City Council Work Session Transcript – 4/10/2018 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 4/10/2018 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 4/10/2018 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:10:25 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think we have a quorum to we can get started. Today is Tuesday, April 2015 April 10th, 2018. We're in the boards and commissions room, 301 west second street, Austin city hall. We have just a few items that have been pulled today and we had some folks that -- from a timing reason looked like the appropriate place for us to start was with the childcare report, so we're going to start with that. >> Mayor and council, Sarah Hensley, interim city manager. I was going to kick it off. I want you to know how proud I am of Donna and her team in taking a more holistic approach at addressing this resolution, which has an extensive amount of deliverables, they've done a tremendous job not only of working internally in the city, but you will find some of our partners outside the city. I'm thrilled that we're able to provide you with information that I think will help you as you move forward in your budget under the area of economic opportunities and affordability. So I'm going to turn it over to Donna and her team who have done just a tremendous job and I want to thank them personally. >> >> Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everyone. As Sarah said, my name is Donna Sundstrom, the director of public health and this is a report on childcare and pre-k services services. You have the revised [9:12:25 AM] presentation that was distributed out to you that we're distributing today. As you recall, the resolution included 12 different deliverables, I'll be referencing these deliverables throughout the presentation as we go along. To provide a little bit of background, Austin public health was identified as the lead department for this resolution. And due to the expansiveness of the deliverables that were involved, along with the importance of this topic to our community, we convened a group of early childhood experts from community to help us in working on the resolution. And we would like to take the time now to acknowledge these representatives from these different organizations, from our work group members and sincerely thank them for the contributions they've made in this whole process. So Austin community college, we had representation from Austin community college, Austin independent visibility, early childhood council, E 3 alliance, United Way of greater Austin. Travis county health and human services and workforce solutions capital area. Some of those members of the work group are in the audience today so I definitely want to recognize them and sincerely thank them for their efforts and distribution R. Contributions on this work. In addition I would also like to thank the multitude of city departments and outside entities that we also consulted with to ensure that we were providing a comprehensive response to this resolution. Those are listed here. We also developed an in-depth report that responds to all 12 deliverables. In the presentation today I'm going to be providing a very high level, brief overview of just some of the areas. So as we begin, it's important, I want to clarify [9:14:27 AM] what high quality is in relation to childcare services. High quality is defined as childcare providers obtaining a quality certification from the national association for the education of young children or the national accreditation commission or from Texas rising star. Texas rising star does have two, three and four star levels, however, only four is considered high quality. The first deliverable of the resolution requested quality ratings of childcare providers by council district. And an interactive map has been developed for this deliverable. An example of information is shown there on the slide. It also -- the map also includes other relevant leaders that will be important for discussion and analysis as -- as we further analyze and work on these issues. Also the link to that interactive map is at the bottom of the slide. The number of children using childcare subsidies are licensed providers so that information was included in the interactive map as well. And more information about childcare subsidies and the details of that is included in the report. Deliverable 3 asked about differential factors among childcare centers in relation to teacher education, pay, benefits, working conditions. So this slide represents information on childcare teacher education. And you can see some variances in our community. For example, 25% of childcare teachers in east Austin have no formal childhood education on early childhood development compared to seven to nine percent in west, north and [9:16:29 AM] central Austin. Childcare teacher wages, the average range of wages that childcare teachers make ranges from eight dollars to about $16, with the majority of those salaries being below the city's established living wage. On deliverable four and five it requested information on public land or co- location opportunities available through local government entities. In speaking with the different local entities, the most promising option appears to be in aid in under utilized campuses. Aisd shared this map with us that indicates the elementary schools that are below 75% capacity. And as you can see, most of them are in the eastern crescent of Austin. The lowest cost option in regard to capital improvements that would be needed in order to meet the requirements of early childhood classrooms. So that may be just doing capital improvements for hand washing sinks, diaper changing areas, et cetera. So this seemed to be an initialing area with our conversations with aisd, but we would need a collaborative process with aid and the city to have a structure. Deliverable 6 was related to city programs that exist and access to quality childcare so we partnered with the human resources department to do a city employees survey to look at the needs and opinions of our workforce. This slide shows the type of childcare used. From the respondents that we had to the survey, almost [9:18:29 AM] half of them are using a licensed childcare facility or preschool. And then second most type used is a friend, relative -- friend or relative. In looking at affordability, the benchmark for affordability is for the childcare expenses to be no more than 10% of the family's income. In looking at the city employee survey, out of the city employees who responded to this question, 66% are spending more than 10% on childcare expenses. The city has four programs that are for city employees with young children. And this slide here shows the -- really getting at the employee awareness of city of Austin childcare programs. You can see the variances of different programs. And we met with human resources department to review all of the responses to the survey and to also look for ways -- for areas of childcare benefits for city employees -- that most benefit the city employees. And together we're working collaboratively on updating the eligibility requirements, reviewing the reimbursement rate and considering a tiered rate of financial assistance and also developing a marketing campaign of all of the city employee childcare programs that are available. Also the importance of high quality childcare. And the importance of early childhood education. The next slides are focused on information on equity gaps in childcare. As you can see, Travis county doesn't fare too much better than Texas with 86% of our families with -- with children from low income families with working parents living in subsidized [9:20:29 AM] childcare deserts. This slide here provides more information of the numbers of high quality childcare centers by council district. And this slide here provides information on kindergarten readiness. And you can see that kindergarten readiness has dropped for all children, but more so for children in low income families. The resolution also called for the evaluation of future and potential benefits ever locating a high quality childcare center at the highland mall site. This slide provides information from the district and also from the city employee survey? In August of 2017, council action selected highland site for the new planning and development center. A portion of the site has been identified for potential future standalone childcare center with step out for -- stub out for I utilities to be installed. It would require separate design and standards for the site and the being. Also funding would need to be identified and consideration for the outdoor space that's required for a high quality childcare center. Resolution 12 requested information about the current access to pre-k services and the opportunities for expansion. So in this slide here you see that shows that children that attend pre-k have significantly higher levels of kindergarten readiness than those that stay at home or with a relative. This gap, and you can see in the graph on the right side, is even greater with children with low income families. This slide here shows information of the current pre-k access and availability by district and in speaking with Austin and pflugerville aid, there is [9:22:30 AM] some expansion opportunities of up to 11 classrooms. It would cost about $176,000 in initial costs, but then could leverage 112,000 in state funding annually per classroom. And there may be opportunities with other school districts for similar investment in future years as well. So in addition to the invaluable expertise that the work group provided throughout the process and gathering the information, they also compiled a list of items for council consideration. They've grouped the items by policy funding 2018 bond and additional items that include policy and ending. In speaking with quality childcare providers, there seem to be some opportunities to explore current fee schedules among relevant city departments. For opening, expanding and operating a high quality childcare center. Additionally there could be expansion of the zoning categories where childcare is a permitted use. In the report there's more details on this. Also, there is -- could be an opportunity for the city to consider including a childcare center when appropriate as an optional component in future pet processes. And this could be for future large facilities such as APD's future headquarters or Austin energy's future headquarters. Moving on to the funding items for council consideration from the work group, the work group was very judicious in developing items that require funding with the hope that inclusion in the fiscal year 2018-19 budget and the total cost of all the four items is approximately 430,000 [9:24:30 AM] combined. We've already provided information about pre-k expansion previously. This slide focuses on the other three items the first two are quality investments through teacher education. The first would expand available slots for pre-k. The second would improve quality through teacher education. And these also would qualify the teachers for wage stipends. That could help with some of the wages and salary issues that we discussed earlier. The third item relates to the expiration and incentive programs in public-private partnerships for childcare services. In working with economic development there appears that more research is needed in order to determine what program structures would be the most effective. Economic development estimated that $75,000 could provide a consultant to explore more work into this area. In collaboration with Austin public health and Austin community stakeholders. On the 2018 bond item, the proposed bond package approved by the bond election advisory task force includes a dove springs health center. And this is to -- this is to include an affordable high quality childcare center as part of this project. In working with public works and the proposed programs at that facility, it does look like a high quality childcare center could be included without additional cost and within the square footage. This would provide a community benefit, improving access for children with low income families and also city of Austin employees. The last item that I'd like to highlight for council consideration from the work group is funding for at least one employee to initiate a planning process and develop a coordinated early childhood enrollment and resource and referral system. And this would really help families know what [9:26:33 AM] they'rable for, how to apply. It could reduce waitlists. It could get more kids enrolled in pre-k and also leverage state funding improving school readiness. There are more items from the work group items consideration that is included in the report. I do think with the city's -- the new city strategic direction 2023 plan that some of these work group items for council consideration do align with the economic affordability and -- economic opportunity and affordability. So this concludes my presentation. I would like to take the time now to introduce my staff who have really led the effort in this and have really -- have done an incredible job of pulling all this data together, working across departments and stakeholders. And that's Rachel Farley, Laura Williamson and Cindy Gomez. Thank you. I want to thank staff and the working group that have worked on this. They've put a lot of work into this. I want to remind folks why there was a resolution I and my co-sponsors brought before council because there was discussion during the highland mall redevelopment about a childcare center possibly being in that building. And the information -- I don't know where it came from, but the comment was made, you know -- I think it was mayor pro tem who brought that up. We were talking about childcare, what happened to that? And the comment was, well, we did some studies done and information that showed that this area -- I believe it was like saturated with childcare or we were concerned about putting mom and pops out of business. And I just as somebody who has recently looked for childcare, I just couldn't believe that to be the case [9:28:34 AM] that there was too much. And so that's what drove the -- this resolution. And if you look at slide 15 you will see, and there's another one about district 4 as well, that says the data actually showed the critical shortage of early childcare and education centers not just in district 4s, but you will also see in districts 2 and 4 that have most of our low income families, have the least centers that are high quality. So I think there's a lot of opportunities here. I think there's some -- there's policy decisions we can make such as allowing childcare in more zoning categories. You know, we talk about trying to tackle traffic and congestion, we have to think about other ways. And one way is to bring -- help bring childcare closer to families so they're not driving far. I know families that have picked a childcare facility that they have to go out of their way and then come back to work. And so I understand that we have a lot of needs and priorities and we have to balance all of those, but there's things that we can do, for example, the one- time cost of $16,000 could help -- it's a one-time cost to help start. It's seed money for classrooms, for early pre-k. So let's see what else I wanted to say. I look forward to -- because I know that the city does provide a subsidy to employees, but it hasn't been changed in years. So if there's a way in our next budget we can maybe increase that a little. And I've met with I believe it was Texas mutual and it was a really awesome meeting about their CEO who decided it was best for business -- it was a business decision to put childcare on this facility and how he got a lot of push back from all [9:30:34 AM] different places, but he went in there saying it's good for us to have childcare. And it was just an example of when we want it and we know it's necessary, we can make it happen. So I hope that this does meet some of our priorities, does meet some of our strategic outcomes and gets us closer to those. I know many of the stakeholders have known this data for years, but I think it's great that we have so we can make data driven decisions and see how we can help with the situation. But if there's other questions, of course, but I wanted to ask if any of the working group would like to come up and make a few comments. >> It thank you very much. I'll just take a minute. I'm sue carpenter, I'm the chief programs officer with United Way for greater Austin. And first of all, I want to thank this council for launching this resolution. And I also want to compliment the city staff who really are -- this is just an mazing team that you have -- an amazing team that you have employed here who brought the community around in a very thoughtful process that brought together the latest research, the local data and also thoughtful consideration of our community assets and how we could bring things forward. I want to let you know that this resolution has been carefully reviewed by the school readiness action plan leadership team, which is the group of all the planners and researchers and policymakers in the early childhood arena and we have endorsed it. It was also presented to early childhood stakeholders at a large community meeting and they are very strongly in support of all of the recommendations that were made here. I support personally all of the recommendations, but I personally want to draw your [9:32:35 AM] attention to those that would leverage -- could leverage literally millions of dollars in T.E.A. Dollars that are we are not currently taking advantage of. So for example, with the program that you were talking about, Delia, with equipping a classroom with $16,000, in year one you're already pulling down from the state over $100,000. So an initial 16,000-dollar investment over five years brings down almost half a million dollars. But more importantly to me, that means that children are getting two years of very high quality pre-k which the research shows greatly amplifies their opportunity to be successful in school. So it has the economic benefit as well as we know child outcomes. So I hope that you will consider all of the recommendations. We think that this would make a huge difference in our community and the economic viability of families. >> Mayor Adler: I also want to thank the group and the task force for their work on this. Obviously a lot of work went into the report. And councilmember Garza, thank you for in this resolution noticing that issue. And to the degree, manager, in your process going over three months to try and figure out what you've put in the budget or not, you've asked for input from councilmembers, I would endorse being able to do at least some of these recommendations, especially the ones that leverage the federal and the state money. Ms. Houston, Mr. Casar and then Ms. Kitchen. >> Houston: Thank you for the work that you've done. I had a question about -- on slide 26. Regarding a resource and referral system. [9:34:35 AM] And for some reason I thought that was something that 211 was already doing, with United Way, 211. >> United Way does offer some referral services. There was talk at one point to have a dedicated early childhood resource person. But this would actually expand the referral services. What we're talking about in coordinated system is you would have a navigator who would look at a family's income and see which type of childcare best fit their needs. So would it be pre-k, would it be early head start, would it be head start? Would it be just childcare? That would be one component as well as, you know, looking for the needs of a private pay person who may just need in north Austin or east Austin, I need half a day here. It's a combined service of resource and referral. >> Houston: So for the last four years now I've been talking about duplication of services. And so many of my low income children have case managers from a variety of other entities. How do we keep from complicating those services? Because we're also funding case management services from integral care, child protective services. We have a lot those entities do case management. At the school system we're paying support specialists. We're doing all kinds of space management. So how do we keep from duplicating the services that we're also paying for as the city of Austin? >> I think in can be a benefit to the case managers out in the community. We just had a realtime example that happened toward the end of last week where a case manager was searching for childcare for a family that was in a crisis situation so we were able to navigate through that [9:36:36 AM] system, but I think it could be an asset to those case managers out there that's really focused on the early childhood and high quality childcare topic areas. >> Houston: Of course I need the need for that. I know better than a lot of people that we need to start as early as we can with language and getting people ready -- emotionally ready for school, but it's still the duplication of the funding. We're all paying for funding to do these kinds of things. And I didn't hear you talk about -- I hear it as an asset, but I didn't know how you would stop the duplication or even address the duplication of services? >> And I think that it's a good point to look at and make sure that the duplication of services isn't happening. So we don't want to provide something with something going on already. So I'm looking at it more like a complimentary service out there because it is a very complex topic area that is difficult to navigate even for case managers. But we can definitely look at that more, councilmember Houston, and make sure -- >> Houston: That's been something we've been asking for in all of our health and human services contracts because we pay so much money. And the money that we allocate to the school system, some of those funds. So I'm just asking you all to at least be aware that that's an issue in how we serve people, especially those at the lower economic end of the scale. >> And councilmember Houston, we're also hoping that this type of system would create some more efficiencies in the sense that if there are students students -- children on a waiting list for childcare subsidies who could be benefiting from public pre-k for free for nine months of the school year that that could get more kids into high quality pre-k and then [9:38:36 AM] maybe that would open up more spaces in the childcare subsidy waitlist or in that system. Just kind of directing -- helping get children in the best the spot for them and creating more access and efficiencies. >> Houston: And was that included in your report? >> They did provide some data on childcare, especially having the dove springs conversations and the health center that's coming up. So yes, in some aspects. >> Houston: I know they're part of that team, but as far as this particular -- >> They did not sit on this work group, but they did give us input for some items items. >> Houston: I just asked that question because they serve a lot of the kids we're talking about and I did notice them on the group group. >> Casar: I'm really glad to have seen this working and really appreciate and trust the staff and community groups that are working on this. It's always really stark to me, as councilmember Garza noted, just how skewed it is, how many low income children really live so heavily in districts 2 and 4. So I think that there's some really promising ideas as far as using the facilities in dove springs or whatever else to handle some portion of the needs in district 2. I'm really interested in the highland mall site as well as the Austin schools on what would be the most quick options. I just don't know. I know that we actually have a lot of schools that are full or doubly full, [9:40:37 AM] especially with Ta brown having to get torn down and now two schools being at some of our elementary schools all at once. And the highland mall site seems like a promising opportunity, but building a whole new building I don't know how long that takes and if it works. If we're in this budget going to think about making some of these decisions and getting moving on this, which I would support, I'm just interested sort of from the district 4 side what the next steps might be as far as what the most efficient way is to get moving and interested in supporting this in different parts across the city, but I didn't see it included in this presentation, but when you look at the numbers of low income kids it's just so heavily screwed into our two districts primarily that it seems like a good place to start and I'm glad that y'all sort of identified those two areas of need here in the presentation. I just don't know which of the two is the way that we should go yet. And if you have any ideas -- if you've already started working on that, we'd be happy to hear where you are at. >> Both the highland mall site and the partnership with aid would require more planning. And Greg canally is here to speak about highland mall if you have specific questions about that site. As far as aid is promising in the sense as was mentioned, there is classroom space that could be made available, but they were very preliminary conversations. And there are some challenges likes they do currently have childcare on site for their staff at some centers, but they're all on the school year, the school calendar and not provided year-round. So if we were providing for employees or low income, there wouldn't be full year services. There would be things to navigate on both ends. I think both are promising, but both would take some promising. >> Casar: And it's year- round if it's at the highland mall site or the school district. I think the highland mall site is in-house because that's just us and our property. If there's anything we need [9:42:37 AM] to do to get the conversations going, creativity going on the partnership with the school district, you guys let us know. Because if the building space is already there then we might just be a couple of steps ahead. