewhere between 80 and 85. >> Houston: I'm sorry about that. [Laughter]. We've noticed that we've become more task force and we've made more of those and they just keep going. They don't ever stop and so there's no end in sight to some of them. So I appreciate if that's the correct number, if it's higher or lower, if you will just let us all know. >> Yes. I'll confirm that number with staff and let you know. >> Houston: Okay. And additionally, some of our boards and commissions are now 15 members instead of 11, which makes it even more difficult to get a quorum and to fill some of those very -- those commissions and boards that need expertise. [9:57:22 AM] In some areas there are not those kinds of resources it takes a lot more time to find somebody that knows about building and codes and standards and that kind of thing. So all of that makes it challenging for what we're trying to do. I was the chair of the health and human services commission and under that were all kinds of things. From animals to quality of life. And there was no -- Austin health, for example, which is probably the largest funding source that we have, there was no commission available to vet all of the information, so then the council committee became the place where all those things were vetted. So some of those were opportunities to create maybe something that was specific to a large funding population that we don't have and still don't have. So that's one of the concerns that I also have. Excellent statements from councilmember alter about how we use the reports to inform our decisions. The flood mitigation task force did a wonderful job in how that relates to codenext, it's just never included. And when we look at flood mitigation and impervious cover and what we do. And so there are things that the task force does, and they do, and they have experts doing this work and they ensure that it's accurate and it's comprehensive and then we just don't pay attention to it. So that that marble falls makes some of my commissioners feel like what I'm doing and why am I putting all this energy into it if nobody is even looking at it and making again the silos because that to me is something that codenext 2 should be looking at as well. So again, I thank again, I thank you for your work and hopefully I'm willing to work on trying to do something to kind of streamline. [9:59:24 AM] As we came into this 10-1 council we said there are too many meetings, too many task forces, too many boards and commissions, and so we've expanded that. [ Laughter ] So thank you. >> Does anybody else have any questions? >> Renteria: I also want to thank you all for -- I had to ask for this report because we never did receive it, and I want to apologize for waiting so long, but Laurie brought that up to me. >> We were wondering. [ Laughter ] >> No. We did all this work for you guys and don't even bother looking at it, so I want to thank you all, and we are going to take a look at this and try to get something done so thank you. >> Garza: Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. I really appreciate that you guys are looking at this issue because as you all know, the people who serve on the boards and commissions, we really care about making our government better and more efficient, so thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Garza: We're going to move on to the pulled items and I will -- I'll pull -- I'll bring the ones up that the mayor has not asked to pull. So the first one is item 15. >> Chair? >> Garza: Yes. >> Kitchen: I wanted to also made a mistake, but in case -- it didn't make the list so it's item 101 which relates to small area planning. >> Garza: Okay. So item 15 convention center pulled by councilmember pool. Do we have staff here for that? >> I can answer some questions about the lease. >> Garza: All right. >> Pool: Item 15 is convention center. >> Garza: It's the convention center budget, I think. >> Is there a question about the lease? >> Pool: That's a different item, but thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Mark Washington, assistant city manager. There's staff from visit Austin that should be on the way here shortly. [10:01:29 AM] >> Garza: Okay. >> Pool: Do you want to go on to something else? >> Oh, there. >> Talked faster than I was walking. >> Pool: Hi. >> Good morning. >> Morning. >> Pool: Thanks for coming. Well, first off the bat, I wanted to ask if you have updated the proposed budget with the changes that we made during budget readings. For the visitors >> Yes, we did and that was all provided to the city earlier this week, I believe, so you should have all the latest information. >> Pool: Is that up and is it listed in our backup? >> I'm not sure when it got posted. I might defer to city staff on that. I would assume that it would be. >> Pool: Right, okay. So can you walk us through what those changes are? >> So significant changes on the $2 million reduction are kind of the ones that we talked about at the previous council meeting, so we're looking at reducing -- or freezing compensation for staff, looking at restructuring benefits, to try to have some savings around our personnel costs. The biggest reduction is going to be in our marketing and advertising budgeted and kind of all of our programs have across the board cuts. >> Pool: So you don't have specific changes in front of you? >> There is a revised -- I don't know if it's the final one, but there is a revised backup online. >> Pool: Right. >> Alter: Would it be version two? Was that the correct, most up to date one in our backup? It says -- it says proposed for fiscal year 2018, 14,795,700. [10:03:30 AM] >> Yes, that's correct. >> Pool: Can you talk a little bit about the revisions that you're making to the marketing plan, a little bit more specifically? >> Do you want to talk about the marketing plan? >> No. Go ahead. >> So specifically on the marketing plan -- do you have a copy in front offer you? >> Right here. >> Specifically on the marketing plan, our big efforts cuts will be in our advertising program so we're going to look at a reduction kind of across the board, again, so we'll be spending a little less on production, we'll be spending less on placement in kind of all categories, so that would include meetings, leisure, heritage, culture, kind of across the board cuts there. We're not making very many cuts on our sales side because of the way the funding is coming back to oust from the convention center, that that has to be spent specifically on the convention sales and service side. Then we're having smaller cuts to kind of each program in different line items. >> Pool: So in the previous version, before we made changes during budget reading, you had $6.7 million for marketing and then in addition to that your budget document proposed 6.3 million for convention sales and services, you just mentioned sales and services, and 2.2 million for finance, administrative and I.T. This is one of the questions that I submitted for response from y'all, and we don't yet have the answers to these questions. >> So we provided a response to that. I don't know if it's been forwarded, but we did provide our responsive documents. >> Pool: And then I see 1.6 million for the visitor center, which I understand is located in the parking garage across red river from the convention center. Have you been able to collect the information on how the $1.6 million figure was arrived at and why it seems like a lot of money that you're paying to the convention center when you are a partner with the convention center. It looks like the money just kind of goes back and forth. >> The rent is not 1.6. [10:05:31 AM] That's for the entire operations of the convention center, retail sales, staffing, programming. The actual rent for the convention center is -- I'm sorry for the visitor center is a little over $200,000. >> Pool: Is that per month or -- >> Annually. >> Pool: Okay. >> About 212,000, and we worked on that lease in conjunction with the city of real estate offices and they had a formula they use for coming up with appropriate leasing amounts for leasing with entities outside the city. >> So if you are a partner with the convention center, what underpins your paying them? We, for example, in fact earlier today talked about one of our -- when our commissions, our citizens commissions meet, if they're not in city hall they have to pay the Austin police department to provide them with security, which seems -- well, we've kind of dealt with that previously and I don't know that I necessarily agree that one department of the city should pay for another, especially if something like security is at play. How -- what is the -- what is the policy basis where you all pay the convention center with monies that I guess you receive from the convention center? Because it's all hotel occupancy tax revenue. >> The first big distinction is we are not a city department, we're a private nonprofit entity that contracts with the city. Historically the rent we have paid at the visitor center has come out of private funds that have been raised through the visitor center retail sales, so it has not been paid by hotel occupancy tax, with the changes that have been requested of us this year it will be paid through hotel occupancy tax. >> Pool: And the last one and I'll let somebody else ask questions if they have them, there's different amounts of money for the different groups. You have your film and music and sports commissions. Can you walk us through the amounts of money that are assigned to each of those and what the work is that you do for those. And how -- what proportion of all of that is in support of local crews, frank with film. [10:07:36 AM] >> So I will start with the sports commission if that's okay. Sports kind of falls under our sales category. Their mission is to recruit and retain sporting events to the city of Austin. One of the things they do that is really important is they film need periods. A lot of times sporting groups come in the summer when it's harder to get convention center groups, partly because it's hot, partly because it competes with summer vacation so the sports group help fill that need during the summer so that is their focus. Their budget for this year is going to be about $340,000, we have two people who staff that commission, and I don't -- I should know exactly how many room flights they book but I don't have that in front offer me so I apologize for that. So film is goofing a budget of a little under 200,000 this year so our film department, their main goal is to work with scouts who want to bring production to Austin and we feel like we do an excellent job of that. We have tools we use, both online and physical, that allows us to really interact with the production crews here and with locations here so people can upload the -- these are locations we want you to come film, these are the types of services we can provide, so we help facilitate connecting the production crew with the local crews here on the ground. On the music side, that budget is going to be about $350,000 this year, and their role really is to do everything that promotes Austin music. A big piece of what they do -- in that office is actually book Austin musicians, we'll take musicians on the road with us if we have a client event, if we have a sales mission, if we have someone come in for a site visit we want to expose them to Austin musicians so hire a Austin musician, we do about 150 of those a year. We attempt booking Austin musicians for convention groups that come that want to use them for their entertainment, and that's 50 to 75 groups a year that get booked through that program. >> Pool: These sums are more than allocated last year. Is that right? [10:09:37 AM] >> I believe that they are. I don't have it in front of me, but I believe that's true. >> Pool: Okay. And then what interaction after the fact do you have with those various artists that you book or help facilitate transfer of their information? Do you meet with them regularly to find ways where maybe visit Austin has some gaps or maybe could do better for them? >> Absolutely. I think one of the things that we've heard from the musicians that we work with is we bring weekday business, a lot of times it's easy to get gigs on Friday and Saturdays but the weekday business is where it's harder for them so our convention groups fill that need. We also bring daytime business for them, hay, we really want to experience your music scene but we're here with your children so we don't necessarily want to go to a nightclub so we try to facilitate some day time gigs so we help fill those gaps. >> Pool: Where would we find a day time convert? >> I'll have to refer you to the music office because I'm the finance person and they don't let me get out that much but I can definitely get you a listing of those. >> Pool: Generally how much do our local artists earn whenever they have a gig that you guys have lined up? >> We're seeing that typically they're about $1,200 is average, and a lot of times these weekend gigs are maybe a couple hundred dollars so they're a little more lucrative working through our office so it's really important we maintain that ongoing relationship with the musicians here in town. We want to make sure we have a strong database of local Austin musicians so when somebody says we want tejano music or jazz music we have a large list to choose from. >> Pool: Do you break that down by per person because not all bands are created equal? If you're giving a solo artist -- >> It's on a case-by-case basis. I don't know that. That's a better question for OMAR. >> Pool: I think it would be great to get that information. I'm meeting with y'all in my office tomorrow so if you could bring this level of detail that would be really great. Thanks. >> Sure. >> Mayor Adler: Further questions? [10:11:39 AM] Yes. >> Flannigan: I want to follow up on something you said. When I look at the proposed budget, the amended one, it shows the music and film number goes down from '17 to '18. But you said that they're getting more? >> And I said I believe because I didn't have it in front of me, I wasn't looking at