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen and then mayor pro tem and [inaudible]. >> I have a question about slide 15 or actually it's related to slide 15. That has to do with high quality centers. So I'm wondering what are the criteria for high quality centers. I think this might be inherent in some of the recommendations, but how do we help centers become high quality? Is that the teacher training that's been -- or are there other aspects that are important to the criteria for whether a center is high quality? >> Donna, do you want may he to take that? So currently the city is most of thing the quality childcare collaborative and that includes funding for coaches and mentors who go into childcare centers to train teachers, but also look at the standards for national accreditation, whether it's the neyec or the national accreditation commission or Texas rising star. So that coach kind of assesses assesses the level of quality that center wants to pursue and then breaking down the different requirements. So whether that's teacher qualifications, they've navigate them over to Austin community college or any other higher Ed institute for more degreed or hours in early childhood. Or they will start looking at the classroom environment and seeing what kind of supports are needed there. And then they'll also started looking at assessments, at positive child-teacher interactions. Really the quality that goes on inside the classroom, and that's what makes the [9:44:39 AM] difference between a high quality and a childcare center that's just meeting regular minimum standards. You're not seeing those lower ratios. You're not seeing that interaction, that teacher really supporting the instructional learning of that child. >> Kitchen: Okay. So we have -- did I hear you right? We have a program right now that helps -- with the resource, an individual that's available to help a childcare center assess what it takes? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: I'm concerned -- do we have recommendations to brief up that program? And the reason I'm asking that is because, for example, district 5 has zero high quality centers. And so -- and of course there are other districts too that have low numbers of high quality centers like district, district 2 and 4 and 6 and 10 have low numbers of high quality centers. And like I said, there's none in district 5. >> Indirectly there are some recommendations, especially those relates to the teacher wages and teacher education because one of the biggest barriers for those centers, they may want to be nationally accredited, but they have teaching staff that don't have the degrees and then don't want to go to school. They've been working there. So a lot of these incentive programs that have been built around the teachers and the professional development of that individual is how we move the needle towards quality. You know, have you to get the buy-in from that group. So motor that we can support them with Wayne supplement wage supplements and stipends we can work more into that in early childhood. >> Kitchen: I would like more information, to the extent you have it. So looking at slide 15 and maybe it's information from [9:46:39 AM] that particular program that may be where the data is available. I would like to know some more statistics by district, by childcare center. For example, there's 39 childcare centers in district 5, but none are high quality and I would like to understand better why. And I'm sure that other councilmembers would like to understand that better in their districts. So have 39 of them asked for help? Have none of them asked for help? Have some of them asked for help, but they can't get there because they need funding for their teachers? The extent to which data can show me specifically what the barriers are. Do you think that some level of data is available like that? >> Workforce solutions is the organization that we have the contract with for that collaborative and they have quarterly -- actually monthly planning meetings where they go through all of this. And they did provide us with a report where they worked with -- they reached out to a lot of the providers to try to answer those questions exactly why they aren't pursuing quality and what the barriers are. And we can share that -- we can share that report with you. >> Kitchen: I'd like to see that report and see it broke down like slide 15 by district if the information is available. And I would like to see which of our recommendations can go specifically to improving that because it occurs to me that there are resources on the ground. So to the extent of leverages those resources on the ground and to leverage the dollars in these existing resources is critical. And a really good use of our dollars if there's ways to do that. And I'd like to work with y'all on that, and particularly I'm concerned that district 5 has no high quality centers. >> We would be happy to follow back up with you on [9:48:40 AM] that, councilmember. >> Good morning. My name is Kathie Mchorse and I'm an early childhood education director. And I wanted to address a few of those questions. I think it's important to know that participating in a quality accreditation system is voluntary on the part of centers. And when you look at the centers, high quality centers -- any childcare center's funding stream, the funds predominantly come from tuition paid by parents or childcare subsidies that are provided through workforce solutions that are state funding. And the reimbursement rates for childcare subsidies are below the cost of care that it requires to provide that care. And the higher quality obviously costs more. Lower ratios, higher costs on the center to provide that. When teachers are earning additional credentials, a cda, an associate's degree, they would hope to receive a salary increase or a wage increase for that but the current system then requires to pass that cost on to families who are paying tuition because the subsidy rate will not cover that cost. And there's recent study in Dallas that the cost of quality -- quality doesn't pay for itself. And the reimbursement rates for highest quality leave a significant gap. So centers that are accredited at two star or three star or four star receive incremental increases, but currently in our local workforce reimbursements rates if you're in a two star you get five percent additional of the rate, seven percent for three star and nine percent for four star. So I think that's where the gap is, even if there's a desire to become high quality, many of our centers can't afford to do so and they can't maintain their staff. >> Kitchen: And the families they serve can't afford to pay the higher rates. >> Exactly. >> Kitchen: I just wanted to point that out. [9:50:41 AM] Although I appreciate what's going on in district 2 and 4, I think as a council we need to do better for the whole city and also look at across the city about ways that we can help. It's a rejuvenate problem, like you said -- it's a huge problem, like you said. If we work towards high quality centers, which we need to do, we have difficulties -- our families have difficulties affording them. I would like to explore better what we can do to help support the high quality centers all over town. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> I'm sorry. One other additional piece we discussed the ability to partner. Afc can partner with quality centers but on-site public-private partnerships and then they can leverage the T.E.A. Dollars per student. So that was one of the recommendations was the alternative certification program because we do have staff and centers that have a bachelor's degree. If they can get a teaching certificate, then they can then provide pre-k on campus through partnership with aid and the center receives a portion of the funds and aid keeps a portion of those state funds for administrative costs. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you all. I'll look forward to exploring this more with you. >> Garza: I didn't mean to single out two and four to mean that -- put any childcare there. I singled it out because the data shows that's where the most low income families live. There are -- I totally understand there's low income. And frankly, my child's academic is in Pio's district, so wherever it can go is great because it will help other districts. I just want to clear up that I wasn't saying put them all in 2 and 4. I was saying we need them citywide and we need to change whatever policy or do whatever funding we can to help get more citywide. [9:52:46 AM] >> >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: Thank you very much. This is really valuable and I look forward to deviling into the report. -- Delving into the report. I'll start with a few questions. I actually have a lot of questions, but I'll start with the certification ratings first. I just want to concur in looking at the map it does seem like there are areas that have a lot of centers that are not certified and that that might be -- I appreciate that you've identified that as a recommendation to work with those staff and I know sue carpenter and the United Way and others have identified that for a long time as a goal of trying to make sure that -- as one way of trying to make sure that we have early -- high quality early childcare centers throughout the city to work with the existing centers and improve their certification levels. On that note I'm looking at especially councilmember kitchen in your district you've got some very good, very well regarded montessori programs and in looking at montessori programs, just spot- checking throughout the map, most of them do not have a certification rating. And I'm thinking that's because they participate in a different -- in different kinds of certification. So I wondered if someone could address that. You've got some of our most Progressive, well regarded programs do not have a certification and I think it's because they're a different animal. >> Also, centers that don't have a contract for childcare subsidies would then participate in the Texas rising star system so they would rely on some other kind of national accreditation. So nayc or I believe there's a montessori national accreditation. >> Kitchen: Can we get that information too. Do you have information about who might have alternative accreditations? >> We can definitely do that. >> I know some of the facilities in your area and [9:54:46 AM] I can -- I don't want to call them out here especially since we've been talking about, you know, there are no high quality ones. I just want to make sure that's not the message we're sending. >> Kitchen: And that's something I wasn't aware of, so thank you. That might help us flesh out this slide and idea better what existing resources are. >> We can definitely look into that and we are also careful in trying to point out in the report that it's not that the centers without nayc are not high quality. It's just that they don't have one of those three high quality ratings. Like Kathie said, participation in those is voluntary. So it's harder to compare all of them when they're not all in the system. >> Thank you for making that distinction. >> I'll go back and confirm, but I'm almost positive that a montessori school looks at the accreditation at the teacher, so I think the teacher gets the accreditation, but we'll check on that. >> Tovo: I remember as a parent doing research, some are accredited by the montessori and some are not. So there's some variety. >> And by the way, we've been asked, speakers, if you would identify yourself when you speak so the person that is transcribing this knows who you are. >> Tovo:I think one of the really exciting possibilities is the continued partnership with aid. And I wasn't -- just in looking through and on the map I wasn't clear if we had a map, if your map maps where existing pre-k programs are at aid and also the tuition-based programs at aid. >> Yes, the map has -- for aid, the map shows each school -- each elementary school and whether it has pre-k3, prehk4 or no pre-k. [9:56:49 AM] Then I don't believe it's on the map but we have a table that will show which schools accept tuition for pre-k in aid. >> Tovo: Can you just tell us how to do that on the map? Is that a layer or -- >> There's a layer for schools with pre-k, pre-4, schools with pre-k-4 only, and another layer for aid schools with no pre-k. >> Tovo: Okay. And you said it also distinguishes between the tuition-based and the -- >> I'm not quite sure if the tuition based is on the map. I don't believe it is, but we have that information. I could double-check if we have it in the report or if not I can send it to you. >> That would be great, thank you. Does it also note the schools that have infant care programs? I know there are a couple. I think Travis -- I see -- in my district, Travis high is one of the -- >> Yes. >> Tovo: -- Highly ranked childcare facilities. >> Yes. In the report it details which aid elementary schools have childcare and which ones -- yeah which schools they're at. >> Tovo: And this it also indicate -- does it also indicate whether those are open to the general public? Some are just open to students and faculty. There used to be a couple that had a infant care that was first faculty, then open to the community and then I think it's gone. >> We can double-check and send that information to you, councilmember. >> Tovo: I would it would be helpful to have those layers of information. I'm very supportive of the idea of investing in schools with the initial up-front investment to help but I think we should do it in the same way we do our parks discussion, like what are the areas where there aren't existing facilities and how we can layer our funding in [9:58:50 AM] those areas of highest need. >> And there's also if you take a look at appendix L, some of that information is in there for you too. >> Tovo: Appendix L, thank you. Especially as we look at some of the underenrolled schools, that was not long ago something that the community, neighborhood association really brought forward at Becker elementary, was to start a tuition based pre-k at Becker so not only who students who qualified financially for that program attend but it would be a way of drawing back students whose families might not qualify as low-income but it would be a way of pulling them back into the school and I think it's been a pretty successful model. It's now in a lot of schools so I think it's -- you know, I'd like to continue to support aid in moving that concept forward. I think, too, though as we look the where people live we also need to be mindful of where they work. You know, as a parent, it's important to me to be -- to have schooling options close to where I work because I want to be able to go over there in the middle of the day or pick up a child if she's sick. And so that kind of brings me back to a much, much earlier recommendation from 2008 that we really look at our downtown area, which has very few childcare options and in fact I'm not even seeing on your map some of the options that I know exist, but we have lots of families who work downtown and a scarcity of childcare options, so that also may be true in some other areas of our city. That's why -- one reason why I think highland should be one of our real high priority areas because we know there will be a lot of parents going to school at ACC or working in the campus or surrounding areas but there might be other areas of the city where we have high concentrations of people working so I will look through appendix L, you said? Or six? [10:00:50 AM] >> L. >> L. And one layer in the map is also employers with 500 or more employees, so some employment hubs. And I'm sorry to keep forgetting to say I'm Rachel from Austin public health. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> I just wanted to -- Laura, with Austin public health. I wanted to make sure you knew about that Austin workforce hub layer with 500 employees or more. As future sites come up you can use that interactive map to see where employers are. >> Those are the large employers -- okay. From that we can also, I think, think about collectively even a lot of smaller employers. Thanks. I haven't been able to figure out the layers but it sounds like there's a wealth of information within those so thanks so much. I think that's it for the moment. >> Mayor Adler: Before Allison talks so I don't forget it, just to note that we don't have with us today councilmember troxclair, but councilmember troxclair brought into the world Margaret may troxclair. >> Awwww. Good topic. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, while on childcare. So we're all excited about that. I think actually yesterday, I think. Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. So I really appreciate the wealth of information that's in here, and I look forward to diving into it more, particularly for my district. I do have some more questions to councilmember kitchen on the barriers to the teacher training and to mayor pro tem in terms of the alternative measures of quality. I'm not sure that page 15 is Acevedo we have been interpreting it in terms of where the need and is and I want to dive into that more as we go through the layers on the map. [10:02:51 AM] On page 6, this is where you have the map of the number of children using childcare subsidies as licensed providers. Is that a map that shows where the licensed providers are and how many kids in a particular center are using it? Or is that a map of where the kids are from that are using centers? >> Sarah, Austin public health. That's a map of actual centers. >> Alter: Okay. Do we have map -- I know some of my colleagues have been referring to data with respect to where the low-income children live within the city. Is that somewhere in our binder or where would we see that layer? >> There's also another layer that has -- that covers the income and where the kind of like a heat map and provides information about different income sectors of children under the age of six. >> Alter: Okay, great. And then page 21, I come from a philanthropy background and there are very few investments that give you a seven to eight times return, and so I want to interrogate that a little bit further. So as I'm understanding this, there's a up front $16,000 investment in the classroom basically retrofit the classroom to be appropriate for pre-k children so lowering sinks, toilets that are lower, et cetera, water fountains. And that that would allow us to leverage on an annual basis $112,000 from the state. What is the cost to run a classroom on an annual basis? Because you've just said that subsidies don't cover the teachers. So this looks like really appealing rate of return but we have to factor in what it would cost to run the programs on an annual basis so can you speak to that a little bit? >> I can grab that one. [10:04:52 AM] >> Very good. Just to clarify, this particular -- oh, sorry. >> Mayor Adler: That's okay. >> I am on. Sorry. Sue carpenter with united Way for greater Austin. This particular funding is for part. Day pre-k programs within the school district, and currently there's a large swath of children on wait lists who cannot get in because there just aren't slots available in those particular neighborhoods. So the funding right now is at pretty much a wash. If we quip the classroom, the aisd can pull down that money from tea and that funding will cover all the costs for operating the program. So the school district doesn't end up with a profit from it, but it pays for all the teaching curriculum/instruction costs related to that delivery of service. >> Alter: I didn't mean to imply that the school district should be looking for profit, but return on investment, I wanted to understand if there were other hidden costs. Did you want to add? >> Laura with Austin public health, just to clarify, this is for pre-k through the school district. When we were talking about the subsidies not covering cost of care those are for childcare centers, zero to three outside of school districts. >> Alter: I'm assuming you get 32 children by having a half day of each. >> 16 children with two classes per day. >> Alter: And have we found that the low-income families can take advantage of the half day if it doesn't cover enough time for them to actually go to work? >> We know it won't work -- it won't meet every family's needs, but currently there's a wait list and based on the experience so far we'll be able to fill those classrooms. >> Alter: So we can invest $16,000 per classroom for I guess it's 11 classrooms costing us 176,000, pull down $112,000 a year. That would cover the full [10:06:52 AM] cost of the pre-k. So -- >> It's 112 per classroom. >> Alter: Per classroom, thank you for that clarification. So I guess I'm sort of wondering where we would wait to the budget process, you know, so that this would start in October when you'd want to retrofit those over the summer and get that started for September. It seems like we could actually entertain a budget amendment to invest the 176,000 right now. We have that money available from leftover things if we would be able. I guess my question to you be in a position to make those investments this summer or would we need more time? >> We need more time. Aisd needs time to ramp up to do their whole enrollment process and hire teachers and so forth. Typically we have to have the funding secured by January of the previous year. So we've lost our window for this upcoming fall, but for the next year we would be in good shape. >> Alter: Now, is there a way -- I don't want to spread philanthropic dollars thin but it does seem to me this is the kind of investment that fill fill an tropeses would find very attractive, I don't know if it would be funded through United Way or if the city could set something up in the meantime to see if there are philanthropists that want to step up to make an investment that has seven to eight times return right off the bat on an annual basis from its initial investment. You know, if there's a way in the meantime until we get to the budget would we be able to do that and maybe the city could be of some assistance in advertising that? [10:08:52 AM] >> I definitely think there's even more opportunities for public-private investment in this so we can also leverage private donations. Just so you know in the past three years we have drawn down and we've gone to business leaders and philanthropists and they've already equipped enough classrooms so that over a thousand kids are currently being served. So we have already launched this using private dollars. >> Alter: Great. >> I feel like we're kind of tapping that well dry. So that's why we need to look at other kinds of partnerships and funding streams. >> Alter: Right. I was thinking of that mostly because that seemed to be one direction for the philanthropy and leave the dollars open for some of the other investments in the same area so that we'd be leveraging our dollars more. >> I want to follow up with one other thing. I just want to make sure to close the loop on the tea dollars where I think we have opportunities to really draw down literally millions of dollars year on year. Not only in the aisd but the other piece where we were talking about closing the gap for subsidy dollars. Aisd is offering to partner with our public community childcare centers, for profit or not for profit, in all of our communities so long as they serve eligible children and meet their quality standards. So this is the opportunity where we're going to have to retrofit those classrooms to make sure that they have a certified teacher, which is why we have the money in there to provide alternative certification, but, again, that 1-time investment will allow us to draw down huge amount of money that will improve the whole childcare center because that funding is unrestricted. It comes through the center, it's unrestricted to the center, and it can be used to enhance the quality. So it's really a way that we can -- we could be the best in the whole state. The only city who has figured out this loophole here and has a school district who is willing to [10:10:55 AM] play. So I just think this was an innovation moment and a time where we can take advantage of, as I said, literally millions of dollars going into our childcare system. >> Alter: I really appreciate the ability to leverage the funds. Where is that second portion that's not in the school district facilities in terms of the costs? >> There's a place there that talks about the alternative certification. So that's the barrier. Childcare centers are saying we'll do it but we have to get the certified teachers. So we have to make sure we're building that workforce. >> Alter: Okay. So what page is that? >> Laura Williamson with Austin public health. We have a 73 page report, 310 with the appendices, so we had to pair things down for the presentation. If you look at the full report we distributed yesterday beginning on page 58 are the funding considerations from the work group which include investments for pre-k classrooms, alternative certifications, as well as the other quality programming through community colleges with a lot more background information, including budgets and more details about the numbers for the state funding. >> Alter: Great. I look forward to looking at that. I think this is -- I appreciate Austin public health bringing this forward. When we have opportunities where we can really leverage the dollars in this way, we really do need to think about making those short-term investments to get that long-term stream of funds to support things that we care about. So thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Flannigan and then councilmember pool. >> Flannigan: Thank you. Just a couple of questions on -- it looks like there's maybe a little data translation error. I can pull stuff on the map and it showed dots in Williamson county but I look at the slides and the numbers don't add up. Specifically slide 15, which shows the number of centers, it looks like you're just counting the Travis county side of my district, and that would explain why district 6 would have the [10:12:55 AM] lowest number. Generally speaking my district is pretty well resourced with things so it would be weird. I think you're missing the wilco count on that chart. >> It probably is in the map. >> Flannigan: I'm comparing it to the interactive map, which is why I bring it up. On slide 6 where it shows the number of children accessing the subsidy, it also looks like maybe the wilco ones were left out because it appears there are centers in wilco that accept those subsidies but the map makes it look like no one in wilco is using that unless they're driving across the county line. >> Donna, as you public health. We did include it in the report and interactive map. You'll see not only the childcare cities within city but then Williamson county but also the subsidies for those centers? Williamson county. Once you get into the report and the map you'll see those as well. Our static presentation didn't quite carry over for the slide. >> Flannigan: As my colleagues know I always point that out because nine times out of ten people look at the presentation and don't dig deeper and I don't want people to misunderstand the wealth of resources in my district because there are other parts of town that need toast resources. >> Rachel from Austin public health. The map on page 5 already includes the wilco Austin centers. And we didn't get that layer into the interactive map in time to include that on the static map of slide 6. That information has been given to our gis map person, so if it's not in there yet it's on its way in there. Thank you. >> I want to add one more thing about slide 15. This is a subset of childcare centers that serve children 0-5 so there are, you know, dozens and dozens [10:14:56 AM] of childcare centers that are in elementary schools that do afterschool care and those are not included in that particular chart on 15. This is looking more at those licensed community-based childcare centers for little children. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Thanks. And I just echo all of the real appreciation for the depth of the work that was done and clearly you guys took our resolution to heart and did really good work delving into this. I want to just focus a little bit more on teacher wages, because this drives what Ms. Carpenter is talking about. In order to get the higher certified teachers into the classrooms with the young children, we need to make sure that we are offering them something more than simply minimum wage. >> Right. >> Pool: Drawing a little bit -- I presided over one of the childcare centers that my daughter was in back when she was a little kiddo. She was born in 88 so this was 30 years ago. We were looking at some of these issues then, too, including the certification. The last day care she was in they wanted to do the naeyc and we looked at the wages. One of the things we came up with which I thought was absolutely innovative at the time, church-based childcare, they councilmember tovo the board and said we're going to -- came to the board and said we're going to offer our teachers -- do you remember that term "Cafeteria plan," relevant in the '80s and '90s, they were going to give I think $100 at the time to all teachers and the teachers could use the teachers -- the money to buy into childcare themselves or health care, and $100 went a lot father back then than it does now but even then it [10:16:57 AM] wasn't a whole lot of money. The church recognized it was more than a one to one return on investment for the church because maybe some of those dollars would be invested in that childcare and then they could expand on the health care plan that that church already had for -- it was lutheran so they were buying into whatever the lutherans had available. So I thought that was pretty savvy and unique at the time in that part of the city where they were doing it and maybe for the entire city as a whole. So in teacher wages, you do also include any benefits that may be offered? And if not or if so, is there a way that we can enhance the ability of the teachers to buy into health care or have childcare themselves in order to provide that package that supports not just dollar for dollar salaries but also the benefits that go with it? >> Laura Williamson with Austin public health. Really only the item for council consideration are more specific to wages and it's a little indirect. We do have a lot more information about the benefits packages that currently exist through the report that United Way developed, but the recommendation that's on page 61 in the full report for the cdas through Austin community college, it would serve up to 20 teachers and the city currently has a program and a social services agreement, the program we've talked about, the Janet Watson program that providers wage supplements for teachers furthering their investigation and that's something we already invest in. The 20 teachers that go through that program would qualify for an existing city program for wage supplements but we don't have anything in here specific to health programs. >> But just to -- >> Pool: Ms. Carpenter. >> Again, sue carpenter from United Way. The funding from tea is sufficient that it could [10:19:02 AM] almost parity with public school hourly wage. The trick is the center will have agency over how they use that funding so they may or may not decide to offer benefits or how much they're going to raise salaries and so forth, but depending on how many children they're serving, they could really provide those kinds of opportunities for the staff. So, for example, we have a few centers who are piloting this right now. One program is getting over $80,000 a year from tea through this, and they're able to provide huge salary increases for their staff and offering health insurance. So it is tied to low-income children enrolled, so, you know, we're going to have to get that right mix of the population in the center to make it worthwhile, but there's a lot of opportunity there. >> Pool: That's great to hear. Thanks so much. Again, thank you for this report. It's really helpful. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. -- Ms. Kitchen and then Ms. Houston. >> Kitchen: To add to what councilmember pool was asking about, there is a program in the city that provides subsidies to help lower wage workers with their health benefits, and it's for smaller entities, and that's tex health central Texas. If y'all are not aware of that you might look at that. I'm not certain how many of the childcare centers they're covering now, but it is a -- they do have some dollars available. So. . . >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you. This may be more the aid individual. And how they operate. Because they're pretty independent about how they operate their programs. So one of my staffers, in their vertical team, tried to enroll their child in pre-k and there were only -- there were no more slots for [10:21:07 AM] non-subsidized children so they had to move to another elementary school and pay something like 865 a month for childcare. Now, I don't know whether that's low or moderate. It seems high to me, but my children are much older than anybody in this room, so I wouldn't remember. We used people next door, so, you know, I don't know how you calculate in your things here the folks -- the friends and families that people use in the neighborhood. So if you know -- because we've been doing this for almost an hour and 20 minutes now. If you know who I can ask at aid about how do they calculate the rates and how do they move somebody? Because this happened to be an angle glow child trying to go into a minority school. Instead of having that opportunity they were put in another school where that wasn't -- it's complicated. Me and aid have complications there with title 1 schools. But when I'm trying to get more children who are anglo into my brown and browner schools and yet they say, no, you can't go to that school, you can go to this school where that's not an issue but you've got to pay $565 and that means the day is broken up because you've got to pick them up at a certain time. So it's a lot of time about how aisd manages the programs that they have that I have questions about so if you can point me to that person I'll make sure that I get in touch with them. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> We'd be happy to do that, councilmember. >> Mayor Adler: Can we move on to the bond presentation? >> I just want to thank you all for the rich conversation and interest in this area. And we definitely think there's opportunities for the joint subcommittee conversations, to carry those over into those conversations, as well as shifting possibly workforce development dollars. So, again, thank you for your time. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for the work. Thank you all for the work. Let's move to the bond presentation. [10:23:44 AM] So now for the bond presentation. The floor is yours, Carla. >> Thank you. Good morning, Carla Stefan here in my bond development team role today. Working with the office of the cfo. I'm here with Katie, the other part of the bond team duo also with the office of the cfo. We are joined by Tom, who was chair of the bond election advisory task force. And Bruce Evans who served as vice chair. I'll start off with just a brief overview of what the city staff and task force have been doing the last year, kind of remind you of the process we undertook to get to today. Katie is going to then go over the community engagement efforts that were part of this bond development program. Tom will then take over and actually present to you the task force recommendation that they're bringing forward for your consideration. Katie will then kind of talk about how that recommendation aligns with certain council priorities and then I'll wrap up with kind of what we plan on your work may look like over the next few months to get to a bond election. So I do want to start just by thanking the task force. The names listed here represent 13 citizens who spent a significant amount of time working on this bond development effort. They each provided a unique perspective but collectively worked together to bring forward what I think is a bond package that meets needs all across the city. Katie and I absolutely enjoyed working with all of them. We want to thank them, as well as the many city departments involved in providing information and attending all of the meetings, as well as the community members who showed up to the meetings. We have a lot of community input and certainly over the last year if I've learned anything it takes a village to put a bond package together. So we do appreciate the work of this task force. Just to review where we've [10:25:45 AM] been, this process actually started in August of 2016, when council passed a resolution that established the bond election advisory task force. From that point, city staff actually were working behind the scenes to develop an initial bond needs assessment. At that same time the task force did begin meeting and we had a series of informational presentations that gave them kind of the bond knowledge they needed as the foundation so that once they got the recommended starting point they had some information to work from to begin their deliberations. They kind of took a divide and conquer approach and slit themselves up into five working groups and began meeting weekly back in August to go over the start -- the recommended starting point and determined what they were going to bring forward. The community engagement effort started late last year and actually continued through January of this year. The task force began deliberating their recommendation in February and actually voted to approve their recommendation they're presenting to you today in March. And then you'll see as we get to the end of the presentation, between now and August and then ultimately a bond election in November we'll talk about what's going to happen during the course of those months. That resolution that you passed in August of 2016 also gave some direction and provided some parameters on how to move forward with bond development. It directed that . We look at addressing infrastructure needs, including but not limited to infrastructure needs related to flooding, libraries, housing, mobility, transit, parks, fire stations and other plan needs. So this was an all-encompassing bond development effort. It's unlike the 2016 bond that only focused on mobility. This focused on needs across the city. [10:27:45 AM] There were also other parameters that we directed the city departments to consider. Certainly we asked them to consider things like their prior bond spending. The project readiness of projects that they wanted to include, and certainly the capacity to deliver those projects and programs. The other component that we directed them to consider is to bring forward -- bring forth needs that could work within a five-year program. That limitation or parameter is consistent with the city's financial policies. If a bond program moved forward it would -- in a five-year program was the parameter the projects would get appropriations over the five years and we would sell bonds probably over a six-year period. That five-yes limitation does provide some -- limits risk of cost estimation. Certainly the further out you go the more uncertain you are of what a project will cost. So this helps limit that risk. It also -- a five-year program also provides the ability to kind of react to community priorities as they evolve during that time and it also takes into consideration the remaining bond programs that are still to be completed because we haven't spent all of the money from the prior bond propositions yet so that still comes into play as well. Certainly the starting point and, again, machine of the task force -- much of the task force recommendation focused on reinvestment in existing city infrastructure versus adding additional city assets. This slide, we put it in here. Certainly the information that we provided to the task force included information on debt capacity and the tax rate impact. This is the exact slide that we provided to the task force over a year ago with the addition of that red [10:29:46 AM] banner. Today that red banner is probably the most important piece of the slide because the -- everything about this slide is being updated and analyzed and we will be bringing you updated information. Certainly the task force and the community are very familiar with these numbers at this point. When we provided this information last year, no tax rate increase was estimated to give about $325 million worth of bonding capacity. A one cent gave you about 575 million, and a two cents tax rate increase would give but 825. So those are certainly numbers that were debated and referred to quite a bit during the task force work but, again, we will be providing you updated information when we're back in front of you next month. So expect all of these numbers to change. Just before the task force presents their recommendation, I do want to remind you, the starting point that staff provided to both council and the task force back in June of last year was $640 million spread across five areas, reininvestment in facilities and asset at 240 million, transportation infrastructure 190 million, stormwater 75 million, parkland, open space 50 million, and affordable housing at 85 million. And with that I will turn it over to Katie. She'll talk through the community engagement piece. >> Thank you. So from the beginning public and community engagement were a key part of this bond development process. The task force spent the first six months of their work getting up to speed on bond-related elements, including how the city handles and issues debt, the city's construction and procurement processes and how bond programs work. As the time approached to solicit feedback from the community on the 2018 bond recommendation, the task force actually created a community engagement working group to come up with a strategy on how to engage the public. Ultimately they settled on a [10:31:48 AM] multiprong approach so we had an online bond survey, online bond similarity and eight interactive town halls that mirrored the online bond similarity activity as well as four listening sessions. The task force also committed to having all meetings of the task force, both the full and the working group meetings open to the public. The full task force meetings were televised and links to the meeting were available on the city's 2018 bond website at austintexas clog/2018 bonds. All told, the task force held 13 full task force meetings and 66 working group meetings, totaling over 140 hours of public meeting time. They heard from over 150 members of the community at the full task force meetings and the working group meetings, and there was lots of support for the following categories, developing John Trevino park, funding for the cultural centers, including the asian-american resource center, carver museum, cultural center, mexican-american cultural center, funding for replacement of the dowry art center, funding offend convert the [indiscernible] Funding to repair community pools, as well as to build a new colony park pool, and then funding for increase -- increased funding for affordable housing. So diving just a little bit deeper, we had over 900 survey responses recorded online or in paper to the task force's survey. 58% of the respondents detective those were supportive of a tax rate increase to support the programs being included in the bond recommendation. We had over 283 participants in our in-person and online bond simulator exercises and among those the bond package submitted was around 691 million. Relative to the staff's recommended starting point [10:33:49 AM] four of the categories received support for increased funding. Affordable housing, reinvestment in facilities and assets, stormwater, and parkland and open space. One category did receive support for decreased funding relative to the staff recommended starting point and that was transportation infrastructure. So these preferences were reflected in the final recommendation. The details of which you will hear from chair knuckles, to whom I will turn this presentation over to now. >> Thank you. I'm happy to be here finally presenting the task force recommendation to y'all. It has been a long process, a lot of work, but very rewarding and as a planning commission member I will say it was a lot more fun than working on codenext. [ Laughter ] So the task force's final recommendation is a total package of 851 million, which is an increase of 211 million over staff's initial recommendation of 640 million. And as you can see on the slide, it is broken down into five categories. We had a work group for each of these categories. Several of our work group chairs and other members of the task force are in the audience, so if you have specific questions about individual categories, hopefully they can respond to those. It's the understanding of the task force that an $851 million package would require just over a two cents tax rate increase based on staff's analysis. So in June 2017, staff provided an initial recommendation for the task force to consider, and it [10:35:49 AM] was [indiscernible] To five categories, one, affordable housing, which evaluated requests for projects and programs which support the affordable housing goals of the city, reinvestment in facilities and assets, which looked at capital renewal requests across the city, from various departments, including recreation centers, pools, fire stations, and existing branch libraries. Parkland and open space, which evaluated requests for new parkland and water quality lands. Stormwater tasked with looking into efforts to mitigate flooding around the city, and transportation infrastructure, which also evaluated capital renewal requests, these focusing on the city's existing transportation network. Is the affordable housing group met regularly at the carver museum and library. The work group began with an initial starting point from staff of 85 million. Following presentations from the neighborhood housing and community development department and community nonprofits the working group ultimately voted to recommend a package of 161 million, which breaks down as follows: 75 million to be leveraged with community partners for the rental housing and development assistance program is 18 million for the homeowner acquisition and development program, 50 million for land and property acquisition. This is essentially land banking. And 18 million for the go-home repair program. The parkland and open space work group met with representatives from pard and watershed protection to evaluate requests related to acquiring new land for parks and water quality. The working group began with [10:37:50 AM] a recommendation of 50 million, which was 20 million for open space, and 30 million for parkland. Ultimately the working group recommended a package of 117 million, with the following goals, acquisition of approximately 4300 acres of water quality protection lands, acquisition of land for a destination park in oak hill, five to ten infill parks throughout the city, funding for furthering completion of the city's greenbelt system, and acquisition of strategic properties throughout the city. The reinvestment in facilities and assets working group began their work with a $240 million initial starting point, which included for parks and requisition 120 million for renovations and upgrades to various pard assets, such as cemeteries, pools, playscapes and tennis courts. Austin public library, 20 million for renovations to existing branch libraries, and to begin the necessary work to convert the John Henry Faulk building to archival storage. Austin public health, 10 million for renovations at the Betty Dunkerley campus. Public safety, 90 million for renovations to fire/ems stations and for a new helicopter hanger. Following presentations in meetings with representatives from departments noted above and taking into consideration input received from community groups, the working group ultimately landed on a package of $281 million, broken down as follows, 97 million for improvements to various pard assets, 16 million for a new public health facility in the dove springs neighborhood, 31.5 million for renovations to existing [10:39:50 AM] branch libraries and upgrades to both John Henry Faulk building, 69 million for new fire stations and renovations to existing fire and ems stations, 67.5 million for a replacement Dougherty arts center and improvements to the various cultural centers around the city. The stormwater working group began with a staff recommendation of 75 million for flood mitigation projects. After consulting with watershed protection and hearing from the community, the work group settled on a recommendation of 112 million, broken down as follows, 15 flood mitigation projects throughout the city. Each district would have at least one project. 27 million for flood buyouts in district 5. Transportation infrastructure group began with a starting point from staff of 190 million. Allocated as shown on the slide. The working group met with Austin transportation department and the public works department and heard from members of the community. Ultimately, the working group voted to recommend a package of 180 million. Removing $5 million apiece from the initial starting point for signals in technology and vision zero transportation safety. The recommendation included rehabilitation of 90 miles lane improvements, and funding for cost participation in utility projects. Bridges, culverts, structures with matching funds from campo, fund replacement of top three bridges and structures on the list of critical replacement needs. Safety and mobility improvements upgrades to signals, controllers, firmware, expansion of [10:41:52 AM] communication systems and new signal installations, transportation safety, vision zero, major intersection safety projects, pedestrian safety improvements, speed management projects. Sidewalk rehabilitation, allocate 10% of funds equally to each district, then distribute the remaining 90% of the proposed funds to districts based on very high and high priorities for all existing sidewalks. And I would note on the transportation infrastructure recommendation, there's no overlap with what the 2016 mobility bond focused on corridors. Include. That came up a lot, but this is for -- this is essentially for non-corridor stuff or anything on a corridor, it's basically -- again, it's basically dealing with deferred maintenance issues. Groups came up with and the task force agreed to forward to council several policy recommendations. Including the following. For reinvestment in facilities and assets, commission a study comparing private construction costs to those required by city procedures. Commission a study analysis to identify and quantify the individual cost of respective fees, reviews, internal inspections. Cost of city regulations to illustrate the impact of city practices and council directives on cost of city construction. Conduct a cost benefit analysis for each of these to email to from a [10:43:54 AM] taxpayer's perspective. Establish a high-level task force to explore the broad possibilities for the city to contract with private builders and developers to provide the city with needed space for lease/purchase by the city. Find funding sources other than the 30-year bond for maintenance items, especially lighting, plumbing, hvac and other energy and water. Related improvements. For affordable housing, the task force recommends that funding be made available to those making up to 120% of the median family income. That acquisitions should be exclusive to treating -- creating more affordable housing as opposed to more general community benefits, that land purchased from this fund be zoned public after acquisition to allow for the greatest use in developing affordable housing. For transportation infrastructure, the recommendation was traffic-calming devices may only be added in a neighborhood only after its residents have approved them by majority vote within nine months. Prior to the installation. And now I'll turn it back over to Katie or Carla. >> It will be me. In so in developing the initial recommended starting point city staff looked at requests through a variety of lenses, including equity, imagine Austin and council strategic priority outcomes. As the bond development process progressed and the task force recommendation emerged, city staff realigned the programs and projects included in the recommendation with the various council priorities. So early on the task force stated their desire to look at the bond program through the lens of equity. The equity office presented an overview of its equity tool to the task force at its July 21, 2017 meeting, and offered its services to evaluate the programs and [10:45:54 AM] projects being considered for the 2018 bond. During a month-long review process that began with a $3.2 billion needs assessment the equity office worked closely with the relevant city departments to evaluate their programs through an equity lens. The results of this effort were presented to the task force at their February 8 meeting and consisted of the following results: 14 of the projects were rated green, which indicates that the project or program has the potential to advance equity. 