the exact numbers. Looking at that I can tell you exactly what this is. I know we talked about this a lot, we hosted pma, you'll notice large expenditures, one specifically our draw and reserve fund last year we're not doing this year to help support that event so we hired a lot of musicians for that event. That was a multiday event and so that put more money in that bucket than we'll need this year because we're not going to have that large of an event coming back. >> Flannigan: So when the community sees music and film budget by program, that includes hiring musicians for other conventions coming? >> Specifically for our events. Occasionally we will provide events -- >> Flannigan: Pcma you were considering your event? >> Yes, our event, we hired for that but we also connect them to other groups and that's not reflected in the budget. >> Flannigan: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. First of all, I wanted to thank you for your work, working with us during the budget process to move things forward. One of the things that came up through that conversation from the community -- and I don't know if this is the appropriate forum -- was how it is that we do help our musicians and what role you guys could play in that, insofar as our musicians themselves are doing a lot of material, they have their record, they have -- you know, they go and do gigs elsewhere and to what extent are we using their knowledge and their getting out there in community to also promote Austin in a way that is mutually reinforcing, so they go and do a gig somewhere. Do they have some sign that you guys provide that says, you know, Austin is great or whatever or on their record, you know, are there mechanisms we have built in where we are somehow advertising for Austin but also providing some useful support for the musician so that you're accomplishing two things at once with your market. [10:13:56 AM] >> One of the things we do that we're really proud of, one of the best promotional items we have is an Austin CD we put together and that showcases various Austin artists. I believe to date we've done this about 15 years and we haven't repeated an artist yet so that shows the breadth of musical talent we have and that's one of the best pieces we have to promote them. We use that on the road and that obviously is a huge promotional piece for them. For the artists we work, obviously people who live in Austin love it, they want to talk about it so we encourage them to do that when on the road. If they're working with us, obviously that's kind of one of the requirements, we're going to talk about how great Austin is so we feel like we have a really good relationship with those groups and we actually have some great testimonials from pollutions we've worked with about how much they've enjoyed working with us and how we've helped advance their career. >> We're also using music as an incentive for our convention centers as well, when someone says we'll book the city, you're booking 10,000 nights in the city so we'll give you $10,000 worth of music, so we're using it in our sales and taking those musicians on the road with our air stream at least once a year and, you know, working to promote the local musicians all the time. I mean, it's part of our lifeblood everyday really. >> Alter: I think one of the things that I heard a lot through the budget process and I think that was one of the reasons that we wanted to have some of the money invested in small business marketing was not just the musicians, but making sure that we have that connection with the visitor bureau or visit Austin back to our local businesses, which is what makes Austin special, so as we can be more creative with that, I would really encourage that. >> I think one of the great recommendations that came out of the visitor task force was this idea of this committee that we would work with with our marketing agency and visit Austin meeting quarterly to make sure we're doing exactly marketing local. If you think about our marketing, 64% of it is leisure marketing, 23% is diversity marketing, only 12% is the meeting side. [10:16:03 AM] We took liberty of looking at our publications, this is all local business. This is what we promote, 85% of what we promote is local all the time. You'll find this same kind of information on our website as well. I'm happy to leave this with you, but we love the idea of selling Austin. It is what sells Austin, is the local. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Sure. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Just a quick question. I don't remember if we had a conversation about this or not, but since you brought up the local businesses, it's something I've been wondering. Are we still charging the local businesses for putting their information in the visitor center? >> We do have a brochure program that has a small fee, varies depending on if you're a non-proficient or what type of business, I think it's 250 to $300 a year and we see people renewing that to is he feel like people -- >> Kitchen: That maybe something to talk about at some point. I don't know if any of the other councilmembers have had any feedback, but I've had at least some feedback that that could be a problem for some people. >> Is it specific organizations that have had a challenge or we can have a one on one conversation with them? >> Kitchen: I'll go back and check so I can provide you better information. >> Yeah, we're happy to have those conversations. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Yeah, I've heard the same about the rack rate and whether it's achievable by everybody in town. And then also what does that mean? How many people come into the visitor center and actually what are they getting for their $250 a year. >> We have generally over 200,000 people who come through the visitor center every year so we feel like that's great exposure for the cost. We understand advertising is expense, we understand the production costs around a brochure but that puts them in front of a lot of eyes who come in specifically looking for how do I get connected to local businesses. The other thing we do that is crucial is provide business services. When someone comes in, hey, I want to hear live music with my kids, where do I go? [10:18:03 AM] This is exam where you need to go, someone is playing at 2:00. I wanting to eat home cooking, where do I go for home cooking, I'm looking for great Asian food, and we send them always to local businesses. >> Pool: That's interesting. And it is curious. I don't think anybody has ever come and talked to me about that so -- >> And tomorrow when we come -- >> We'll be happy to do it tomorrow. >> Linda Atkins, our vp of services will be we W me so she can explain that program and how it works. >> Pool: Right. There really isn't any way for us to get confirmation on that, including the musicians or the artists in town, if they're benefiting from the promotion, I just have never gotten any feedback -- >> Sorry to interrupt. I'm excited. One of the things I will tell you that we have tomorrow is we'll bring a three ring binder and that will walk you through just the last year all the leads we sent off to the community for local businesses. So photographers, caterers, attractions, museums, et cetera, and we track that on an annual basis, making sure we return on our investment. >> Pool: Great. I promise this will be any last question. We had a budget rider to add additional monies for local and independent business for you guys to work with our local business groups. What plans do you have for that? >> There's some confusion about the intent, and I will apologize, I tried to listen intently to the budget conversations, there were a lot that happened quickly. Did I not hundred that that -- I did not understand that 200,000 was coming to our budget and we didn't understand what the goal and purpose of that was so we have not included that in our budget this year. >> Pool: Well, we'll do research on that but my understanding was it was a budget rider designating a portion of your existing budget in order to support local and independent businesses. So we do need to probably iron that out, but this is the first I've heard that you didn't understand or we weren't entirely clear, and so we probably should have heard that earlier. [10:20:07 AM] So let's work to get that thing nailed down. >> Yeah, absolutely. One of the things we -- you know, hopefully have shown that we really want to be cooperative, we want to work with the council. Personally, I do have some hesitation about us administering some type of grant if we don't understand the purpose of it and if it's for local small business market we want to ensure our brand is consistent so we'd like to have conversations around that and the goal around that. >> Additionally where would those marketing dollars be spent in theory? Obviously with the hotel tax we want to make sure there's a return on that investment in terms of room nights, et cetera. Where are those ads placed? In Austin, around the country? We don't even have a sense of that yet. >> Pool: Sure. I think that's an area where economic development department can also be of some assistance. At least in my mind there was kind of a triparty conversation going on with y'all, EdD and whoever -- and our Austin independent business alliance for example would be a good organization to have that discussion. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Houston. >> Houston: Thank you. And I don't remember either because it's still a fog -- >> Thank you. >> Houston: But I thought it was to support ib izz to do some work, but I didn't know we grave direction for vis Austin to be the conduit, I thought that was money specifically for local businesses. >> That was my understanding also and like I said there was a lot going on so if I misunderstood that absolutely we're happy to look at it. >> Mayor Adler: Can you take a look at that and then come back to council with a proposal, having talked to them and talked to economic development? Clearly we designated $200,000 out of that 8.6 to be spent to help market local businesses. Obviously it's hot tax money so it has to be tied to tourism and heads in beds, if you could recommend -- if that was ambiguous -- the best way to proceed on that. [10:22:09 AM] >> Mr. Mayor, if you don't mind I'd like to make sure that branding stays kind of similar to our live music brand so we don't have confusion in the marketplace. We don't want to be competitive for what our city's brand is in the marketplace. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. We have had a conversation I think it was with the convention center about visitor centers, and they said, well, if we're going to put another one we'd want it at the airport. We've talked a lot about how you work with the convention center, but we also own the airport, and it seems like there should be synergies there. Can you speak to a little bit about how you work with them and what they're allowed to support in terms of these activities? >> So last year, when we hosted pma, one of the things we did was we did conference registration at the airport which was the first time and it was a wow moment for all the meeting planners that came into town who said it would be so makings if we could do our registration at the airport. We had one customer so excited she got her name badge and forgot her luggage. So the idea was there's an opportunity during the 25 or 30 weeks a year could we be doing conference registration out there, which would also be visitor information at the same time, maybe we could help support south by and events like acl and have a registration area out there. We've had entry level conversations with the airport about that possibility and, you know, we're exploring what the rental would look like, exploring what the space would look like. They have a vendor they work with who is the exclusive kind of provider of those, selling those areas, and, you know, it's just been premature to have those conversations because we don't know what our budget is but I could see that being a long-term solution and if Austin was doing it we would be the only destination I'm aware of that's doing that and could be a wow moment for our planning -- as well as our -- you're going to have a lot of tourists there. [10:24:17 AM] >> Alter: I think that's really interesting but there's an underlying assumption that we have to operate airport in order to do -- pay the airport in order to do these things that are good for our city and we're just paying one to the other. I'm just wondering if the city manager could maybe clarify with legal what we're allowed to do under the various regulations that operate for the airport. We haven't had that discussion so I'm not aware of what those constraints are, but I'm assuming that there are some constraints on what we can and cannot do with respect to our airport, but it seems part of city business that's also related to travel. I would like some more clarity on the options there because it seems like we could develop some synergies. >> Councilmember alter, just to be clear, the airport would still need to be in the information business because they're still giving out information on the airport, where can I pick up my bag, we're really talking about providing -- >> Alter: I understand that. That helps the city and we own the airport but the airport is under particular regulations so I'm asking for clarity on what is allowed just as we got clarity over what was allowed with the hot tax. I'm sure that there's more information that I'm not aware of but I think that we may -- to the extent that there is any room, maybe we can cut down the costs of that to be able to deliver that service that might allow you to achieve your mission at lower cost. >> We know that. >> I got to tell you the airport has been very cooperative in the conversation, they like the idea on a lot of levels and there would be additional infrastructure to the airport because we'd have to put some booths out there per se and I don't know what the wireless is or the electrical to support that is so there had be costs at the airport, you know, that we would -- that if we decided to go out and do that. So there is an impact there. We'd need to have a conversation about. [10:26:17 AM] >> Alter: Okay, thank you. >> Pool: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool. >> Pool: I got clarification from the city clerk since I was wrong on the amount. Here's what was captured in the minutes on the grant to local business. Direction was approved to allocate 200,000 of the hotel/motel occupancy tax reallocation funds, the 8.6 million, to create a marketing grand with a third party organization for marketing local businesses to tourists as approved on councilmember troxclair's motion, et cetera. So that's the -- that's what this says in the minutes. >> Mayor Adler: Recommendation. Anything else on this item before we move on? Thank you very much. >> Thanks, mayor, councilmembers. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Next item is -- >> Councilmember pool, would you like to have these? We'll bring them tomorrow for you. >> Pool: You can bring them tomorrow. >> Mayor Adler: Item number 27, this is the lease. I need somebody else to take the chair for this item. All right. Mr. Casar. >> Casar: Okay. This item was pulled by councilmember alter so go ahead. >> Alter: Thank you. So this item has a lease that is both for development services and for Austin energy. My questions are more about development services and in particular I'm trying to understand what's proposed here in light of the design build that we are moving forward with and in light of the uncertainty at the moment about the dsd positions. So my first question is how many development service positions are intended to be housed at this facility? >> Councilmember, it's about 93 positions. >> Alter: Okay. And how much of the space needed by dsd is impacted by the increase in positions that were still in the process of delivering? [10:28:26 AM] >> I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question? >> Alter: So we're saying we need this space to house 93 of the people who work at dsd. I'm assuming they were projecting the need for this space since it was in the works before the budget to include the 51 positions that we still haven't authorized, and so of those 51 -- I mean, are all 51 housed over there? Who is moving there? I mean, how should we think about that decision in light of the fact that we haven't decided anything on those positions? >> Melissa Martinez. The 51 positions do not impact our need for the additional space at Ben white, so we need the space irregardless of the 51 positions that are proposed. >> Alter: Can you explain how that works? >> Sure. The 93 positions that are slated -- that are -- would go to Ben white include our site and subdivision, site and subdivision division, community tree preservation division, general permit program, and the digital document conversion functions that are currently housed within development services. The majority of these positions that would go to Ben white are inspection groups. >> Alter: But they would be vacating space that would be occupied by the other 51? >> Sure. So the benefit is -- let me just step back, for the last two years development services has been -- we currently occupy five floors at one Texas center and it's very limited space so over the past years we've made various efforts to just accommodate the current workforce in our building. We've taken conference room spaces, cubicles and made shared spaces with that. [10:30:31 AM] So we've been utilizing unconventional work space to just accommodate current staff. So in one sense if we can -- if we move -- relocate staff to Ben white location then that would eliminate -- that would alleviate and allow us to accommodate the second expedited -- the second team for expedited building plan review and the large conference space -- the multiconference spaces that are needed to implement that program. It would allow us space for -- let me just look here. Create conference room space for the expedited building plan review and just multiuse space, and it would allow us space for the current employees that are office at one Texas center. >> Alter: Thank you. Do we know when we're expecting design build to be finished? >> Councilmember, lauraine Rizer, officer of real estate. We're looking between three and four years for that project to be finished. I'd like to add some additional information to what Melissa said, is that actually we've been working on this lease since about 18 months now, and so as they were hiring the positions they got last year, they had no space for them so we were just piling them in. We were doing different work shifts and whatever we could to try to fit them into the building and so all along trying to find lease space, but we've had a difficult time trying to find lease space at a reasonable rate. And so that's what's led to the overcrowding. Sop it's really for the positions that were hired last year and we had no space for them at that time. >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate the clarification. I'm just trying to put all the dots together here. So if the design build is not going to be -- is going to be ready in three to four years why are we leasing for seven years. >> Councilmember, there's a couple reasons. [10:32:32 AM] One is because that was one of the ways that we could get the lower level rent. Right now we're seeing 25-$37 is what we've been being quoted in other space, but also, too, there's a bigger plan because once we move into -- start moving in out of one Texas center there's going to be a period of time before we move back into one Texas center because we want to use that opportunity to change out, like, the air conditioning vents and things before we move people back into the building, and so we wanted to have some cheaper lease space that we've already tied up over a period of time to be able to use that as a transition. Already we have rbj and a couple other buildings that are in -- I don't know if you've been to that building but its in in drastic need of repair, the elevator barely works, we need to move those inspectors into temporary space to renovate that building or potentially sell the property. We'll be bringing a recommendation to that once we finish looking into that. So we have a lot of need coming in the future that we have phased out so we're trying to look at a longer-term plan. >> Alter: So I just want to make sure I'm following this because I was trying to understand this in light of the other decision. So you're saying that we already are overcrowded. >> Yes. >> Alter: Dsd. The design build is one of the solutions that is going to happen three to four years out but we have space needs that are right now. >> Yes. >> Alter: And you believe this is an economical lease and, yes, it does go beyond the move-in to the design build, but you have plans for the use of that space as that happens and/or need regardless of whether these other positions for other city spaces to use that temporarily as we phase in and out of various renovation projects. >> That is correct. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. I wanted to clarify this. [10:34:36 AM] Thank you. >> Casar: Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I had similar questions but I just want to understand, so the lease cost on this is lower than a lot of the other leases that we currently have. >> That is correct. >> Flannigan: And this lower cost lease space will be used after design build is completed as part of transition, so we'll be able to stop other leases -- >> That's correct. >> Flannigan: -- Earlier than if we had just waited for everything else to take its natural course. So in years five, six, seven, we'll start to see the lease savings we expect to see because of design build, it just won't be the direct one to one. It will start the shuffle and this is part of what you see solving the shuffle that will occur during the transition? >> Yes, councilmember. >> Flannigan: Good. That's helpful. The backup in the rca was really good, I think, it just missed that piece about the role of this in the shuffle and that answers most of my questions. I will say that I'm listed as pulling item 102 but this was the item I intended to pull so we don't have to talk about 102 unless anybody else does. >> Casar: Any other questions? Councilmember Renteria. >> Renteria: I'm really glad that you all are looking into the -- the health department one time was in that building and they moved owed because of mold problems they were having there. So, yes, I realize that just like the senior housing, Rebecca Johnson, it has to be remodeled and that's why they're going to through the process of building another unit next to it, so they can get people out of -- both those buildings were built in the late 1990s and early '70s and they're in pretty bad shape. >> Yes, sir, they are. >> Casar: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: I just wanted to say they'd a question on 102. I think it will be quick, but I do have a question on 102. >> Casar: Are there any other questions on this item before I hand the gavel back to the mayor? One question that just popped in my head, since this is for development services, is this lease paid for by fee revenue or are we barred from doing it that way? [10:36:43 AM] >> The lease -- the rental fee was included -- approved in the budget for this year, this coming year. >> Casar: So it's backed by fee revenue rather than general operating dollars? >> Yes. >> Casar: That's helpful to understand. And maybe we can get an email update on this, but my recollection was that the building -- the planning department center would be coming online a little sooner than three or four years from now, but we don't have to resolve that question at this moment, but my recollection from conversations was that it was a little bit shrter time line and if that's changed I'm sure we'll hear about it. >> Yes, councilmember. Actually just real quick, I'm really looking at a phased move-in and the groups moving into that building, and we haven't actually sat down and planned that yet. >> Casar: Okay. >> But it's a thousand employees and I don't see it happening -- >> Casar: They're all moving on the same day, okay. So the completion of the building date might be somewhat earlier than -- >> That is correct. >> Casar: -- The giant move-in day. Helpful, thank you. Councilmember Garza I think has a question. >> Garza: I know you said that this is not -- is not related to the 51 but it kind of is, and so I just want to make sure that if whatever we decide on that 51, we're not going to hear later, well, we've already rented space and we have these empty cubicles and so I just want to make sure that this -- this is not related to the 51 positions. Is that correct? >> Correct. >> Garza: Okay. Thank you. >> Casar: Okay. Mayor -- sorry, councilmember Houston. >> Houston: How many people Austin energy are moving? >> Councilmember, I don't -- . >> Go G morning, mark, cfo, we have about 115 employees will be moving in there. It's mostly our customer service representatives and our utility contact center. [10:38:46 AM] >> Houston: Thank you. >> Casar: All right. Any other questions? Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Go to the next item. Councilmember pool, you pulled item 44. >> Pool: Right. Item number 44 is the anti-lobbying ordinance rewrite, and my colleagues who served with me on the waste management policy working group probably remember that we had tasked staff with coming back with some recommended changes. What I'd like to do is postpone this so our ethics review commission can have a look-see at what the elements are and give us a read. That next meeting is October 11. There's also interest in allowing the zero waste advisory commission to review it before we bring it here for approval, and I'm still kind of weighing that to see what impact that might have on our time line for approving. So my staff yesterday contact the staff attorney over at the ethics review commission to request placement on the October 11 agenda, and also talked with my appointee on the ethics review commission. So the next council meeting after that is October 12. Timing may pose a problem for purchasing or our staff and we also would like to have a little bit of breathing space in between a commission's action and our taking it up so we may want to add a little bit -- a week or too. >> Mayor, I just need to do a little more research. I don't know that the erc has jurisdiction to hear this matter. >> Pool: I understand they may not, but that doesn't prohibit us from asking them to have a look at it. Is that correct? >> So you have you to waive your code and change that to allow them to look at it specifically? >> Pool: I would like them specifically to look at the anti-lobbying ordinance. I think it would be really helpful and maybe we do need to revise the language for their mission to allow that sort of thing. Especially on lobbying and ethics matters. [10:40:50 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Yes, councilmember alter. >> Alter: I think part of the reason that we wanted the ethics commission to look at it is that one of the recommendations is to have them have a role as kind of a third-party look in certain situations, kind of like an ombudsman role, and so it seemed like they should have a chance to comment on particularly that piece of the legislation if we were gonna be asking them to play that role. Is this something, then, that we would have to postpone and make a motion to allow them to do that? Or are we not able to do that in same meeting? >> We'll probably need to post it so you can amend your ordinance. >> Alter: Okay. And I just wanted to check in with Mr. Scarborough and see -- I know there's a biosolids contract that would not be subject to the Alo and I just wanted to check in and see if you had any concerns about postponing and what that might mean and/or if Austin water had concerns that we should know about. >> Good morning, mayor, councilmember, James Scarborough, purchasing office. The timing of this item before