28 of the projects and programs were evaluated yellow, indicating that they have merit and may fulfill critical infrastructure needs but do not appear to significantly advance equity. Only one project received a red rating, indicating that it might advance equity and may fulfill critical city infrastructure needs but there are concerns about its unintended consequences on equity. The red rated project was not included in staff's initial recommended starting point nor in the task force's final recommendation. Staff has included imagine Austin priorities in their analysis of the bond programs and projects from the beginning of the bond development process in December of 2016. The task force recommendation aligns with imagine Austin in the following ways: All six imagine Austin priorities received some level of funding in the task force recommendation. Healthy Austin received nearly a quarter of the funding of the recommendation, with 207.5 million and compact and connected and affordability compromised the next largest priorities receiving funding at 191 million and $161 million respectively and the maiming allocations can be seen in the green table in the middle of this page. Similarly to the imagine Austin alignment, staff included the draft council strategic outcomes in their analysis of the needs assessment and throughout the bond development process. Once the recommendation was finalized, staff realigned the projects and programs from the recommendation to match the newly adopted council strategic outcomes. The majority of the recommendation from the task force falls in the safety and health and environment [10:47:54 AM] outcomes, followed by the economic opportunity and affordability, as shown in the table on the right. So staff -- the task force received a briefing on the spirit of east Austin initiatives at their February 23 meeting. This included a series of initiatives being recommended to move forward the goals of the spirit of east Austin. Following this meeting city staff aligned with these initiatives and with the following results: The 161 million being recommended for affordable housing aligns with four of the initiatives noted in the briefing. Specifically the Austin affordable fund, holistic community development, the strategic housing blueprint and the aisd city of Austin and Travis county surplus land use. The 67.5 million being recommended for the cultural centers aligns to the cultural revitalization and preservation initiative. The equity survey assessment I discussed previously is part of the city's overall efforts to operationlize racial equity in city practices. The dove springs health center being recommended would fall into the play space centers initiative, which operate as community, planning, and development and employment and health information hubs. The investment in the cultural centers would also fall under this initiative. And finally the funding for parkland acquisition and affordable housing real estate acquisition would also fall under the surplus land use initiative. Finally the community survey. Even though the citizen results came into this process late there is a correlation between the recommendation from the task force and the opportunities for improvement. As noted in the survey and as shown on the bottom of this slide on the right. The task force recommends investing $180 million in existing transportation infrastructure, $69 million in public safety facilities, and $16 million for the development of a new dove springs health center. All areas of improvement as noted in the survey. And with that I'll turn it over to Carla to discuss [10:49:55 AM] next steps. >> So where do we go from here? As I mentioned earlier, we will be back next month with updated debt capacity analysis and tax rate impact information. We will also spend the next few weekends as staff working with city departments and the city manager's executive team reviewing the task force recommendation in a little bit more detail and if there are updates or tweaks that we want to bring forward we will provide those next month as well. We'll consider the task force recommendation in terms of other financing options that might be available for some of the projects or programs. The project readiness, the delivery capacity to actually bring those forward within a five-year time frame, as well as any o&m impact that would be coming forward so we can share that information with you. You'll have may and June to further deliberate a bond program before you break in July. And then you would be setting the ballot language and the final bond package to go to the voters in August with the election in November. We certainly realize that you have a very busy may and June ahead of you with budget and context so we are working -- codenext so we are working and finalizing the calendar that will still provide with you some meetings to actually discuss this bond. We're working with the agenda office to see how to fit all of those pieces together. And the last thing, just to facilitate going forward we are standing up a bond q&a page, much like your budget q&a page. We will get that link to you so that you can start submitting any and all questions you have. We will post answers to those questions as soon as possible, just so that all of council has that information, as well as the community. And that's all we have today. We'll be happy to take any questions you have at this time. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Again, I want to thank everybody that's worked on this, especially the folks that were on the commission. [10:51:56 AM] If you'd pass that back to them. Obviously, a lot of work, not an easy task to do. A lot of folks -- a lot of applicants pushing in a lot of different ways so thank you for the work. Mr. Flannigan. >> Flannigan: Yeah, just want to start, mayor, and maybe, city manager, if you could help frame what we're supposed to be talking about right now because I have a long list of questions but I know this isn't the only opportunity to talk about the bond. So what is the substantive conversation we should be having now at this stage of the process? >> Mayor Adler: What kind of direction do you want at this point? It's a four- month process. >> While we have the members of the task force here I think the most appropriate would be if there are questions about the task force deliberations or what they brought forward that would probably be the most substantial now while they're here. >> Flannigan: I'll start just with a community engagement question. Is there any analysis of how that input was taken geographically? Number of people by district? But also demographically? I mean, how should we interpret the community engagement as it relates to, frankly, the electorate that's going to be asked to vote on this? >> So the online community survey that the task force put out has that demographic information. When the interactive town halls that we held in each of the districts -- we did not collect that demographic data but certainly for the survey, which there were over 900 respondents on, that's available. It is on our website and we can get that information to you as well. >> Flannigan: I may have others but I'm going to think about specifically the questions I want to ask now. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I have a process question for slide 21, and I just raise this question for the council as a group. I'm not sure what I think about it but I think we should have the C [10:53:56 AM] conversation. We have finalized our bond package in August, which is a pretty tight time frame for something going on the November ballot. I recall that when we did the mobility 2016 bond we finalized them in June, if I'm remembering correctly. So I know that we have a lot on our plate for may and June, but I just think that we should recognize and perhaps give a little bit of thought to whether or not August is really appropriate. This is potentially a pretty large bond package and there needs to be time for our community to talk to have a campaign. So I just noticed that myself, and my question for my colleagues -- I don't know if anybody has had time to even think about that, but I just raise that question for my colleagues, if anyone wants to comment now or think about it. These are all very important items on the ballot, and, you know, that essentially gives two months for a campaign that's -- you know, that's based on what people really know we're going to put on the ballot. I mean right now obviously we've got -- I'm not expecting huge differences, but there may be some difference that's the council wants to add. So I just raise that for everyone. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. >> Kitchen: If anyone wants to comment. >> Flannigan: I'll comment. >> Kitchen: Yes. >> Part of the reason I agreed to do this. >> Kitchen: Yeah. >> I've been working on city and county bond packages for a long time. >> Kitchen: Mm- hmm. >> As a lawyer but I decided, hey, wouldn't it be fun to work on it not as a lawyer. [ Laughter ] >> Kitchen: And was it fun, Tom? >> It was. [ Laughter ] But a lot of -- you know, in my experience, the council has to vote in August to meet various election law requirements. To get something on the ballot for November. I think that's what's driving those dates. I'll defer to the city [10:55:57 AM] attorney's office. In my experience at the county, we have to have the commissioners court vote on them in August because the law requires you to do it that far in advance to do various notices and things. >> Kitchen: Do you think that's enough? I was thinking June, which may not be feasible? >> I mean, obviously, I'm just -- I'm thinking that that's why -- that's what was driving the August date. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> You can do it before then, obviously, yeah. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> He's correct. We were backing up. We started with state law requirements and backed up from there to build your calendar. The August date is the latest date you would have to set the ballot language and call the election. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston and then Ms. Garza. >> Houston: You did a great job, you really did. I watched y'all at some of the various public engagements and you all were listening and trying to pay attention to what people were asking for. And yes, there were a lot of special interest groups there. So -- and you always were very calm and very thoughtful about how you responded to them. So I appreciate all the work that you did. That's really all I had to say. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Garza? >> Garza: Hi I had a question. It's my understanding that the bond task force that came up with the recommendations and then you went out to the public, right, and the public made some more? I think most of those or 8, page 8, what the public testimony included. Is there any -- because it looks like everything that was -- where there was public testimony addressing is now in the recommendation, is that right? >> Yes. >> Garza: Okay. And thank you all I know this is very difficult work to do, but I guess my initial thoughts as we move into a more lengthy discussion on what we will present to the voters, if we will present something to [10:57:57 AM] the voters, is in a way -- I don't mean this in a bad way at all, but it reminds me of the pool master plan where we asked for kind of a narrow what do we need? And we got back everything. We got back this giant package, which was don't close any pools and add more pools. And you know, I know we're going to have a very difficult discussion moving forward because when the mobility bond, which was 720 million, and that's just the beginning of that one. There's more asks on the mobility side. In addition to a possible capital metro bond ask in 2020. And you know, the desire to start the affordability committee, the regional affordability committee was looking at all these together and how it's not just a one cent addition or a two cent addition, it's on top of all the other things that we've asked our voters for at the county level, at aisd level. So just generally thank you all for all your hard work. I know I met with my appointee and you guys put a lot of work into this and I really appreciate the volunteer time. Just going forward I know we have some really tough decisions to make, but I hope we look back at all our previous bonds and what we've -- what we have passed -- what we have presented to voters. The great majority has been for transportation. Second has been open space and parks. And I think that we are really -- this is a watershed moment for us as a city and pun intended on watershed moment. [Laughter]. In addressing affordable housing we have funded the least in our history, and I think we can really -- there's really an opportunity to invest significantly in our [10:59:59 AM] drainage infrastructure where families are experiencing local flooding, not just in floodplains and where we can invest in affordable housing. And if we -- codenext as we're supporting policy that helps keep working families here and thinking of whatever ideology we consider to help that, this is another opportunity to support a bond package that changes the way we invest in affordable housing. And instead of making it the area we least invest in, making it the area that we most invest in. So thank you for your work on this. >> Let me make one comment regarding the size of the bond package, the $851 million. The vote on that was 11-2. So there were two members of the task force that really want to recommend a bond package that did not involve a tax increase. So there were 11 votes for the 851 million, but I don't think you should assume that all 11 of those people were saying we want $851 million to go on the ballot and have over a two percent tax increase. Based on the discussions I heard among the task force members, there were some of those 11 that fully expected council would pare back the package in the interest of affordability. So I just wanted to make that point clear. >> Garza: And I appreciate that and I guess that's not to say that I wouldn't support a package that big. I think maybe for me the priorities in the current package are going to be different for me. And that being -- that being that our history is only a couple of bonds have failed, and one of those being affordable housing. So having said all that, I'm not saying that I'm opposed to some kind of -- something [11:02:00 AM] that will have an impact unfortunately. But my priorities might be a little different. >> Mayor Adler: I wanted to bookmark, there were some real good recommendations that the task force made in addition and separate from the spending priorities. And I don't want to lose track of those. And some of these I think would be real good. And I think that some of these we've hit around with resolutions from the council before, but I just point those out because I think those are a direction we should really focus on as well. Councilmember pool? >> Pool: Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up, the policy recommendations. I made a note on the one on the traffic calming coming back to the residents closer to the time when the work would be done. I have a particular situation in district 7 where the work was approved literally years ago, and no one really remembers that there was significant engagement four years ago, including with the neighborhood association, the residents on the street. And with the turnover of people coming and going in our city, it it wouldn't be a far reach to say that probably a majority of the people who liked what was talked about four years ago who lived on that street maybe don't live there anymore. So it was like a whole new process, but our systems don't have a way for us to go back and revisit those conversations. All we can do is say oh, yeah, here's where the presentation was made in 2013-2014. Which does not assuage the concerns that the neighbors have and there is no way to recognize this. So bravo on this particular one to come back to the residents closer to the time the work is being done to double-check and make sure that the changes at one time that were supported or not supported haven't changed. [11:04:01 AM] And then the other thing I wanted to say really quickly is I would like to get a read from staff. We rarely ask this officially and systematically. I would like a read from staff on our capacity, our staff capacity and all other capacity to do the max that is offered and maybe the lower dollar figures that were also offered up. I imagine that at some point in offering up the original bond package numbers, there was a sense of, well, yeah, we could do it, but when we did the mobility bond in '16 '16, a lot of the capacity which was going to be contracted out, those monies were included in that bond. So it wasn't going to be so much a burden on existing staff. We knew we were going to contract out. That involves a lead time to find the people, hire them on and to train them, which needs to happen as well, but the capacity for me would be our in-house staff. And in some conversations, just last thing I'll say on this, in talking with interim assistant manager Hensley about some of the work that was done to do some repairs at our city aquatics facilities, the pool that had been leaking 40,000 gallons a day for years, they went in and using pard staff as opposed to even public works, which is still in-house, they were able to do the job more quickly and within the budget that was given to them probably because they have such a commitment to the work because that's their department and they wanted to shine for their colleagues. And I know we have the block folks out there doing a lot of the works, but I also want to support and encourage and maybe look at ways that the departments that are on tap for these things that have the ability to do some repairs, for example, that they also be considered in the mix. And maybe given priority [11:06:01 AM] just for that very loyalty piece where doing it efficiently and effectively within the time and the money allotted is the key measure of success. >> We can pull that information together. And when we're back next month, provide the capacity information as well. >> Pool: That would be great. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I want to thank the task force and all your hard and the detail and the time to engage with the public and the staff who also have worked very hard on this. I was intrigued by the information on page 19, the charts, the imagine Austin, the strategic outcomes. I'm understanding that that page is referring to what the staff brought forward. Is it possible to get the underlying feet that and then is there a similar set of charts for the bond proposed by the task force? >> We'll put that question in the bond Q and a page so that it's available, but we can pull that information and get that posted. >> Alter: And I'm interested in all three of those snapshots. Then I wanted to ask about the overall capacity from the task force perspective about the size of the bond and have a little bit of information about where folks were at both on the task force and from what you heard from the community. Because it doesn't do us any good to go out with a bond package and have it fail. And you guys were really having a lot of these conversations and I'd like to hear a little more about what you heard. >> Well, among the public [11:08:01 AM] outreach tools we use, we did a survey. And we also had -- we had these meetings where basically we gave the public money and they got to put their money in each of the five categories. And I know that one of the slides indicated that the average size of the bond package that members of the public were comfortable with was 691 million, I believe. There it is. So, you know, the average public citizen was comfortable with a 691-million-dollar bond package. The task force came up with 851 million. And I think this goes back to what I was saying earlier earlier. I can't break it down by specific numbers, but there was definitely a sentiment even among the 11 people who voted for the $851 million, that are it ought to be paired down in the -- pared down in the interest of affordability. It's just that those -- the people that were thinking that way were basically saying council needs to make the final decision, not us. You will. >> Alter: And then can staff speak to one of the task force recommendations on page 17 with respect to kind of general maintenance items and why those were included in the bond and not funded in an alternative way? >> That was certainly an area that got a lot of discussion. Certainly the sentiment of the task force is why -- they continued to ask the question why are these things being brought forward in a bond program? I can tell you this is not [11:10:03 AM] atypical of a bond program. We've included projects and programs that speak to deferred maintenance in nearly every one of our multibond programs in the past. I think there certainly is a financial policy that's been established that tries to speak to putting away a certain level of funding every year for deferred maintenance. And until that policy is fully funded, I think this is one of the few mechanisms that the city has right now to deal with some deferred maintenance issues. >> Alter: And I think this might be a question for the city manager. On some of the recommendations there about comparing the city costs to the private construction costs, how would you like us to proceed if we would like more information on that comparison? Would you prefer a resolution or is this something that you're prepared to provide wuss? Because the implication of this is that we're spending a lot more money on our projects than the private sector would and that there might be an ability to contract with them. And obviously we've observed that as something we've chosen to do in some cases and not others, but I think there's a broader picture here that we may be missing. And I'm just wondering how you would like us to proceed if we want to make sure that we have that information totally -- it's related to the bond, but not wholly dependent on the bond. >> Councilmember, we appreciate the recommendations that came from the task force and that's part of the next step that staff is working on to take these suggestions and to ensure the feedback we're bringing back to council incorporates some of these comparisons. So I don't think we need a resolution, but it's certainly something that we'll be working towards to get you that information. >> Alter: So that would come to us in what format? >> As part of the next presentation in the next month or so? [11:12:04 AM] >> Alter: UT. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar? >> Casar: I want to take this moment to give more for the benefit of my colleagues sort of some first reactions and try to keep those really brief. I think councilmember Garza already put it really well that if we have the opportunity to make sure that our housing investment starts to catch up to some of the other investments we've made over time, I think that makes a lot of sense, especially sense we have been preempted out of getting fee revenue on developments for affordable housing. We still have that ability and transportation in parks and other places. And the fact that we've gotten only 10% of the funding from the voters for housing that we've gotten on things like transportation. So I think this is a moment for us to try to catch up. I appreciate the task force recommended a larger number than staff originally brought forward, but in our housing committee we talked about getting closer to a 2 or 300-million-dollar number and staff said they could staff up out of the bonds just like the transportation department did on the mobility bonds. So I do think trying to get in that 250 to 50-million-dollar range on housing is a really high priority if between now and June when we start figuring out what to set it, we encourage with our communities and we find that there is community support and of course there is. We shouldn't put something on the ballot that we don't think has a good chance of passing, but at the same time we shouldn't also lower expectations and not trust that the public could hear the message about the housing crisis. And second, this is preliminary, but I am interested in seeing if there are ways that we can make sure that there is a process in things like libraries and facilities and parks and drainage after a bond passes to make sure we're addressing the things, the projects of highest need, because just in a very quick preliminary skim of [11:14:04 AM] the projects that are presented to the task force, just in the parks area, the district is getting -- would likely get the least investment just from staff's initial take where four or five, six and seven, by a pretty large margin. And just speaking for district 4, we know from the childcare presentation that we have only almost fourth of the he on owe one fourths of the low income kids in our district and the least park acres and the least developed park acres in the entire city. And just looking at this, I don't want to go through a process where we have to try to bring in community members to advocate for their neighborhood parks. So potentially a more useful avenue might be for us to think through not having to go between now and June picking parks in the city, but instead passing a substantial parks bond that invests in our neighborhood parks. And then from there after passage just like we did with the corridors, go through a community and staff and council sort of partnered process for figuring out really where those dollars can be stretched the furthest and where they're needed so we don't have the sort out the next five-year's park plan and fight that out in the next two months. And so I think that that would be one way of avoiding that. Like -- I think the same might potentially go for drainage. While there are flooding issues in my district and my own house is in a floodplain, I know there are issues of imminent health and that potentially in other parts of the city. So I wouldn't -- at the same time I would want that same sort of process so that people who need it the most can get it, but we don't have to sort that out in the next two months. And I do want to flag for people just out of transparency that I want to work with the legal department to best understand some prior projects that were bought with bond money that aren't being used for that purpose [11:16:04 AM] anymore. What might be necessary in this bond to repurpose those. One clear example is the 20-acre Home Depot site that's in my district, but adjacent to district 1 and nearby district 9 that if we want to redevelop that if a municipal court building is going in that. That we can address that where bonds may have passed in 2006, but if we aren't using that property for something, that we outlined in 2006 if there's anything we need to do this year to fix that. So thank y'all for entertaining that, but those are the three things that stick out to me now. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston? >> Houston: One of the things I want to see how much I appreciate is that you used an equity lens to look through all of the recommendations that the staff brought forward as well as the community input. And I think that's helpful when we start trying to segment things is that you all have already looked at that through an equity lens and this is your recommendation. I thought I heard Mr. Nuckols say something about the Bettie Dunkerley campus. Are you talking about the Austin public health site or are you talking about animal services? And what were you doing? I don't see that on page 14. I wasn't sure what you were talking about. >> That was the Austin public health site. And we -- the working group chose to replace that with the dove springs facility. >> Oh, okay. So the site where Austin public health is now was the old -- the second old deaf blind and/or fan school for negroes in this town. So that's going to stay where it is. Is it going to be upgraded for infrastructure. That's an old facility. Can someone -- the department in their original [11:18:05 AM] submittal requested money for improvements to that site. As the task force was deliberating and settled on the final dollar amount they recommended, the department thought that that dollar amount would be better spent at a different site, dove springs. And other improvements. Because the price tag for the work at that original site was more than what the task force brought forward. That's kind of why there was the change. >> Houston: So one of the things that I'm feeling is that we defer maintenance so much on so many things over the many years that we've had these things, these structures, these parks, these pools, this infrastructure for storm water, we've deferred maintenance on there. So now it's almost becoming critical that we do something. So in order to keep people in those over 50-year-old builds, it's going to take a lot of work, but I'm hearing you saying that's not going to be done or they're going to do something different. >> I'm sure if council would like to do something for deferred maintenance there's a $3.2 billion list that we have that had the deferred maintenance needs of the city. I think as the departments get the final bond package, the dollar amounts, there will probably be a revisit of depending on where those dollars land, how to best prioritize those amongst the areas for prioritization. So I don't think we're settled on how we would spend that money yet, but that's certainly -- there's an abundance of need for deferred maintenance and this is one way to start funding all of that. I think it will all depend on what the final amounts are that are allocated between the groups. >> Mayor Adler: And I -- >> Houston: And I understand that we were working on something for the municipal court because that was one of my priorities and it's not here. So I guess something else [11:20:05 AM] happened to it. Can somebody tell me what happened to the municipal court because that was something that I really felt we needed to focus on. >> We can get you that information. I'm not ready to speak in detail about that. >> Houston: Okay. We're going to keep it a secret yet. [Laughter] >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Flannigan, did you want to answer that? >> Flannigan: On the municipal court, we're going to explore the same technique we used for the planning and development building, which is not on a bond election, but that other process. >> Houston: Thanks, appreciate that, because that to me was a number one priority. And of course the storm water with all the density and the building we're doing and all the building that's projected, it being able to provide that infrastructure is going to be even more critical. I have parts of my district have never flooded before that are now flooding. And we're having to buy them out as well and that's in the northern part of the area. So we have to keep ahead of the density by providing the infrastructure to be able to handle all the rainwater that's going to happen. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Are we ready -- mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: I had my light on via sticky. Thank you all. I know this is challenging work and appreciate the work you did. First some very quick questions. I see in the report that we received on page 76 red bud trail, the bridge. Did we not have money in the last bond. I thought it was in our last bond package. >> We will put that up with the questions and get you that information. I tend to lose track of some of those details over the last year. >> Tovo: And I have a few more details that I might need to do as a Q and a. The asian-american resource [11:22:07 AM] center, district 7 -- I don't think that's in district 7, I think it's in district 1. But in any case, on page 63 there's a recommendation to address issues related to parking, pedestrian connectivity, outdoor amenities and seed funding. I wondered if any of those intended improvements include a bridge over the drainage ditch to -- I've foredon't the name of our city facility. Thank you, the police department. The Rutherford center. If you go to any of the events at asian-american center, once the parking lot fills people park in the Rutherford center and then you have to walk out along that very busy street or you can cross through the drainage ditch and lots of folks cross, including me, cross through the drainage temperature ditch and up the side and I know it's been a subject to have a pedestrian bridge over that area. I think that public works that priced it. I wonder if that includes that intended improvement. And if you don't know the answer, let's submit it as a bond question. And it sounds locksman, I've asked you about this -- southside like, councilmember Houston, that you've discussed this B. Is it necessary it from bond money? >> Houston: No. I think we're still looking for money to provide the pedestrian bridge. I think they've done the scope of design -- no. What's before design? Preliminary plans. They've done that. >> I'm getting an occasion that parks department is working with watershed, but we will get that answer posted for you. >> That would be great. That would really be -- >> Thank you for asking because this has been going on for about three years now. >> Tovo: Yeah. People do it all the time. So it really would be a big [11:24:09 AM] improvements. I appreciate the bond policy recommendations. I have specific questions about one, but I would also say that one thing that seems consistent to me about recommendations is kind of the direction that our staff have asked us to go in allowing more flexibility working with private developers on public projects so this seems very consistent with that. I do have a series of questions about housing and one of them starts with the bond policy recommendation. And that is that funding be made available for those making up to 120% of median family income. So I wondered if someone on the task force could talk us through that? It seems like we have such high needs at lower levels of median family income that that just took me by surprise. >> >> Thanks, Rachel stone, I was the chair of the working group for housing. All of the recommendations are subject to the land acquisition, the real estate acquisition budget. That was only for land purchased by the city that could then be made available for developing affordable housing. And the thought behind that was to expand affordable housing opportunities beyond the three programs that the city already funds, which is multi-family rental housing, home repair and home ownership. So the thought was if -- for the grove if we had had money to purchase something like the grove or the state hospital, that we should make -- we should allow developers to build properties that are extending up to 120% median family income in order to get in some of that workforce housing opportunity or just expand housing options for people all over the city. So just for the real estate that -- the real estate acquisition, it would go beyond. Lapse lapse. [Lapse in audio]. [11:26:19 AM] >> Tovo: I love having money set aside for acquisition. I think missing the grove opportunity was really, really unfortunate and a bad policy decision not to pursue that as far as we could. I think too, you know, there was some great properties within aid as you've noted in this report, that we didn't have the money to bid successfully for. So I think that's really critical. One confusion I have here is that it talks -- so as I understand the layout of this, the spirit of east Austin section on page 23 is sort of highlighting what elements of the bond package would be supportive of spirit of east Austin initiatives. Is that right? And so what I'd like to talk about is the aisd-city of Austin surplus land use, that makes sense to me. The Austin affordable fund, as I understand it, and is probably a question for the mayor, now as an entity outside the city. So I really like the idea of having money set aside to be a strike fund, but I'm -- I wanted to hear from the bond task force about whether your intent is to identify an entity outside the city as a recipient of that fund or how that worked. It's not in your work group report and it's not in the other section, but it is in the section talking about the spirit of east Austin and real estate acquisition in that context. So I need some help sorting out that reference. >> The real estate acquisition budget is our understanding would be for purchasing properties, either they could be already developed like multi- family families that are going to go into foreclosure and we're purchasing them before they do. Or for land that becomes available. My understanding of the affordable central Texas non-profit that was started to do development of [11:28:20 AM] multi-family properties, they are working independently. They could maybe -- that is my understanding what happened to the original strike fund understand, someone can correct me if that's wrong. But they would certainly be able to work with the land that is developed. The city would be purchasing the properties and then deciding -- they would have to develop some policy around how they're going to welcome with developers to get affordable housing put on those lands so they could work with that non-profit. But the -- there is no idea that the city would be buying the land and then transferring it over specifically as some kind of outside fund. That was not our intention. >> Tovo: Thanks. And elsewhere in the on report it talked about the land would be purchased through I think there was a reference through -- to the Austin housing and finance corporation. So in other areas of the report it didn't sound as if we were purchasing land through an outside entity. It sounded like we were purchasing it through the city's entering the united supermarkets arenatate, but there were -- of the city's entering the united supermarkets arenatate, but there was a point of confusion for me. >> Mayor Adler: So to address it really quickly, the housing works, people working over the last several years trying to put a strike fund, I think there are 42,000 workforce apartment units on transportation corridors in the city and the demographer tells us in the next 10 years we'll lose all of those units. To gentrification in the city. Teachers and artists and city employees. So the housing work goal that's been picked up now and moved forward, also called the strike fund or the affordable central Texas or whatever that is; trying to before we use those units is to buy those units and leave themself-sufficient so they operate on their own but then preserve as much of that housing stock as we can. Some of those units it looks like are going to be purchased in con construction unconscious with haca or with other entities that involve the city in order to leverage the dollars in order to save as many of those units as [11:30:20 AM] are possible. So I think one of the things they're looking at is to see whether or not this is a tool that makes sense for the city haca or otherwise to be able to help leverage and expand the reach of that effort. >> Tovo: When you say that is one of the things they are looking at, who is they? >> I think it's housing works, the board of the non-profit general partner, that entity. Affordable central Texas. I think it's the the 501(c)3. I think it was if that makes sense to do. It requires additional conversations with us, but I think my understanding is that with the bond task force was saying this is a possibility for that if that turns out the best way to leverage the dollars to save the greatest amount of existing housing, workforce housing capacity. >> Tovo: Okay. And I want to be very clear. I'm extremely supportive of setting aside funds for that purpose. I just -- I am not comfortable at this point committing to a relationship with an entity to do that without lots more discussion. So that's one reason why I wanted to clarify the task force purpose. >> And one reason -- they never came to our meetings, there was no discussion. There's no assumed relationship there. It would just be for the city. >> Tovo: And I think there's plenty of opportunity for -- we have 60,000 non-subsidized affordable units so there's lots of room for I think the non-profit to do work and for the city to engage in some of this work as well. And in preserving some of that housing. This is a question for the housing committee. So I'm in talking more about [11:32:22 AM] this amount. As I shared with some community members, the last time we had affordable housing bonds, the recommendations came forward from the committee and I was part of a couple of councilmembers who advocated for a larger amount and then that failed. So -- and then had to come back the following year and unfortunately it passed. I want to definitely set an amount that will pass and be supported by the voters. But I am interested in talking about potentially increasing beyond what the recommendation is here from task force members. Was that -- at the committee level was the discussion about increasing or potentially increasing the taxable rate or are they -- was the discussion about cutting other areas of the bond? And mayor, that's a question for the housing committee. Would you mind if councilmember Casar answered that? >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to respond to that. >> Casar: The committee members had asked us to get an update from the housing members of the bond. So we hadn't discussed other portions of the bond and weren't posted to do that. We can't really tackle -- our goal was to understand what the work group recommended, how their deliberations went, what they came up with and to hear from staff on that. And we talked about the increased need to especially fund things like land acquisition because we know in six to 10 years to fund the same need we would need to pass almost twice as much money. So that's primarily the -- that's the discussion that we had. >> Tovo: So it talked about increase, but not how we would increase. How we would increase the size of the bond package, but not cut in other areas. >> Casar: And I wouldn't want to have that question in a subset of council. We wanted to get the update and be able to discuss just the housing portion and without having the other parts posted, we couldn't talk about whether the other parts would go up or down. >> Tovo: That makes sense to me. And to that point I have to [11:34:23 AM] ask this next question. And it's been awhile and I haven't gone back through our discussions, but when we were discussing the mobility bond, did she have the discussion about the next bond package being focused on nontransportation needs. So I guess this may be a question for the task force members. Did you take that into account. We have a fairly large amount -- recommended to be set aside in this bond package for mobility and transportation needs and I wondered if you could sort of summarize for us the conversations that led you to that point knowing that the last bond package had such a large amount set aside for -- it was exclusively mobility issues. >> When we spoke about that -- pardon me. Bruce Evans, zoning and platting commission appointee to the task force. And I worked to the transportation task force. Or working group. When we had discussions on this issue, again, as Tom pointed out earlier in his presentation, we were not talking about corridors, which is what the 720-million-dollar package was for. We were primarily looking at maintenance and repair. A lot of these dollars are going for road reconstruction if we do it at an early stage, then we save a whole lot of money that we would be faced with longer in the cycle. And a lot of the dollars were also directed towards three of the bridges. The red bird being one of those that have been identified as being necessary items. So we're not really so much mobility related as we are taking care of the infrastructure that we have in place at this time. >> Thank you for that explanation. I appreciate that. It's very challenging because we have so many needs and I see sidewalk construction in here. We certainly allocated money in our mobility bond for [11:36:25 AM] sidewalk construction as well. However, that's something people site as a very hide need. It's just a dilemma in a true sense of that word. And I guess I would just end by noting that I hope as we craft the bonds we'll be flexible in the language as staff usually are because there are some projects in here that I think are real good candidates for hotel occupancy tax. So I wouldn't want to topic, had to be mentioned. I wouldn't want to necessarily have an amount and an entity listed in the event that that entity is eligible for hotel occupancy tax that we would want -- I would think we would want to be able to at least discuss making that shift to that we're saving our bond dollars for projects that aren't necessarily eligible. So thank you again for all the work. >> >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen, do you want to conclude us? >> Kitchen: Yes. I wanted to quickly say thank you to Tom and to all the members of the task force. I know you worked very hard on this. I'm particularly pleased to see the recommendations related to watershed and drainage and flooding. Those have been issues all over the city for a long time. I wanted to signal for my colleagues a couple of areas that I'm going to be looking at, either including in some way in the recommendation or in adding. These are items that have come to the council now that I don't think were in front of the committee, and those relate to the recommendations from our music and arts commissions, for our urgent need for preserving creative spaces before we lose them. So I'm interested in furthering those recommendations. I'm also intrigued by a recommendation or actually pretty low dollar recommendation that's health related, particularly for our seniors. And that realities to [11:38:26 AM] capital -- relates to capital improvements for the rbj building, and that's for seniors. So that's a priority for how we might use that space. And then with regard to transportation I'll have some additional questions probably for staff at this point. We are now understanding what's in front of us in cam campo, some of which includes traffic signalization and some other things. And I want to make sure that we're not overlapping the funding here in terms of the projects. And then finally, I would like more information and I'll submit questions to staff, and that's on the Daugherty, the amount in there for the Daugherty, I just want to understand more details about the assumptions behind that cost, particularly the location that's being considered for it. >> Flannigan: I had also noted the signals project that we noted for campo yesterday. Were those projects being the city was submitting to campo provided to you all in your analysis? >> I don't believe so. The signalization that we were addressing concerned basic replacement of components where you can no longer get repair parts. So it's upgrade of a lot of signalization at intersections, just obsolescence and we're trying to catch up with that. >> Flannigan: So the project the semi submitted -- the city submitted to campo is an upgrade of signals in the city. And if there's not overlap this might be considered matching fund. There will be some connection there that I think is worth exploring. On the sidewalk rehab money I see in the presentation that the task force is recommending taking 10% of that and dividing that by the 10 districts. My napkin math on that says [11:40:27 AM] about 10,000 for each district. Is that something that was recommended to the task force to consider or did you all come up with those numbers yourselves? >> >> Mayor Adler: Introduce yourself, please? >> Would you repeat the question one more time? >> Flannigan: In the signal rehab and replacement section, which is 20 million, the slide says 10% of that should be divided amongst the districts. That would be two million divided by 10 is 200,000 per district. So I'm curious where that part of the recommendation came from, just take a part and then divide by 10. 200 grand doesn't really go that far. >> Actually, the 20 million didn't have anything like that. The 10% related to sidewalks. Where it was going to be distributed equally to the different districts and the remainder will be used for the very high and high ranked sidewalks that needed to be repaired. As far as the signal is concerned, this was about -- it was purely about renovation and replacement of existing signals and the controls for the signals to bring them up to -- up to modern standards such as connecting them to gps so that when emergency vehicles -- >> Flannigan: That was in the campo project. >> We -- the only relationship we had with campo was in the red bud bridge. >> Flannigan: And that didn't get into campo. So there's in conflict there. So when I look at slide 16, can we bring up slide 16? I want to make sure I'm looking at the same information that you're looking at. It shows 20 million for sidewalk rehab. Then that last bullet point says allocate 10% of those funds equally to each district. So it would be two million divided by 10. >> Correct. >> So it would be 200,000 per district. So that part of the recommendation, was that something that the task force decided was necessary or was that -- were you [11:42:27 AM] advised to take a portion of this and divide by 10? >> We were devised by the [indiscernible]. By the public works and transportation departments. >> Flannigan: Okay. So I know where to ask those questions next. I'm not a fan of divide by 10. I'm a pretty vocal opponent of divide by 10. I don't think it serves the needs of the city, but that's my take on it. So I'm curious where staff is coming from on that. And then on the traffic-calming piece where it talks about majority vote, same question. Was that something the task force came up with and then did you all discuss or contemplate the mechanism that would be used to achieve that vote? >> That actually came up from one of our individual members who had an experience and braille it brought it to the task force. >> Flannigan: Did you discuss what a majority vote would look like? >> No. >> 51%. >> Flannigan: But 51% of what? 51% of the hoa board, 51% of duly elected election on a uniform election date with early voting. Because it's two very different things. And then -- >> I think our staff can probably weigh in. We have a staff on that now. I believe it's neighbors in the meet area. >> Flannigan: It's an important area because there's traffic-calming project in one neighborhood in my district, and the old process versus the new process is how big that radius is and it really does depend on the roads. Some roads are more a collector than other roads so you have to think about what is the boundary bon which you're deciding residents can vote and what is the mechanism they can vote. And if that captures an apartment complex how do we make sure they're involved? Do the business owners, property owners get to vote? There's a lot of complicated factors in there that I think the community said we elected people in districts to answer these questions. [11:44:31 AM] Not so much going back to that process, but we can going into that at another time. >> We did not delve into that. >> >> Flannigan:. So my last question, the thing that you said, Mr. Nuckols, about not everyone who voted for it expected the whole thing to show up on the ballot. And I want to echo councilmember Garza's comments because it does sound a lot like the aquatics task force that I've spoken quite frequently about. But -- so in this large package of projects, did the task force have any conversation about prioritizing from here any sort of guidance that you all might want to provide to the council of if we wanted to go smaller where you would start to peel things off? >> No, we did not. We did not do that. >> Flannigan: Okay. I will say for my colleagues on the bond website there's a lot of good information there and one of them is a survey result by district for if you would support a tax increase. It's really, really good information. I think it shows the challenge of the community engagement. I think the number of participants, percent of participants probably matches equally to what a may election used to look like where you have 20% of the respondents come from district 10 and only 10% from district 6 and then you see in the tax increase, 76% of my residents said no tax increase, 79%, but it was the smallest number of respondents. So to the extent that any of this is statistically significant it's probably not, but there's some good information there about that. >> Could I respond to one of your questions? >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> You asked about the feedback as to trying to maybe keep the bond dollars in line. And I think one of the things in particular that we talked about both in facilities and in transportation, those two working groups were really [11:46:31 AM] exposed to the fact that we are facing significant deferred maintenance. And several of us looked at this bond as an opportunity to address that and hopefully make that the goal of the bond election so that the city would get on track with deferred maintenance and maybe put that to at least on a path to where it's solved. So we did talk about that in the work grouping. It did not transfer in the overall conversation, but it was certainly something that was discussed. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Thanks, I wanted to follow up on the Daugherty arts center that councilmember kitchen asked. I know from the last broadly based bond election task force back in 2012 we looked at the Daugherty arts center and their significant toxic materials issues with that site. But there was probably -- so that would argue for moving it. But there was also probably larger desire by the community to keep that art center, that community right where it is. Did you guys wrestle with that? Like we did? >> Significantly. >> Pool: So what was the up shot of that conversation? Because it was six years ago and I'm curious to see if anything had changed. >> The real issue that kept coming back was the fact that it's in a floodplain. And in order to remedy that site to make it accessible within that floodplain was just beyond expense. Then taken into consideration the age of the facility and all the issues that it has, and we had strong community sentiment, they really wanted it moved from that detrimental location, but they wanted it in exactly the same place. [11:48:34 AM] [Laughter]. >> Pool: So just to toss this out for consideration. There was some talk at the time about moving it closer to palmer auditorium or the long center, somewhere in that vicinity. And I don't know, assistant city manager Hensley, do you know anything about that? >> >> Sarah Hensley, interim assistant city manager. We did a study about that. It would not worked. We have looked at several other sites, one of which is really right there by the appreciation main office. -- The parks and recreation main office. And I'm trying to partner hard with aid to see if there's a way to get a win-win there and get the school district in one of those sites that they have underenrolled students that is an art type campus as well as again looking at a site here close to the main -- the pard main office. >> Pool: That's really good information. Councilmember kitchen, I would be happy to partner with you any way you might need in order to help with the Daugherty situation. Because it's really beloved. It fulfills a necessary community goal. And a purpose. And we don't want to lose it from its accessibility to pretty much everyone in the city. >> And my concern will be if the consideration is to move it on to existing parkland, we have to have a conversation about that. We've already talked about the fact that that location next to the Zach and the existing pard building. We already have parkland there we want to preserve. So I would not be in favor of using parkland that we already -- have already established that we want to preserve. So if we're talking about replacing the pard building that's a different story. So we can talk about it further. But I want to signal that [11:50:35 AM] because the community has already expressed a huge amount of concern about that space. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mayor pro tem. I'm sorry, councilmember pool? >> Pool: Just to finish up, my really deep appreciation for the work that you guys did.s this some. Best work that contribute to our community and it gives you a familiarity with the inner workings literally getting in the weeds of the things that matter here. And it's hard work. It's hard work. And I really so appreciate everything you did. And in particular I want to give a shout-out to the staff for the additional lenses that you put the different recommendations through. That is -- those are bits of information that we've never had in the past available to us. And a lot of that is because we've put some more things out on the stable so the strategic outcomes and the equity lens, that will really aid us in trying to figure out with what's the best fit for our community. And then just last, I will echo what a number of folks around the dais are saying, and the mayor pro tem said it best. I want to make sure that the different proposals that we put on the ballot can win. And I helped in the second round after the first round of housing bonds, the 78 million failed. I was a volunteer and that's when I got to now housing works to help pass the 65-million-dollar bond. And we really -- if we're going to put it on the ballot it's because we think it's necessary, but we also have to scope to what the appetite in our community is and we have to scope to what the capacity of our staff and the city is in order to lay down the work that that money would buy over a relevant period of time. And that's all -- that's all part of putting those pieces together. And I look forward to working with my colleagues and staff more closely on trying to make that happen. And be successful in November. So again, thank you all so very much. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: So I think [11:52:36 AM] because we were talking about aid and the childcare centers earlier and now we're talking about parks and potentially new parks or creating more park -- using our bond funding to create more park opportunities in areas where we have them, I just want to cycle back. Number one, councilmember Casar, I agree with you that I think we should talk about the park priorities as a second phase, but when we talk about that I hope we can think about and I hope that the bond funding language will be flexible enough to allow us to go back to some of the parks recommendations. We had a great task force that looked at areas around the city that are under-parked and identified some opportunities for partnering with aid or other school district campuses, though they were strictly looking at aid, and there were some good opportunities. It's not clear to me where we are in that process. I think they were Westlake to start a few pilot projects with a couple of different campuses, but those may take some investments and those would be really bond dollars I think well leveraged if we're investing in some of those campuses where we have an opportunity to partner with aid especially in areas that are without sufficient park access. So hopefully we can pull that into the discussion. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: Just real quick. The neighborhood partnering program for the transportation -- I'm sorry if I missed discussion about that. Is that -- because that's the program where the neighborhood can put in half of the money. Would that be replacing what the city already provides or would that be helping subsidize neighborhoods who maybe can't afford to give their half of whatever the project is? >> It was made to provide matching funds for programs that were proposed by citizens that came to the city that would be of benefit and we felt there [11:54:37 AM] was significant roi to have that program in place. >> Garza: Is it the city's matching side or is it helping the neighborhood's side? >> It really should be both. The city gains from the construction and the neighborhood gains as well. For both. >> To answer your question, the dollars are the city's. >> Garza: City side, okay. And I wanted to add, I know we'll have a deep discussion about all of this, but in addition to, there will be entities outside of this process that will be asking to be included. And one of those is a resolution just passed by the cap metro board which includes an ask of 15 million in the transportation area which would be the engineering study for a possible measure for high capacity transit. So I just wanted to put that on everybody's radar. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. I had a couple of other comments, but I just wanted to note that for the neighborhood partnering program, it has historically of late been funded by bond money, but neighbors can use as their match volunteer hours. So it doesn't have to only be financial commitment by the neighbors and there are a lot of communities that take advantage of that opportunity to use their volunteer dollars for their match. I wanted to just point out when we talk about deferred maintenance, the other day when we did the budget, we discussed the financial policy that we are not following, which is to take care of our deferred maintenance at a certain level. I think it was five percent or six percent. I'm not exactly sure how it's written, but that's one of the few financial policies that we have that we are not in compliance with. And the bond is one of the main ways that we have to begin to catch up to get to a point where we are following what has been recommended as the prudent [11:56:38 AM] financial policy for the city. So I wanted to raise that. And then on the transportation bond, I want to be really clear this is not the same thing as what was covered under the mobility bond. This is for everyday maintenance of our streets. It takes care of other things outside of the corridors. Those bridges that are covered are critical infrastructure. They have to be able to carry the capacity that we have now that we have grown. There are opportunities to leverage those funds for additional funds, but without the bond we will not be in a position to leverage those funds and those bridges will stay unfixed and potentially will give way in some very critical locations in our city that will create extreme havoc if those bridges are not sustainable over time. And that there have been rankings for a lot of the things that have been put in there of risk and other things from the transportation department, from public works that are behind those approaches. I also want to point on the signaling that -- and the transportation in general, that was my understanding that the bond task force did bring down the transportation bond some from where it started. And one of the things that was cut was signaling. So the original request I think for signaling was at 20 million and went down to 15 million. And the amount that's being potentially funded by campo is five million. So -- is it more than that? >> Kitchen: It's more. Finish your thought and I'll speak to that. >> Alter: Because I think the city match was potentially coming from that and it was only five million that was for that. But anyway, we still do need to have the reconciling for campo. But I did want to point out that the commission or the task force already did try to pare down the transportation bond and did so by 10 million and that was where they ended up. [11:58:41 AM] >> I wanted to add a comment about why we duke it down. We had discussions with the transportation department and the public works department on what would be the capacity to handle this money. And the sweet spot came out to 15 million for those items and that 20 million would be a stretch in each area. So we get let's fix it at 15. So because given the fact that they had the 20-million-dollar package and then the 180 million, they seemed like they had a lot of work to do and they may not even end up using all 20 million. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ms. Houston is the one I'm going to recognize next unless Ms. Kitchen you had something directly on the point? >> Kitchen: Just on directly on the point, just quickly, the conversation we had at campo last night really highlights the need with regard to the bridges. Because we didn't get any of the funding on the bridges from campo. So that's really critical. I do think there's the potential for some overlap. And we'll just dig into the details and figure that out. Because the possibility bond did have some items that were not new and they were reconstruction. But we'll figure that out. There's plenty of need in this area. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Could you talk to me a little bit about vision zero and what's the difference between vision zero and what we're funding out of other buckets and the ones that we will be funding out of the bond? >> We looked at the requirements as they came in from the city, look -- specifically relating to intersections, traffic lights, marking. The way you -- you mark up the intersections, the boxes at the intersections, so there . .We can provide you through the bond q&a what the department brought forward in terms of how this piece fits with the other initiatives under vision zero [12:00:41 PM] >> Right, and what are the buckets vision series is getting money from already. >> Okay. Mayor pro tem. >> I raised it and how it has come up a couple times, I want to sigh I'm completely supportive of repairing unsafe bridges. One of the reasons I'm asking about Emmett Shelton is looking back at the bonding advisory recommendations from 2012 is because it was a recommendation and I can't remember if that got stripped out or cut or we didn't, we ran out of money or it wasn't money sufficient for the bond, so there may be overlap and I appreciate that several offices of going to dig in, but then there are also some projects that -- >> We will provide more detail, but I did get preliminary information that money was for preliminary work, it didn't cover construction so this will be just bringing that project forward. >> Okay, but it did get -- that piece did get funded and that design work happened and now we're ready for the next phase at red bud trail? I'm looking at assistant city manager Goode. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> 88 wanted to respond about the neighborhood program and the ability for neighborhoods to volunteer. That is right, but there are some neighborhoods they don't have time to volunteer because they are busy working several jobs just to be able to afford their 0 rent. So if there was an opportunity to provide some level of our bond in a number like a million to help those kinds of neighborhoods, that is something I will be looking into. Thanks. >> Okay. Colleagues, thank you very much. Good work. Colleagues, we have a discussion with respect to the mobility bond. We have four items pulled. We might have the act to handle these things and break for lunch and we don't have to come back, if we could try to do that. I pulled two of the items, item [12:02:44 PM] number 23, I'm sorry number 25 and 28. As you will recall, council, it has come up when we look at doing committee membership and appointments. It came up in a council member and it seemed as if we would hit a sweet spot collectively, if we just said let's let everybody sign up for any committee they want to be on, and we tasked the city attorney with coming back to us with a proposal that enabled us to have that happen. We kept running into -- obviously, it is going to be something that needs to be discussed and there are concerns with just increasing the membership from four to five, that was part of the discussion and we agreed that we would hold off doing that and would, instead, let the staff come back to us with the proposal to let everyone sign up in the committee they could be on. >> Mayor, you're correct with all that, but the items this week are not the big item. >> Right. Exactly right. Because staff is not ready to bring us back the big item, we can't do that. But, we had a situation that existed with respect to council member troxclair being out on moo maternity leave and council member alter willing to step in and take that spot. We had a meeting of the audit and finance committee on the 25th so since we didn't have the big thing coming back to us and we hope it comes back as soon as it can, we put on the agenda just something that was stopgap measure that raised as little controversial elements is as possible to just say that council member alter would temporarily serve on that, pending our discussion on the bigger items, and that's what is presented. Item number 28, basically, says [12:04:45 PM] that while council member troxclair is on maternity leave, the council member, there is an additional position for document alter to serve and then an appointment and then asking the mayor pro tem to chair and council member pool to vice chair that meeting, since council member troxclair is chair. If that is in any way controversial, we don't have to do that this month it would mean we don't have Alison serving at the end of the month. I pulled those things so you would know what the intent was. Council member pool. >> Pool: I make the point that I fully support them I didn't want to include a mention, a reference to council member troxclair because I thought that was odd to put that into official documentation she was absent. I didn't want to put that in the resolution, and saying it was temporary, it may not be temporary but didn't want to necessarily say it was because it may be since I support increasing the number of committee members to these committees above the four that it is now and in recognition that we're going to do the larger adjustment later on month when our law department can get us all the ins and outs to make sure we do that properly, I wanted to urge we adopt the original draft resolution that the mayor's office put on the back up, which was the March 30 resolution. That one does not include the word "Temporarily" and doesn't include the reference by name to council member troxclair. So, which was the resolution that I agrees, and that was the text of the resolution I agreed to sign on to, which was the one from March 30. So I'm full bore on approving your original draft resolution and I think we should move forward with that. I think that is a good move, and that will tee it up for the large he committees later on. >> When we posted the original [12:06:45 PM] language, there were concerns in some of the other offices of not identifying it was temporary because it was temporary. We went back to legal, there is concern among the group, they want this specifically listed as temporary and one of the mentions for council member troxclair, no one could read it as see she was stepping off or otherwise replaced but it was something that was temporary. My sense is if we can all agree to do the language that specifically says it is temporary, I would suggest you move forward. If there are concerns we doing that, I have attacked to council member alter, she incident need to serve in this -- she doesn't need to serve in this last meeting but I would love to have I suggest we don't address it this week the original doesn't replace council member troxclair, it raises the committee members from four to five. >> We've discussed that and I looked at transcript and that was raised when we asked staff to come back with a proposal to increase the committees to be whoever can serve on it. As council member kitchen was asking for it to be increased from four to five and another committee, as well, and the transcript says from the discussion at the time was that we wouldn't be dealing with that going from four to five and that we would wait until we had the broader conversation with respect to what we were doing with that. So, really, we sided, we would wait until we had the broader conversation to do these things. I made the mistake perhaps, of try doing something quickly so Alison could serve at the end of the month. If that is creating problems, then we don't need to do that, but that is all that was intended to do. The vehicle existed to do that and it meets the needs of the [12:08:47 PM] people, it is not automatic biggous, it is temporary, it is not intended to replace the larger conversation, whether we should have four or five or any of those things. That's what I intended it to be. If it was a mistake, then let's just wait until we have the broader conversation. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: I'm okay with moving forward with what is on the agenda, the original language, so situation with audit and finance committee can be taken care of and we will take up the larger conversation that comes back to us. >> I'm not comfortable with doing that because of the reasons we've mentioned. >> >> Kitchen: Oh, is it temporary or not. >> Mayor Adler: It doesn't implicate any other greater policy issues and that's what I would propose for council to do. But, again, if we're going to do that, I would want to be part of that conversation on Thursday. So I would be supportive of the council moving forward with the most recent versions that were handed out after talk to council. Council member Renteria. >> Renteria: Now that you mentioned Thursday are we going to have a full council on Thursday? >> Mayor Adler: You don't have a full council, you have I think seven members of the council to move forward, after consultation with the mayor pro tem, question asked council member alter and council member Houston to check in and chair this meeting. They've spoken and I think council member alter is going to at least initially start as chair. >> The only reason I brought that up was because I do have a doctor appointment at 9:30 Thursday, which is -- I didn't realize. It N was set months ago so I didn't realize that I was going [12:10:49 PM] to be -- and I'll probably be back about 11:00 but I just wanted to bring that up, mention that. >> I would like to suggest we do not start at 10:00, maybe we can start at noon or something like that. That would take dare of the issue. I don't want to meet and then break and then meet again. >> I think this is an important question but can we resoft the audit and finance issue and then move on to the meeting. I am a co-sponsor of that and one of the concerns I had about the original may be resolved. It makes no difference to me how we resolve the question about the resolution. I have a concern if it became a permanent change we might have a higher threshold for reaching quorum, which I don't want to have. It is may understanding the ordinance actually says a number of individuals rather than a percentage, so it may be a moot point. But I just wanted to point that out. Again, it makes no difference to me whether we go with temporary or permanent or whatever, so I would go with the sponsor's will on that. >> Mayor Adler: Discussion? Yes, Mr. Flannigan. >> Flannigan: Yes, I wouldn't support the initial language. >> Mayor Adler: Any other discussion about the temporary/non-temporary part before we talk about the meeting itself? Okay. For those of you that are going to be here for that meeting -- so, I think -- who is here, intends to attend the meeting on Thursday? So I think Mr. Casar is among that group. I think you have seven total. [12:12:51 PM] >> Tovo: In terms of a 10:00 start, you have six. >> Mayor Adler: If you wanted to start at 10:00, you will have six. I will let you talk about when you want to start the meeting and I will note participate in this conversation because I won't be here. >> I will put forward my suggestion again that rather than starting at 10:00 and breaking and coming back that we just start at a time that we can consolidate, which my guess would be noon, I'm assuming we have a 2:00 I think that we're waiting for. Would than right, Mr. Manager? Okay, iso. Or maybe we can start at 1:00 and we're the ones that are going to be here so let us talk about it. >> I want to make sure we can do that. >> Of course. >> Can we do that? >> It is noticed at 10:00. >> Citizen commune communication is set at noon. >> I was proposing noon. >> Under the open meetings act you have to start some time after the time you said. You said you were going to start at 10:00, you can't start earlier than that. On the agenda, you have 10:30 and 2:00 time certains and then you will have the 4:00, noon, citizen communication, 4:00 public hearings. >> So we could start at noon, legally. >> My suggestion would be that you send somebody down there at 10:00, just one person, just to -- >> I think we can figure out how to let people know, but if that's my preference. What does everybody else think who is going to be there. >> I'm going to be there and that's rallying not my preference. When we have more time, we use more time and I would like to go ahead and at least get the consent agenda done with so that woe don't even have to do that. And then, we have the 10:30, I think it is, house and finance corporation which is a consent [12:14:51 PM] agenda. We can knock all of that out. Danger a break, come back for citizens communication. And I think, by that time, you should be back. So anything that we have to pass, we have to kind of wait anyway. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Garza. >> Garza: I will comment on this issue, I wanted to be in line. >> Mayor Adler: All right, you're in line. Council member alter. >> Alter: I think the issue is there are any issues that are controversial or not. People have had a chance to look look at the agenda. With six, we wait for anybody to abstain on something that we can table, anything and wait, but I think we still need six to table it. And so that would be my one concern about starting at 10:00, although I appreciate yet the opportunity get done early and I have every intention of leading the meeting so we get done early, I just don't have a sense of where people are at on any of the items, if there are any that are coming up beyond the committee, which I'm guessing we're going to pull down the issues with respect to the committee. >> We've had some postponements kind of coming in now, asking for postponements to a later date. I don't know all of them front of me. >> Alter: There there are 4:00 items. 10:30 for the housing and finance corporation, 12:00 for citizen communication, there's 2:00 for zoning and 4:00 for the public hearings and there's music and proclamations at 5:30. >> Mayor Adler: Council member pool. >> Pool: In the spirit of massive cooperation, I would split the baby and say I'm fine to go with the temporary but I would not include the phrase about council member troxclair being absent, it feels weird having that in an official [12:16:52 PM] document. I would be happy, if that is the motion, I don't know who is going to offer that up but I would be happy to vote for that. And I have a big item 38 project that I'm prepared to give you guys some good everyone site into with a little -- insight into with a little hand out when we get to items further down on this list in order to preserve its ability to stay on consent Thursday. I may take a little bit more time when we get tied on 38 today to so more of you hear about this project and that will allow us to move more swiftly through first reading of this item on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: I forgot to mention I have something from 10:30, too that I will have to step off the dais from 10:30 to probably 11:15, so although I prefer noon, I can certainly do a 10:00, if that's what people prefer because I would assume it would be done by 10:30. >> Mayor, I just got word the 10:0 ahfc agenda is going to be withdrawn, there is only one item and it apparently is not going forward. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So do you want to start at 10:00 tomorrow or start later? >> So when does council member Renteria get back? >> Renteria: About 11:00. >> Mayor Adler: Council member alter, do you have a preference? >> Can we start at 11:00? >> Mayor Adler: Pick one. >> Alter: We can either start at 11:30 to have enough people there or start at 12:00. Either one is fine with me. I don't -- >> Mayor Adler: So, with that said, if you start at 11:30, you ought to be Ike to get consent agenda done. Housing doesn't get heard that will have you sitting there to talk to the citizens [12:18:53 PM] communication. >> If the staff can communicate with the reverend who is going to do the invocation and ask the people be there right at time at 11:30 so we don't have to keep folks waiting for sit sing communication, as -- citizen communication, as well, and we will move quickly as you allow. >> And question postponement on two of the zoning ices I have in my district. >> Mayor Adler: You're going to request zone on the two in your district. Do you know what the numbers are? >> >> 34 is one of them. The other one is 49. >> Mayor Adler: 49. Okay. Thanks for that notice. Thank you, council member pool, I don't have a problem taking out the mention of the maternity leave, although I would like to check with council member troxclair to see if that was something that she felt differently on. Assuming she doesn't feel any differently on that, then I have no problem with that coming out. >> Mayoring shall if you're going to do that, are you going to have a time certain? It says it is temporarily waved. Are we going to say ending a certain date? >> No we're going to say temporarily and it is going to get preempted by the bigger discussion we will have as soon as you bring that back to us. >> Which is on the 26th. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Garza, did you have something? >> Garza: I just wanted to talk about why I won't be here, and I think we're all actually going to be at the same equity summit in Chicago. I agreed to be on a panel a couple months ago that's addressing equity and economic development. I think it goes both ways, I probably would have not agreed to it if I knew two other council members were out and I doubt they would have agreed if they knew I was out. So that's why, unfortunately, I [12:20:55 PM] won't be here. We all get invitations to so many things and by to very few of the invitations of the places that we're invited to and this one was important to me as we're looking at a revamp of our 380 and how we have equity into that, so that was my address there I wanted to add. I know we talked some of us weren't going to be there, what was going to happen on zone cases and I want to make sure that I guess the agreement was that everything with a move forward. Does this mean it would move forward in a postponement way or first reading. Either one of those is fine for me but specifically for item 36, I know we are all very courteous and deferred to the council members of that district. So on 36, I'm fine with it on first reading, I'm fine with it on all three readings, as well. It was a 9-0 vote around it is also staff's recommendation. >> My understanding is the council is going to move forward on anything that they can move forward on that if everybody was here it couldn't resolve in a change in the vote so that things can move forward, and otherwise, they won't. If anybody wanted anything particularly held, we would notice that on the board so the full council had notice of that. And I appreciate the first thick said, council member Garza, the perspective, this meeting. There is another track on this that related to displacementen our city staff competed for a few spots, a few cities. There were multiple cities that competed for being part of this cohort and the mayor pro tem and I agreed to serve on that the same way that you served on the other, in part, to help us [12:22:56 PM] competitively earn a position in that group of cities, so I'm looking forward to being there, focusing on this placement together with the mayor pro tem and other cities that were selected to be a part of that cohort. Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Thanks. I just wanted to indicate there is a zoning case in district 9, item 50, and I'm extremely supportive of that moving forward in my absence in case anyone had any questions about that. I have a slightly different issue but I think it fits under our posting language, and I'll just mention it and maybe we can follow-up on it. On the you know, now that we do an earlier posting, more and more items are ending up on an addendum and it's, I think, confusing so some members of our public if they print out the agenda for the meeting it doesn't necessarily capture those eye deny dah items. -- Adenda items so if you look online with the numbering system, see if I can pull it up, in the numbering system, it will show one through 53. As a member of the public throughout the agenda and the addendum. I wonder if we can't create space on the agenda and have these items added so it is all contained in one document. So I just throw that out. Again, we don't need to resolve it, I think it would be easier, more user friendly if we had one document for each meeting and it indicates the items that were added as turn addendum items. >> Mayor Adler: That makes sense to me, if you can take a look at that and see if it is workable. All right. >> We will start the meeting at 11:30 and move as quickly as we [12:24:56 PM] can and being on tomorrow will facilitate that. I know it is an odd time, so if you can please be there on time that would be helpful. For those absent, I'm happy to acknowledge that if you be provide me the name of the conference and the one or two sentences you would want me to communicate. I know you are away on city business and that would be perfectly appropriate and it is also great we, as a city, were invited to participate in this process. I did have a question for council member Garza on item 47, which I think was recommended for denial. She stepped out. Okay. When she gets back, I would like to know how she wants us to proceed on 47, recommended for denial and is in her district. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Guernsey. >> We will be asked for postponement on item number 47 for may 10. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Houston, you did have something? >> I don't know when I'm supposed to talk about the pulled item. >> Mayor Adler: Now is the time. >> Mr. Guernsey, since you're will all right, item 40, I have some questions. I'm going to ask for a postponement on tomorrow, but there's some things that just don't hardly make sense in my head. On the staff recommendation, page four of six, when you all are doing capital metro transit stops within walking distance, are you doing the current transit stops or the proposed transit stops? >> Council member what I will do is probably go back and talk with my staff, I hear construction going on in this area so we can look at that. [12:26:57 PM] >> So the other thing is about the crossing over 183 to get to the HEB, which son the other side of the road. It is kind of like the chicken crossing the road, by several people have been killed doing that so I need to know how many fatalities and accidents we've had with people trying to cross the bridge. There is a bridge there now, but it is dark and transients thrive so people are not comfortable, that's why they run across the highway. Under the imagine Austin process, it talks about complete communities, where housing services, retail jobs, entertainment, health care and other daily needs. It is interesting to me that none of these things are available in that community, yet we're going to okay a storage facility rather than something that would help make a complete community on the number one track, I believe. And, then, of course, I have glad plain issues that I need some more continue says they will look at it at site plan but it's a one-way in, one-way out development. 300 units and there's a floodplain issue so those are the things that I will want to know, and it was too throng put in a question -- long to put in a question and answer, so I thought I would ask you. Mayor, I didn't know I was supposed to let you know what I was going to be asking you when I pull stuff. That is a new process. >> Mayor Adler: That is not a process, miss Houston. When I my staff when they look at the agenda every two-weeks, ski I ask them to tell me what might be controversial or an issue, when you pullinged this they didn't pick up on that so I asked them to call it so you I might know what the issues might be. >> That is the first time in four-years anybody called me about what I'm going to pull and why so that was just confusing to me, so thank you for the explanation. [12:28:57 PM] >> That was just for me to know. Anything else on pulled items before we hear from the corridor construction program people? Mr. Casar. >> Tovo: I still want to do item 38. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Casar. Cars it is not >> Casar: It is not a fulled item but let everybody know we canning a we we're making changes, so it shouldn't really be meaningful to anyone but I want to raise 2 here in I case you missed it. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Council member pool. >> Pool: Passing around a handout with basic information about the project and the list of community benefits from this proposal. As I mentioned, I want to run through this here today. Dave Anderson, the representative on this, will be in attendance and lay it out on Thursday but I just wanted sir, won't have to say all this on Thursday and that's really good because there are more of you all here today and this is a really important project. So the project reflects the original vision of the planning area as a second downtown, providing mixed use, mass transit, community benefits and great parks. Brandywine and their representatives worked hard to craft a master plan and through several collaborative community meetings they won the support of the nearby Gracy woods neighborhood. I want to talk about what is going to happen at this site this phased plan runs over 20-years. It is a 65-acre tract. It has a variety of benefits including a new capital metro rail station on site with public parking, which will be about 400-plus spaces for rail commuters, paid for in full by [12:30:58 PM] the developer. They must commence construction of the new station before they can take advantage of any extra titlements proposed here. And I do want to stop and make a note to our staff that we need to mange sure our language in that portion of the agreement is crystal clear. I'm seen of brandywine's good intent, but at the end of the day we need to make sure that station is completed and functioning as part of our project. I can follow-up with staff on that question. Brandywine is offering nine-acres of open space and parkland, which is more than the 3.2-acre rest quired in the north Burnett plan, this includes connection to the trail. There is off site traffic improvements about $3 million and internal pedestrian and bike-friendly street design, several internal streets will offer grade-separated bike lanes for safety. The key environmental benefits are gsi, that's the green storm water infrastructure installations, better storm water controls and reconstruction of the current poorly-functioning retention pond. We will remove or the developer will remove 15-acres of asphalt, preserve the heritage trees and protect the erosion hazard Zones on the creek. Brandywine with the broadmoor development will be adhering to the affordability requirements in the plan which called for 10% of the bone bonus area which is 319,000 square feet to be affordable at 60% mfi for rental for 40-years and 80% mfi-for- ownership units for 99-years. The developer intends to build over 2,000 units, primarily [12:32:59 PM] rental, but there will be some ownership condo units. Then, this is a really important part and I've talked about this from the dais a couple of times recently, we are working with the developer on a goal of having at least 50% of the required affordable units on site. This is really important. It is important because the fee in Lew rate is only -- in lieu rate is only $6 a square foot. I would make a note here I would like to work on updating the plan to improve that rate so it better reflects market realities. I'm also noticing the development bonus section is entitled "Interim" so we really need to tackle that revision here and bring the north burnet gateway plan up-to-date, but that is separate from our plan on Thursday. The project is projected to increase enrollment at three schools. Those gradual increases over the notion deck AIDS will keep a steady en-- over the next deck next decades will keep enrollment going. We're working with brandywine to keep standards on this construction project there is a menu of items in the project and I'm hope to feel secure a commitment on that, including the living wage, osha training, workman's comp, all goals that we're well familiar with and we all support tomorrow achieve all of this, brandywine is asking for a change from mgbcu, the tod transit oriented design designation allows the project to take advantage of a higher development bonus which will in [12:35:01 PM] turn give more affordable units, increasing their far from 3-1 to 8-1 up to 360 feet. The project will actually only need a 3.24 to 1 far but they need the height. The height allow as smaller foot print, it will achieve a greater amount of open space. Brandywine's Dave Anderson is here. I plan and would like to move this project on Thursday on first reading. I know some of my colleagues may want to weigh in when brandywine returns -- when council members are all back in town for second and third readings. And then, I'll just close by saying I am aware this is a tremendous increase in titlements we're looking at but this fits in the vision of the plan. I applaud the developer for bringing this project to this regional center. This is an area that has been planned for density with a foundation of community conversations through the north burnet gateway plan. This is before this kind of development should take place and where these types of amenities benefit surrounding communities, as well as the community that will work on this site. I want to thank brandywine for working with the nearby neighborhood for a better project. A lot of my constituents are excited about what is coming, particularly the rail station, parks and retail amenities. Brandywine's work with the community made this a truly beneficial project for everyone. It is a model for how community conversations and collaboration fosters better planning, better projects and over all good. Will I'll just read you a quick excerpt from the Gracy woods neighborhood association letter of support. [12:37:02 PM] Gracy woods neighborhood association is glad to see a thoughtful plan for this evolution of this site. We look forward to welcoming the new residents and businesses that this impressive project will attract. We also appreciate being included in the development discussions, since we will share transit routes, access to the trails and parkland and other area amenities with this project. We hope Gracy woods neighborhood association, hopes that this council will approve 9 rezone of 11501 birnet road to allow this project to move forward in north Austin. Thank you so much to the representatives. They will be around on Thursday to talk about it more, and thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk a little bit more about the project today rather than on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Council member alter. >> Alter: I wanted to clarify what you are hoping for on Thursday. You earlier mentioned wanting it on done sent and now you're talking -- consent and now you're talking about a presentation. I want to make sure if you're expected people to come to for the public hearing and presentation, if it gets pulled for the public hearing -- >> This already would be pulled for presentation by the developer this letter from Gracy boards is in lieu of the neighbors coming down. They are fully supportive of this going on first reading on Thursday without any hitches. >> Okay, so first reading but not consent. >> Right. I think the developer always gets the opportunity to speak to their project. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Renteria. >> Renteria: I want to thank you nor supporting this project. This is going to be a great opportunity for that area there, especially with moving the rail station there. I never could understand why is they build built it where it is at now, it is not very easily accessible so I really want to [12:39:06 PM] thank the developer for working with your office because thing is really going to improve the red line that runs through there. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Miss Houston. >> Houston: Council member pool, if it is first reading only can it stay on consent? >> Pool: What I don't know, the developer has a right to make a presentation so I would need get a read from him or law to make sure we don't inadvertently -- >> Pool: I don't think he wants to make a presentation to just six of us. >> Mayor Adler: That would be fine, just don't close the public hearing when you do that. >> Alter: I know with that sounds like a great plan. Mr. Anderson, is that okay with you? You all remind me Thursday that as what he we will do. It will be on consent but not close the public hearing so, hopefully, I will make the motion properly. >> Mayor Adler: Further discussion on this item, number 48. >> Tovo: I have a quick question. Due know what the enrollment is? >> My staff collected those numbers but I don't have them with me, but we can get those for sure. We're talking about a 20-year period and boundaries may change. I think that pillow has dropped a little bit and is pulling people from further afield, so this may replace some of the students who are maybe coming from -- >> Tovo: That drives with Mr. Anderson. >> He may know better than me. >> Tovo: He, did he showed me the trend is downwards. It would be great to get them to numbers, thanks. >> Be happy to. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else on 38. >> I wanted to clarify with council member Houston, item 40 is connected with 41. >> All of those will be [12:41:07 PM] postponed. >> Great, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: What are the other numbers postponed? >>> 41 through 45. >> Mayor Adler: And items number 46 and 47 are going before the planning commission tonight. Isn't that right? >> And, like I said, staff is requested postponement of 40. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds right to me. And then the last one, council member pool, the language on number 28 doesn't mention maternity leave, it says imminent absence for the committee. Did you not want to say that? >> It felt odd to me to call out a council member's absence. I mean, after talking with law, it was clear that that wouldn't be in the official document, you know, put into ordinance or anything, it just felt odd. >> Mayor Adler: I'll let you all decide if you want to put in those last eight words when you're together as a group. All right. Staff, you want to talk to us about the corridor? The hope was to -- and then we don't have to come back. And we don't lose people. >> We just have a few slides to tee up to provide context for your discussion. And so we have provided some additional information based on questions you had had after the last council meeting so just again to reacclimate, part of the corridor construction program, we had nine corridors eligible for construction on that slide there I know you all are pretty familiar with that. Again, just to tee back of the staff proposal based on the results of the prioritization model, based on the contract with the voters and looking at a [12:43:10 PM] feasible program of projects, we are proposing doing quarter wide projects for all nine-quarters. We are proposing multi modal improvements on east river side group and that includes to montopolis drive. And we have several projects to move into design and seek funding for construction on William cannon. One of the segments has been recommended by campo for funding and that is I-35 to 345 Kinney falls park way segment. It includes airport boulevard, all segments would move into design. South Lamar boulevard, Ben white and north of Lamar boulevard to Howard lane. That was submitted for campo funding, it is not currently recommended. These projects include several enhanced multi modal improvement packages, including east river side, north Lamar, burnet road, slaughter lane. We have one recommended for campo funding. Then, additional segments, enhanced multi modal package for mlk, south Lamar boulevard. Again, we will be seeking additional funding for all the projects in the program, the 4.1 billion program, regardless of 2016 bond funding or not. Here is a quick map to recap what is being proposed and the different funding categories. Again, the total package is 1.4 billion, looking at these different funding categories, whether they are using 2016 bond dollars or looking for other funding sources. Again, campo has recommended funding for the projects I [12:45:11 PM] recommended along William cannon, slaughter lane. It was noted to us, we did get additional information that because tx-dot is doing programs and other grant funded associated with north Lamar, that is one thing that factored into north Lamar not moving forward for proposed funding. The timeline, we are having this item come back to council on April 26. We would then, of a that quickly pivot into the implementation phase and that would start with the project design phase. Project design phase really breaks out into two sub phases, one is preliminary engineering and the other is full design. What we're looking to do right now is get our design teams on board for the various corridors and get them moving on engineering, hopefully start big early summer. So what are some of the things we do in engineering? This is where we gather a lot of the data and information we need to really start refining the design to move into the full design for these corridors. So we're getting survey information along the corridors, we're start to work to develop traffic management plans. We are getting additional information about the right of ways. Geo technical information. Looking at drainage and other utility coordination needs and on going coordination with our partner agencies, as well, to gather aing decisional information. The preliminary engineering phase we anticipate getting through this for most corridors by early calendar year 2019. Several questions have come up about our coordination with project connect and I want to reassure council we are meeting often with capital metro with them both on I think it is now called their cap remap or connections 2025 and also the project connect initiatives. We're meeting pretty much every [12:47:11 PM] other week and we're sharing a lot of information between the teams. As a matter of fact, dapt metro helped to inform some of the technical updates as we were translating those into potential investment packages. We met early and often with the dap metro team to do that this is the short-term time shrine a lot of the projects do include a lot of the enhancements that support transit, including better connectivity to transit stops, support where they're looking at putting stations, also looking at putting transit hubs or mobility hubs, as well. We are working on the short-term a lot of what we're already doing in the mobility improvement packages are supporting a lot of the short-term improvements that project connect is pitting forward. For the long-term, we have shared information between our teams so we have looked at the conceptual illustrations they have for propose postals for high-capacity transit, and shares of cross sections we have coming out of the corridor improvements. We will continue to coordinate with project connect and we feel like the timelines actually match up relatively well. As we move into the preliminary phase, we will feel like there is opportunities to share information about what we're learning about the corridors with the project connect team to again, basic information about where the survey lines are, all that type of information, drainage issues helps both of our agencies as we move forward. Again, what was presented on project connect is they are going to be getting to looking at a program of projects to bring before the cap metro board and looking to move forward with that. Again, I think that is supposed to happen around the fall time [12:49:11 PM] frame. We will be into preliminary Mary engineering phase and gathering some of that initialing information as that is going on. And so, again, I think that matches up pretty well with our preliminary engineering phase as capital metro is looking to develop their program of projects, and connect to some potential decisions on that, that should be happening as we are finishing up preliminary engineering phase. We feel confident as we move forward, if we can quickly pivot into implementation, engineer do some of that initial data gathering, survey work, look at other issues. We can share that information with capital metro and be ready to come back to council, provide a briefing about what we learned, as part of preliminary engineering and then get any additional direction that council might want of to prove advise