you is somewhat related to the timing of an upcoming solicitation for Austin water for biosolid given their current contract expires early next year. So while my office and our colleagues are ready to engage in further discussions in this regard, the timing is really associated with the need of our customer. So if Austin water has some flexibility, then certainly we're not pressing it, but they have a bit more urgency in this regard. >> Darrell [indiscernible], Austin -- [off mic] >> Mayor Adler: Turn your mic on. >> You're on. >> Darrell with Austin water. Yeah, this would stretch beyond we think it would cause it to go beyond the end of our current contract, so we would either have to proceed without the anti-lobbying ordinance, which we wouldn't want to do, or seek to extend the current contract. [10:42:59 AM] So it does present some challenges for us. >> Alter: Is there a scenario where the anti-lobbying ordinance is in place by the time that you're reviewing the contracts as opposed to -- so you make your solicitation and it's not applying in that period but then by the time you get it back and you're reviewing it it would be in place? From the time line I saw there was a scenario where there could be a portion of it where it didn't apply but that the ultimate decision where it came to council and stuff, it would apply. >> We possibly stretched beyond it. I'll let Mr. Scarborough answer that and I might chime in after that. >> Councilmember, that is a possible scenario, but it depend on council's vote. There's a decision point for council with regard to the start of the no contact period. Per the current recommended revision to the anti-lobbying ordinance the no contact period would begin upon receipt of offers or when solicitation closes. If that's the case, then we can issue the Austin water solicitation for the biosolids and even if the anti-lobbying ordinance had not been reestablished we would have no impact because of the way their current recommendation read, the anti-lobbying ordinance wouldn't start until offers are received. If, however, council wished to have the anti-lobbying -- the no contact period start when the solicitation is issued as it currently starts, then we would need to cancel and reissue the solicitation because the time that the solicitation was on the street would now be subject to the anti-lobbying ordinance. >> Alter: Could we -- when we pass the anti-lobbying ordinance, could we make an exception for that contract that would allow us to keep -- I mean, it sounds like what we'd be doing de facto, if we proceeded in this way in the anti-lobbying ordinance was not ready until getting the solicitations back is in fact what we're proposing in this anti-lobbying ordinance but it sounds like you might have to somehow legally come up with the appropriate exception language for that contract so that you wouldn't have to start over from scratch to do exactly the same thing that you've already done. [10:45:20 AM] Is that an option? >> Are you saying to put it under the new one at some point? >> Alter: Well, what I heard from Mr. Scarborough is that if we impose the anti-lobbying ordinance and this contract was midway through, that you might have to -- because we've waived the anti-lobbying ordinance ordinance for waste management, so the old one doesn't apply either, that in this case we would have to go back and start solicitation over if we implemented it in the middle because the new one would then apply. And what I'm trying to figure out is if there's a legal way to accept this contract from having to do that start-over since that start-over is in a sense consistent with what's being proposed from staff and out of our committee, as I understand it. So it seems like that requirement to restart is just a function of the particular circumstances and not substantively important, if I'm understanding correctly. >> I would always want to consult with my colleagues at law, but I believe if council makes a specific authorization for this particular solicitation, I believe that might be possible. Again, I would defer to my colleagues. >> Alter: Is that something that we can get an answer to from law? >> Good morning, Chris [indiscernible] Assistant attorney, we can absolutely look into issues of timing if it comes to a particular contract and whether the application of the revised ordinance causes a timing issue, we can look at accepting that. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you. And to the city attorney, I heard you say we'd have to change the code to get the ethics group to look at that. What is that process -- what does that process entail? >> Just simply do an amendment to your city code because the jurisdiction of the erc is written out very specifically about what taxicab do -- what it can do so we can look at amending that particular section or doing a catch-all as the mayor suggested perhaps the code could be amended to say the council could send anything to various boards and commissions so we'll look at both of those. [10:47:38 AM] >> Houston: Thank you. The other thing that I have, Mr. Scarborough, it was my understanding that y'all were working specifically with the waste haulers but it's come back as it impacts all of the contracts. Could you speak briefly to how that will work? >> Yes. >> Houston: And, again, how many other stakeholders other than waste haulers participated in the process that brought this change to us. >> Sure. Councilmember Houston, the recommendations that initiated our work on the revisions to the anti-lobbying ordinance came from the solid waste or the waste management work group that was chaired by councilmember pool. Those recommendations came as a result of a number of meetings that were overseen by that particular work group, and the majority of the attendees at those meetings were current and previous and prospective contractors to the city, providing a variety of waste management services. The changes that we're contemplating to the anti-lobbying ordinance would impact all solicitations for city contracts that would be subject to the ordinance, which now is most of them. So to the extent that there's been communication outside of that group regarding these changes and feedback from the rest of the city's vendor community outside of our public notices, there haven't been any. So if that was of interest then we would indeed need time to seek feedback from the rest of the city's population of current and prospective contractors. >> Houston: So would this in fact be applicable to all the health and human services contracts that we have to do? >> Currently, the anti-lobbying ordinance does not apply to health and human services contracts. [10:49:38 AM] We carried that exemption or exclusion forward into the revised or proposed revisions to the anti- lobbying ordinance so it would not apply based on the current recommendations. >> Houston: Historically, do you know why that wasn't included? You weren't here then? >> I wasn't here then but what I heard was it was the desire of council to exclude the health and human services contracts. >> Houston: Do you know when that happened? >> I can find out for you, ma'am, but I don't know. >> Houston: Would you please? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Houston: Because I think it's important. If this is going to be passed -- what I understand the working group was working on and it's going to include more people, then I think it's imperative that more stakeholders look at and be able to make suggestions to what you've presented to us or will present to us on Thursday. >> Okay. >> Houston: And then after you figure out why not the health and human services contracts because they lobby harder than anybody else does. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Houston: I'd like to know what that is. [ Laughter ] >> Very good. >> Mayor Adler: Ready to move on to the next one? Ms. Pool. >> Pool: I don't know if -- I don't know if the chart that our folks in purchasing sent to my staff were provided to everybody, but it definitely should be part of the backup. It shows you a comparison matrix of the revisions, and the piece that we were talking about right here simply -- the change there is to delay the start and the imposition of the anti-lobbying ordinance, so that actually is a little bit of a liberalization of the policy and then the concerns that were raised went to debarment, where respondents who have committed multiple violations within a five-year period are currently debarred from doing business with the city for up to three years and we thought that was too draconian and so that has -- those references are being removed and I think they are working on that language, too, and I'm looking for input from the ethics review commission on that. [10:51:48 AM] But essentially the rest of it was cleanup, like permitted representations are repetitive and so they were consolidated. If I could ask Mr. Scarborough to make sure this gets to all mayor and council so you can see -- it sound here like it's a wild revision but it actually isn't, and then, also, the recommendations of the policy working group that we passed out -- was it at the end of July? I think it's been a while. We can resend that also. All of this information is up on the website at the city for this working group, so you can see all the information. >> Mayor Adler: And they're both in backup. >> Pool: And all of it is in backup. So I think the key piece right now is to look at the comparison matrix on the revisions for an understanding that it sound more ground breaking and changing than it actually - - than it actually is. >> Mayor Adler: So my sense, colleagues, probably this will get postponed this week because it sound like any timing issues we could take care of with particular exemption so that your process can continue on without delay. >> Mayor, I do want to say that we likely have to extend that contract anyway. We'll work to so we're not trying to stand in the waive anything going to the ethics review commission but even with those dates we may have to look at extending that contract. But we'll work with them -- >> Mayor Adler: For reasons other than this postponement? >> Well, no. Because -- just because of the -- we've waited so long already and we had that March 31st end of our contract, and biosolids just keep coming in. >> Mayor Adler: There's nothing we can do about that now and this postponement this week doesn't increase the need to do that. Do whatever you need to do but my understanding is we can postpone this week without having caused any delay by virtue of the postponement this week or any problems with the contract process by virtue of the postponement this week, which makes me think that it's probably very likely this will get postponed this week so that the -- can take a look at it. [10:53:54 AM] >> Pool: That's what I'll be asking and I think Austin water should proceed on the time line that you have. >> Thank you, mayor, councilmember. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. All right. That gets us to next item. Item number 50. Mr. Flannigan, you pulled this one. >> Flannigan: Yes. Yes. So I the resolution doesn't address geography it. It doesn't reference that we should be considering their distribution across the whole city. So if we looked at underenrolled schools that's only going to be one part of town. If we look at -- so I just thought it was important to think about how we might add another bullet point to that list that talked about the geographic dispersion. >> Mayor Adler: The mayor pro tem, she's not here now, so she'll look back on this or she could be listening to this. I understand that she was going to have ear phone listening to work session today while she was also trying to listen to the discussions on the trip she's doing for us with the city. Do you want to explain -- just so she can hear that and get fair notice, a bullet point talks about geography -- >> Flannigan: I don't want to exacerbate the situation where our income-restricted housing is only getting newt one part of town. This is an opportunity to make sure we don't continue that problem, so as we think about where we might have these Zones, I want to ensure that we're thinking about every part of town and not just one part of town. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. >> Flannigan: I also have some very significant questions on tax impact but all of that analysis is referenced in the ordinance and I'll have plenty of conversations with staff off-line about that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, great. Let's go to the next item, which is the puzzle item. [10:55:55 AM] Conversation on this one? It's on the agenda this week. My hope was that we could pass this so that we could further the conversation. I know there are a lot of questions that a lot of people -- that people have, and I think that the resolution doesn't make any decisions on anything but is a good vehicle for us to be able to flesh out and answer some of the questions that people have, staff, in order to spend the time, needs some indication that there's some interest in this in order to be able to do that and that's what the resolution was intended to do. Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: I'm passing out a proposed amendment that we can consider on Thursday. I'll also post it on the message board. The idea behind it is just to examine and develop these options in more detail. I know that many of us have a lot of questions about the details that these potential exponents we've talked about the need to have further discussion, but we haven't talked about specifically how we might do that. So I thought that the -- that what we might do -- and I think it's a good idea that what we might do is create a work group, not unlike what we did for Austin resource recovery. This is more complex and perhaps would take more time, but basically the thinking is to create a working group, and the working group would be composed of the mayor and four other city councilmembers, and there's a list here of what the group would do, but essentially the group would be going through and examining in more detail each of the components that are proposed in the downtown puzzle, working with staff, would construct a timetable and, you know, consideration for when to report back to the city council, would get input from stakeholders as appropriate. [10:58:16 AM] Again, the arr work group did that. And would deliver periodic updates to city council. I didn't put a timeline on it because I wasn't sure how long this process would take, so -- but that's the idea. This is to propose to my colleagues a process through which we could get more details and examine the components because they are fairly complex. And I'm thinking that it just -- trying to do that with all of us sitting around the table during a work session would take a lot of work sessions and a lot of time, so I thought this might be the kind of -- kind of activity that lends itself to a working group. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any further discussion on this? Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: I don't know if the city manager could answer these questions, but there's a memo by cfo Greg canally referred to several times in this resolution, so I'm curious to ask staff if in their opinion -- what their thought is on this? It seems -- the be it further resolved, while I understand is just starting a process, it seems more prescriptive than what many of us say we are opposed to a lot of times. Specifically it says put the city council in the position to assemble the downtown puzzle. And these all seem like very large tasks individually, so my question to staff is do think feel it needs to be packaged this way? >> Kitchen: Are you talking about the amendment or the original? >> Garza: No, the original. >> Kitchen: Yeah, I share the concerns that you're mentioning on the original and tried to address some of that in the amendment. [11:00:16 AM] >> Mayor Adler: So as the author and then I'll pass it on, I think that's some symbiotic relationship between these elements. I think there's some symbiotic relationship between the elements, but it doesn't necessarily -- there are lots of different ways these things can be achieved and I think a lot of the answers can be answered in the process. And they're not intended to be exclusive things. I think there are things that are covered in this that I think that I would also support by way of the bond campaign, the bond election that that would happen? But I think there is some symbiotic relationship between these and asking the staff to look at these. The waller creek park, for example, doesn't need to wait for this process if there's support for that. And other elements. It's not intended to be prescriptive, but only to say would you come through and look at these things and it's not necessary for everything to be done before information comes back to the council on pieces of it. If there's better language to make it non- prescriptive, that was the intent of saying take a look at all these things and put us in a position if it is something we wanted to do, we would do it. So I had originally drafted it to not be prescriptive, but to say advance this. We're not in a position to do this because there are a lot of questions, go answer the questions that people are asking. >> The memo that you referred to that was, I think, issued in July was in response to a specific resolution which was to look at the entire package and that's why the memo was written that way. [11:02:17 AM] But I do think while many of the items in the puzzle are interrelated and some might be interdependent, as you say they are large projects and they would take -- the expansion of the convention center would take a period of time to accomplish if we were doing a p3 arrangement. So I don't think we could bring all of them back as one package. It would delay some that we could have completed earlier if we did that. So does that make sense to you? >> Garza: Okay. I guess I'm not sure where I am on this being packaged together like this. I want to be clear that I support many parts of this. I still have concerns about the mexican-american cultural center, that was a question I had for law as well. That was funded through bond funding and I was any concern about it was funded as a bond measure through parks as a cultural center is changing its focus to now include basically an extension of the convention center. Are we putting ourselves in any liability by changing what the voters approved it for previously? >> As we said, we're waiting on to council intends to do and then refer to bond council because it is bond funded. We want to handle that very carefully. >> Garza: Okay. I guess my question is could there be the scenario that we could not -- we cannot make it an extension of the convention center because of constraints in the bond language and what we're allowed to do because of how it was funded initially. Is that a concern? That could be a concern? >> That's something that we're continuing to look at is how the bond funds were done in the beginning. [11:04:27 AM] >> Garza: So just to be clear I support many of the things in here. I think it's -- I'm concerned about packaging all of this and making promises to the community that we are solving all of these different things by passing this when there are still many questions on what things can be funded, how things can be funded, whether they're interconnected, whether they're not. And so I personally don't understand the urgency of passing this on Thursday, but if other people could explain that to me I'd appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: I share the concerns about the timeline and that. My focus here is to try to get a process in place so that we can actually go through a process of vetting and understanding. So I know that people haven't had a chance to think about it yet, but -- and I will post it on the message board. So I appreciate any kind of feedback that anyone has about the concept of some kind of work group process. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember pool? >> Pool: I'll spend some time reading your amendment, councilmember kitchen. Thanks for doing that work. I agree with the comments that have been made so far about one of the difficulties and getting our arms around even how to ask the questions is because there's so many pieces in here put together that may in fact require different approaches in order to solve them, and some may lock up funds into the future more tightly than we may want. And we don't yet know that. We don't know when revenues might start flowing and we don't really know how much they would be. [11:06:31 AM] I think that we can separate out some of these initiatives. Mayor, you mentioned the waller creek tif. I think that we are further along in expanding the timeline, spending the timeline on the waller creek tif than -- so that that could be moved forward first and it wouldn't hurt anything because the point is to get the waller creek tif expanded. I support finding funding to -- for the master plan, the eventual plan for the mexican-american cultural center. They're underway. So we don't know when that will be complete, but I think that that cultural center deserves much more certainty in its funding source than tying it to a tourism public improvement district or even -- a tourism pid or even the risk that we can't spend hotel occupancy taxes down there. We can do certificates of obligation quickly with no risk. That can be done. We can add whatever the dollar figure emerges from the master planning process can be vetted through, our citizens bond advisory committee and added to the bond ballot next year. I would personally campaign for that approval. I remember the first time mac was put on the bond election, it and carver failed, but it came around the second time and they passed. So I think there is tremendous support in their community for funding if, the expansion at the mac. But we also don't want to inhibit that planning process by now saying that it has to be an expansion of the convention center. I don't know that that's necessarily part of that victims. So I want to sever that piece as well from this package because I think we can move more anymorebly and more comprehensively and with more certaintity and less risk if we shifted away either to certificates of obligation or bonds. [11:08:41 AM] And there may be some other opportunities out there that our staff can tell us about. And then with regard to homelessness, clearly we need to see a strategic plan for addressing the homelessness issue. I'd like to have a full understanding of just exactly what that means. What metrics do we have to measure our achievements and our success to know that we have actually made a dent in that issue. I know that some work has been going on for the past nine months to a year that the mayor pro tem has been actively involved in and probably others on the dais, but I don't have that level of familiarity or intimate detail to tell residents of Austin who ask me what is our plan, what do we need? How do we know $30 million is enough? Maybe we need three times that amount. And I can't answer those questions. So I think we need to sever that piece out and understand the size of that problem. And all of the various issues that attach to it because it isn't just housing, it's also wraparound social services, it's identifying the community that would be -- would benefit from it and making sure that we have the proper resources because each individual is unique in what their needs are and we need to make sure that we can actually address that through into the future. And I don't see expanding the convention center a tourism pid as being either certain or without risk, a certain level of risk, in order to do the three things we're talking about. So I think that using councilmember kitchen's approach we can pull these pieces apart, attack each one individually and separately. They are each unique. And I think we will have a better chance of success in meeting these needs and also being able to measure that we have met those needs. [11:10:46 AM] >> Councilmember Renteria? >> Renteria: I don't really see is that way. I see this as an opportunity. This would just be another tool that would -- that would let us do some of the things that, you know, we're constrained on doing. So I believe that this is an opportunity that we have that -- where we can get something and not raise our taxes here in Austin. So I'm really supportive. Even with the mac, there's no guarantee either on the bonds and then by the bonds get sold, there's an opportunity here. I mean, it doesn't have to happen right away, where, you know, the convention center does an expansion over there and they get to manage it. But that's just an opportunity. If the next councilmembers or us if we're still around decide on doing it that way, then that's the only opportunity, but yes, we should do -- you keep that option and also with a bond election because there's no guarantee that we're going to pass a bond election with all the other taxing entities here in Austin and also submitting bond packages that the taxpayers might just say no. So there is a lot of risk out there. And I think that we should just take advantage of all the opportunities that we can get. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. And all of these ideas are worthy ideas. But they all kind of hinge on whether or not they expand the convention center. And so if they're really that worthy then we need to be looking at them separate and apart from that or at least be looking at them if we don't expand the convention center, how do we address these other needs? [11:12:55 AM] Because I see them as very different. If we expand the convention center then we can do this, this and this, but those things are needing to be done anyway. So if we don't expand the convention center how can we address these needs. And that's the part that I don't see here and that I'm not going to be able to support because I don't understand how we're going to do those things that need to happen in our community without expanding the consensus? It's not against the convention center. That may be something I come to at some point, but it's all contingent on that at some point and in your resolution. >> Mayor Adler: And to be clear -- because I think it's a really good point and I think the same point that councilmember Garza made and councilmember pool were all making and councilmember Renteria, it is a priority I think to get the macc done, to get the carver done. And there are multiple ways to get that done. One would be the bco's, one the bond election. I wouldn't want them to be excluded from this, but it is also another potential funding source. And I think that's the spirit in which this is being offered. At this point we haven't been able to find funding sources in the past, let's find as many as we can and then look at them. So that's what that is. So in answer to councilmember Garza, I think this is just an extra one that -- I would want to take a look at whether this is and to answer those questions because I don't think we know what the answers to all those questions are at this point, but this sets up the process, the resolution sets up the process to be able to answer those. Councilmember pool may be right, it may be co or bond, it may be in addition to. It could be that the funding stream for that and the carver come from multiple places. But the process I think moving forward will help us answer those kinds of questions. [11:15:00 AM] So councilmember kitchen, I appreciate you bringing this forward to the council as a way to guide that process and to be clear that we're not going this because we have all the answers. We're doing in an attempt to try to get the answers. I'll read about it and post it on the message board. >> Kitchen: I would also suggest that it certainly can be wordsmithed or amended to add the kinds of concerns that people are stating to make it sure that each of these items can be looked at independently, can be brought back to the council on a different timeline. And can certainly acknowledge that I think as councilmember Houston said, that all of these are things that we need to address. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I want to agree with councilmember Renteria. I think this is an interesting process to move forward. And we pass a lot of relations to say we have an idea, city manager, go figure it out. And I'm a little concerned that we do that a little too much sometimes and I'd love some input from the city manager on how difficult this process is going to be. And it's not necessarily a question you have to answer now, but how difficult this will be, how long it will take, the the fact that we don't have answers for some of these questions is the point of the resolution is to go get the answers. I don't have an issue with tweaking some of the language that seems too prescriptive. We're trying to get the answers here so we can make the decisions. And I don't think putting three or four things in a resolution means that we're not going to get individual answers. I think if we focus on trying to sever things and put them in separate things and we get back to the siloing conversation that we were having earlier that yeah, I think there's benefit to having these things in conjunction because having the financial synergies or more, but I'm interested in from the city manager knowing a little bit more about the resources it's going to take to answer these questions and knowing that we didn't give you a bunch of new staff two weeks ago, how is your office balancing the issues that are currently underway? [11:17:19 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Garza? >> Garza: I just wanted to be clear. I'm not advocating for taking the mac out of your -- to councilmember Renteria's point, you're absolutely right. A bond is a big if, but it's a big if in here. It's an action and I appreciate the language in here that says if appropriate because it could come back staff telling us we can't do that. I just want to be clear to our community that this is not guaranteeing a funding stream for all of these things. It's saying this is kind of connecting these together and the concern I have is we've had this conversation about whether we expand the convention center and talk about siloing things, sometimes things do need their own conversation and it's turned into what used to be do we expand the convention center or not to if we don't expand the convention center, we don't have these options. And so as we start this process, we're changing this whole procedure to say -- we're basically saying we say expand the convention center and see if we can do these things. So we're making the decision. And I'm not opposed to expanding the convention center -- to me voting on this on Thursday is saying yes, we think we should expand the convention center around then we'll see if we can do these other things. We weren't able to finish the conversation about expanding the convention center. So the way it's packaged is my concern. And again, all these other things could -- may or may not be able to be funded. Yes, it's good for our staff to look into it and determine that, but it could have been done differently. It didn't have to be named to the downtown puzzle. We could have -- and it's my understanding that staff is doing all these things anyway. They're already working on much of this and seeing how it could be funded. [11:19:21 AM] So that's just my concern. >> Mayor Adler: Further discussion before we go on to the next item? Yes, councilmember alter. >> Alter: I would love an answer to Mr. Flannigan's question from the city manager. I'm just trying to understand what this resolution actually means that you would be doing differently, what resources you need, what direction. It says to prepare ordinances and agreements, it doesn't say to answer our questions. So I'm maybe at a fundamental step back of just trying to understand what it is that this resolution is actually swaying with all of the pieces. And we haven't heard from you on your thoughts about how you would think we would approach this if we think there's a general consensus we have on opportunities and we have some problems that might need to be solved and they might be interlinked, but I would like some guidance from you as to your thoughts on the policy direction and what's in this resolution, what more we need to be doing and what's missing. >> As councilmember Garza said, we have been working on many of these items already. A year ago we were working with waller creek local government corporation and the conservancy on this concept of the tif change, either extending the time or expanding the footprint so we have already done that. We have been working on the master plan, trying to get the master plan for a convention expansion. We've been working on that since March of 2014. So many of these things have already been in the works. To move the expansion forward the first step won to adopt the master plan which has been prepared and brought to council over a year ago. [11:21:30 AM] And then the visitor task force was created to look at it and they made their recommendation. So that's one piece. The tif, I don't think we can get that work done before December of this year. Typically you make tif changes in time for a January 1st property date change. We would have to come up with a new fansing plan, a new project plan so we would have to know what we're going to spend the money on, present those to both the council and the county, ask the county if they would extend their portion of the tif. So there's a lot of work that's involved in doing tifs, so it would probably take until this time mention year to get all that done. So many of the pieces in here are multi-year projects. If we -- if the council choose to approve the master plan and said move forward on expansion, we would like the option that the visitor task force presented, the option that had a 3p, we would need to do an rfp to see if we could find someone to package the land and would do a transaction much like we -- you just approved for development services. So we would start picking these apart. I think there are some that fit together and the T public improvement district, the tourism pid and the expansion naturally fit together. I don't know that the hotels will agree to do that. If we don't do the expansion, maybe they will, I just don't know. We've got a staff group that's working on the homeless issue already. Internally that is one of the items on the strategic plan that -- one of the outcomes and things that y'all have wanted us to work on so we've got an active staff. In fact, I have a memo that I should have signed yesterday and sent out that talks about the work that the staff group is doing. But that is to do a needs assessment and like at what we currently fund, how do we currently fund it and what do we need, what are our options going forward. [11:23:41 AM] So much of that work would be done over the next six to 12 months. >> Alter: So what is the direction that you don't have from council from a policy [lapse in audio]? We need to agree that we have an expansion of the convention center, we have another issue of homelessness, we have an opportunity with waller creek, we have the mexican-american cultural center and a whole bunch of other things that are in this. What are the direction that you don't have that you need at this point. And I apologize if I'm not asking the right question. I'm trying to make sense of all of these things and, you know, I want to hear from you on the kind of direction that you need to keep the ball moving on these and would a working group be useful, would it just be another extra thing that you have to staff that's not going to move things forward? I'm just trying to understand how we move forward? >> Frankly another working group would slow our work done as staff. We typically bring you package work as you finish it. And what this did was put a framework around it, but we need time to work on these projects. And as we would get the work done we certainly would bring them back to the city council or a work session or for whatever briefings and answer whatever questions you would have. I think that's what we've been doing all along. We did not bring the tif, the waller creek tif, back to this council because we were talking about it in the fall last year and they were -- the conservancy folks were talking to councilmembers as well so that was a concept that y'all had heard. [11:25:41 AM] But then the proposal for the downtown puzzle that packaged many things together came about and we were asked to do some work on that. In fact, that was two years ago, I think. So I think the direction I need is that y'all would like to see all of this addressed. And we'll start working as we do all of them. But -- go ahead. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Kitchen? >> Kitchen: I want to qualify on the work group, the purpose of the work group is not so much to help the staff. It's to help the council with the process for vetting. Not to get in the way of what the staff needs to do, so I don't mean that because I appreciate what you're saying, city manager. I appreciate what you're saying. But whenever the city manager puts something together it's going to have to come back to the council and we'll have to feel comfortable it vetting it. So the work group process that I'm proposing -- and again, if people don't want to do that, that's fine, but it's just one way to handle the vetting that we're going to have to do. Because regardless of -- our staff put together a great package for us, but because of the -- because of the level of complexity and the weight of all these matters we're going to have a lot of questions. So we need some process to go through it. And you know when we talked about committees, we talked about the fact that perhaps ad hoc kinds of work groups were the way to go rather than standing committees for. So it's up to the council whether you wanted to make a work group or not, but I wanted to explain the purpose for the work group is for the council to have a process. >> Mayor Adler: And councilmember, it wasn't the intent of the resolution to ask the council to be committing to do an expansion. But I know for me before I'm asked to take a final vote on the expansion I want to know whether or not or on what conditions or situations, for example, that does provide money for the mac or the carver center because that would be part of my deliberations on that issue. [11:27:59 AM] But the intent was to draft this in a way that did not have the council committing to any component because I have a lot of questions to, as was apparent a lot of people had questions. So it was just trying to formalize a process to start answering the questions that we had in the -- we had and the community had. And to have -- and a lot of councilmembers had. So to have a subgroup of us that's monitoring what the staff is doing and making sure they're answering all the questions that we have and bringing information back to the council I think is something that also might be helpful. >> Garza: Mayor, would you be open to -- I appreciate that explanation, but in the first be it resolved it says -- the first sentence says bring back as timely as practicable ordinances, agreements. That's like when we initiate an ordinance change and we say yes, we want this ordinance change, bring us back the ordinance so we can vote on it. So to me it sounds very "Bring us back the master plan so we can vote on it, bring us back whatever so we can vote on it." So would you be open to taking out ordinances, agreements and other tools and changing it to options, bring back options to do so? >> Mayor Adler: We could do that. The reason I had tun that was to -- because I thought by doing that we would actually answer the questions. So for example, people have questions about the tpid. What would be that? So I would say go figure out what that agreement would be and come back to us so we can see the elements of an agreement so we're just now -- as we're talking now about something that's really amorphous. I mean, go talk to the hotel people and let the council have oversight over that with what Ms. Kitchen has proposed. So it was saying actually get into talking to them about it so that we could see what the push-pull was. [11:30:03 AM] Actually look at the ordinances and the other tools if we were to get funding out of this that went to the mac, what would that mean? Would it be just for one component of the mac, like the theater and what would then the rules have to be associated with that? So again, it was saying take this to a level of detail necessary for us to actually know what the answers are. That's what was intended by that. But without any kind of suggestion that we're preapproving any of these things, but it was just saying please get to that next level of detail for us. That was the intent. So if there's a way to modify that, I'd be open to that too. But that was the intent was not to come back and with something we just approved, it was just to force us getting to that level of detail. >> Garza: So I will work on some possible amendments to that language because -- what I'm hearing is what staff could bring back is if you expand the convention center, here's how you could fund abc and E. If you don't expand the convention center center, here's how you could still do abc and F. Is that your intent? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. I think that was part of the conversation that Ms. Houston has. Or what things can we do -- I don't see it necessarily as an either/or potentially, going back to what you said before and both councilmember Renteria and councilmember pool said. There may be three different funding sources that we can bring to bear to some of the things that we want to have happen. But this was asking council to get to that next level of detail for us to be able to answer those questions. I would be happy to work with you on working with that. >> Garza: I don't think I can work with you -- >> Mayor Adler: On the bulletin board or whatever like that. Yes, councilmember pool? >> Pool: Yeah, that was a concern I had as well, the first be it resolved sounded like we had already taken a vote on expanding the convention center and that we were all in support of that and we actually hadn't even had that conversation. [11:32:10 AM] We talked about all the different things that we might be able to do with money that might flow at some undetermined time, at some unknown amount. And we have not gone straight in and talked about does this dais agree that we should expand the downtown convention center center? And I think for transparency and accountability that is a question that we have to take up. Which is why I'm still supportive of pulling out and severing the different elements so that we can deal with each one individually with all their unique pros and cons. In fact, I had asked my staff to do an amendment for that first be it resolved as well, so it sounds like I'm not the only one thinking along these lines. I have a question on which tif it was that the city manager was saying. Are you talking about the waller creek tif might not be ready by the end of the year? Because that is something that I think we have -- I hope that this work here hasn't actually delayed staff or pulled staff off of some other projects that had already begun. And if we cannot get the waller creek tif buttoned up by the end of the year so it can begin in January of 2018, that concerns me greatly. Is that what you were saying or were you talking about a different tif? >> I was talking about the waller creek tif and the extension of the time from 2021 to 2029, I believe is -- >> The time extension. >> Pool: I'd like to maybe have a conversation with you offline will B that to understand what we may need to do to get that across the finish line. I think there's some expectation that that might happen. >> We may have to start talking about prioritizing other projects. >> Pool: I would not be at all surprised. I think we have hit everybody really hard and heavy and we don't ever seem to let up with our new initiatives and there's 11 of us and there didn't used to be that many people so naturally there is a larger workload coming your direction. [11:34:13 AM] I think we need to give you a hand that way. Then I just had one last question on the resolution from the mayor on your page 5. You talk about the waller creek tax tif in paragraph 3 and on paragraph 4 you say create a downtown tif or other funding -- is that yet another tax increment funding zone? Is that -- that's not the pid that you're talking about in paragraph 1. Is that another tif? >> Mayor Adler: In the resolution that we passed earlier this year we asked council -- we asked staff to respond to different funding options which could be available for different things downtown. And one of the things that was mentioned by Mr. Canally in the staff memorandum was a tif that was not the extension of the waller creek tif. So it was an element in that memo from staff, so it's included here as well. So it could take multiple forms or I didn't want to limit staff in answering the question to any one plan because I think different people had different questions about that. So it was intended to be broad enough for all of the questions that council was asking to be answered. >> Pool: So I have Mr. Canally's memo here from July 6. And some of the concerns are how general and lacking in detail, which makes sense because at the time we hadn't really dug into the issue and we're only now digging into the issue. But I have some concerns about overlaying additional and increasing the number of tax increment fansing type mechanisms that we use especially downtown because that ties up that increment of revenue and directs it to something for a significant period of time. [11:36:17 AM] And then we can't go back in and adjust that or twist the levers or turn the dials as needed. So I really want to have a pretty in-depth conversation about how many tifs do we have downtown, which I know we have the downtown tif which supports the da so a.>> That's a pid. >> And then there are the pids. So we need to line all of them up and really understand if downtown is an economic engine and generates significant tax revenues for the city and we overlay a lot of different restrictions and constraints on the use of that revenue, then we will indeed have very significant difficulty in reaching out with revenues to take care of programs or infrastructure needs that are not downtown. And that has been a concern of many in our community for decades. But a lot of the interest is only -- it isn't only downtown, but that's what it looks like. And I want to be really sensitive to that and make sure that we don't inadvertently end up increasing constraints that mean that additional revenues can only be spent in downtown precincts when in fact our needs are great everywhere else. >> Mayor Adler: And I share all those concerns and this was to get us to the next level of detail to actually be able to have a meaningful conversation on that issue. Councilmember alter? >> Alter: I wanted to go back to the waller creek tif and say I would also like more of that detail, but I did have a question right now. So to the extent that what's being proposed is an extension of the time of an existing tif, so nothing would change for next year, I'm just trying to understand why January 1st is the deadline, if it doesn't change anything until 2028 or whatever the end date is, just in terms of the timeline I understand you're saying -- if I understood you correctly you're saying it would be difficult to get it all done at this point for January, but does that preclude us from having it in place so that they can do their fund-raising and their other material at some other point in the year, but not wait until January 1st of 2019? [11:38:41 AM] >> It should not impact any of their fund-raising because they already have the existing tif. Typically when you set up a new tif you want to have it effective with January 1st so the tax assessment for that new year gets built into it. You grab that tax assessment -- assessed valuation as soon as you get it. In this case it is an extension, but knowing the workload of the folks that would have to work on it, I don't think we could get it done in the first quarter of this fiscal year. We still would have to do financing plan, how we would spend the money and the project plan is what we would spend it on and the financing plan. And we would have to issue the debt. So we would have to go through the rating process and that sort of thing? There's a lot of work just to doing the tif. And there is that partner that we have on the waller creek tif, Travis county donates 50% of the tax increment to the waller creek project as well. They may not agree to do that if we extend the timetable, the property tax is a significant revenue source to the Travis county. It's one of their largest. That would be a complication in forming the extension of it. So we would have to work with that through bond council as well as financial advisors as well as the county staff. >> Alter: But to the extent that it's not a new tif, it's an extension and it wouldn't be changing anything for next year, there's nothing to say it couldn't be done in March because you're in the trying to change it for what you would be getting next year. And then I did want to just say that it does matter for their fund-raising whether they have a secure funding source through time because it makes it more attractive for people to donate the bigger dollars because they know they can count on that. So I do think it does matter for the course of the project and our ability to see the fruits of the labor that's gone into it so far. [11:40:51 AM] So I look forward with talking with you about that. I know we have a meeting tomorrow and maybe we can touch on that then. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Are we ready to go to the next item? Ms. Houston? >> Houston: I wish, but we're not yet. On page 2 of 5, this tourism public improvement district, it says that downtown hotels will participate in this but I was reading something last night or the night before that it says 60% of the hotels in Austin. So can somebody clarify is it just in the downtown area or is it 60% of the hotels in Austin? Because that's where I read it someplace and I can't find it now. >> I think it's of all the rooms or a certain percentage of the rooms I think in the city. >> In the city. >> Mayor Adler: That's my understanding, not just downtown. >> Houston: So it's not just the downtown hotels. >> Mayor Adler: That's my understanding, but whatever the rules are with respect to the fid we have to get to the next level and find out. >> Houston: But I need to find that before because some of the hotel rooms are outside of downtown. The man said 75% of the hotel rooms are outside of downtown. So are those people included in this and do they agree to this? So I think again this is one more thing that is kind of an outstanding for me before I'll be able to say that sounds like a good deal? >> Mayor Adler: And we can ask staff to take a look at that but one of the reasons this is in here is because I didn't know the answer to all those questions, so this is direction to our staff and legal to engage with the hotel people and find out what they will agree to and what they won't agree to or what we'll agree to and what we won't agree to. And to take a look at who it is that needs to agree. >> Houston: So as has already been said in that first paragraph if it says to come back to council with tools necessary to include ordinance -- tools necessary to do what it is that we're trying to do, that might include an ordinance, but I think I need to have the answers before we go to the next level. [11:42:58 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Before we would ever approve any ordinance or any agreement or any tool, I would hike to know what they say -- I would like to know what they say and what they would do and what they would mean so that I would also know whether or not I wanted to vote for them. But there's a lot more information to I want have, just like the question you just asked, that I think this process is at this point we're saying go out and answer all these questions. >> Houston: And you're willing to wait for the time that it will take for staff to go out and research all this and give us good answers back. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Houston: Okay. But it felt like we were being rushed to do it tomorrow. I mean Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: It was not my intent. I just want them to start trying to answer the questions. Anything else on this one before we move on? Okay. We'll go on to the next one then. That gets us to item number 55. Mr. Casar, Mr. Flannigan. >> Casar: Mayor, I'll introduce this briefly. I wanted to see if folks had questions. We have a really great opportunity to improve lots of folks' lives. I appreciate my co-sponsors and the councils considering this for this opportunity to be brought up by a lot of community groups that had been working and researching and talking folks -- to folks for a really long time to bring forward the opportunity for us to give Austin workers the freedom to earn paid sick days. Y'all know we have more limited powers on the council than we would like in all situations. But this is a real opportunity for us to improve the lives of over 200,000 Austin families that currently have no access to any kind of family leave or sick leave at all. Those are folks that have to make hard choices about whether to pay the rent or be taking care of a sick child or about their grocery budget versus taking a day off to be at the bedside of an ailing parent. [11:45:01 AM] And there are eight states and over 30 cities and over 100 countries that have addressed this issue by protecting workers' right to earn sick days. So I think that I think this resolution moves us through the formal properties to answer seven key questions about what this ordinance would look like. We have lots of cities obviously to learn from, that we can model from. So by moving this forward here in September the goal would be to have the stakeholder process happen through the end of this year and then we could have a vote on the ordinance in February. We've touched base with city staff, they have put together the resources and are ready to go is my understanding to host the meetings between here and the end of the year. And also lots of community organizations will be available Thursday speaking to their commitment to helping us work on this. It's a very diverse coalition of folks that have come around this so far. Folks like the center for public priority that have been researching this. The safe alliance, who research how folks who often don't have trouble getting to appointments or taking time off work to address violence because of access to paid leave. Folks from the labor movement, but also local and small businesses have been engaged in this and I think will be critical to answering those key questions for us so that we could make a decision hopefully before Valentine's day of next year to address this really urgent need. I look forward to hearing if you all have any questions. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Flannigan. >> Flannigan: I just wanted to hopefully make a family R. Friendly amendment that the -- friendly amendment that the list of participating organizations, I want to make sure there's some representation from human management resource companies so we have folks that understand that unique part of the workforce and how it might impact those types of contracts and their work too. [11:47:03 AM] >> Casar: I'm happy to add that. If there's specific language you would like to post on the message board I will just incorporate it. >> Houston: I appreciate that because I will be posting a couple on the message board. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter? >> Alter: Thank you for bringing this forward. I appreciate you looking into it. I had a couple of minor suggestions I wanted to propose for the conversation. One is if you can add the Asian chamber and the small business mercantile oceans to the stakeholders who are participating in there. And we also have aid as an employer and they have some folks that I think don't fit sick leave as well. And then I wanted to clarify, I think it was in what I read, but I wanted to make sure that the intentions that this will also address the fiscal costs to the city as implementation as part of the conversation. >> Casar: So yes, I'm happy to add additional stakeholders here. And again, if councilmember Houston and councilmember alter, if you are able to post those so that we can -- my staff can easily do that, that would be really helpful. I will check back with legal, but generally the intent -- I think there's some challenges with regulating other governmental entities associated with the city's powers, so we'll touch base with legal, but maybe that can just be a pending question on how we regulate that. So that's I think -- that's sort of to your aid question. But thank you. >> Alter: But in terms of the fiscal costs to the city? >> Casar: Yes, the fiscal costs to the city, right now as you know from our budget we managed to set some funds aside to ensure that all of our temporary employees have access to sick days and I think I'm actually meeting with director hays right after work session today to sort of get a sense of how much it's going to cost us. [11:49:10 AM] What's been really interesting in looking at the research on how this has gone in other cities is that indeed a significant portion of workers don't use their sick days at all during a given year and tend to use somewhere between a third and a half of the sick pay that they have. In a year where it's used because it's kind of like an insurance policy. So the fiscal impact tends to be significantly less than just paying everybody all of their sick days every year. So -- but I will -- I'll confer and try to work on that. I think it might be some separate resolution and work because this is an ordinance again that I think would ultimately govern the behavior of private entities within the city and since we're a governmental entity I think we sort that out by resolution and by budget. >> Alter: Maybe I wasn't being leer clear on what I meant. In order for this to succeed there has to be an enforcement mechanism so somebody at the city has to be in charge of making sure that this is enforced. And so there are some budgetary implications if this is going to succeed or there has to be a carrot system depending on which way this proceeds, but ultimately you would require some staffing. So I think that should be part of the conversation so that it has a chance of succeeding at a higher level. >> Casar: I did misunderstand you. And I will -- if you'd like one of the seven questions that we're asking the stakeholder group to really look at is how we should manage enforcement and maybe we should be more explicit and add something in there to say find out how we would manage and what resources would be necessary to manage it appropriately based on whatever the ordinance actually says. Thank you for that. >> Alter: The other matters too, but I was asking about that. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston? >> Houston: As we talk about enforcement, so the city will be -- I know the city has the ability to enforce rules and regulations regarding health and safety, but does the city have regular layings to enforce private businesses, how they pay sick leave or vacation time or any of those kind of, quote, what employee benefits are considered? [11:51:32 AM] >> If you pass an ordinance that directs us then we would have to figure out about the enforcement mechanism so we usually enforce things through class C misdemeanors. There could be civil enforcement. It's something we have to work through. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this one? Mr. Casar. >> Casar: Thanks, y'all. And if anyone has any other amendments, I really appreciate seeing them on the board, but I will go ahead and try to craft what councilmember alter has brought forward on fiscal resources and then of course those stakeholder additions are appreciated. So thank y'all. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? We'll move on to the next one. The next one was 72, 73. Am I correct that the applicant here is requesting a postponement? >> Mayor and council K Jerry rusthoven, assistant director of planning and zoning. I am the applicant on this case and I am requesting an indefinite postponement. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So this would be postponed next week. >> Alter: I have a question on that. So I'm just trying to understand why we wouldn't want to move forward with historic zoning in this case if we're going to interinto negotiations they can still demolish it and I'm not sure if it's an executive session question or not because it deals with negotiation. So I'm trying to understand -- >> Actually, the mayor actually asked us to do this in executive session so we have listed -- we have five things you have asked to go into executive session today. >> Alter: Okay. I'll hold my question. >> Mayor Adler: That then gets us to 102. We'll come back to 101. [11:53:34 AM] Mr. Flannigan had pulled this, unpulled this, but councilmember alter, you said you had a question about 102? >> Alter: Yeah. I understand that a portion of 102 involves space reallocation for the clerk's office. And that the clerk's office would then be in three different spaces across city hall and there were some concerns that we talked about a lot when we did the city clerk's evaluation about the needs for space. And I was just wondering if someone could speak to how a decision on 102 is a decision for the clerk's office or how those are related. >> Councilmember Houston, Lorraine Rizer with real estate. One is that we will be postponing this item. The property owner informed me on Monday that they have a hotel deal on this property and so until they can work out the terms of that hotel they're not willing to commit to a lease at this time. So I will be pulling that item. And on the second part of your question, again, we were looking for a short-term fix because there's going to be Reno -- major renovations in city hall to accommodate all the needs. So this is one piece in the puzzle and we understand the city clerk's needs and we're going to be working with her as we're moving forward to move other entities out of the city hall. There's just not one single space big enough without major renovations so we're trying to make -- let her have some additional space as soon as possible, but looking for a longer term fix with renovating city hall. >> Alter: As you move forward with that I would hope the conversations can be open and that there can be communication. I know that there's a lot of concerns making sure that there needs be being addressed so if we can make sure that the safety concerns and the other concerns of the clerk's office are a part of this process as it moves to the next steps, I would appreciate that. [11:55:54 AM] >> 'Em. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: For 101? >> Pool: I had sent an email asking for a briefing and just to get all of us up to speed on where all of the city hall renovations and what we're doing to help with the space constraints that the city clerk's office has city manager, do we have a time yet for when that might be on an agenda? >> No, but we'll get it scheduled. >> Pool: That's great. I think that will lay out all of the particulars and then we maybe can help give morphine tune direction possibly. And sometimes the real estate office I feel like you have a magic wand and you touch things and they fall into place. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Before we go into executive session, Ms. Kitchen, you pulled 101. >> Kitchen: Yes. I just wanted to bring this to people's attention in case anyone had any questions. And this is a resolution related to small area planning. Just a couple of clarifications about it. It is a -- it sets a path for criteria to come back to us related to small area planning. This is a subject matter that they have been working on and tell be able to continue to pursue and then bring back to us, identify geographic areas, proposed criteria, proposed changes to the land development code and a proposed plan for implementation and resources needed. I want to make the decision tings that this -- distinction that this does not initiate a code change. What this does is just ask our staff to bring us this information back. And then our next step after that, after we look at the criteria and approve criteria would be to initiate a code change. [11:57:57 AM] So I wanted to make that distinction. Business, distinction. This is about small area planning, this is not addressing neighborhood plans. Neighborhood plans are separate conversation and certainly one that we will have at some point but that's not what this one is about. This is about small area planning. And then, finally, I know that we are scheduled on our codenext briefing tomorrow to get a report back from the -- I guess -- I may be using the wrong name, long-term planning -- the group working on small area planning in our staff. Am I using the wrong term? >> No. It's our long-range planning. >> Kitchen: Long-range planning, sorry. They'll be briefing us tomorrow. That's great. That will help us understand where they are in their process. This resolution just confirms what they've been doing, provides some additional direction to them in terms of bringing information back to us. As I said before, it doesn't initiate a code change. It actually just initiatives some -- puts some parameters and some specifics around what we'd like to see back. So I just wanted to bring this to everyone's attention in case there were any questions. >> Mayor Adler: So there's going to be a presentation tomorrow as part of the codenext on the long- range planning and if you could just touch on this resolution in that context, that would abgreat. >> You mean tomorrow or today? >> Mayor Adler: Tomorrow. I just don't want you to have to give the same presentation -- >> Kitchen: I'm is not asking for a presentation right now so -- >> Mayor Adler: Tomorrow, when the staff reports on the long range planning talk about how this dovetails with that, okay? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. On Thursday I will be Austin housing finance corporation, housing ten. Agenda item number 10. [11:59:58 AM] There are some concerns from the Austin interfaith [indiscernible] Whatever that acronym is about the allocations, and they would like to pull that for conversation. Interfaith action of central Texas. It's about their budget. >> Mayor Adler: Right. And I'm missing it. You're saying agenda item number -- >> Houston: 25, and on the Austin housing finance corporation, agenda item number 10. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Got you. >> Mayor Adler: Thayer they're synced. >> Mayor Adler: We'll puss those and discuss those at the meeting on Thursday. Anything else? Yes. >> Garza: Item 19 is the a postponement on that law and municipal court and stakeholders are working on a final agreement so they're still working and it's looking positive. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Before we go into -- Ms. Kitchen. >> Kitchen: I was just wondering if we're going to -- if we have anything set for time certain? >> Mayor Adler: We don't have anything that's set for time certain yet. Mr. Casar. >> Casar: I'd like to request 55, the sick days one be after dinner. >> Mayor Adler: 55 after dinner. Okay. At this point I think that there are a lot of people that are coming perhaps to talk about the downtown issue, so I think we have to have a time for that to happen after dinner as well. If there's going to be an agreement I'll take a look at and other people can take a look at your amendment that it may be we can limit the number of speakers on that, but let's see if there's consensus to move forward on that. [12:02:02 PM] On both those, on 55 and on the downtown deal, if somebody shows up in the afternoon and is able to speak on it and wants to speak then rather than coming back in the evening we'll dough what we have done in the past and give them that opportunity to be able to do that. We have a briefing before we go into executive session on the boards and commission -- we already did is that? Okay. Good job! [ Laughter ] Good job. And so that gets us then to executive session. City council will now go in closed session to take up five items pursuant to section 551.071 of the government code, city council will discuss legal matters related to e2, breaion king verses Richter, item B three, hb100, state regulation of the transportation companies, item 18, resolution concerning the firefighters contract. Item 72, the montopolis -- 500 montopolis drive issue, 72, 73, and also item 83, which is the mode of transportation and oil field haulers, inc., matter. >> Alter: Mayor, I think there's an ifc related to 72, 73. If we're going to talk -- I'm wondering if it may come up in the conversation and so if we should -- >> Mayor Adler: Which -- >> Alter: Mention that? >> Mayor Adler: Give me the item number. >> Alter: I don't -- I want to say it's -- >> Mayor Adler: Let's call that out. >> Alter: I don't know which one it is, but -- sorry, I didn't have the item. >> Mayor Adler: This is the one related to montopolis so it would be 56. [12:04:08 PM] Fifty-six also being pulled so 72, 73. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Without -- number 1 has been withdrawn. Hearing no objection, we will now go into executive session. It is five minutes after 12:00. I don't think we'll be coming -- I guess potentially we could if you wanted to have a conversation about those items. So we'll see. All right. We're going back into executive session. [ Executive session ] [2:57:15 PM] (Mayor Adler) We are now out of regular session. In closed session we discussed legal matters related to items E2 and E3. E2, E3, 18, 56, 72 and 83. It is 2:58 p.m. and the meeting stands adjourned. [2:58:00 PM]