us at this point. With that any questions? >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Council member Garza? >> Garza: I appreciate the extent to which you are coordinating. The asterisk refers to the same source, a meeting back up. You said you're talking to them, but in addition to the back up, you did run this timeline by their staff? >> We did. We talked to them and shared that information. Again, we're coordinating often with our timelines. >> Garza: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Council member kitchen. >> Kitchen: The other thing I would note, too, I'm glad you are talking about, you know the construction is not what would line up with cap metro and to some extent the pe Rs might now so I'm happy to hear you talk about bringing that back to council because the council will need the ability to vote on whether or not to proceed with various construction items so there's that. And then, on south Lamar, I want to clarify something. We've been going back and forth on a question and I'm not sure I understand it. The bicycle lanes that are slated for construction on south Lamar as part of the proposed [12:51:12 PM] project, my understanding from reading the back-up is that they're striped. In other words, they're not separated by claims. >> In the quarter wide mobility package for south Lamar. Part of the back and forth -- >> Kitchen: I want to confirm. I did hear that right? There's no separated bike lanes plans on south Lamar as part of this package. >> That's right. We're looking to get some additional space but not have the actually separation of the mode. >> Kitchen: So it will be a stripe, right? A pavement painting? >> We will work on those improvements that could include striping but it could include other improvements, as well, I was get into design. >> Kitchen: I'm hearing two different things and that's why I'm trying to nail this down. I'm hearing you say maybe but I want to know if the funds are in there so that there could be a separated bike lane with the, you know, with either the -- I don't know, with the poles or with concrete or something other than striping and I need to hear a yes or a no no, is the funding in there for that to be done and if it is I would like the description in the back up to describe that. >> Yeah, I'm sorry, it is not really a yes or no answer. If you're talking about a separated bike lane where there is a median or section of concrete raised, a concrete that separated the mode, right, that is not in the quarter wide mobility improvement package. However, when you talk about poles or some other options that might be available that could be something we could look at as part of the design. I don't want to completely eliminate it but right now we're not looking 59 separation of the bike lane mode. >> I'm looking for language that makes it clear in the back up. Because in talking with some of [12:53:13 PM] the bicycle advocates they thought they were getting either shared ice paths or separation on south Lamar and it doesn't sound like it is in there. I want clarity about whatever this is we're doing so we're not setting expectations that are not what we're going to get. >> Sure. >> Kitchen: The other things are my concern about south Lamar, you can't ride on south Lamar with a painted, not if you -- I mean, some intrepid bicyclists will do that. I'm not one of them. With the traffic going like it is and painted line, even with a somewhat broader lane, we're effectively not doing bicycle lanes. And then the other thing is you know, we've already take and I will signal to me colleagues that I do plan to suggest a change on the section -- and we've been talking about that, the section of south Lamar that would, in fact, be eligible for some clearly enhanced bicycle lane, which would include separation. Because there isn't funding to do the entire street, we would be talking about a much smaller portion. But we can work on that. But I want to signal to my colleagues that I will be proposing that change. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? Yes. Miss Houston. Hughes a couple >> Houston: A couple of questions. This may be for the representatives on the campo group, how does one get something submitted for campo for conversation. I've been talking about talking about the Howard lane, east Howard lane, it is city and county and part of it is in campo service area. How do I get that submitted for conversation the next time this is available? [12:55:14 PM] >> Sure. Robert Goode, assistance city manager. We brought this campo call to council, next call we will work with each council district office as we did this last time. Make sure we have that communication we also look at the projects and see campo gives us the criteria for how they will score and perhaps we worked with you and it didn't look like it was going to score very highly. We can certainly work it in the next call. >> Houston: Would you please, I don't remember, you bring a lot, get in touch with me and let me know if that is included and if it didn't score it is, in fact, a very major highway and there's some major problems I've been trying to work with transportation over time so I think it was Mr. Johnson that said, why don't you submit it to campo, so maybe I didn't do it. If you could check back with us, I would appreciate it it. The other part of that is, for capital metro board members, is there you all's understanding that we will try go back to the legislature to get some legislation changed so that the green line can be operationallized or be part of your plan? There's some state legislation that has to be changed before we can use that as an option. >> I wasn't aware. Are you aware of -- >> Council member Houston, I think the green line is something that's being considered as part of the project connect, but I don't know exactly what has to be changed. >> Houston: So I send you the information, I got it for the first time in a meeting with Mr. Clark this past week and never heard there was some legislative hiccup there that had to be changed before we could even consider that. >> Okay. >> So this is the first time in four-years. I will send it to the three of [12:57:15 PM] you. >> Mayor Adler: Could be post that on the message board so we all can see that. >> Houston: Yes. >> I would be happy to work with you. >> Houston: I expressed my dissatisfaction this has nor come up before. I've been talking about the green line four-years and I've never seen it before. I wondered if you all knew about it. >> No, actually, I don't. >> Flannigan: I do know about it. >> Mayor Adler: Council member Flannigan. Council member mayor pro tem is next. >> I would say on the campo side, there were other projects that were not included that raised questions on the campo policy board but it was not something you had to do, it was staff-initiate product says. The new scoring criteria, it puts more emphasis on projects that had some design work involved. I found there were some projects that had old design projects that got credit for that ended up in this call it that I'm not sure the design work is all the design I wish it would have, but I think, Mr. Goode, if we can start now on what we all can be doing as council members to identify and turn forward preliminary work, whatever work is necessary to get those scores up in advance of the next call. I can't recall, council member kitchen or alter or mayor, when that process would initiate. >> They said summer of '19 was the anticipated next call, I guess, so we can certainly be doing prework now. >> They will be at some point. They said they were going to take longer to do the call it than they did this one. They were going to give jurisdictions more time. >> Six- months to prepare, rather than six-weeks. >> We want to have projects included in the next call, we need to have those things figured out by this year. [12:59:15 PM] I'm happy, councilor Houston, I'm happy to work with you in identifying -- really, any office. If you have projects in your district you're not sure campo is getting attention paid to it, four of us are on that board. >> The strategic mobility plan will hopefully bring all of this together and you will participate and improve that and that comes fall spring so that meshes well with the timeline for the next campo call, youyou all will have a list of ryes in that plan that we want -- of roadways in that plan ha we want to pursue. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem and then Ms. Alter. >> Tovo: I wanted to ask about the glued improvements that are -- the Guadalupe improvements that are in here. I've heard from the Texas representatives and with stakeholders in the area, some questions and some concerns about some of what is in the Guadalupe corridor plan. And I think I raised that in our discussion about the action that we're preparing to take here and was told that we're not -- what we're doing here is not necessarily moving forward with some of the elements was corridor plan that people had concerns about. But I need explore that a little bit because it seems to me that some of the changes -- some of what we would be funding through our bond funding is indeed moving forward with the corridor plan and I need to be sure that you're in conversations with the university of Texas and with some of the other parties. So I'll leave it there and then I have some follow-up questions, but could you chime in here on what the status of your conversations are with the university, area partners and with UT and with some of the other property owners and stakeholders in that area? >> Yeah. And we have had conversations with several stakeholders along Guadalupe and the drag. And I think it's been really more for clarification on what's included in the proposal. And the base proposal includes the quarter-wide mobility package for [1:01:15 PM] Guadalupe for full design construction funding out of 2016 bond dollars and that includes things like sidewalks, signal improvements, bike lane improvements along 24th street. So several improvements associated with improving Guadalupe and around the drag, mobility around the drag area. It does not include the transit priority lane in improvements. That's in the enhanced multi multimodal package that is in the funding proposal. >> Tovo: So the addition of transit enhancements, can you tell us basically what that includes? >> It is basically a contraflow lane improvement. Basically when you think will how the buses roof right now along lavaca, they take the big turn and go over on to the drag. That would allow them to go to 18th street below mlk and go up in a contraflow fashion and get in alignment with Guadalupe and go straight up. It takes the conflicts at that mlk turn and jog over to Guadalupe out of the equation. And we've had conversations with capital metro about this. We all agree that's going to be a pretty effective improvement to do that and we're looking at that as an early out improvement to do. We feel like that's important to move forward with. >> Tovo: Thank you. And that's the main transit enhancement that's going on. >> Signalization will help -- >> Tovo: Under that bullet the transit operational enhancements, that's the main one? >> As far as the infrastructure improvements, some of the signalization and other associated improvements will also help transit as well. >> Tovo: And how about restriping nueces from one way to two way? That is-- somewhere in front of me is an email from the university area partners that is one of the items that they have some significant concerns about. >> And we did talk to them -- >> Tovo: They said we oppose in the strongest possible terms the [1:03:16 PM] conversion of nueces. It's unnecessary, not based on any local request. We absolutely don't want to increase non-local traffic through neighborhood streets. As you know there's a lot of pedestrian, a lot of pedestrian activity in that area. So the concern about increasing non-local traffic is a real one in terms of making sure that it's as safe as possible for the students who live in that area. >> Sure. And we have talked to the university area partners about this and talked more about the purpose of it. I might add mark Bernstein to talk more about the purpose why and again we translated these out of the corridor plan itself. But we've had some conversations. Mark, do you want to talk more about that improvement along nueces street? You're good. E mark Bernstein, hdr consultant manager. On nueces street, the purpose of the one way to two way conversion is to give local traffic more choices to reach their destination in the university area. So that's the main purpose of that. Clearly the pedestrian safety in that area is of the utmost concern. So along with that improvement are several sidewalk improvements on the cross streets leading from nueces to Guadalupe itself from 28th street all the way down to 24th street. So you can see that there are sidewalk improvements on those cross streets associated with that. And that will alleviate many of the issues that we have on those near blocks to help mobility for cars as well as pedestrians through that whole zone. So everyone can reach their dezavalatation. >> Tovo: -- Destination. Have you had conversations with the staff representatives from UT who have been following this issue? >> I think we've had some communications with them. We have not had extensive meetings or anything to talk with them about that. We have gotten some feedback about some of the concerns about some of the improvements associated with the corridor-wide and we are going to be reaching out to them to get back with them as well. >> Tovo: And I met with them earlier. I'm not certain -- they did express some questions about the Guadalupe corridor plan. [1:05:16 PM] Have they expressed some explicit concerns about what you've included in this? >> I don't think we've heard any. I'll look at my communications. I don't think we've heard anything directly from them about any concerns about the staff concerns about the construction program. We've had some communications with them to be sure we're connected, but we have not heard anything specific about concerns. >> Tovo: I think it would be helpful and maybe this is a better conversation for after. But I think some of the parties who have expressed concerns and are likely stakeholders in this area, I think it would be helpful to talk through those particular elements. As I see it, it's the -- probably the nueces is going to be the largest area of concern. And the -- I think you're converting -- there was one other change that I think is causing some concerns. >> Just so you know, councilmember, mayor pro tem, one of the things that we've talked with uap and some of the other stakeholders about is as we move into design we'll be able to talk more specifically about what the detailed improvements would be and get more specific concerns with them, be able to talk that through a little bit more. That's what we had always envisioned as part of moving into design phase is we would work out more of the details, but then also hear more of the specific concerns. And then figure out how we could best address those potentially. And any specific tweaks that we might be able to do in design to address some of the specific concerns if they're valid based on the improvements being proposed. >> Tovo: Okay. And along 24th you would be repurposing -- I think this is something else I heard about, repurposing one of the travel lanes in either direction? Can you talk a little about that? >> Mark, do you want to talk about that? >> Yes. Again, on 24th street there's a four-lane segment that's there. Somewhere some gaps in there, but no bicycle facilities in the area. So the plan calls to convert the four lanes, which are on the narrow side, to a three-lane cross-section so we would have a continuous [1:07:17 PM] turn lane, two vehicular lanes and then we would have room for a bike lane on the roadway. So that would be a separated bike facility that's there. What we're seeing operationally to the four-lane segment is the number of left turn movements is blocking that inside lane so it's acting functionally as a continuous turn lane with really only one lane available for through traffic to go to. Adding to that and the narrowness of the lanes, they're under 10 feet, nine and a half to nine feet wide, so a lot of times that left turning vehicle, if it's a larger vehicle, a truck, pickup truck or so forth, can not only block the inside lane, but the outside lane, making both lanes impassable. By converting to a three-lane cross- section we can alleviate some of those improvements, allow the street to function much as it does today, but bring in those needed components of the sidewalk and the bike facility along 24th. >> Tovo: Are the bike ways going to be protected or are they striped? >> They're going to be striped. We're looking at delien nateers, the raised pylons that would possibly did he lien Nate that traffic from -- delineate that traffic from design. But that's what we're looking at. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. Those are very narrow lanes along 24th. Years ago I saw a very bad accident where four pedestrians were hit walking along 24th because of the proximity to cars, so some additional pedestrian bike safety steams appropriate. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: I appreciate the mayor pro tem's questions on Guadalupe. I'm receiving some similar correspondence from constituents. I did want to respond to councilmember Houston with respect to campo and clarify it's my understanding that the call will go out in summer of 2019 and then be due December of 2019 or January of 2020. So there is some additional time beyond the end of the year, but what we saw with this call was that those projects that were further [1:09:18 PM] along in design were deemed readier for campo funding so the obstacle is making sure you're through the design process sufficiently enough when that call comes so there are not outstanding questions about right-of-way right-of-way, access and -- acquisition and other things about if you have multiple options that some of that public engagement process has happened. And those would need to be resolved before they were submitted in December of 2019. Just as you're thinking about that and as councilmember Flannigan mentioned, I too am happy to speak with any colleagues who are interested in the campo process for projects in their district. Mr. Trimble, I can asked for some further information about the equations in the data in the matrix and I'm hearing there may be a memo, but I don't know if there was one, if you sent a memo that I missed or not. So I just wanted to clarify that. >> We did. Actually, acm Goode had sent out a memo and our hdr team had put together. It has the equations and some of the context for how the model worked and using some of the math behind it. We can make sure that you have that and can go through it. >> Alter: I thought it was yesterday. If it was Friday I'm sure I will find T you said it's also in the backup for today? >> I believe so. And I'm happy to follow up. We're happy to follow up with you and talk with you about it. >> Alter: Let me look and see if the material answers my questions and then we'll follow up with you. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston? >> Houston: I'm not sure what you're hearing from the folks because I'm hearing from the folks about some of their concerns. What I'm going to try to do is go back and find all of those emails that I get regarding nueces and some of the other concerns that neighbors are having that may not be in the stakeholder groups that you're talking to and try to forward them to you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar? [1:11:18 PM] >> Casar: Thanks for sending the memo on the design speeds and the nato standards and the leak. In your memo we talk about how we would use those standards on urban arterial streets, but perhaps ashto or some other standard if it was not considered urban arterial streets, would you tell us which ones you would consider and which category? >> Well, to be clear, we definitely intend to comply with the nato standards. Again, looking at the 35 miles per hour design speed target, but then also considering the context in which those -- in those corridors exist, those streets exist. That was the intent. I think we put in aashto because that was another set of standards that approaches it from the other way, which is to look at trying to look at design speeds and maybe lowering those design speeds as needed for safety issues. So again, they kind of meet in middle and we're taking all of that in account to say we're going to look at design speeds for the safety aspect and then also looking at the particular context of these streets in which we're going to be doing the improvements a as well. I don't know, mark, if there's anything you want to add to that. >> Our intent is to comply with nato across the board on all the corridors. The issue comes down to the choice of design speed so nato is recommending 35 and under, as you well know, in areas where we can obtain that speed operationally, when the corridor is actually built out. There are areas of some of the corridors that do not have the urban context along the side street, along the edge of the right-of-way that can allow us to meet those operational speeds. So those are areas that we're going to look at a little closer to see what is the design speed that we would like to use in those areas. So we want a little bit more flexibility in terms of some areas where a higher design speed of possibly 40 may be safer environment where we're going to expect operating speeds at those [1:13:19 PM] levels, but in the majority of the corridors we do expect to be in that range that has been discussed. >> Casar: So what I'm trying to understand is whether the staff anticipates or knows where that difference will be going into this process. What you're saying is we have to actually go into this process to know the answer to the question. >> Definitely the latter. That's the type of things that we'll be looking at as we move into design, getting some of that preliminary data and preliminary engineering phase, but then as we do the full design we'll be able to look at what that design speed is and the context and what we can actually do basically given that particular street or context. >> Casar: So I just want to mark then or figure out if there's a way that we can clarify if there's anyplace where we get to that decision point where we say design a is going to meet these standards, design B might be able to meet those standards. We have to make a choice about where to go, whether it's a 35 miles per hour street or a 45 miles per hour street. What you're saying is this is not that decision point. The decision point would actually be -- >> It would be happening later. As a matter of fact, as we come back and we're going to basically periodically update council and boards and commissions, as we get more information on that we can definitely update council and then the other boards and commissions too about what we're learning. >> So then potentially just brainstorming out loud here we include something that states sort of where those points would be so that we could actually -- all I think we're trying to make sure we're doing when we're sometimes communicating with constituents is to make sure we don't miss decision points because we didn't know to ask. >> Sure. >> We're already set to bring back now because of the project connect coordination after preliminary design is complete because project connect would have moved further along too to bring that all back to you and say here's where we're at. Now where do we go? So we'll bring all those issues at that time. We already committed at that milestone, at the end of preliminary engineering to bring that back to council. >> Casar: So we could see -- have you bring back where you think you would [1:15:19 PM] hit nato and where you think you might not be able to so that people can understand and vet why it is we can't hit that standard. >> Sure. If we know enough at that stage. >> Casar: That is helpful. And then I think my other questions are probably ones that we can just handle offline and not have to hold us up. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter, did you have further questions? >> Alter: I just wanted to let my colleagues know that campo is holding a regional artery workshop/open house at the school for the blind on 45th street. And there's two portions of that. There's a local government portion from 9:00 to 10:30 and then a second part after that which is more of an open house. And I don't think it would really matter if a councilmember went to either one, but the second part is more for the public. And part of that would be to identify blockages and intersections that are problematic and other kinds of things. I'm assuming our city staff will be there as well. And if you want more information on it, I can get you what I have, but apropos this discussion I was thinking that there might be some folks who want to attend those things. They're not always very actively attended, and it is an opportunity to interact directly with the staff of campo if that's of interest to you. >> Houston: Thank you for that information. I'll try to see what's on my schedule to come, because I have come to several campo meetings and I've talked about some of the issues in eastern Travis county, they just don't seem to be able to get carried forward because I'm not there all the time. So I depend upon my colleagues to try to make sure that they're not left out of the equation when it comes to funding. Because the growth is happening in that way, pflugerville, Howard lane, dessau road. So if we get ahead of it we [1:17:20 PM] might be able to stop some really bad accidents. We've had a couple just recently because we're not doing the kinds of things we could be doing in the areas that are not represented on a campo board. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I think those are all the things that we have. Thanks. I think pausing this month was helpful to help answer the questions to make sure that we were coordinating. So that's good. But do I understand, Mr. Goode, that we're still tracking to get this done on time, this whole bond package? >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Sounds good. This meeting then -- I think we've handled everything we need to do. It's 1:14 and this meeting is adjourned.