Special Called Meeting Transcript – 6/2/2018 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 6/2/2018 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 6/2/2018 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [10:09:08 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Are we ready? Looks like we have a quorum on the dais. We have a custom on the council of singing happy birthday on really important happy birthday days. Usually we reserve that honor just for people on the dais. But I think it's appropriate for us to make an exception because of the day that we have, and because today is Jerry rusthoven's birthday. So I would remind the council to turn off their mics, so we don't embarrass ourselves, and urge everyone to join us in singing "Happy birthday" to Jerry. [ ♪ Singing "Happy birthday" ♪] >> Mayor Adler: All right, everybody. That was not a precedent-setting moment. Today is June 2nd, 2018. We are in city hall here in the city council chambers. It is 10:10. We are set today for public comment on codenext. We also have noticed the opportunity for the council to be able to discuss and/or take action on process. But we have -- we have lots of folks that have expressed interest, and at this point we probably have about six hours' worth of testimony signed up at this point. [10:11:09 AM] So I'm going to pretty much hold everybody to the three minutes, so make sure that when you hear the buzzer, you're ready to stop so we can keep things moving here today. My -- I think we have a community that is obviously very interested in this, and it's important for us to hear from the community and certainly everybody can speak on anything that they want to speak on. As a council, it looks like we're going to at least start June in trying to find where there might be consensus or agreements in ways that can leave the community less polarized and more trying to work together in a common direction, recognizing that that means we have to search and try to find consensus opportunities. So what personally I'll be listening for in people that are speaking are suggestions on where we might be able to find those consensus opportunities. But certainly anyone can speak to anything they want to. So without objection, council, I'll go ahead and just start calling people. Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: Mayor, could we just remind the public what our scheduled lunchtime is so that they can kind of plan their morning and then I assume that everybody can sign onto the speaker system and see sort of where they are in the lineup if they want -- if you're here and you know you are many hundreds down the road, then they know they can leave and come back later and we'll still hear them. >> Mayor Adler: That'll be fine. And if somebody signs up and for whatever reason your name gets called and you're not here, let the clerk know because I will give you another opportunity to be able to speak. [10:13:10 AM] It's not like if you happen the miss the moment, you lose the opportunity. So we're going to take a lunch break today at 12:30 to 1:30, anticipating taking a dinner break from 5:30 to 6:30. I think we have -- so those are the times. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. I would like for you to talk for just a moment about how we're going to be respectful and we ask the people in the audience to be respectful as well. >> Mayor Adler: And I think that's important so thank you, Ms. Houston forks raising that issue. I think that it's important that we recognize that everyone here speaking loves this city and is trying to get the city to a good place. We have to accept that measure of good faith, and I -- it's important for us on the dais that everybody maintain that measure of decorum. This is an opportunity for us to be able to listen to differing points of view. We recognize that everybody has a -- many people have different paths that they would recommend that we follow. But it's real important that we maintain that level of civility and respect that, frankly, we're not seeing that much perhaps at the national level, and quite frankly, even inside this chamber on some -- some recent issues. So we would ask everybody to do that. We have tons of testimony, so what I'm going to do is call people. I'm going to ask the person on deck or next up to come up to the podium as well so that we can work quickly. We're going to try to go immediately from one speaker to another one so we would ask you ,to the degree that you can, hold your applause till the end of the six or seven hours. [10:15:17 AM] [Laughter]. I'm sure we're going to have more and more people signing up so it's going to be a long day. And, again, when the buzzer goes off, you pretty much need to stop. I'm going to reinforce the buzzer so we can move forward. All right? Let's go ahead and begin. We're going to start with Brent torgumson. Is he here? Is mark Mccartney here? Okay. Now, you come on up. The next on-deck speaker is Susana Almanza who's here. She has time donated from Patricia king. Is Ms. King here? Yes? Thank you. And celene Rendon here? Thank you. You have nine minutes when you get called. Mr. Mccartney. Please begin. Three minutes. >> Thank you. Thank you for listening to the variety of opinions here on testimony today. When you read the newspaper and you wonder what's happened to the working class in this country, you blame income and equality, rising college tuition, a reduced investment in public education. But here in Austin, the home values and cost of living have skyrocketed. That's one issue we can address. The median home price in my neighborhood have more than doubled this decade, $700,000, which require an income of over $150,000 to afford. The median household makes half that. And our decisions have an impact on that because we banned multiple family homes in most of the neighborhood. This might have been reasonable 30 years ago when someone of median income could get a mortgage and pay it off but not when the price of land is approaching $300,000 per lot. My message to you today is we need cooperative housing citywide and stop using single-family zoning to abandon multifamily homes and use public housing. [10:17:19 AM] I encourage to you eliminate residential occupancy limits and parking minimums which drive up the cost of living. The zoning chair in my neighborhood association ask me reically, was the thought process to rezone to live in a better neighborhood or, is it expected only those making $150,000 a year should have a stable home in the neighborhood? Anyone that's part of the community, whether teaching in a school or working at a cash register, deserves to live here. It's our responsibility to make that possible. I like my neighborhood. I want people just starting their careers to be able to raise families. There are small parts of the neighborhood in which they can afford to live, if they haven't bought a home a decade ago. They're segregated lots into multifamily homes. Density doesn't mean affordability, yet 80 people live in a little more than an acre in my apartment complex. We don't use neighborhood street parking and none of us, none of us, could afford to live there if it were zoned single-family. But as the neighborhood plan says, this is a single-family neighborhood, one in which the next generation won't be able to afford to live. The assumption needs to be that if we don't change zoning, if the majority of lots are kept at two homes per lot maximum, the neighborhood won't change. But of course it's changing. The working class is being forced out to the suburbs and mansions are being built where they used to live. Single-family zoning is not protecting affordability, it's protecting exclusivity. When you place limit on homes in Austin by blocking development in wealthy neighborhoods, you don't stop people from moving to Austin, you just drive up the cost of living and gentrify the city starting with poorest neighborhoods. Let's agree that there's a problem we care about solving that's at least a foundation of common understanding on which we can build, even if you don't want a townhouse built on it. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. On deck is Cynthia cohain. [10:19:24 AM] Is Cynthia here? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. You have donated time from Carrie crow. Is Carrie crow here? No? I don't see Carrie crow. So you'll have -- why don't you come on down and tell the clerk. Okay? If you'll come down and the person who's donating time to you needs to go to the clerk, and if you'll come to the other podium. >> Good morning, mayor and city council members. I'm Susana Almanza in the another one right to coalition. The city council must implement a land development code that is fair and just, that eliminates the institution of barriers to equity that also stops the displacement and disruptions of Austin's communities of color. We oppose codenext because it doesn't preserve the existing low-income housing that exists now. It doesn't preserve the public participation that exists right now, and because it does not address racism in policies and procedures, when development occurs in our neighborhood, it means the land prices will go up, the rents will go up, the property taxes will go up, and effluent and those that are not effluent will be forced to move out. We're going to see park inundating our streets. Neighborhood characters are going to change and the current owners and renters are going to be forced out. Density doesn't give us low-income housing, and it doesn't even give us affordability. We oppose codenext because it doesn't adhere to the adopted neighborhood plans. We've reviewed five neighborhood plans, the govalle Johnston, rosewood, and montopolis. The following map shows how the increase of high density and residential and commercial zoning in these Austin communities -- and you can see here on your left in the Cesar Chavez neighborhood, the yellow is single-family. [10:21:32 AM] Look to the right. That's high density residential with three or more units. Then we look at commercial density in Cesar Chavez, 36 units or more, then we combine residential and commercial. You see that map on your right, and you basically see Cesar Chavez has been completely high-densified. Then we looked at the holly neighborhood. Yellow single-family. We look to your right, the high density of three or more units on each property. Then we then looked at commercial in the holly, and then we combined on your right the commercial residential. As you can see, holly neighborhood has also gone to high density. We then look at at the govalle Johnston with the single-family zoning. Pretty much codenext was in line with the govalle Johnston plan. We've combined residential and commercial in the govalle that you see here. We then go to the rosewood plan. Of course you can see all the single-family, and then you begin to see the high density zoning residential in rosewood. And to the left is commercial, then to the right you see the combination of rosewood -- of residential and commercial, high density coming their way. And then in montopolis, again there's a single-family zoning and then you see the commercial high density, as I said. Inspect codenext 2, it was more aligned with our adopted plan. But when we go to -- we then review zoning changes in codenext 3 report. The urban core neighborhood, east Cesar Chavez, holly, govalle, rosewood and montopolis are being rezoned for higher density just as reported in draft 2. The large majority goes from sf-3 to subzone RSC. Minimum sizes would be reduced. As written, r2c allows the division of 50-foot wide lot into two lots and construction of four units, one single-family attached building. [10:23:36 AM] Essentially a complex with one unit on each lot, plus two additional accessory dwelling units, that's twice the density allowed currently, today. So then when we looked at, like I say, the montopolis plan was more in line with draft 3. Then we looked at montopolis in draft 3. You can see that basically all of montopolis got high densified because we went according to square footage then. Codenext draft 3 would displace lower income people, including seniors, people of color, working families, both those in the housing of montopolis residents to build housing. Draft 3 displaces the working people in east Austin. Codenext doesn't adhere to the adopted plans. This gentrification has a con cages rippling effect on core neighborhoods. Codenext turns a blind eye to equity and economic justice. Codenext keeps in place the racist east Riverside corridor master plan, a marriage displacement in gentrification zoning protected by F 25 zoning. It starts east of highway 35 at Riverside drive and travels east to highway 71. Codenext must rescind this zoning. The city council adopted east Riverside corridor master plan as if the whole area was vacant of human lifetime over 1,700 low income working poor, mostly people of color, were displaced to make room for higher density luxury apartments and stores for higher class wage owners. Displaced residents from the lake view apartments protested their displacement that was caused by the east Riverside corridor master plan. Country club creek at 4501 east Riverside drive with 252 affordable units has been sold, and these residents will be displaced in the very near future. [10:25:40 AM] So many more affordable housing units will be redeveloped due to the Riverside corridor master plan. 97 acres at east Riverside drive south of pleasant valley road are proposed for redevelopment. Over 1,000 affordable units will be demolished to make room for 4,000 expensive apartments, hotel rooms, and offices. At the present time, over 40% of the affordable units are occupied by students, 60% are occupied by families. Codenext is not based -- is not community-based. As you can see from the maps, the proposed code promotes land use policies that conflict with the adopted plans of many local neighborhoods. That's why codenext is not supported by the community it impacts. From the start, its designers have ignored 31 formal neighborhood plans created over 20 years at a taxpayer cost of $13 million. Codenext embodies the interest of developers, the chamber of commerce, Austin real estate council, Austin board of realtors, and home builders associations of greater Austin. There's a conflict between housing as lived, social space, and housing as an instrument of profit-making. A conflict between housing as a home and as a real estate. The hypercommodification of housing leads to new forms of risk, uncomfortable, and instability for everyone else. Removing regulations under codenext shifts power towards capita and away from residents, making land more valuable and more amenable to speculation. The real estate industry whatever it can to maintain high prices, removing existing tenant protection with would place real estate firms in a better position to reshape markets even more in their own favor. [10:27:40 AM] The hypercommodified city is bound to be an oppressive city. Put codenext on the ballot. Let's respect the democratic process. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [Cheers and applause] >> Casar: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Mr. [Indiscernibl E] -- >> Casar: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: I think that you have Susan Erickson donated time. That gets you six minutes. >> Yes. >> I'd like to ask Ms. Almanza a question. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Yes, sir. >> I'll be very brief. On the maps it looked like you had highlighted F 25 zoning -- >> Yes, that's not what we had original neighborhood plan. It's a part of the master -- the east Riverside corridor -- >> Not east Riverside, because I don't agree with F 25. I don't think we should have it anywhere but on the other neighborhoods you highlighted it as if it were upzoning, but F 25 is literally preserving the zoning that's today, including the neighborhood plan. >> Are you talking about montopolis? >> In every other neighborhood, it was highlighted as if it were upzoned. >> Because it's commercial upzoning. >> Flannigan: But it's what's today. >> That doesn't mean it's necessarily what the neighborhood plan wanted. >> Flannigan: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So Ms. Cohain. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Then the other podium is Florence sennel here? Florence? No? Oh, you're coming? You'll be up at this podium. You have some time donated. Is Carlotta Garcia here? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Is Antonio Martinez here? [10:29:41 AM] >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Yes? He needs to come on in if he's going to tonight time. You'll be at this podium in just a moment. Ms. Cohain, go ahead. >> Okay. Where does the time get tracked? Is it here? >> Mayor Adler: I think so. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: You have six minutes. >> Okay. Thank you. My name is Cynthia cohain. I'm a former president of the O allandale neighborhood association. We put together an excellent paper the president sent to y'all on may 17th. I support the position in it, and I promise you I'm not going to go through the seven pages today. Okay? I do want to just give a quick recap of that, and then I have two other issues I want to raise. But since I prepared for three minutes and I got donated time, and I've heard two speakers so far, there's one more thing I want to add. I do not want to contribute to the discussion of gentrification and renters versus homeowners and all that, but please remember, as elected officials, your first responsibility as to the current residents, homeowners, renters, homeless people in Austin. I'm reading a lot about the need for the city to grow to accommodate everybody who wants to move here. I think that's a secondary goal. I think your first responsibility as to the folks who are already here. [Cheers and applause] >> Thank you. Almost a million people right here. Now to codenext. Codenext, to me, does not keep the imagine Austin promise to protect and preserve the neighborhoods. It's increasing density, it's reducing the lot size requirements for subdividing, and it reduces the parking requirements for businesses. I see all of those as having real adverse effect on neighborhoods. [10:31:41 AM] I want to touch on two specific concerns that I have that talk a little bit more about the parking and the density. Non-conforming lots. Codenext is changing the lot size requirements. It's throwing lots that conform to current code into non-conformance, including my lot and the lots within a lot of allandale and rosedale and I'm sure other places. Unlike the current code, codenext will not grandfather the non- conforming lots. So what is the code going to do? I looked at the applicable code, and it is really dense. Its division 232g1, it's eight pages long, it's very confusing. I reached out to an architect. He agreed it was confusing. For example, just one example of the confusion. You can't tell what's going to happen when property changes hands. If a perspective owner has to bring the lot and the property up to code, the property value could be significantly less than the current appraisal. But we're still paying taxes. And the taxes are still going up. Those taxes do not reflect decreased value for non-conformance, and they probably never will. The rationale for creating non-conformance is unclear to me and everyone I've spoken to, but it appears intended to encourage demolition or redevelopment. It appears intended to throw so many adjacent properties in non-conformance that one developer can come in, offer a really tremendous amount of money to somebody who needs the money, they sell, and the rest of our -- out of luck, to put it politely. [10:33:55 AM] Regardless of the intent, the new conformance without grandfathering will make life harder for many of us when we try to get a building permit for any work on our homes. And I'm talking nothing big, necessarily, but maybe you're just -- you're closing a porch in, you're bumping out, you're adding a room, you know, I don't know what it is, but it is a very confusing set of code. The other topic I want to mention is the impact on our aging population. And I just read that Austin is the fastest-growing city in the country for the population just under the aging number, like just up to age 64. City council, I've also just read, received a certificate of approval for its age-friendly action plan. The certificate from aarp and the world health organization, which apparently just came out, marks the official start to the plan's implementation. Congratulations. Sincere congratulations. This is really exciting. Pause. But...what about codenext? Unfortunately, codenext appears incompatible with this age-friendly action plan. And I haven't put the two together, haven't had time to do that, but I do not see how codenext upzoning and reduced parking requirements for business could be compatible with the action plan. Will the seniors who live in lots that codenext will make non-conforming be able to age in place? Which any survey you see, that is a number one goal. I want to stay in my home. I want to stay near my friends. I want to stay near my church. In my little corner of allandale, there are seniors living in unremodeled two-bedroom -- [10:36:00 AM] [buzzer sounds] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> How many seconds do I have left? >> Mayor Adler: Nope. The buzzer means your time is up. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: We'll go to the next speaker. Thank you very much. Applause. >> Mayor? Sunday you will see have nine minutes. The next speaker is going to be Michael Floyd. >> Pool: Mayor, if we could ask her to send her remarks to the entire council, they would have benefit of that and I would ask that they be included in the official report of today's public hearing. >> Thank you. [Applause] >> Houston: Mayor? It's over here. Over here. I just want to remind the folks, the more you clap, the longer we stay here. And for those of you who signed up early, that may be all right. For the people who come behind you, that's not going to be all right. So if you want to do something about how much you appreciate something, just do jazz hands, and then we can keep going. Okay? >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston, thank you. [Applause] [Laughter] >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead and proceed. Go ahead. Your nine minutes is grinning. >> Hello. My name is Florence and I'm a leader with our lady of Guadalupe catholic church, a member of Austin interfaith. In April we held a forum to explain codenext and how it could possibly impact our community. We had 120 in attendance and broke out into ten groups to hear people's stories and concerns relating to zoning. One story was about our church. In 1907, our lady of Guadalupe was originally located 5th and Guadalupe, west of I-35 until outside consultants influenced the mayor and councilmembers to forcibly displaced Mexicans and force -- African American families. We were relocated to east Austin. [10:38:01 AM] A subsequent zoning change led to a meeting between developers and representatives of our lady of Guadalupe, in which one developer pointed to our deacon and said, you people need to move east of 183. On a personal note, in the 1940s, my grandparents purchased their home at 97 Rainey street. I was fortunate to have had both sets of my grandparents live in east Austin, where I could walk through the neighborhoods and visit with them often. However, in 2004, the city of Austin rezoned their neighborhood. Developers and real estate agents agents pressured my grandparents to sell. With the intent to development near the Austin convention center. Subsequently my grandparents moved. Have you ever wondered what happened to the families on Rainey street? Let me tell you what happened to my grandmother. She went through depression. She was sad. She was lonely. But she was never angry because she knew god would always provide for her and her family. I'm the granddaughter to her. We're a huge family. And it was heart breaking to watch our grandmother go through that, missing her families, missing her neighbors, missing the community. Missing the homeless that would come and visit her as she fed often. My grandmother had a loving spirit and loving soul, and she was robbed by taking her neighborhood away from her. What developed was the fast life now known as the Rainey street entertainment district, with multiple high-rise condominium buildings. This continual culture change is destroying generations of families, families. Neighborhoods, racial, ethnic composition, and Austin history. [10:40:06 AM] Sadly, the city of Austin didn't preserve the Rainey street's historic and residential character. So we are here today, again. This time before you to explain that if codenext version 3 passes, parishioners and long-time residents of east Austin, including seniors and families of color, will once again be displaced. Restrictions on non-conforming lots and unnecessary upzoning of sf-3 lots will lead to displacement. More over, the change, zoning in our neighborhood will accelerate displacement, again. Our church was displaced once due to zoning. Today we are here to work with you so that people of the east Austin community are not displaced again, and generations of families and culture traditions remain intact. We are against codenext in its current form. But we are here to propose how you can make it better. Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. So reverend Michael Floyd is the next speaker. You had some time that was donated to you. Is Isabel Carrera here? Is Dorothy here? You'll have nine minutes, reverend. The next speaker will be zeda Esther day. You'll be at this next podium. >> As you've heard, I'm Michael Floyd, a member of all saints episcopal church, a non-partisan broad based coalition of 36 congregations, schools, and nonprofits working for the common good. [10:42:09 AM] As a homeowner in east Austin, I have seen how skyrocketing property values creates undue pressure on middle class homeowners. Between 2016 and 2018, the assessed market value of my home more than doubled, causing my taxes to rise astronomically. I know from the many small group conversations, institutions all over the city, my family is not alone. Austin is in an affordability crisis. Housing is increasingly uncomfortable for growing numbers of low and middle income residents. Families are children, seniors and people of color, particularly in east and south Austin, are being pushed out of the city. Before we had Austin interfaith take positions on issues like this, we listened carefully. In addition to the small group house meeting campaign I already mentioned, we conducted civic academies on codenext at our member institutions where we taught the basics of codenext and broke up into small groups to hear how this would impact residents. At our lady of Guadalupe, as you've heard, over 120 people attended. We held similar sessions at my church, all saints episcopal, piled fire union tanner university, united methodist church, and we have others planned. While recognizing any land use code will not entirely solve all affordability housing problems, Austin interfaith nevertheless believes that if our land code is guided by two basic principles, it can help mitigate the crisis. First, displacement due to skyrocketing land values, housing costs, rents, and taxes should be minimized. Recognizing the injustice of historic land use practices that discriminated against whole segments of the community, extra care should be taken to prevent further discrimination of this sort. Second, for Austin to have an inclusive and diverse population, and be welcoming to both old and new residents, there must be a wide range of affordable housing options based on the preservation of existing affordable housing stock, encouraging such alternatives as co-ops and mobile home parks. [10:44:25 AM] The hundreds of citizens that have participated in our academies have concluded that codenext falls short of these goals. We, transfer, oppose codenext in its present form and we are here to make suggestions as to how it might be improved. We believe it can be improved in at least the four following ways. First, entitlements and residential zoning categories above and beyond those provided in the present land use code should not be granted by right, but should be calibrated to incentivize the instruction of affordable units in all parts of the city. Second, something more or less equivalent to the present sf-3 zoning category should be retained, and compatibility should be defined in terms of allowing neighborhoods to limit undesirable uses, particularly proliferation of bars. Third, the qualifications for the density bonus should be strengthened so that the privilege of increased density can be earned, only by the construction of family-friendly, multi-bedroom units, intended for those making 50 to 30% mfi or below. The fee in lieu option should be applicable only when the fee does not list the cost of a two- to three-bedroom unit, and the fee can only be used to fund affordable housing projects. Fourth, provisions regarding non-compliance need to be clarified and framed so this does not keep east Austin homeowners from making the kinds of improvements that will enable them to stay in their homes. We appreciate the hearings and this opportunity for discussion, but the problems with codenext are not resolvable within the projected process and timeline. Because of the number and complexity of the problems, there can be no quick fix. We, therefore, hope that there will be more time for discussion before any action is taken so that Austin can become as affordable as possible. Thank you. [10:46:26 AM] [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. So the next speaker -- >> Kitchen: Mr. Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: I'm assuming that you have provided or will provide that information to us. Right? >> We certainly can. >> Kitchen: Yeah, please do. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. So zeda at this podium, and after her is Arie gerrnott. You'll be at the other podium. Come on up. Ms. Easterday, you have three minutes. >> Thank you for this opportunity to speak about an idea gone terribly wrong that has been foisted a Austin citizens. This is nothing like a simplified code fix, not a rewrite of zoning for the entire city, and was supposed to include meaningful neighborhood input, honor neighborhood plans, and any changes test-driven on small parts of the city to see if it fits. Massive demolitions destroying the fabric of livable, reasonably priced for Austin neighborhoods, replaced with massive, very expensive, dense multifamily dwellings that will temporarily be occupied by highly paid transient residents are unconscionable. Displacement of neighborhood residents of diversity is nothing more than city sanctioned segregation. Citizens experienced in Austin -- in Austin city, experienced in planning, law, environment, infrastructure, architecture, and engineering, poured over all three versions and are welcoming in the basic items. [10:48:37 AM] Are any of you so experienced in these areas that you steadfastly refuse to acknowledge their expertise for the people you serve? Perhaps the most egregious and offensive is the lie that all this will somehow help the poor and meet a fabricated need for density at all costs. For many years, density bonus plans have fallen short of any meaningful service to the poor, yet they're promoted as a fix. Remember, the most dense cities in our country are also the most expensive to live in. Is this your hope that Austin, more and more of its current citizens have been driven out, to leave room for who? Everyone makes mistakes. Own up to your mistakes in pushing forward at the behest of the worst planning staff in the United States, this very flawed -- [applause] -- Written urbanization idea and cut your losses. If a new car is a lemon, there's laws to protect you. Current citizens have no help for the majority of the council -- from the majority of the council for this very rotten lemon. Cut your losses. Stop this fiasco and start over. All of us have had to do this and we've had to admit our mistakes. Please, please serve your citizens and stop this run-away speeding train from destroying the very core of our city. You have the power to do it, but some of you lack the will to stand up to wealthy campaign contributors who stand to increase their wealth on the backs of on the other hand citizens. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: 4:00. Caroline Reynolds is on deck. Is she here? Caroline Reynolds? Is Caroline Reynolds here? Would you come on up to this podium, please. Go ahead. You have three minutes. >> Good morning, y'all. My name is Arie. I'm a 20-year resident of the city of Austin. I grew up here and live and work here. Unfortunately, I'm almost unable to live here anymore. [10:50:37 AM] All my friends, we went to school, we got good jobs, we're UT employees, engineers, social workers, teachers, A.P.D. Employees, and none of us can afford to buy houses in the urban core. We have to commute in if we want to settle down and raise families here. We're not asking for 2000-square-foot mansions or-million-dollar homes going up in rosewood or allandale or anything like that, we're asking for adding more missing housing in the revisions to the land development code, prioritizing what we've always done, which is single-family zoning, has made a bad problem worse, and, for example, there's a sticker on the el primo taco truck on south first that says "Don't Dallas my Austin." I'm asking you also to please not San Francisco my Austin. Fourplex, small homes, smaller lot sizes, and ease the Adu process. This allows more austinites to live in these neighborhoods without massive overhauls and homeowners to add uses to their lots to offset their property taxes which we all acknowledge are terrible. And this is in all parts of the city, not in certain areas that we've decided to should not the development to, that should be uniformly distributed. Without changes, all of us that live in the city now are saying that we only want millionaires or those fortunate enough to be able to buy a home before 2008 to be homeowners in this city. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Ms. Reynolds, your three minutes is beginning. Sharon Blythe, is she here? Ms. Blythe? All right. You'll be at the other podium. Go ahead, please. >> Good day, mayor and councilmembers. I'm Caroline Reynolds. [10:52:37 AM] I've spent a career of 40 years cleaning hazardous waste sites, include chemistry and other things, that these the new code doesn't even include. And I did it all on time and on budget. I strongly urge you to throw out codenext, because it's arcane. It's 300% over budget and it's over schedule. Don't throw good money after bad. The staff has spent, in addition to the 8 million to the consultant, they have spent 18 to $25 million in loaded staff salaries, down the drain. The code is inconsistent and with typos. It's now up to an elephant team, an elephant team, 2,000 pages. It's inconsistent, over schedule, over budget. They threw parties with roller girls and a cash bar and provided slides of south first street that had all the businesses torn out. This was all fake. It's their dream. It's not our dream. We were trying to raise families and go to our jobs and do something good for the next day. This codenext was like the mating of elephants. It was done in high places and in the dark. [Laughter]. And I want you to remember that a mama elephant can produce a calf in only two years. It's been six years. This smacks of medieval law that was written in Latin so the common man could not read and understand it. The city of Albuquerque performed the same task in two years for less than two million dollars, just like elephants. Staff took money from young families, families sending children to college, and retired families on fixed income and turned out a monstrosity. [10:54:43 AM] Why should our young mothers have to put their children to bed at night and struggle through 2,000 pages to find out whether or not they have a conforming property or not? This is the longest and most complex and arcane code in the United States of America. We are number one. [Laughter] Get rid of this project manager, get rid of code monstrosity. Start fresh with staff that is supervised. They went four years without a benchmark. Why? No one does that. No wonder they're not on budget or schedule. It could have been done in less time for less money. Take this elephant off the city's back. [Buzzer sounds] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. [Cheers and applause] >> Mayor Adler: After Ms. Blythe testifies, then Joyce is up next. Come on down. Susan Lipman? Thank you. You'll have six minutes. >> My name is Sharon Blythe. I am not as eloquent as the previous speakers. I don't have any prepared comments. But the one thing I do know is, I've aged in this city tremendously from 1987 to now. I've seen it deteriorate into just a big mess. And this is the worst mess. Like I said, I moved there in 1987. I buried my husband in March of 1989. He died of pancreatic cancer. I buried him at Austin memorial park cemetery. I had to -- there was rudeness of city staff, over city cemeteries, and it hasn't improved much. I think this city is a mess. I feel like that I have no representation on this city council at all, as an aging property owner. I have worked very hard, raised two kids. My son just got his doctorate degree at the university of Arkansas two weeks ago, and I feel like I am walking on eggshells every day because of your decisions. [10:56:49 AM] I have no representation on this council. And that's the way a lot of people, I believe, in my neighborhood feel, and in my district 6 feel. And I just read that the planning commission has done something else with codenext version 3, trying to make hundreds of more corridors with the city, including jollyville road, which is our main road in and out of our community. I think that you all really -- I feel like most of you have made your decision how you're going to vote, and the majority of you are going to vote for codenext and put it right through. The problem is that you have already made your decision before you even heard the public speak. And I think that's an atrocity and that is not your charge on this dais. [Applause] You need to listen to the people, the people that are here, and I don't think it's my responsibility to fund people moving into this city from California by breaking up my lot and putting ads on my lot, too. That is not my responsibility and I didn't work 31 years for what I've got today to let that happen. And you all really need to think about what you're doing. It is a tragedy for this city and your legacy will be this code, I guarantee you that. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [Applause] Joyce paciano. Is Alan here? >> I have one donor. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. You have six minutes. Is Allen here? You'll be up at this podium. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Good morning. I'm Joyce pacian on. I've lived in Austin 44 years, breaker woods. Codenext is beyond repair. Continuing to work on it is comparable to keeping a body on life support if rigor Mortis has set in after you grafted an additional two million from us taxpayers to complete the code it has only grown after three and a half drafts into a code of 1400er or-riddled pages that includes 450 pages of addenda and errata plus a new map you, land commissioners, planning staff, and we the people are struggling to understand in so little time. [10:59:05 AM] Four years ago we were presumed the land development code four two million dollars that would be easy to understand and use. It was supposed to be a hybrid code, one that would maintain existing categories with the addition of form-based code categories. It was not supposed to be a total rewrite. In addition, it was supposed to be implemented in a few neighborhoods in a wanted to test drive it. It wasn't supposed to be used as a bulldozer to implement citywide upzoning or to implement proposed corridor plans. I understand that the planning commission has made dozens of recommendations to codenext that go way beyond the imagine Austin comprehensive plan. One reclassifies streets creating five block deep Zones of increased density around all those streets. Promises broken. So let's return frankencode to the consultants and gets our money back, then let's fix the flawed community involvement process that produced frankieencode. In my opinion here's why the codenext process was and continues to be a sham. It lacks transparency and accountability. For three years, the public was brandy with slick brochures, powerpoints, swag and events that painted a Rosie picture of the code the consultants and planning staff were creating. When we asked to see examples of the code, we were told to wait until the whole code could be released in January 2017. When we asked for this when we asked for tables to help us understand the first draft we were given a complex matrix. The city staff positioned as a middleman between the community and consultants pushed its own agenda. With little information to go on, public input was easily manipulated and limited. The city has destroyed our trust in the process, so it shouldn't be surprised that codenext is not supported by communities it impacts or that over 30,000 citizens want to put codenext on the ballot next November. [11:01:05 AM] How do we fix codenext to be the community-based project that would reflect the goals of the imagine Austin comprehensive plan and decisions citizens made in neighborhood plans? Simple. Start by cleaning up and reorganizing the existing land development code. We something many of us understand. Then add form-based code or other categories as amendments. You could it tweak the code according to compatibility standards, et cetera. There are over 30 neighborhood plans that the city spent over $13 million on and that neighborhood volunteers invested thousands of hours working with the existing land development code to create. The knowledge and experience these volunteers have and the neighborhood plans are a valuable resource. Let's use that resource to help create the new land development code. Remember something, people tend to support what they help create. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. [ Applause ] The next speaker is holly reed. Is holly reed here? You'll be up. Sir, you have three minutes. >> Thank you. My name is Allan [indiscernible], I'd like to build on the previous speaker a bit. I live in district 7 and the first time I heard about this code was a meeting at burnet junior high. There were a few maps, there were speeches, no questions were permitted, and we were sent to isolated tables to meet with strangers to discuss issues about land development code. The next time it was at Anderson high school as recall. The consultants were there, no questions permitted, we were allowed to look at maps with red, green, yellow dots on with areas we were concerned about issues. The third was at Lincoln center, again no questions permitted, there were more maps, lots of maps, more dots, lots of dots, and we were told that we would put a dot down and draw a one to 2-foot line to the margin of the map and write down the problems we had with this. [11:03:08 AM] In the meantime the consultant and the city were meeting behind closed doors at that facility talking about the land use code. The next time was at the old armory. Again, no questions were asked and no questions were permitted, and they were going over the process as they saw it. In November of 2016, the city council met and decided that they would prohibit ads in certain -- and certain zoning clarifications in Austin. Codenext draft came out four months later and ads were perm understand all areas of the city of Austin, making me wonder who listens to the city council. When the draft came out there were new names for the zoning codes, and it was incredibly complex. Draft two came out next. At this time there was no red lining auto like there is in the legislature. We had no idea what had changed. We had to go over it line by line again with a new map and new names for zoning categories. Then draft three came out. It also had a new map. It also had no red-lining. Then the planning commission adds 450 pages of addendum. Finally zap says it's too much to swallow and this thing should be shot through the head. Planning commission. [ Laughter ] Planning commission pushed forward and it's my, in that their final votes and notes on this were not finished in time for the public hearing on Tuesday, which is a first for me. We're lucky in our neighborhood we do have a few deed restrictions and because of that we will enforce them to save our neighborhoods in Austin. Unfortunately, there are people in Austin who do not have deed restrictions and will rely on your good graces. This is a terrible document, and I hope you kill it. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [ Applause ] After holly reed speaks the next speaker is Barbara Mcarthur. [11:05:10 AM] Is Barbara here? You have donated time from Betsy Greenberg. Is Betsy here? >> Here. >> Mayor Adler: Where? I see you. What about Candice vol ls. You'll have nine minutes when you start but we're going to start with holly reed. You have three minutes. >> Mayor Adler, councilmembers, I live on infield road, serve on the board of the west Austin neighborhood group and I'd like to speak to you in particular about the planning commission's recommendation for corridor transition zoning as part of codenext draft three. I respectfully ask that you do not adopt this directive. It is listed as item 110 in the report and proposes to upzone all property within five blocks of streets that the planning commission has designated as regional, community, and neighborhood corridors. Along infield road exposition boulevard, Windsor rode and west 35th street are residences, surrounded by old irregional residential neighborhoods. Infield road is not a regional corridor, used by predominantly used by high speed traffic. It is a road that connects residential neighborhoods and it is where I've lived for the past 26 years. If you adopt this directive, you will put our homes and neighborhoods in terrible jeopardy. We will become surrounded by vertical mixed-use buildings up to 120 feet tall and possibly 60-foot commercial property, all along neighborhood streets. This will destroy everything about our neighborhood's character and encourage more demolition of existing homes and the very last of affordable multi-family rental property. Trees that line these so- called corridors in west Austin will be cut down to make room for large buildings. [11:07:13 AM] Homes and duplexes will be replaced by inappropriate development in the for of big, expensive condos and apartment buildings and restaurants and bars. This will drive out residents who have lived in our neighborhood for many years, further displacing people who make Austin unique. The planning commission's recommendation ignores not only our central west Austin neighborhood plan and its future land use map but also conflicts with our city's comprehensive plan imagine Austin. Please consider carefully why you would implement this recommendation. Would it make our neighborhoods more affordable? No. It would do the opposite. Would it preserve Austin's unique character and its older urban neighborhoods? It would destroy them. Would it encourage new development that is compatible with existing neighborhoods? Absolutely not. Would it reduce traffic on neighborhood streets? No. With the reduction in parking requirements and added density, it would create gridlock. Would it honor current and long-time residents of neighborhoods and communities and make it possible for them to stay in their homes? No. It would cause displacement. Please do not adopt this recommendation? [ Buzzer sounding ] Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. [ Applause ] So after -- Ms. Mcarthur is Diane bangle here? Would you come on down to this potassium? >> Good morning, councilmembers. I hope this is not the public's last opportunity to comment on codenext. [Indiscernible] Is often represented as a consensual action with a positive effect on both the city's overall economy and level of diversity but that is just idea logical cover. A primary objective of this redevelopment is the need to appeal to a new desirable set of consumers. [11:09:19 AM] The norms, values and alleged rationality of the free market filters through the function of government and restructures its priorities away from the social welfare of the community. Existing affordable housing is displaced to provide parking facilities for upscale corridor redevelopment. A soccer stadium with qualify as a viable development project for public land but much needed low-income housing cannot. A lot of the neighborhoods impacted most by codenext are those that retain some -- that retain some diversity in income, occupation, ethnicity and housing choice. A lot of people moved to these neighborhoods for what they offered and what they could afford. People built them into communities. The codenext experiment didn't just start five years ago. It started in neighborhoods in the 1990s with glossy brochures from the city during the neighborhood planning process that promised more affordability, more housing, the special residential uses were adopted into the plans. Several neighborhoods in east Austin adopted these new types. Small lots, substandard lots to be redeveloped, cottage lots, 2500 square foot lots, more units on all the lots. They were promised affordable housing. Does this sound familiar? Doesn't it sound like the current codenext? Some of these plans such as the chestnut neighborhood plan were adopted in 1999 so now we have a lab to look at what happened. We're not projecting into the future. How did it work out for the communities? These tools gentrified the communities. These communities that thrived even though they're a product of segregation, displacing people and their community voice was again. Mr. Tang's paper, those who stayed, original residents -- their belief that their neighborhood has lost its sense of community. Between 2000 and 2010, the ten years after these codenext style things were implemented in east Austin, the black population decreased by 66%. [11:11:30 AM] The Latino population decreased by 33%. And the white population by 442%. To be clear, red-lining erases a zoning ordinance of 1928 moved the minority population to the eastside but it was the economics that drove the black community out of Austin. Codenext increases entitlements on almost every residential property in the city if not by increasing units, by reducing lot size. From a study done it says that evidence from upzoning shows increased density appears to correspond to higher rents, higher incomes and more white and Asian inhabitants and a national survey 85% of these developments were unaffordable to someone making the area median income. From a "New York Times" editorial the central weapon of assault that gives the city to a different social class is the massive rezoning of neighborhoods. It is a systematic class remaking of city neighborhoods. Widespread transformation is intentional, massive and swift, resulting in completely sabotaged city. Upzoning and adding increased entitlements to residential areas of Austin will be like screaming fire sale to land spendingulators and developers and the first neighborhoods they will run to will be those with modest housing. At one of the first public meetings a member said we have to do something. But I'll turn it around and say you have to do something. You need to decide if you're going to allow codenext to make Austin a better city for the people you're trying to extract at the expense of the people who live here now. Clearly the codenext project is broken. Just like a gambler who has lost a lot of money, perhaps the right answer is not to gamble more, but to turn and walk away. [11:13:42 AM] [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Is bill spiesman here? I'll be at this potassium. Go ahead. You have three minutes. >> Thank you, mayor, members of council, for allowing me this community. My name is Diane bangle and I'm representing the real estate council of Austin. Our members are architects, engineers, landscape designers and land planners who work within the land development code on a daily basis. And that is why over the past year our member experts showed up in good faith to review the code drafts, provide comments, and participate in each step of the process. However, despite all this hard work and the thousands of hours combined work sessions, site testing, pouring through every chapter of every draft, our concerns were not addressed and the version we have in front of us today is not complete. The latest draft of the code is not predictable, nor has the rose been streamlined. There are still Riles yet to be determined and criteria manuals yet to be written. There are still conflicts and inconsistencies within environmental, transportation, legal, and general planning sections. When you apply these competing regulations to a potential project it is unclear whacked even be built -- what could even be built, which is the opposite of what we're trying to do here. We ask that this council, number 1, take the time it needs to review the remaining chapters and get those right. Number 2, please do more testing. Make sure that the multiple sections of the code truly work together as a whole. And, finally, we support that the council is providing policy direction, and we urge you to assign someone with authority able to make hard decisions and carry out that policy and lead us to a new code that provides us with more affordable housing, makes the rules clear and simple, and allows for more transit and mobility. Thank you. [11:15:44 AM] [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Is Julia Montgomery here? Julia Montgomery? She's outside? She needs to come in. Go ahead, please. >> Good morning. I'm bill spiesman, president of the brentwood neighborhood association. Over the last year, citizens have provided the city with numerous codenext recommendations. One of them is an example here that we provided, recommendation providing housing opportunities in proximity to schools rather than incompatible uses. Currently across the street from Mccallum, our low indent office and family zoning. Codenext upcongratulations these to ms-2a and 2b for active frontages. These properties only access is directly across from the entrance to the high school. On a narrow street within a neighborhood, not on a large arterial street. The zoning allows hotels, motels, bail bonds services, fortune tellers, psychics, palm reading, spas, hot tubs for hourly rental, tattoos, body pierce, microbreweries, late night and drive-through restaurants. These are not compatible with a high school. Why are they still in the plan? What a shoddy plan. I won't bother presenting any more of the many recommendations now because it's clear that the city has not been listening. You, the city council, have been numb to the frustrations of the citizens, ignoring our petition to cast our vote. You think that codenext is ready for adoption regardless of the fact that major changes are still being adopted. You have wasted $8 million on the plan that rewards developers, threatens families and accelerates the displacement of nine minorities from our city. [11:17:50 AM] You need to consider the $8 million spent on codenext as a loss and walk away from the poker game and start over. The citizens will understand. If you do not, the citizens will never forget. I remind thought mayor and several councilmembers will be facing election soon. [ Applause ] 70% of the registered voters in my precinct voted in the last city election. You're moving to decimate neighborhoods in my district where there are 66,000 registered voters. You will not earn their votes if you support codenext. The rest of the city will react the same way. We, the citizens, are in charge. You -- so we implore you to respect the petition, walk away from this disaster of a land development code, and start over. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: You have six minutes. Why don't you come on up. Is Julie Montgomery here? Come on up. Is David Easterday here? I'll be at this potassium. Thank you. -- At this podium. Thank you. >> Good morning, hi. My name is Julia Montgomery, and go to do a little experiment. The question is can my toddler stay occupied for three minutes while I talk to all about codenext. I have a whole bag of toys here. So I am a resident of east Austin, but I have -- grew up in Austin. I've lived here basically my whole life. I've lived all over the whole city, in east Riverside, Hancock neighborhood, brentwood. I grew up in the far west neighborhood where it was just me and my mom and she was a single mom and she was able to find us a duplex that she could afford at the time so that we could go -- I could go to some of the best schools in town. [11:19:54 AM] And it kind of breaks my heart because I don't think a single mom today could afford to still live in that neighborhood. There aren't the same options available anymore. I don't think I would have -- be able to do the same for my kids today. And I would like to ask you to please legalize more housing citywide. Lining Austin housing works says we need all kinds of homes for -- in all parts of town for all kinds of people. And one of the earlier speakers said you need to listen to the people who are here today. And that's true. You do need to listen to the people here today. But you also, please, please,, please, think about and also consider the perspectives of all the people who aren't here today. How many parents with young kids are gonna be trying to do this? Bring their families down here today? There are thousands upon thousands of families with young kids who you're not going to hear from here today. We have tried to get some of us here, but it's gonna be a tiny faction. Who has got spare time, you know? Not people with little kids. [ Laughter ] Go for it, buddy. Case in point. There are a few recommendations that came out of the planning commission that I really seriously hope you will consider on behalf of families with kids. The far bonus for adding a third bedroom near public schools would be amazing. We've been looking for a three bedroom house for a long time that we can afford, and there are -- it's hard to do. And the -- we just need more houses near good schools, need more houses near parks and near transit. I would ask also that you adopt the recommendation of expanding the transition Zones so that we can get more missing middle around transit corridors but not right on the transit corridors. We want families with kids to be able to get the bus, not the other way around. We don't want kids -- if you value low and middle-income kids' lives and safety as much as high-income kids they should have an opportunity not to have to live right on a busy street either, you know? [11:22:06 AM] We need more housing that's inside neighborhoods, not just on really busy streets. Make those transition Zones bigger, please. Give us more missing middle so families with kids don't have to live right on busy streets. The other day I was looking back at my testimony -- I rewatched my testimony from the Adu resolution good, four years ago almost exactly. I noticed how much younger I looked. I had had a haircut in the las five months and hair wasn't torn out from a toddler twiddling with it and I knew where my eye liner still was. I got to thinking, okay, it makes sense I'm older and tiredder now. I have kids. Then it kind of strung me that the city, you guys, the city has been in labor with the codenext process for, like, four or five years. And you are almost there. You just -- you need to push a little longer and get this baby delivered so that the rest of the city can -- so that the city can be healthy and grow in a healthy way for decades to come. You can't stop now. You are the -- the head is out. You need to just finish pushing and get this baby delivered. And make for a good future for all of the city's residents, including the little ones. Not just a small portion of the city, but everybody. Sorry that was so disorganized. I have not been getting any sleep. All right. Thank you, guys. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Good luck. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: After Mr. Easterday speaks is Adam green field here? You'll be Adam Greenfield? You'll be next. Circulation your three minutes is beginning. -- Sir, your three minutes is beginning. >> No, no. [11:24:06 AM] It's not [indiscernible] >> I'm David Easterday 37 I've lived in Austin about 15 years. Mayor, councilmembers, voters, I want to point out just one important reason that developers and investors and those who gain profit from their activities are so adamant to tear down a large part of Austin and replace it with higher density developments using the same haphazard streets and roads, the same failed transit, and the same insufficient water supply while [indiscernible] As other developers are doing all over Austin at a break neck speed without codenext. It is clearly an infrastructure grab. The developers avoid the full cost of providing infrastructure, but knew that. This of course help the bottom line but makes Austin less affordable for the rest of us. Who can blame them know for they have the encouragement of a radical urbanist planning staff that expedited permitting and inspections is necessary and possible. But Austin does not need the extreme density proposed by codenext. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. I think that's a really good idea to have a chair next to that podium. If we could find another chair and put it next to the other podium so people could come up, that would be great. Mr. Green-field, you speak and then Linda bail, you'll be up next. [11:26:07 AM] >> Good morning, mayor, good morning, council. My name is Adam Greenfield, I'm a board member of walk Austin, nonprofit that is dedicated to making walking an everyday feature of life for people here in Austin and I'm also on the pedestrian advisory council. Thank you very much for holding this hearing. I think ultimately this conversation is about a vision. When we picture the Austin of tomorrow, what do we want to see? I've participated in an urban design exercise that I think gives a fascinating insight into what people ultimately want to see. Instead of asking people, people are invited to build their dream neighborhood with small models with their hands like we just saw with this child here. And the results of those exercises, no matter where you do it, are strikingly familiar and similar to each other. It's amazing. People always build neighborhoods with their hands, where there are lively streets, where there are squares, where people can grow old on the square, where people know their neighbors and where there's a mom and pop grocery store around the corner. These are what people build with their hands. Right now, we are far from that vision. I didn't see children on my street. The very young or the very old or people who can't drive are often stuck in their homes because there's nothing close by to walk to. And many of us are forced to shop at strip malls because people live so far away from each other that there's not enough people to support small local mom and pop stores. And statistically we know that we are lonelier than ever before. This is borne out in the statistics. There's a lot of good in the codenext document and a lot that needs to be improved. But I imagine myself as a young child or someone who is told to drive in version three of codenext and I still don't think I'm gonna be able to make it. We're still gonna be disconnected and isolated from each other. [11:28:09 AM] Recently walk Austin submitted to the codenext team a series of recommendations based on the current code. I won't go into the details here, but we are continuing to advocate for an Austin that people build with their hands in those modeling exercises. We're pushing for more corner stores. We're pushing for more types of housing and neighborhoods while minimizing displacement and enhancing affordability. But we are also asking in a parallel process for the city of Austin to ask the people of Austin what they want with this kind of architecture we're building. There's a common perception in Austin that a lot of what's getting built is generic and cheap. We need to make sure that if people are going to embrace them they need to see it as something that is beautiful. When a new building goes up in Austin there should be celebrations in the street because it's so beautiful. So overhauling our land development code will help produce the place that's people deep down want in their hearts. [ Buzzer sounding ] And you need to do the right thing. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: So Ms. Bailey is coming up now. Anna Mcguire, why don't you come on down, grab a chair. Michael -- let's see here, melody lambert. Is melody lambert here? Why don't you grab a chair too. Go ahead, Ms. Bailey. You can begin. >> Version three of codenext -- oh, my name is Linda Bailey, district 10. Version three of coax makes affordable Adu housing utterly unaffordable for rr, r1a and r1b zoned lots. As a person who trusted in affordable housing, I was surprised to see how the affordable housing density bonus, when reality is applied, actually completely discourages affordable housing on larger lots in Austin. The density bonus in these districts allows a resident to, one, either pay a fee-in-lieu in order to charge market rent or, two, rent at a specified defined rent for qualifying low-income residents. [11:30:25 AM] Most of the lots in the city have no fee or income restriction for building an Adu, larger lots zoned rr with a minimum lot size of 43,000 square feet or r1a or r1b both with minimum lot size of 15,000 square feet, there's a negative especially penalty. Assuming a resident wants to build a two bedroom Adu tell you max size of 1100 square feet, the cost of building would be approximately 250,000. A smaller one would be 750 square feet, 190,000. The proposed city fee in version three of codenext to build an Adu to rent at market rate is $335,000. For a two bedroom on a larger lot. So the fee is actually much larger than it costs to build it and, hence, foolish to build. I have these numbers vetted by the city staff. An affordable unit would be restricted to rent for at least 6% of the median family income or 913 per month for a two bedroom Adu or approximately 11,000 per year. For a two-bedroom Adu the annual rent is significantly lower than the cost to build and maintain the Adu. By conservative estimates if it was built and financed that affordable Adu would lose the owner $10,000 every year. Consequently making it no economic sense to build an affordable Adu even if the Adu is 750 square feet. In these three districts, the density bonus you in version three of codenext is designed to prevent us from building affordable housing. Just one example of a shoddy plan. [11:32:25 AM] Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead, yes. >> Alter: I wanted to point out that my office is working on that and that might be one of those areas of common ground. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. In which case I appreciate its identification. Let's continue on. We have -- do we have Anna? And then is Brandon Perez here? >> He's probably coming in right now. I sent him out to sign up so he could rush back in. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. We'll check and see if he's here. We'll start you at three minutes. Is melody lambert here? I'll be up next. That's good. Is robin Scott here? Come down to the chairs. >> Thank you, councilmembers, mayor, mayor pro tem. My name is [indiscernible], chair of the southeast combined neighborhood contact team. Full disclosure I serve on the zoning and planning commission but I am not in any way speak for the zap. I almost have a past member of the [indiscernible] Task force. Let me start with this information. Edward Jackson, 32, Josephina, and her son Jay, unidentified mail lost during the 2013 Halloween fund. Jose, 50 years of age, Edward Hernandez 37 are also from del valle, and [indiscernible], 67, we lost them during the 2015 flood. Hurricane Harvey we dodged a bullet with that one. As a result of the 2013 flood we had 200 students homeless, 1200 homes that were damaged and we had over 850 buyouts in the lower onion creek area. [11:34:25 AM] We lost an entire community. As chair of the contact team our position has been and is that we -- we ask that you respectfully -- we support and we request that you accept the recommendations of the environmental commission. They are there to address public safety and the watershed department, their charge is also public safety. We're concerned with flooding, creek flooding, also localized flooding. That is I know something that is experienced in some of your communities. We're concerned about impervious cover. We also support the engineering studies being proposed bit environmental commission in regards to the development that is being proposed. So it does not have an adverse impact on neighboring homes and communities. Secondly we ask that you delete the definition of high opportunity area from the codenext that definition, the rationale for us is the term 73 pet waits racism and systemic inequities. If you think about it if they were proud of the definition "High opportunity" why isn't there a definition for "Very high opportunity," moderate opportunity," low opportunity,," oh, by the way, southeast Austin is a very low opportunity area, in that we ask that it be removed because we want to make sure that there's not a repeat or an ongoing 1928 master plan, if you will. We also ask that you maintain the neighborhood plan designation as an overlay, as contact team members we are all volunteers. We are -- you know, when we can, we are -- make things happen, we get engaged. We know what's important for our community. A case in point, once we are provided the proper information, for example, right now we're fighting a cabaret next to a day care. [11:36:27 AM] So we know our community byes. Best. Because we're volunteers truly we are the ones most vested in it. The corridors, we worry about the corridors and what's going to be changing regarding single-family homes adjacent to corridors. What's going to happen to those? We also support the people's plan. This talks about affordable housing for southeast Austin, what is unique is when we hear affordable housing, we're not hearing affordable housing for low-income individuals. We're also in favor of practicing right to return programs in east Austin, neighborhood preservation, environmental quality, inadequate drainage and flooding. Those are the issues that are addressed in the people's plan. And for -- and in response to, you know, when people are not here as a single parent that moved to Austin in '92 with 3 little ones, there's some people that are not here from southeast Austin because they are working or they're a single parent and they cannot be here. So even though those individuals are not here, we ask you to also remember them. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: [Indiscernible] Is gonna be the next speaker. We have robin Scott here. David Warner. Why don't you come on down and sit with us. Go ahead, ma'am. >> Thank you. I'll keep this short. I'm melody lambert. I've come from a far away place called great hills. I'm here to express my vehement opposition to codenext and the very recent recommendations for corridors with five-block transition Zones or any transition zone. I'd just like to bring up the fact -- I'm a native Texan and, you know, the idea of an urban heat island needs to be thought about here with all this growth, right? [11:38:27 AM] I mean, we're just getting hotter and hotter every year, and the day dream that your children are gonna run down the street barefoot is not based in reality in Texas. I mean, you know, I've lived here more than 35 years. So, anyway, just like to add that and say that I believe the citizens of Austin should be allowed to vote on these far-reaching changes, not just the few. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [ Applause ] Robin Scott is up speaking next. Is David -- is Dan harkishu here? Why don't you come on down and sit with us. >> Good morning. Thank you for thishearing. I'm robin Scott in district 7 and it's an honor to be represented by the honorable Ms. Pool. I've lived in Austin as a single parent since 1983. I raised four boys. They're all still here in the area, and now I have three grandsons. By the way, tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of break away records, my son's shop, we're gonna have a party at the top and y'all are all invited. I've lived in the 58, lived in the 57, lived in the 56, lived in the 43, lived in the 47. I've been in the 56 for about 20 years now. When I lived in the 58 I lived on a road I called speed led city. I was an entry-level state employee and built a career in public service. Now I'm retired living in what we call baha brentwood one block off Lamar in between Houston street and north loop right in the middle of hipsterville. I'm fighting to stay y'all. I'm fighting to stay. [11:40:29 AM] I want to stay with my sons, with my grandsons. I want to stay in my community. My oldest grandson is in the special needs program at Mccallum right around the corner from my house. I lived in speed led city in 83 to 85 because I couldn't afford anywhere else. I went to bed praying every night my little kids would be safe, and we were. And here we are. So I'm not gonna argue stats. I'm not gonna argue policy. I'm gonna pause at principles and community values like diversity. I included my kids with university hills optimists and north Austin optimists specifically when they were being recruited as athletes over to northwest. No diss to northwest but it was too white for me. I wanted my kids to have friends of all backgrounds, that welcomed -- not based on economic concerns, but if you wanted to mayor, you played. You didn't have to pay to play either. So, yeah, values like diversity, inclusion, and rights to have a place at the table. The right to be self-determining. A recent article I read was about east Austin, basically, oh, no, what have we done and what now? [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Thank you. >> I'm just gonna say -- I've got to say this, that we don't want to make the same mistake again because if we're not at the table, we're [indiscernible] >> Ma'am, ma'am -- thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Werner is going to speak next. Is Craig Lazor here? Why don't you come on down. You have three minutes. >> Mayor, city council, my wife when I bought a building at 603 west 18th street back in 1983, and at that time it was zoned the highest downtown zoning, go-60. [11:42:43 AM] And it's part of an area between Rio grande and San Antonio, martin Luther king and 15th, which was referred in the downtown planning process as the panhandle. And as part of the downtown plan, essentially all those properties that hadn't already been granted 120 feet dmu or 90-foot dmu, which is a substantial number, were restricted to 60 feet. And in fact there seems -- as far as I can tell no real reason why they all shouldn't be 120 feet as they are in the adjoining area in the north capitol corridor. For instance, the former plumbing facility at 18th and San Antonio is going to up to 120 feet. And there are some undeveloped areas like the jack brown cleaners, the block which is just west of the also I think could potentially in a well-planned way substantially increase the capacity of downtown to to do the apartments and other things. The one objection was that -- judges hill argued that this would somehow impact their neighborhood. In fact the vast majority of the single family residents in judges hill are on the other side of the hill. They're at pearl and below. Now, there's -- in addition, our -- the place we own, which is at, oh, as I cyst and oasis and 18th street is more than 60 feet below west avenue, which is the traditional eastern boundary of judges hill. Judges hill changed that to Rio grande during the dmu process but really west avenue was the traditional eastern boundary. [11:44:54 AM] So being 60 feet below that, a 60-foot building is below sidewalk level at the most eastern portion of judges hill. In addition to that, there are a substantial number of build-ins on Rio grande and on west avenue, which are two or three stories here and obscure the view as well. And so I think, to make this adjustment in the -- in the zoning would really impact almost no residents. [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Mr. Harkishu is the next speaker. Is Paul cadoro here? I'll be up next. Next speak is Dan harkishu. >> Yes. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen of the board, I am [indiscernible] I live in bryker woods. I want to mention -- to add to the discussion about voting. We learned that there is resistance in your ranks to subjecting to citizens vote of codenext. I point out that early social regimes from which I once flood are cities not allowing a vote. [ Applause ] Next I point out that the codenext corroborate discussed isolated -- cannot be discussed isolated of the problems of the city and the root cause of all the problems of the city is excessive taxation. It seems that there is a preoccupation in finding reasons to increase taxes. We discussed affordability and housing. There is no use in providing cheap housing if taxes will raise the cost of living such that people living in them cannot buy food. [11:47:00 AM] And this is the only city that I know which solicits suggestions for new bonds to be issued. There were two bonds issued in 2016, '17, each had 20 to 30% items not germane. This applies to codenext as well because the model used in providing things for voting is that of a [indiscernible] Offering each specific interest group an attractive [indiscernible] To vote for and knowing that in the whole they end up losers. All proposals like bonds should be split up and individual items given separately to the voters. This holds for codenext too. And as -- to address the root cause of our problems, the city should analyze and reduce its expenditures and workforce. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. [ Applause ] Mr. Lazor is going to speak next. Mr. Cadoro is on deck. Is Andre [indiscernible] Here? >> Houston: He took the baby outside. >> Mayor Adler: There were two different in that family. Is Andre [indiscernible] Here? >> Houston: He's coming. >> Mayor Adler: Attorneys everybody'sto come in if he's going to speak. >> My name is Craig Lazor, hear speaking for the Sierra Austin regional group. I want to thank you for taking on such a thankless task force. It has been hard for a conservation committee to come to a consequence. We had numerous meetings on next weapon received input from various members, attended community meetings of all types all over Austin. Will codenext solve the problems some claim? Or will it continue to drive Austin in a direction no one really wants to go. The Sierra club was unable to come to consensus on many issues but there are some in which we were in wide agreement. [11:49:05 AM] I personally attended most of the green infrastructure meetings held by the department of watershed protection. These were excellent meetings. Once again I was proud ton a citizen of a city that values thinking long and deeply about our environmental sustainability. Unfortunately, in the current version of codenext, much of this work has been watered down by those who set personal profit over the sustainability of our city. [ Applause ] We are convinced that climate change will continue to have increasingly devastating effects on Austin, particularly when it comes to water quality, whether or not quantity and flooding. This will affect all citizens but it will affect our most vulnerable populations the most. It is obvious we cannot now rely on the state of Texas or the federal government to take any meaningful action to address climate change. Because of this, we strongly support the save Barton creek association letter that you have all received. Specifically codenext must restain more water on-site than it currently does and encourage more beneficial use of water. Codenext needs to support the environmental commission's recommendations and implement water forward's recommendations as soon as possible. We must require developments of 5,000 square feet and above to treat for water quality if we expect to have clean creeks and rivers for citizens to enjoy in the future. We need to extend the use of green stormwater infrastructure to treat residential subdivisions including roads, to the ecosystem impervious cover is impervious cover and it impacts water quality and quantity. You must remove exemptions to impervious cover limits in the redevelopment exceptions throughout the water quality section for all watersheds. Why? For the same reason that the city council cannot repeal the law of gravity. [ Applause ] Developer profits will not mitigate for polluted water and flooding. You must coordinate with water forward to reduce water demand. [11:51:08 AM] All the science is telling us that we have less water in our future. We simply must conserve more water. Likewise, we must conserve more water through our irrigation requirement. Even if codenext becomes code never, these environmental recommendations should be enacted as soon as possible. [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Before Mr. Cadoro begins is Veronica Nunez here? Don't see her. You'll have three minutes. >> Good morning. >> Mayor Adler: I want to apologize last time you were higher I short changed you a few minutes. I apologize for that. After you're done speaking, Andre [indiscernible] Is here -- is he here? Why don't you come on down. When you're done talking, Eleanor Mckinney will be speaking next if you could ready yourself. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. No apology necessary. I'm Paul cadoro, here on behalf of the board of directors for the Austin apartment association and as you know the association was founded in 1946 and composed of [indiscernible] The association fully understands the importance of comprehensive planning and we embrace the goals and objectives of imagine Austin. However, it's clear to our organization that the tenets and vision of imagine Austin cannot be fulfilled using the existing code with its inherent inconsistencies and notoriously long development approval process. When codenext was launched we fully supported its efforts to develop a new regulatory framework to govern land use and as this process nears completion we understand that valid questions remain regarding the code's clarity and some of the conflicts that may be inherent in it as well. Clearly working to be done especially in the non-zoning sections but while acknowledging that valid questions remain and linger we support the codenext effort. We urge the city council to embrace the work done to date. [11:53:08 AM] We fully respect the work that's done by staff on this forward with the recommendations of the planning commission. You know, it's been difficult to kind of keep traffic all the changes but we do have general concerns. First of all, we understand the goals and objectives of the affordable housing density bonus program but we don't support the city's plans in some instances where by parcels have their entitlements base units lowered but they can get those back if they participate in the affordable housing bonus program and make those units affordable. It essentially becomes an involuntary voluntary program and we don't believe that multiproperty property owners should bear the entire responsibility of affordable housing in the city. We also have concerns about any of those situations where units per acre are reduced under the -- from the current zoning to new zoning, and we think that should only apply to vacant parcels. With regard to impervious cover limits for multi-family development and water runoff regulations those are a challenge for redeveloping parcels. We urge the city to improve capital improvement programs and regional control measures and public-private partnerships so multi-family units of all sizes can be built on parcels of all sizes. Finally, you know, we do have concerns about the park reductions in codenext. Because they do have unintended consequences. Issues related to adequate parking and service vehicles. For service vehicles, residents and others should be addressed at time of construction. Apartment owners, managers, they just want to be anyonely and they want to create a sense of community for themselves and surrounding residents and properties developed with inadequate parking bring up conflicts that can be easily avoided. [Buzzer sounding] Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. After Mr. Personally speaks, Ellen Mckinney will be up and is Mr. Piper sneer you want to ready yourself? [11:55:15 AM] You'll be up in just a moment. Sir. >> Good morning, council. Thank you for sharing your Saturday with us. I'm Andre [indiscernible] With the Austin board of realtors. The board of realtors represents 13,000 members in the central Texas area who connect people with homes. We help austinites -- our members help austinites buy and sell homes, lease homes and manage small scale properties. I'm here to offer words of encouragement. I wore my fair housing pin today. 50 years ago this April lbj signed the fair housing act into law. The act called for ending discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, region, sex, disability, or families with children. 50 years ago this November voters in the city of Austin overturned the locally adopted fair housing ordinance at the impassioned urging of the board of realtors, among others. Despite the fair housing act 50 years later Austin remains far from the vision of those who struggled and fought to see the act signed into law. We do not need more studies to confirm this. What does this have to do with codenext? I'm not here to tell you that codenext is the cure for Austin's worsening affordability challenges and growing economic segregation but if we as a city don't use this opportunity to make progress on bringing Austin closer to the vision of 1968, well, why not? If this council declares codenext is unsalvagable and there's nothing left to do but walk away, aren't we rerepeating what voters and the city of Austin did 50 years ago? 50 years ago Austin collectively said no and did everything it could to do nothing. The planning commission gave you a code that moves Austin forward on many fair housing issues. [11:57:19 AM] There are interesting creative ideas in their recommendation. Honor their 1:00. Take up their recommendation -- honor their work. Take up their recommendation. You can't afford to start from scratch. The city will move forward and make progress by working together to take advantage of this opportunity for a better code. A better code is more transparent. It's easier to understand and use. It's free of excessive costs, especially for homeowners, small businesses, and small builders. A better code gains ground on fair housing by increasing housing choices throughout the city. A better code adds opportunities for affordable housing along corridors and in transition Zones are housing and transit can combine to create more affordable living options. A better code is recognized as a living document that will continue to change and adapt with our changing city. A better code will provide a stronger template to work from on those problems -- on the problems we are facing with affordability over the course of the next many years. [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you -- >> I have -- >> Mayor Adler: No, no. Can't let you do it because I'd have to let everybody. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [Indiscernible] Will be up next. Mr. Piper, do you want to come on down? Is rosemary here? Why don't you ready yourself. You're gonna be up in just a moment. >> Thank you. Good morning, mayor, councilmembers. My name>> Good morning. I'm Eleanor Mckinney, licensed architect in district 5. I have two concerns to draft 3 of codenext. I'm opposed to the P.C. Recommendation to say strike common open space and move the threshold for civic open space to eight acres. If this happens, then essentially we will have no more open space within the urban core. As we know, imagine Austin seeks a balance to maintain the green city we love. [11:59:23 AM] The tools are common open space, a threshold of two acres, the newly proposed civic open space with a threshold of four acres, and the parkland dedication ordinance. The current common open space ordinance provides for open space on commercial and multifamily sites. I worked on this ordinance to include green roofs with city staff. I've also executed projects, according to this ordinance, and have seen firsthand the benefits to the public. Any common open space that's accessible can count toward parkland dedication. The proposed specific open space provides a greater diversity of more urban open space types to satisfy the requirement. With the threshold of four acres, civic open space ensures open space within the urban core. Any space can count to a parkland dedication. Bringing forward the parkland dedication ordinance specifically addresses the need for land in park-deficient areas rather than fee in Louisiana if we do not have these organizes, there will be no space for trees, rain gardens, and green roofs. This would fly in the face of one of imagine Austin programs, in a great nature into the city. I'm also opposed into the transition zone of one block in from the corridors. All we have been hearing about is the need for [indiscernible] On the corridors and how the current ordinance is preventing that density. There's an assumption people that live in the lots adjacent to the corridor is either, one, inconsequential or would be happy to have a cash out. You've not heard from people adjacent to the corridor. Consider this. I moved adjacent to a corridor in 1992. Compatibility has protected my property since '83-'84. I loved where I live and consider myself resident of the neighborhood for 36 years. I don't only pay property taxes but have served on the parks board, the design commission, the green advisory group and code advisory group. [12:01:30 PM] So I might be called a super citizen. My voice is one of many living adjacent to a corridor has not been brought into an informed stakeholder discussion on compatibility and transition zone to the new code. Mayor, you call for doubling down this month -- [buzzer sounding] -- On specific issues. I hope that you will take compatibility and stakeholder inclusion. Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Packers you'll be up next. Rosemary Miriam, then is widelick here? Did I come close? You'll be up next. Go ahead, sir. >> I'm Dave piper, president of the zilker neighborhood association. These code hearings are premature. The last-minute planning commission amendment should be time coordinated, master editor scrutiny, then these hearings should happen. Our current code lives on simultaneously with codenext, including the awful mcmansion ordinance. It's just inconceivable after four years. P.C. Amendment 29 says to remove all requirements for open space on sites one acre or larger. This is unbelievable, after years of environmental review and volunteer citizen input. Amendment 112 says to amend corridors so compatibility is not triggered for 90% of the properties. The only way to accomplish this is to render compatibility standards effectively meaningsless. The so-called Kenny amendment says total is capped at .8. That's a 6,000-square-foot structure on an average size lot. This is straight out of codenext 1 which is soundly rejected. [12:03:31 PM] Why is this back? I urge council to provide direction. Multiple nomenclature for dwelling units is confusing, house, apartment, complex, accessory apartment, et cetera. Each has its own peculiar set of rules. Get rid of this gobbledygook. If a place has a kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, it's dwelling unit. Period. Count all square feet as far or, better yet, use impervious cover with upper and lower height limit. The most abused and contested component in the current code and is universally despised. Codenext 3 incentives destruction of small houses to be replaced by mcmansions. Incentivizes smaller houses for mcmansions. People who want mcmansions need to find larger lots of the preservation remodeling language needs to prevent a few remaining studies from being subsumed in new construction. Excuse me. There's a distinction between the price of land and the price of structures. Land has a fixed supply. It's perfectly inelastic in economic terms and price is wholly dependent on demand. Zoning entitlements, land values, rising property taxes and gentrification are cause and effect. Need to figure out a way to put a reasonable number of dwelling units on reasonably sized parcels of land with enough parking that will won't turn central and east Austin into a congested mess. If that doesn't provide enough housing, put housing in regional centers, enhance those places with amenities and robust transportation system. To facilitate home ownership, use bigger lots instead of scrunched-up smaller lots. Not small lots allow for -- they can accommodate condo regimes -- [buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. [12:05:31 PM] >> And smaller dwelling units. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. After rosemary Miriam speaks, [indiscernible] Will be up. The first speaker is rosemary Miriam, then Lori widelick, then Scott [indiscernible] Will be up. Go ahead, please. >> Good morning, or rather good afternoon. My name is rosemary Miriam and my husband and I purchased our home at 800 west Lynn in 1986. Since that time we have seen numerous changes come about in our west Austin neighborhood. We moved here because we fell in love with the diversity of our neighbors which range from empty nesters, section 8 housing and beautiful large homes. It was a perfect mix and affordable. However, as Austin has grown, property tax increases have forced out our lower income neighbors. At one point we were worried that our elementary school, Matthews, might be vacated due to a shortage of children. The old west Austin neighborhood association worked to help support the children in many ways, in order to help support the school in many ways, in order to keep it open. Today the neighborhood has many young families moving in and bringing with them children that are filling the streets again with sweet sounds of children at play. There are two areas that I would like to speak to regarding the negative impact of codenext on families in our neighborhood. The two concerns involved are short-term rentals and late-night bars, neither of which contribute to affordability in Austin and would result in driving families out of the neighborhood. Specifically the areas between west 5th and west 6th street from Lamar to mopac. And the proposed zoning in codenext would change from Mississippi 38 to mu 1a. Regarding short-term rentaltion, rentalrentals, we have situations where there aren't permits, too many loud people, fights, et cetera, and neighborhoods have found these visitors wandering through their properties, drunk and andpeeing in their yard. [12:07:46 PM] Recently one owner was overheard saying the fines Austin charges is just a part of doing business, and that they are not concerned about getting licenses to operate the strs because they're waiting to be granted a type 3 license. Please do not reward these bad actors by automatically giving them licenses. Folks are afraid to walk outside their homes on the weekends at night because of these drunken guests who maybe become belligerent and aggressive. As an aside, I wanted to mention I emailed each one of you a copy of a story I found which talks about all the cities in this country that are having problems dealing with these short-term rentals, I hope you'll have a chance to read it and see what we have to look forward to. Their fines are hundreds of thousands of dollars versus ours, which I think are 500. Main street 3b zoning is proposed for much of 5th and 6th street, allowing level II bars and night clubs. The noise will certainly drive out families who live anywhere near them. Second, as we have seen with Rainey street, if the highest and best use for a property is a bar or night club, this eliminates refurbishing building housing -- [buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Your time has expired. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: The next speaker -- [applause] -- Lori widelick, then Scott marks. Sir? Sir? What is your name? >> My name, galvina Mendoza. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Mendoza, you're not called yet. I'll call your name in a little bit. >> Oh, okay. I run this business here. >> Mayor Adler: I know. I'd like you to go and Scott marks is next, then Marjorie veriaga. >> Lori widelick, Hyde park contact team. [12:09:52 PM] Continued preservation of existing neighborhoods and the natural environment must be considered top priorities of comprehensive revisions to the city code. The consequences and impact of additional density and infill in existing neighborhoods must be carefully identified and analyzed to avoid endangering the character, the existing character of neighborhoods, and exacerbating community health and safety issues. Modifications to the city code should be measured with regard to their ability to preserve neighborhood character, consistency with adopted neighborhood and area plans, impact on affordability, and the ability of existing families to continue to reside in their homes. For any councilmembers who don't recognize their words, they're from imagine Austin. Despite those words, what's happened? Between draft 3 and the planning commission amendments, neighborhood plans are gone and ccds are gone, compatibility standards are gone. Austin spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars on neighborhood plans, and yet it is prepared to discard them. Under codenext, the legally binding parts of neighborhood plans, zoning ordinances will be gone. Austin spent hundreds of hours on nccds and it's now throwing them away. Despite the fact that they do not interfere with either density or missing middle housing. Hyde park has two nccds and it is the second densest neighborhood in Austin. Opticos cites it as the prime example of missing middle housing. Neighborhood plans and nccds are the ultimate local control, the tool available to a neighborhood to preserve its character and control its future. [12:11:53 PM] Austin is outraged when the ledge overrides its local control. Don't show the same high-handed disregard to Austin neighborhoods that the ledge shows to Austin as a city. If codenext passes -- [applause] -- Austin neighborhoods will be reduced to monotonous sameness and Austin will be poorer for it. And why are we doing this? We are prepared to drive out long-term Austin neighborhood dwellers to accommodate newcomers and people who haven't even moved here. Why do the rights of newcomers override the protection of long-time Austin residents? [Applause] It's your responsibility to protect current Austin residents. That's why we elected you. [Cheers and applause] >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry, Scott marks is up next and then Ms. Brigiaga. >> Houston: Mr. Mayor, they've forgotten the no clapping. I'm going to remind them. It takes longer. We're watching you. >> My name is Scott marks and I'd like to say I'm neutral on this because there are things about codenext that I love. I love the idea of the density bonuses for affordable housing. I think that's really cool, and we need to all kind of put our shoulder to the wheel and make that work because that would be really great. I love the idea of having more multifamily housing zoned areas in the city. I just think that's -- that's so needed in this city, given -- given how many needs there are for affordable housing. Those are the things I love. I've given you a handout with just a simple markup with provisions that we're a little concerned about. As rosemary mentioned, 5th and 6th street between Lamar and mopac, under the proposed zoning of Mississippi 3b in this codenext 3 draft, you'll just have another Rainey street, another area just like east of Lamar if you drive down 6th east of Lamar. [12:14:06 PM] No families will want to live anywhere near that. So we've proposed that the zoning designation that is appropriate for that is mu1a. If you read the introduction, the description of -- sorry councilmember Houston -- mu1a is much more appropriate for 5th and 6th between Lamar and mopac. I think if you read what mu1a is designed to do, that really matches that area of our city and the surrounding neighborhoods and would be really compatible, and yet allow denser development in some cases where it's appropriate. One thing I want to point out that hasn't been pointed out, I don't think, is the effect of this on land values. You know, when people do appraisals of land values, they look at highest and best use. And one of the problems is, we can't allow uses to sneak in to the tables, and so so many of my comments are on this, such as level II barks short-term rentals. These things are going to drive up land values and defeat the whole purpose of codenext, which is to generate more affordability. If the land value skyrockets because it's appraised at what land is worth if a podium-styled building or fancy bar or a bank can be there, then you basically -- no one can buy that land that has a craftsman home, put an Adu behind it, do some sensitive development that allows more development and more density but doesn't drive out people who live nearby. So that's the intention of many of the revisions that you'll see there. Again, mu1a makes more sense along mopac. This has been a hot take, and thank you so much for having a Saturday hearing. We really appreciate that. A valid petition, one thing I wanted to point out, I do think a valid petition is something that could be used during the codenext process, there's a case I just want to mention, James versus the city of Round Rock from 1982, that supports this where there was a comprehensive overhaul of the existing zoning ordinance, and the court said no valid position was allowed. [12:16:19 PM] Thank you very much. >> Tovo: Mayor, I know Mr. Marks has shared that information with my office, and I would just encourage you to consider sharing it with other councilmembers as well if you haven't already. >> Okay. I will. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. After Ms. Brigiaga speaks, is chessney Floyd here? Ready yourself. Sir. Ma'am. Go ahead. >> Good morning. I'm from district 10. I've actively involved myself in the codenext process for over four years, starting as an ambassador for code in the box that went throughout our neighborhoods. Where on Earth did all that information go? To think of the hours and over $8 million spent to get to where we are now at draft 3, which is considerably worse than draft 1. So like I began then as an active voice of reason, throughout the planning process, to address affordability issues in our community, fearing that I may be the next one ousted out, we need to take segregated issues seriously, versus worrying where these folks will come from. They will come with strong leaders doing the right thing for our community. Today I urge you to take three needed steps to revise draft 3. One, accept the planning commission's version of codenext. Two, adopt amendments passed under 7-6 votes for these amendments. Three, fix the code creating working groups of the building experts, I repeat, technical experts, headed by either the city manager or Rodney Gonzales, with the direction to model the code recommended by planning commission, along with criteria manuals prior to adopting a final version. These three asks are necessity to addressing affordability, by optimizing our land use and development code to encourage more housing and a greater diversity of housing types across all districts. Folks, we have a severe supply and demand issue. [12:18:24 PM] Codenext can create affordability, programs, and incentives, that allow developers to pay for what the city needs, more housing. The alternative to codenext is the status quo, which has brought us to this affordability challenge and made Austin the most economically segregated city in the country. We need to act to fix this problem. Codenext should prioritize and connect the development in order to reduce sprawl and affordable mobile city. Nights secret Austin is the most economically segregated city in the country and this has come about as a result of current land use policies. It's time for a change. By accuracying available housing types across the city, codenext could encourage more economic racial diversity throughout Austin by providing housing that's right for different types of people across the city. Austin must change its one size fits all approach by having the second largest land size in the entire nation. You either rent an apartment or buy a single-family house. To increase diversity, we need to increase choice. Instead of segregating people based on the type of housing they do or do not want to live in and can't afford to live in. Diverse neighborhoods need diverse living house choices. I've included some facts for you all -- they're on the screen. These are to impact objectives of imagine Austin. [Buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Chessney Floyd, Danielle Llanes, come on down. Is Harrison Hudson here? You'll be getting ready. Sir. >> Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thank you for having this hearing, giving us the opportunity to speak today. My name is chessney Floyd. I live on grandview street in the heritage neighborhood. It's a walkable central neighborhood, full of missing middle housing. As an architect and member of the heritage neighborhood association, I've spent hundreds of hours analyzing the code and discussing it with my neighbors. [12:20:31 PM] The council should vote no on the adoption of the code, codenext, for three reasons. First, the code does not make our communities more equitable, resilient, or affordable. Second, it violates the rights of stakeholders to participate in zoning changes to neighborhood plans. Third, it takes a punitive approach to existing structures which will be non-conforming under new zoning. No one knows what the benefits of codenext may be. The due diligence has not been done. Yesterday the planning commission proposed 117 new amendments with no time for public review. The first of these proposes creating a process for stakeholder input in phasing out current zoning and testing of development scenarios. These measures we have made sense early on in the process, but voting first and asking questions later is bad policy. Second, codenext zoning replaces neighborhood plans without any stakeholder input. The imagine Austin comprehensive plan states where a small area plan exists, recommendation shall be consistent with the text of the plan and its future land use map. And that changes, neighborhood plans will include public input from affected parties and follow adopted neighborhood plan amendment process. We have found and commented on numerous instances and zoning maps, the text of the code, and permitted uses and specific Zones that codenext deviates substantially from the land use map and our neighborhood plan. And all those comments have been ignored over the comments on three different drafts. If codenext moves forward in some form, I ask that you provide an explicit description of timeline for the process through which stakeholders will participate in revisig their neighborhood plans before adopting any new zoning. Finally, we should be trying to keep people in their homes but section 23-2g makes it difficult to make alterations to older buildings that will not conform to new zoning this punitive approach, coupled with substantial zoning changes, such as the commission's proposed far reduction to 0.3 for single-family residences, is unfair and unwarranted. [12:22:45 PM] Taken together, codenext is tilted to redevelopment of large areas of the city that are inconsistent with imagine Austin and provides no mechanism for actual stakeholder input in that process. Please vote no. Thank you. >> Tovo: Thank you. Is Harrison Hudson here? You'll be up next after Mr. Llanes. It chip Harris here? Chip Harris? You'll be up next, and I think you'll be the last speaker we have before lunch. Mr. Llanes. >> Good afternoon, councilmembers. My name is Daniel Llanes. I've lived all over Austin for the last 40 years. I currently in the chair of govalle Johnson terrace team. I'll say again, I think you should actually scrap codenext. Codenext doesn't even comply with imagine Austin. And on the first day that imagine Austin was announced, I was a person who said that we didn't need imagine Austin. We just needed to complete the neighborhood plans. I've been part of the neighborhood planning process since the '80s, since imagine Austin. The city staff and not you specifically, but the city councils previous to you have been doing the exact same thing. We all come down here, we say all kinds of things, we at some point into the website, goes into a black hole, even in imagine Austin, not one recommendation was taken into account. Like I said, the city should continue its planning process. That's the real planning process. Because my neighborhood plan was put together over three years by 100 people. In my neighborhood, who live, works and play in that area. So the advantage to those 30, what, two or three, something like that, areas of the city that have neighborhood plans now, the current -- the current code is not perfect, but we have managed it. [12:24:51 PM] Because we have a process. There's been a lot of rhetoric by city staff and the consultants about -- well, the rhetoric has been misleading, you know, saying that the neighborhood plans are outdated documents. My neighborhood plan is a living document. Every year it gets amended by a property owner. Every year it gets reviewed. So my neighborhood plan has -- gives the ability for the people around the project to have a voice. Codenext's version is changing my neighborhood plan, and you guys, Greg Guernsey and everybody else said that our neighborhood plans are going to be respected. I want to go past more than that. I want them to be used as the basis because my neighborhood plan was put together by a hundred people over 300 -- over a three-year period. Not by a handful of period who don't know my neighborhood. And I think this is consistent throughout the entire city. So it's really tragic that, you know, so much money has been spent, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, has been happening. So I'll get to a little bit of detail about this after having said those general things. Do away with codenext. Let's finish the planning process. [Buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Don't I have more than three minutes? >> [Off mic] >> Mayor Adler: Would you come on down to the clerk, please? I'm not showing it on my screen. Mr. Llanes? >> I had -- how many is that? Three more? >> There were other people that donated time. >> I had about two or three people donate time to me. >> Mayor Adler: I'm not showing that on my screen. Clerk? >> While y'all figure it out, I'm going to say, look, if codenext changes -- [12:26:53 PM] >> Mayor Adler: I'll give you another three minutes. >> Yes. Okay. So in order to keep my neighborhood plan intact, the way it is now, change the labels. You don't want to call it sf-3, you want to call it something else, go ahead. You want to -- you don't want to call it commercial services, call it something else, go ahead. Changing the labels is one thing. But changing the character of my neighborhood plan is being done by a few people, and it does not have -- does not give the ability of the people that live around that project to voice in. So, change the labels, don't change the overlay. Don't change the density, don't change the compatibility and all that leave that for the amendment process. If somebody wants to come in and amend that -- their property, then let's go through the process that exists that allows for the participation of the people affected. There are specific examples on my neighborhood plan that have this, but there's no time here. And we have no confidence in inputting to you. I asked Mr. Guernsey today. I would like for city staff to come sit with my contact team and my neighborhood, the people in my neighborhood, and go over the nuts and bolts of this and say, yeah, we go with that, yeah, we don't go with that, et cetera, et cetera. But if you adopt codenext, none of that will be possible. The other thing is, don't make Austin into Manhattan. If people - - and I say that because we're talking about density and affordability, bullshit. Bullshit! Go live in Manhattan. Go live in San Francisco. Hugely dense. No affordability. These people out here, they have the answer. We have the answer in govalle/johnson terrace for real affordable housing. [12:28:54 PM] I hope that you listen to us and quit listening to opticos and certainly quit listening to the planning department. Remember the Zucker report. The Zucker report. So you are my elected officials. Do the right thing. I'm so sorry that you didn't do the right thing and put codenext on the ballot. You're going to force the courts to make you do that. So that tells me that you have no integrity. Because you don't do the right thing. Why not? We all live here. We all share the house, the water, the streets, everything else. We are tied together. What affects you, affects me. So if you do something that I'm not in for, I'm going to be in your face. But if you do something good, like make sure that codenext is not the 1928 master plan, that we'll now include displacing white people as well as black and brown people, good luck, you guys. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [Buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Hudson? And then everybody next. >> Everybody clap. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Hudson? Is Mr. Harris here? You'll be up next. Go ahead, sir. Three minutes. >> Hello, council. I'm speaking as a member of the real estate council of Austin and also as a practicing engineer who deals with the current code on a daily basis. Reca has been involved since the beginning and has worked to offer positive and meaningful feedback during the codenext drafting process. Unfortunately, the draft ignores much of that feedback. Draft still has numerous conflicting layers of regulations. I'm a proponent of density affordability and predictability within the code. Draft 3 does not align with these views. In test bits that I've reviewed, draft 3 has made it nearly impossible as an engineer to design com contact, urban development in areas of the city in a needs it. [12:30:56 PM] It results in a code that does not work or function in a predictable efficient manner. The cost it takes to develop in the city are one of the main causes of the affordability crisis. It takes many, many months longer than it should to develop a property in the city, and that results in cost directed directly to the end user. I would hope that we make a priority of codenext to take steps to solve these issues. The draft does not work. It reflects priority between policy issues. I request to take time to get this right. It's essential that someone be put in charge of the comprehensive view of the entire draft code. That is part of the process, testing should be a main priority and performed along the way to make sure that the draft code actually works. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Mendoza. Mr. Mendoza, stay there, please. Can't hear? All right. Why don't you go ahead and speak. Would you let him know to come on up? Sir, why don't you go ahead, Mr. Harris. >> [Off mic] >> Mayor Adler, mayor pro tem tovo, councilmembers, my name is chip Harris. I appreciate the opportunity to speak today. Codenext is being sold as a solution to affordability. In my neighborhood, developers with cash are beating out families and buying existing houses for 350,000. They've then demolished the existing house and replace with it two dwellings, each selling for 500,000 or more. Codenext, by adding entitlements, will accelerate this process. That's not creating affordability. And the reason is because of the affordability fallacy that if the cost is reduced, the result will be a cheaper product. Reality is that the market determines the value. [12:33:01 PM] And with an ever wealthier population replacing our population with gentrification, it will be perpetually replaced by profitability. Here's a recent article by Seattle: In such a distorted market, says John grant, who's skeptical of the free market approach, often the existing zoning that prevents affordable housing from vanishing entirely. Quote what the free market acknowledges, density, not just for density sake, doesn't in itself create more affordable housing, says grant, it creates more market rate housing, end quote. Until we deal with root causes of affordability, the recommended solutions may make matters worse. The latest recommendations of the planning commission do just that, by redefining the term corridor and extending its depth into the neighborhood from a hundred feet to half a mile. In many cases, eliminating any semblance of a neighborhood. Finally, while the product is important, so is the process. I was at a meeting recently when a former councilmember described the process an earlier council agreed upon to revise the land development code, what has resulted in codenext. It was originally envisioned to be a process that engaged the community and planned workshops rather than open houses. Unfortunately, that process was not followed, and we're paying the price with the loss of community trust. If the right process is followed, if those whose lives are going to be most impacted are involved and engaged, and their concerns are addressed, the product will be the right one. 32,000 people signed a petition to allow the citizens to vote on codenext. [12:35:01 PM] As a community, we can't ignore the message that sends. I want to thank mayor pro tem tovo, councilmembers Houston, pool, and alter, for supporting democracy and a citizens' right to vote. [Cheers and applause] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The last -- thank you. Mr. Mendoza. >> You probably never have seen a person like me in this -- a place like this. If my wife was here, first thing she'd do is say, sit down and shut up and go home. I live in a neighborhood. I lived here in Austin 89 years, I believe it is. I'm 92 years old. So I was brought here 1928, and -- but mostly to east Austin. I grew up in east Austin. I went to the east Austin schools. I went to metz elementary, [indiscernible] Mostly anglo students, shifted to Zavala, which was mostly hispanic. And then junior high, I graduated to the old [indiscernible] High school. That's where I met a young girl that, up to now, is my wife now. Still. 71 years we've been married. [Applause] I was drafted and went to the military, returned and got married. We moved into the east Austin area, which was more like a pasture, a few houses there, mostly hispanics that had moved into the east Austin area and were immigrants from the Mexican revolution. [12:37:25 PM] So that's where I picked up a lot of my Spanish history where I learned from them. But mostly I've been invited or involved in east Austin, the area that my dad brought -- bought and where I grew up up until I moved was a mixture of the black and hispanic neighborhoods. At least half of the neighborhood was divided into two nationalities. So as far as races is concerned, I don't even think about it. But the area, I'm here, really, because my neighborhood, the people kept saying, what is going to happen to us with this codenext? We can't afford the taxes on it. My wife and I built this home where I live right now, and we're one of the first ones there, and now -- [buzzer sounding] -- The people around us that are moving have been forced to move -- to move away from our neighborhood. We don't have the people that originally settled that area. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Mendoza, thank you very much. >> And -- >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Mayor pro tem, do you want to ask a question? >> Can something be done? The only thing is, to help us not to have to move from this area. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, sir. Thank you very much. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you for being with us today. Thank you, sir. [12:39:27 PM] Now, we're going to -- >> So I'll be able to tell them, hey, I was there. I saw a bunch of people -- >> Mayor Adler: That's good. That's good. You did good. We're going to take a lunch break. We'll be back at 1:30. Before we go, our rules let people speak in a block if they wanted to, but each block could be more than 27 minutes. That means nine people. So I've been handed group sequence sheets for people to be -- to speak, but some of them have donated time. So if we had donated time, the donator of the time counts against the nine. So if I have nine people signed up, each with donated time from two people, that would be nine times nine minutes or 81 minutes, and that, we can't do. So if you signed up for a block, you need to have a block with a total amount of time of 27 minutes. So if you would visit with the clerk so that you understand that. It is 12:40. We're going to come back at 1:30. Let's return. We're in recess. [1:36:52 PM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think we have a quorum if I count the mayor pro tem and councilmember alter I think they're directly behind me. It is 1:36. We're going to go ahead and start. We're going to begin with Lauren Ross. Is Julia Vaughn Alexander here? She just walked in. Thank you. What about Gerald baptism balaca. Is Jeffrey Owen here? You'll be up. Nina Faulkner? So you'll just have three minutes when you start. And is Nancy Harris here? You might want to start getting ready. Is Steven coreson here? You'll have six minutes. You're on double deck. Ms. Ross, you have nine minutes. >> Mayor? Hold on one second. I'm just wondering, now that we're live and our colleagues now that we're getting started if we could give them a couple minutes. These people have been waiting for a long time to speak to all of council. With all of six of us here that doesn't seem quite of spirit of what we're trying to do. These people came to speak to all of council so I would just ask if we could have a couple more minutes so that people know we're getting started and that we need them -- >> Mayor Adler: That's fine. Let's take a couple minutes. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Hang on a second, Lauren. [1:41:01 PM] >> Mayor adler:all right. We're going to go ahead and start. Ms. Ross, do you want to come on up? You have nine minutes. Jeffrey Bowen is on deck and Nancy Harris after that. >> My name is Lauren Ross, I'm in councilmember kitchen's district. I've been watching my development -- land development code processes since the 1986 comprehensive watershed's ordinance. I'm an environmental engineer, and so I know that the code is complicated and that a rewrite of the code is a million details. I was also part of the save our springs citizens referendum in 1992, and what I learned there is that as David graybur, a philosopher said, our culture plays out, morality plays, and in Austin the land development code is not just 1300 pages of details. This is a conversation about who we are as a community. It's about who we listen to, and it is about bigger forces when we pass the save our springs referendum to protect Barton springs 25 years ago, what I've been saying for 25 years is that it's not just about the pollution of Barton springs, it's about the pollution of our political process. And that's part of the issue that's here in front of us today with codenext and why -- have a little dramatization of this particular codenext morality play that they're going to perform for you now. [1:43:30 PM] >> So there you have some very happy developers and some displaced folks from affordable housing. We want to remind you that what we've heard again and again today that density does not equal affordability. We want to remind you again that codenext is not anti-racist. In fact the conversation about racism in codenext is being used to justify changes that will benefit the same largely white developers who have always been enriched by Austin's land development code. We encourage you to suspend everything on codenext until the people's plan is passed, funded, and implemented. Codenext is gentrification on steroids and we need to know that those communities are safe before this land development code is passed. Codenext has to respect the adopted neighborhood plans. Those plans were developed over more than a decade. They were a democratic process. Those maps in codenext need to align perfectly with neighborhood plans. If density -- if corridors is what we need, let's go back through that process. And, finally, the right for us to stand in front of you in a zoning process, the right for the community to weigh in on the changes that are the buildings that we look at, that we live with, that affect our lives and our livelihoods and our property taxes in this community, that right is sacred. The codenext that you're proposing to pass will erode that right, and that is a violation of something that is sacred, the democratic process. So we ask you not to pass this version of codenext and let the people vote. [1:45:31 PM] Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Jeffrey Bowen. On deck is Nancy Harris. Is David Guarino here? You'll be third person up. Go ahead. >> Thanks for letting me speak on this. My name is Jeffrey Bowen. I live in district 8, a member of the maple run wood stone village and wheeler creek neighborhood association. For those that don't know, that's actually -- he bordered by Brodie lane on the east, convict hill on the north, Davis on the south. So I'm also a member -- I'm also the neighborhood association's representative on ANC. We have approximately 500 -- 5,000 houses in our area. We have just a few duplexes run right along Brodie lane and just within the -- about a block of there. Currently, our precinct has about a 68 patience voting record. We -- precinct has a 68% voting record. We turn out to vote. Roughly over 5,000 members are members. Currently we're sf-2 and sf-3 with that smattering of duplexes in there. What we're asking for is to have the petition honored. I personally walked our neighborhoods, educating the residents, educating the voters. Most had no clue about any of the process of what was going to be happening. Some that did know, they were for it. Some were against it. But the majority were basically -- were just kind of left out of it. Whether it's because of time, don't have the time to deal with it, didn't really want to know, didn't know how it was going to affect them personally or their property. The only thing we really had was all of these open houses. There was a change recently that all of a sudden from -- that we've had a change in our area of being upzoned according to what we got from -- by Mr. Guernsey and his department. [1:47:41 PM] And yet we had no meetings regarding that particular option. Now, within the last day or so, we just recently found out that they're going to want to make Brodie lane a corridor, Davis lane a corridor, alotta, which is a two-lane road, and convict hill, which is a lane road, a corridor. What about the infrastructure? We already have some flooding issues in our area. This will not help those issues when it comes to flooding. If you build along alotta, if you build along convict hill without addressing the flooding issues that we currently have on the creek that is just south of convict hill. So we're just asking that there be an open discussion, at least let the neighborhoods be aware of what is happening when there are changes, because that information is not getting out. The only reason I get the information is by being in contact with some of the other organizations that are at least getting out the information. That information is not being given out to the rest of the residents, the taxpayers, and the voters of the city of Austin. I'm asking you, please, we need to slow down. I know we've been doing this for a long time, but there's still a lot of information that is not being given out and owners -- -- and the people are just not getting that. As I said, basically we do vote and we will be looking at that, and I will honestly be trying to pass out more information to all of our association members just to make sure that they are aware and understand what these corridor changes and what some of these other changes are coming as soon as we get them. The problem is they come along and that information is not disseminated out to the rest of us. Thank you for your time. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mayor pro tem? [1:49:44 PM] >> Tovo: Mr. Beauen? May I ask you a question question? The corridors you mentioned -- I apologize I don't know this already, convict hill, Brodie, were those corridors added in draft three or were those by virtue of the planning commission amendments? >> That was the planning commission. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. After Ms. Harris, Mr. Guarino will be testifying. After he testifies it's gonna be Ann Charlotte Patterson. Is she here? Okay. You're third up. Go ahead, please. >> Good afternoon, mayor, councilmembers. My name is Nancy Harris. And to put it bluntly, codenext is a travesty. It does not accomplish the goals it purports to address, what was meant to be a simplification of the land development code to implement imagine Austin has instead become a convoluted map for a new planning tool that threatens to up end existing neighborhoods, not compatible to the residential character and displacing people of color, low-income families and the elderly, by incentivizing rapid department that will encourage development of currently affordable homes and replacing them with more expensive market-driven units. Over 31,000 Austin residents put pen to paper recognizing this document alters the zoning of every property in the city and needs to be brought to the public for a vote or simply scrapped altogether. Yet their petition has been dismissed by the same councilmembers who have come out publicly supporting codenext. Codenext is filled with errors, inconsistencies, contradictions, and vaguely worded passages open to later interpretation as to their meaning. Codenext eligible authorize thousands of hours citizens have spent making neighborhood plans and the visions they had for their community and home. There have been three versions of the proposed code and codenext staff failed to detail the differences and changes, often dramatic ones, making it difficult for citizens to understand the potential impact on their community. [1:51:46 PM] Ever since coax was released to the public the city has pushed to have this code approved at break neck speed, not giving ordinary citizens time to study and understand it and ignoring their comments. While at the same time promoting the code and public information communications in a one-sided sales pitch and literature that is incorrect and misleading, relying on open-ended catch phrases that sound good but have no basis in reality. Codenext minimizes or eliminates citizens' rights now in effect to protect their property and community. Citizens will not have the same safeguards as opportunities for such things as notices, petition rights, and public hearings will be stripped way or reduced by the en masse zoning of the city and increased use of administrative approvals. Their peaceful neighborhoods will be irrepresentbly changed by the inclusion of non-residential uses such as bars and retail sales. We are not talking about simply being able to add an Adu on your property to stay in your home. Assuming that one has the financial resources and the desire to accept the hassle and risk of doing so to begin with, but a displacement of families and the creation of a new environment that is so foreign most will never return because what they had is lost. The maybe's repeatedly said he will not vote for codenext if it isn't right, yet he's failed to clearly define what he considers right. It seems to me like it's a way of saying trust me, I know what's good for you. Well, it may be all right to make a decision for you about what dish to order at a restaurant they're familiar with, although it's not so good when you've told me you're -- them you're allergic to shell fish and they still insist on ordering it if you get my meaning, but it's an entirely different matter when they want to control decisions about the fate of your home and entire neighborhood. One look at the website for opticos, the costly California consultants that came up with this plan it is no surprise to anyone what the final results are. This is Austin, Texas, and the citizens here deserve to be given the opportunity to create something more in keeping with the values of this city and not a code crafted by opticos or from the dais by the PC or council. [1:53:55 PM] This entire process has been handled from a typical real estate position. Higher potential sales and profitability. There's a common adage in real estate that goes there are three things that matter in real estate, location, location, location. Well, I say in Austin, Texas, that's only a small part of what truly matters. Here even more important is what stands for the heart and soul of a place, and that includes community, friends, and home, all of which are being destroyed. While the lopsided developer real estate interest influence planning commission continues to make suggestions that only further decimate neighborhoods, the zoning and platting commission has said the benefits of codenext to Austin residents is not clear or compelling, that the resulting development process will be more complex, more costly, and less predictable. And that codenext needs to be immediately terminated. I applaud their advice and I hope this council will pay heed to it. Scrap it outright and let the citizens of Austin have more input in an Austin plan orb let the citizens vote and decide if they want this mess or not. I'll close with this, one of my south Austin musician friends has a song "Everybody is from somewhere else about people who want to call this place home. To paraprays him "What brings you to Austin is that, is it the easy money or that old familiar song?" No matter how long they've been here, a day, decade, or lifetime, it's those who have embraced the song, the spirit of what is unique about Austin who are the real austinites. Let's not destroy that lyrical uniqueness that is Austin by breaking up the communities that make this a special place that people are proud to call home. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. So before Mr. Marino speaks, next up will be Ms. Patterson. And then the speaker after that will be Gwen o'bar here. [1:55:57 PM] You have donated time from bill o'bar, so you'll have six minutes when you come up. I have some groups that have joined together to speak collectively, will be speaking as a group. And generally what I'm doing in that is I'm taking the lowest-ranked person in the group and highest-ranked person in the group and putting the group in at somewhere in the middle of that so that those people know how I've roughly calculated that in case they're watching and wanting to know about when I'm going to call them, the group that has Lisa Wimberley and Mary putajofski, I have about 100 more or less in terms of the numbered speaker. The speakers of David hill and Ryan cough probably about 127-ish, one with Megan camp and Corey hart, probably about 146-ish. Sir, you have three minutes. >> Great. Thank you. I appreciate the council's opportunity to let >> Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity. I'm a lifelong resident of Austin and the last three years, homeowner in the Hancock neighborhood in district 9. I'd like to call your attention to six paragraphs today, one from the existing code, two from the draft code, then I'd like to pose some questions for you all that I don't have the answers to but hopefully you'll find the answers to as you go through this process. These six paragraphs deal with non-complying and non-conforming properties under the rules. Under the existing code that we have, we have something called a safe harbor provision, which says that, essentially, if your property was legally conforming and legally compliant before the date the previous code went into effect, then it remains compliant and conforming. [1:58:01 PM] That is slated to be taken out of version 3. Not really sure why but it could have a profound effect on a lot of homeowners, particularly those in older neighborhoods and those with older homes who may come under that protection. It's my understanding that it's possible that once that goes, they might become then legally non-conforming or legally non-complying. Now, there are a couple of paragraphs in the proposed code that would also deal with properties that are currently legally platted and legally in compliance or conformance. And basically what it would say with that is that in the current code, those basically are good to go. In the proposed code, if the zoning changes and the zoning basis changes and some of the overlays change and all of that, then those legally platted and legally compliant properties might become legally non-compliant. So that's about two more paragraphs. Finally, a couple more paragraphs, for those properties that are non-compliant or non-conforming, not necessarily legally, the ones that have never been okay, basically, there is a remedy under the current code and under the proposed code, which is that the owner can speak a certificate of occupancy. Of course that's not free and you have to go through the whole bureaucratic process to do that. But under the proposed code, there is something that's laudable, which is there's something basically like a process built into the code about how paper will be processed, how applications will be processed, and there's something called an order of precedence which includes which kinds of paper will be considered first. [2:00:02 PM] [Buzzer sounding] The certificates of occupancy are last, so thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Patterson, then Ms. O'bar, then Sheri widemarsh. >> I'd like the thank mayor Adler and the council, all staffers and additional employees here today with the city so the public can come out and weigh in on this matter. I'd like to extend my thanks to all the city volunteers who have spend so much time working on codenext. I know that's become an increasingly thankless task. My name's Ann Charlotte partyson. I'm vice president of the [indiscernible] Neighborhood association. I'm also advisory board member for visual department at ACC. I've served on committees for aid and as a classroom coach for Austin partners in education at Webb middle school so I'm here to speak to the public education and family part of this. Recently, I was visiting the office at my son's high school, and noticed there's a sign now posted in English and Spanish imploring families who are being forced to leave the neighborhood zoned for Mccollum to first talk with school staff before moving their child to a different school so school staff can try to find a way so kids can continue their education at the same high school. Research shows that the academic and social disruption that children experience as a result of having to move schools have a long-term impact. This is just one example of the serious consequences that are being dealt to the many renters and homeowners who are being displaced due to the increasing costs of housing and property taxes. And at the same time, working in middle class families, individuals find it nearly impossible to move into Austin. Aisd enrollment is declining and this is a troubling trend for all Russ of us in Austin. The neighborhood school is to have any heart of the neighborhood and families invest in neighborhoods in a way that sustains the communities for everyone there. I'm heartbroken to see the neighborhood schools illusion ethnic and economic diversity and learn that other neighborhoods, the number of children is dwindling altogether. [2:02:21 PM] By itself, the long-term goal of increasing density won't serve these urgent and immediate problems. I'm asking council to consider the following in your upcoming work sessions. One, absolutely prioritize affordability above all goals, other goals in the code rewrite. Follow aisd's recommendations to expand the city's density bonus program to include non-residential properties. Follow aisd's recommendation to limit residential upzoning to the creation of family-friendly developments, affordable at 60% median family income, or lower for rental units, neck pain areas recently affected by gentrification and the loss of families. Follow the recommendation to say immediately focus intention on ways to minimize displacement, provide affordable housing, and preserve existing affordable housing by providing strong incentives that discourage demolition of homes valued at 300,000 or less. And I would add to that, I would ask the city to develop strong disincentives -- [buzzer sounding] -- To the destruction and replacement of the existing affordable family housing including mobile home parks. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Sheri Whitemarsh. Then, I'm sorry, Glenn o'bar. Is Rosie Darby here? You'll be coming up three from now. Ma'am. >> Good afternoon. My name is Gwen o'bar, and I come speaking today with disappointment and a heavy heart. I hope all of you on the dais listen to me, but I'm one citizen with only two votes. And those two votes are for my mayor and my city councilmember. And I expect my mayor and my city councilmember to represent the interest of our neighborhood. However, the fact that I'm having to come to this meeting and the many other meetings I've been to is indicative that I'm not being represented. [2:04:30 PM] I have watched you ignore the recommendations of the east Cesar Chavez neighborhood plan, and that represents thousands of citizens, on numerous issues. And this is the last one that's very important. What the heavy heart is about is I no longer trust to you vote in my interest. I can't even get calls back, not even from staff members. There are people on the dais who I don't get to vote for who have made sure that their staff has called me back, but not the ones I get to vote for. What I'm wondering, as this is going on, is, do the developers and the consultants have the same problem getting you to call them back so that we can talk with you about it? Now I want to get to codenext, which is the 8.5 million boonedoggl eras I see it. The process has been controlled by the planning department, which got an awful audit by the Zucker report. And then the city council has the cag, citizens advisory committee, or group, who is supposed to contribute to this. If they were not allowed to see these reports any sooner than the public, in small towns, I've worked on rezoning, and we actually saw what we were doing on a weekly basis. So this disappoints me. I've gone to other codenext meetings, but I never get to hear back what all I'm recommending. So is it productive? Not to me. You've ignored the petition to allow codenext as the ballot initiative. Then you spent over $50,000 to find a law firm to ignore this petition, and I say you shocked because I know lawyers. They're like everybody else. They all have different opinions about the same subject. [2:06:31 PM] You're using codenext to upzone my neighborhood. I spoke to a local -- he's not local to my area, but he's local to Austin, and he does residential development, not commercial, and he said to me -- I said, you know, I don't understand why east Austin is being targeted this way. And he says to me, well, it's got nothing but -- it's the last place that isn't built out. And I was shocked. Austin is residentially built out. What he was telling me is, he didn't like those little houses, those little affordable houses. And so he's building behind me, just like the other man who built behind me, where we allowed -- we did what they meted back in '99 and said, okay, you can have two houses on a small lot. Guess what now they're selling the back alley flat for 450,000. It hasn't helped affordability, and neither is changing from two houses to a lot to three houses to a lot, going to affect affordable care act positively. It's going to go to the wealthy, which is what this is doing, it's making it for the people that have money. In 1928, as you all know, there was a law passed to keep people of color on the east side of east avenue, which is I-35. Codenext is your new law to move people of color and people like me who are not very wealthy out of this core area. Codenext will not make housing cheaper. And I've got too many examples of how codenext destroys our neighborhood. Besides I've already made the suggestions on what needs to be changed at these meetings, and I've seen nothing to produce what I've suggested or to produce the results that I suggested. In conclusion, it's time to do the right thing for the people who live here. Time to make policies that will reverse flight from east Austin. Time to put codenext to a public vote if you don't have the strength to scrap it, which is what should be happening. [2:08:32 PM] I've talked to many people who believe like me and not just in my area where my two votes count, but where all your votes are going to be coming from. I will use my one vote, and I will use it to encourage all of those I know to vote for the kinds of people that represent me. And I'm going to encourage everybody in all the civic organizations that I belong to, all the charitable organizations I belong to, and all my neighbors to use their vote to help you all to do the right thing. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Whitemarsh and then Ms. Darby, and is Steven predor here? You'll be third up. You have three minutes. >> Hello. My name is Sheri Whitemarsh, with the cherrywood neighborhood in district 9. I am very -- it's been an interesting day to listen to these arguments. I'm just an average citizen that doesn't really know a lot about this code, but from the people in any neighborhood that I trust, architects, engineers, and people that are more able to really read the very complicated code, it sounds to me like it is doing nothing to help preserve the affordable housing that is in neighborhoods like mine where this is the second house I've been able to purchase since I've been here 22 years in the inner neighborhood, and I am a member of the creative class. And I am graphic designer. And I moved to Austin because of the music scene. And it's something that you, as a city, market Austin as the live music capital of the world, and yet you are driving the creative class and the musicians and the artists out of the central city because they can't afford to live here anymore. And it sounds like this code is doing nothing to kind of keep the character of the city and the neighborhood and the things that people are, you know, kind of driving factors coming to Austin. [2:10:40 PM] It's going to do just the opposite to maintain that cultural that is so important, that "Keep Austin weird" culture is going to be gone from you drive that creative class out of the central city. So that's the element to this code that I'm concerned about. Doesn't it seem like it's serving the community and the existing affordable housing. It seems like it's very directed towards making money and development and bringing an Amazon headquarters here, worrying about people that are going to have a lot more money to come here and displace people that are more middle income to living in the city. So I would ask you to abandon codenext and listen to the communities and listen to the neighborhood plans and do something to preserve the culture that you purport to care about. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Is Tracy berry here? Tracy berry? No? >> Okay. Thank you for your time. I've come before you today because I believe that codenext is going to completely strip my land. >> Mayor Adler: Would you state your name, please? >> I live at 8607 coastal drive. It is in southwest Austin on the goat cave, horse cave preserve area. My home was built -- we purchased a home in 1986, and at the time we purchased it, it was outside of the city limits. It was in a mud district and we understood from the realtor that, of course, our area, the detention pond behind our house, was being used or utilized for runoff, and that once the area was built up, the detention pond would be filled in, we would get our land, and there wouldn't be a problem. They told -- they explained that deer lane would be connected to Davis and other changes that have occurred. Well, deer land was connected to Davis. [2:12:42 PM] Other changes occurred. But I still don't have my property. I have talked to everyone that I can have -- that I have access to, talked to watershed protection. They basically told me that you're not going to get your land. I attempted to get in touch with the previous city manager, but I was unable to get through. And so I went to -- I'm in district 8, so I went to council woman troxclair's office and I still haven't been able to get this resolved. And the problem for me is, is that my land, which initially had boundaries, has been eroded by bulldozing and changes that I didn't consent to. So subsequently, my land is easing away. It's sloping and and eroding and I don't know what exactly I can do about it. Initially, watershed decided that the area -- I have a drainage ditch situated between my home and my neighbor's home immediately to the west, so watershed decided that the portion right next to the drainage ditch, and that slopes around my house, they will manage that, and parts of -- excuse me -- parks & recreation will manage the rest of it. Well, what they did was, they created a water garden by -- in the drainage ditch, and of course the mosquitoes, rodents, snakes, unbearable. So I was prompted to call code compliance. Code compliance came out and there was one report over the news about Zika in that area, and that was beside my house. So of course they came and they cleaned all of that up -- [2:14:44 PM] [buzzer sounding] -- Oh. Anyway... >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Please help me. Something needs to be done. Codenext I believe is going to strip me of my land. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: We'll have a staff member follow up with you in just a second. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Is Tracy berry here? Is Phil Thomas here? Okay. Is Carol Stahl here? Okay. So you'll have six minutes, you'll be up next. Is Jim Christian here? You'll be third up. Two people in front of you. Sir. >> My name is Steven kregor and I'm the current president of Windsor hills neighborhood association. Shortly before that I spent four -- almost four years as chair of the friends of Gus Garcia park and recreation center. Sometime before that, I was chair of the upper boggy creek planning team. I spent three and a half years in that position. And that segues into one of many things that I dislike about codenext. And that is, as other people have said, codenext kind of puts those neighborhood plans in the dumpster. So that means I and a whole bunch of other people spent three and a half years wasting our time. And I don't appreciate that at all. Not one single bit. I am 70 years old and about 50 years ago when I was in college, I started paying attention to politics in Austin. And to a lesser degree, participated a little bit. [2:16:45 PM] And codenext is, by far, by far the worst thing that any council has done by far. Here's the worst thing, and down on the third floor parking garage, that's where codenext is. It's horrible. It is a mess. It just violates the whole integrity of neighborhoods. Put aside the neighborhood plan and all that work that went into all those. It just violates the integrity of neighborhoods. It's awful. And I don't understand how you folks can support it, those of you that do. And the idea that density is going to bring affordable housing? Who told that you bill of goods? There's not been a study that I have seen that shows increased density will help affordable housing, particularly in a city that almost has a million people. It's - - it's just not going to happen. And people prior to me have told you how much some of these -- what's the Adu? I can't even remember the name, additional dwellings -- whatever it is, what those things are going to cost. And none of that's affordable. Cost of construction, the cost of the land precludes affordable housing. And I see that I have two seconds left, and -- [buzzer sounding] -- >> Mayor Adler: And thank you very much. >> Don't approve it. >> Mayor Adler: Is Phil Thomas -- come up and you'll have six minutes. Jim Christianson? And you'll have then -- is Mary Anderson here? >> Yeah. >> Mayor Adler: Got you. Thank you. You'll have six minutes when you come up. [2:18:46 PM] Mr. Christianson. Is ray Collins here? You'll be third up, three minutes. Mr. Thomas. >> Thank you, Mr. Mayor, mayor pro tem, councilmembers, all city employees that are here giving up their Saturdays. I appreciate this opportunity to come up here and make these remarks. It's no doubt in my mind, the current code has a lot of opportunities for updating. But back in January of 2014, I went to the codenext kickoff at ACC east view, and I left there scratching my head with some questions. So I decided to go to my neighbors. If I saw them at the H-E-B, I'd stop and ask them. If I saw them at the convenience store, both of the bread baskets, I would stop and ask them. I would even lean across fences and say, hey, what do you think? To a person that replies, fill in a couple of categories, I don't need that, I didn't ask anybody at the city for that and then there was one special case where the gentleman asked me if it would make it easier for him to put a driveway in. I said, well, I don't know everything about it, but it kind of doesn't look like they're going to address any of that. So I'm left with more questions. So where does it come from? Not my neighbors, that's for sure. Then the realization came, it's for the land development sector, a special interest group in Austin if there ever was one. Codenext won't improve life for middle income citizens struggling to remain. Black, brown, white, if you're not pulling down a good six-figure salary, you're going to be taxed out. I know this because it happened to me and my wife already. [2:20:49 PM] My wife and I are victims of gentrification. We are homeland refugees from district 5. We will do all humanly possible to remain in our community in district 3, including actively supporting campaigns to unseat those who would support the developer manifesto known as codenext version 3. And to those who would compare the ballot initiative to the tnc referendum of a few years ago, the latter was requested by a multibillion-dollar corporations, whereas the former was a demand from the people. So please listen to my manifesto that in talking with my neighbors I've come up with. One: Much more subsidized housing paid for by meaningful fees assessed on development. The right to return for those displaced by the goals of the imagine Austin comprehensive plan. The right to remain for multigenerational families through tax caps or valuation caps funded again by fees from development. Four: Improve the transit system to where it actually moves people efficiently. If a bus is sitting in the traffic lane with all the cars and not moving, that's not really a help. Five: Deal with the homeless. Do not create them. Six: Make sure infrastructure curve supports growth. Get ahead of the growth with the infrastructure curve. Put the money into that. And seven: Review the potential impacts, economical, ecological, fires, floods. Yes, fires. And please, on behalf of my wife and me and my neighbors, please do the right thing and do not pass codenext version 3 as it is. [2:22:54 PM] Thank you very much for this opportunity. Thank you for your service. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Houston: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Could we ask him to send a copy of his remarks? I couldn't get it all down. >> Mayor Adler: There's been a request for you to share your remarks with the council. If you would email them to us that would be great. There's a request that you email your comments to the councilmembers. If you do that, that would be helpful. >> Okay. Certainly. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. After Mr. Christianson, we're going to have ray Collins. After Mr. Collins, Patty sprinkle. Is Patty sprinkle here? No? What about Mary Engle? You'll be up then. Go ahead, sir. >> Members of council, mayor, my name is Jim Christianson. I've heard a lot of negative comments about Greg Guernsey and Jerry, but let me just say my experience with them of 40 years of dealing with the city is they're very honorable people. We just happen to disagree on this particular issue. I -- I'm old. I didn't think I was old, but I've been going to a lot of funerals lately and my cousin says, well now we're all part of the older generation. I'm also unique. I'm a lifelong austinite. I grew up in central Austin. Those of us, if you want to know where the old austinites have gone, they've gone to the Facebook page Austin as it used to be. Agree up in French place and cherrywood and presently now live in old infield. Cherrywood was a great neighborhood, and I worked in a neighborhood association over there, concordia neighborhood association, when we were basically up in decline. But we stayed and we contributed and kept that neighborhood so that the newer generations of people that came have now continued to make that not a decaying neighborhood but a vibrant part of the city of Austin. [2:24:55 PM] The neighborhood I live in now called old infield, you probably don't know this, but at one point in time in the '60s, it was a decaying neighborhood. Mrs. Seawright took to the airs to try to stop a local radio station to take one of the big houses who wanted to turn it into a haunted house at Halloween. She's still there, and that neighborhood has come back. But we're over there, an old neighborhood. We were created about zoning was created. And, therefore, we have multifamily zoning all over the place in old infield. If you drive our streets, you think, oh, this is a nice neighborhood of single-family residents. I live in a multifamily zoning, 3, and this is what we've been begging in all the meetings that we've had here, asking for y'all to model what the impacts are going to be on these central city neighborhoods who have multifamily zoning but single-family use still in the -- mixed in. A massive amount of multifamily zoning is now being used in old infield as single-family use. People tell me the compatibility standards are not changing, but they are. People are telling me that the mayor's grand compromise is going to protect us. But when we hear these things that don't tell you you're changing the -- you're changing the parking requirements that you're changing the compatibility standards. I go back way far. I was in part of the original Austin tomorrow program. Then we have -- then we had Ron mullen come as mayor, and his plan was to have what we called the Austin plan. All of us went to these neighborhood meetings and they helped develop the Austin neighborhood plan. The city spent one million dollars. [2:26:58 PM] You know what happened when it came to the council? It was sent -- it was thrown in the trash. One million dollars, wasted. Then came the neighborhood plans. We didn't even choose to participate in the neighborhood plans because we knew what happened before when we spent a whole lot of time. You've heard here today people who spent a whole lot of time on their neighborhood plan that's basically going to be thrown in the trash. I submitted ten suggestions for this process. I'm not a johnny- come-lately. I submitted ten questions of things that would protect our center city neighborhood. None of them were adopted. I ask you, on behalf of people in central Austin, look closely at what you're going to do to them. There are old neighborhoods in Austin with old zoning, and a lot of that zoning is going to make it for the people who do have single-family in the heart of the neighborhood, going to make it unbearable. We stayed in the '60s. I don't know if we're going to stay if this passes. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Greg Collins is next, and then Mary Engle. It Roberta hill here? You have donated time so you'll have six minutes. And after Ms. Engle speaks, then Bertha delgado will speak. Is she here? >> She'll be back in just a minute. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Is Curtis Smith here? Okay. You'll be up next, and when Ms. Delgado comes in, we'll give her a chance to speak. Mr. Collins. >> Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. The quote describes the starting point for codenext. Paul's letter to Romans, he followed forms which they foolishly thought maintained right relationships. [2:28:59 PM] Today's hearing is such a forum. Can this council maintain right relationships with Austin residents? There's a chasm on this dais and in the city, magic will not bridge that chasm. Your actions can render Austin ungovernable, alienating its residents to an even greater degree than at present. If there were a dooms-day clock strangement, this council is moving that closer to midnight. The capitalism and preelections can create political and economic instability, rights amychua, author of political tribes. To paraphrase and use one of her terms, the combination of a market-dominant minority and free elections can create political and economic instability. There is a market dominant minority of Austin residents and non-residents who have driven the codenext process for their own financial benefit. They are standing on one side of the chasm I mentioned above. The bulk of Austin residents are on the other. There is no mystery as to the membership of this market-dominant minority. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Is bigubi Patel here? Mr. Patel. What about Allison hallmark? Allison hallmark? What about Amelia Cobb? You'll be third up. Ms. Engle, you have six minutes. >> Mary Engle. I pity all of you because you have to endure all of this. [2:31:00 PM] In the past five years, I've followed codenext intimately by attending hundreds of meetings as a volunteer. I participated in official codenext meetings, and I personally spent countless hours trying to educate the public with the Austin neighborhoods council with an item on every agenda about codenext when I was the president. Many previous speakers have spoken about the flawed process, but I want to speak about the flawed product. This code was supposed to be a hybrid code and a simpler code, but it is neither. This code is not ready for prime time. The issues that concern me the most are the reduced parking requirements for a community that owns cars. Increased occupancy limits, the elimination of compatibility standards, neighborhood plans and open space for commercial projects, radical lot size reduction which will not increase affordability. If you read the research from across the country, and the elimination of the neighborhood conservation combining districts, which contradicts the people's plan that this council recently voted to support to help reduce displacement and gentrification. I'm also concerned about f25, which -- zoning, which serves as a junk drawer for a bunch of unrelated categories. It consumes about 25% of the city's zoning. It appears that the staff didn't know what to do with huds and ccds, pdas and conditional overlays in a comprehensive way so they just threw them into one package. That's incomprehensible and lazy. I'm concerned about placing cooperative housing and group residential in residential Zones. That goes against the grain of reason. These are paid multifamily situations that will unravel a neighborhood more quickly than anything else. [2:33:04 PM] I know. I live around UT. These -- this type of housing needs to be placed strategically and planned carefully in the community. Also, we need to reinstate from the planning commission's recommendations the uno overlay, the original uno height map because there's enough zoning in uno for the next 75 years. That overlay was carefully crafted as one of the city's most successful overlays. And it could be a potential tool to help with the transportation corridors' compatibility issues abutting single-family, and it could help in planning those corridors. In summation, this code document is true dramatic at the last minute with biased recommendations. It will change the soul and character of our neighborhoods. It needs much more professional work which you will not be able to do. This code is not ready for prime time, and we do not want it. Why are we doing it this way? Please do not pass codenext. I also have a letter here that the mayor wrote to the Austin neighborhoods council executive committee in October of 2016, and I want to read something from this letter. He was proud to be endorsed by the Austin neighborhoods council, and he said: Our neighborhoods are a big part of the spirit and the soul of our city, and maintaining neighborhood character is critical for Austin's continued success. I'm not sure that that is taken care of in codenext and I'm hoping that we can adhere to this statement of the mayor and that we can actually - - that we can actually prove that our neighborhoods are critical to the success of Austin. [2:35:05 PM] Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: So Ms. Engle, in that -- in that letter, I stand by that. In that letter I said that I hope we would be able to get density along the corridors, then we would have to figure out the transitions, and my hope is, that's something we're going to be able to do here on the dais. So thank you. The next speaker -- so Russell Frasier? No? >> Curtis. >> Mayor Adler: Curtis Smith. Okay. Why don't you go ahead. I called you, you weren't here before let's do that. Then Amelia Cobb is on deck. And then Sinclair black I think is the -- Russell Frasier first. All right. Go ahead. Three minutes. >> Thank you, mayor and councilmembers. I'm a constituent of councilwoman pool's. I'm a long-time member of the Austin young Democrats and long-time democratic staffer at the Texas capitol. Thank you for spending your Saturday here with us. I'm here to say I support the current version of codenext, even though I find it far from perfect. I think we could do a far better job of increasing development along our major transportation corridors, especially low-income housing. I think this version of codenext will continue to push sprawl from Austin into our neighboring counties, push more and more people to use gasoline powered vehicles to drive long commutes into our city. Yet if we fail to pass codenext, I believe we ensure the neighboring sprawl grows exponentiallily, increasing all of our commutes, making it harder to compliment increased public transportation as the population grows across our region. When I talked to people in the city about codenext, I rarely find people who understand what this is all about. I worry that most of our -- most of your constituents, most of the people of Austin are woefully underinformed about what is happening here today and that most of the folks here really don't represent the average austinite. [2:37:11 PM] I don't blame it on you or the city. That is what happens when we deal with hundreds of pages of complex land code and the busy lives of our residents. Many of the folks here in Austin are just simply unable to take a day off and come here and testify in front of council. Many of the folks here seem to be using the code as -- in codenext as a proxy to attack issues that we have had in our community before codenext, and we'll continue to suffer from whether we pass this or not. Issues like gentrification, rising property taxes, lack of affordable and middle housing, environmental -- environmental concerns and flooding. I encourage council to work with the state legislature and the federal government to work toward the goal of dealing with these issues that are larger than just this council and the land use code. A lot of these issues we know rising property taxes can't be dealt with just from the city. It has to be the state legislature. And I know many of y'all have worked on that. Finally, as one of the younger people here testifying today, I hope that we decide that -- I hope we decide to support codenext because I believe it prepares for the next generation and refuses to just keep with the status quo. If our city chooses to be afraid of growth and change in the city, it'll only be a detriment to the next generation. Austin must move forward, and I hope that you ultimately pass codenext. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. After Ms. Cobb speaks, then Russell Frasier will be up. Is Susan dial here? Susan dial? You'll have six minutes, Mr. Frasier. Sinclair black is third up. Go ahead. >> Good afternoon, mayor Adler, mayor pro tem tovo, and councilmembers. My name is Amelia Cobb. I live in district 7, specifically north shoal creek. My husband and I moved here nine years ago and purchased a duplex where we live in half and rent the other side. Up to then, I rented my whole life and I'm no spring chicken. [2:39:12 PM] The past two years, I volunteered for our neighborhood as the president of north shoal creek neighborhood association, which is open to all residents of north shoal creek. During that time I was immersed in our neighborhood planning process and not engaged much in the codenext process. In part because I was led to believe that our neighborhood plan would inform codenext. After hearing from my citywide neighbors, I'm not so sure. Our neighborhood consists of one square mile, bordered by 183, burnet, Anderson, and mopac. We recently completed our part of our neighborhood planning process, and it has yet to come before council for consideration. But I want to talk about the process and how we designed our future land use map based on character districts. Considering the spaces and places where we live, work, and recreate, and the field of each distinct area, and the function and compatibility and how it all works and flows together, in that one square mile, we have single-family homes, adus, duplexes, triduplexes, quads, multifamily housing, subsidized housing, live, work, mixed use commercial, even light industrial. In the heart of our neighborhood is an elementary school, park space, and our new community garden. North shoal creek currently provides a place for everyone from diverse economic levels. Some have called north shoal creek the embodiment of imagine Austin. In the planning process we discussed growth. I asked the question, how many people do we need to bring into our neighborhood? Never got an exact answer. Our plan allows for 31% increase in housing new residents. Now I'm hearing that that's that the enough in our one square mile. I'm here because I hear that codenext might decimate our fledgling plan rather than support its implementation. I'm hearing that codenext plans to upzone on burnet corridor, including five blocks into our neighborhood that would swallow, I don't know, a third of our neighborhood? [2:41:14 PM] We spent over a thousand hours or more of volunteer time creating our plan. I'm here to ask that you horn the honor the vision of the residents and business and stakeholders of north shoal creek, as well as the vision of my citywide neighbors and their neighborhood plans. I'm hearing that today, that the codenext process is a mess. So please do not pass the current version of codenext. I think it's time to worry less about saving face and more about saving our space. Oh, and the quilt? This was made by a neighbor of mine, Cathy Tovar -- [buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> And it was a vision I saw -- I know. Just of the diversity of our city, the look, the feel, the texture of each neighborhood. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. The next speaker is Russell Frasier. You have six minutes. Sinclair black will be up after that, then Fred Lewis is third up. Is John volts here? John volts? Okay. Mr. Lewis, you'll have three minutes. Go ahead, sir, Mr. Russell. >> Thank you. I'm Russell Frasier. I'm on the contact team for the greater south river combined neighborhood plan, which is south river city and new England -- St. Edward's neighborhoods, pretty big area, congress to I-35, river down to Ben white. I brought a copy of the neighborhood plan with me. It was adopted in 2005. I know you've had your hands full with codenext for the past few years, but I'd just like to recap two pages out of this plan, just to remind you of what we were thinking and what we continue to think in the urban neighborhoods. Under land use and historic preservation, goal a, maintain the historic fabric and respect the established neighborhood character and natural assets. [2:43:22 PM] I can't believe we want to ignore that when we're redoing our land code for our urban neighborhoods. I mean, what -- it's the reason people love to move here. They love these urban neighborhoods. I've heard a lot of comments about the -- the fact that my neighbors in my neighborhood were opposed to multifamily housing, and I won't dwell on that, but on page 62, we have residential design guidelines that are about a dozen of these guidelines. One is new single-family and multifamily construction should be compatible with existing and historic house architecture. Building heights, construction materials, et cetera, et cetera. Examples are provided of a fourplex, infill developments, with townhouses, what I would call townhouses, and this looks like an apartment house. There's page after page of these examples of things that would be acceptable to my neighbors and I. The second point I'd like to make is, I have -- I've now loaded the long range capital improvement program strategic plan, dated may 2017. This may not be the latest. .It's the latest I could find on the website. A lot of familiar names here. I see them all in front of me. And in this, the first page of this, is a memo to the Austin city council and city manager from the city of Austin planning commission dated may 2017. Recommendations, long-range capital plan. There are seven recommendations. I'm sure you're familiar with these so I'll be belief. Number 4 is something that concerns me. Continue to include potential fiscal impact of code as key consideration factor in the evaluation and formulation of codenext components and adopt a new land development code which leverages cip, capital improvement program, and robustly addresses fiscal impact. [2:45:40 PM] I haven't seen that. Doesn't it mean it doesn't exist. I'm not aware of it. I haven't seen it. I don't pretend to be a codenext expert, but I do live here, I'm a taxpayer, and, you know, bottom line is, to bring -- to provide housing for another half million people and infrastructure, light rail, utilities, is it going to -- is it 10 billion, 50 billion, a hundred billion? Who's going to pay for it, when and how? There's a -- on page -- well, in the index, on this item 4, potential impact of code, key consideration, there's more detail on this. And particularly, one of the -- particularly the proposed 2017-2018 actions, ensure that fiscal health is adequately addressed through revised codenext regulations. Now, I know that codenext is not fully baked. Not baked yet. It may not be baked this year. But sooner or later we're going to have to come to grips with what it means to house another half million people. What it's going to cost, and who's going to pay for it, and how. How is it going to be paid for? The U.S. Is headed one to two trillion dollar deficit in the next two years. From what I understand, the people in Houston got no benefit of the rainy day fund for consequences of Harvey so it's up to us, and we need to come to grips with it. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. We have Mr. Black coming up to speak now. After him, Mr. Lewis with three minutes. And then third up will be Hayden blackbar. >> Excuse me. [2:47:41 PM] Good afternoon. Good news is, everybody in the room feels sorry for you right now. This has been an interesting discussion. Interesting to me. I've taught architecture and urban design at UT for 50 years, until just a few months ago. But I still have my practice downtown. And I still daily have to deal with the suffocating, irrelevant code that we have now. And so -- in fact, I probably wouldn't have this gray hair if we had a different code. I -- there's several themes that I have come up with out of this discussion. One is that much of the testimony, maybe more than half, doesn't matter, is having to do with particular problem and a particular area for a particular person, and that's as it should be. I'm going to later talk about thinking regionally instead. The second thing is that the code we have is really oppressive and irrelevant, largely. And that's sort of referred to as -- or in the Zucker report. Everybody keeps mentioning the Zucker report, yet nobody does anything about it, and it's time to do something about it. The -- everything that's wrong with the code has been used today as an indictment for a code we don't have. That's codenext. It's just been translated from the problems we suffer because of a bad code to the problems we don't have in the future with codenext. I said I wanted to get people to think a little bit more regionally. [2:49:42 PM] Think about congestion. Think about the people that the lack of intensity, walkability, transit-oriented -- transit, oriented, transit-enabled corridors, the people that don't have a choice to exist in that kind of environment are exported to our neighboring counties. What do they do? They drive back into town. So if you're complaining about congestion, and you suffer from it, you can't complain about codenext because it does create more intensity and more housing and it purports to follow our comprehensive code which calls for more intensity and more walkability. And remember something about affordability. If you don't build it, it can't be affordable. [Buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Lewis is speaking for three minutes, then Hayden, then third up would be John raushert. Hang on one second. Is John here? You'll be up third. I'm sorry. Mr. Lewis. >> All right. Good afternoon. I decided to talk about a goal we all agree with, which is to prevent displacement of modest and low income communities. There is one antidisplacement tool that has been recognized in cities across the United States as effective. It has been recommended by the mayors in a racism task force, the people's plan, and the mayor's antidisplacement task force. And, in fact, I had it handed out. This is a -- ten lessons that was handed out by Heather way at the displacement task force yesterday. And the point that's most interesting, and I think the most important, is to prevent gentrification, you have to make, quote, meaningful and robust community engagement of those most affected by displacement a priority in the planning, implementation, and ongoing oversight. [2:51:56 PM] Well, we already have such a tool in the city. It has not been used effectively or in support of antidisplacement in low-income areas. As insufficient resources and lack of proper perspective. That tool that is used across the United States is the neighborhood combined conservation district, nccds. There are many studies showing that it's been used effectively in other cities. It is a bottom-up collective community approach. It is the community confronting displacement rather than doing it individually. In fact, it's the same theory behind collective bargaining in unions, that you're better operating as a community together than individually. So here's my question to you. If we know nccds work in other cities and we know that they can work in Austin, why does codenext draft 3 abolish nccds? Why, with rampant gentrification in Austin, are we getting rid of one of the tools that is known to be successful? Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: After Mr. Blackwalker, Mr. [Indiscernible], then may Taylor. Three minutes. >> Thank you. Good afternoon, mayor and council. I wish I had some answers. I'm not sure that I do, but I wanted to talk about a couple things. I was born and raised in Austin in district 7 when my dad brought me home from the hospital, it was to district 7 which didn't exist back then. And I think a lot about transportation, especially transportation for everyone in our community, our children, our seniors, people who need special access, and have accessibility needs. [2:53:56 PM] And to that end, I serve to the city's multimodal citizen committee, the pedestrian advisory council and bond corridor focus group. When this code was being drafted, I was a senior at Mccollum high school, and you can tell by my age that that was a long time ago. And when I look at the Austin today, I see a very different Austin. And to me, much of that has been driven by the code that we have today. It's out of date. It's been amended, I understand, over a thousand times, and I feel like we need to do something. And one of the things that I think about is at that point in time, Austin was 123 square miles. Today Austin is 325 square miles. We've more than doubled. And what we've built under that code, I mean, I hear a lot of people talking about our heritage neighborhoods, which I grew up in and I still live in, and I value highly, but a lot of what we've built under this code was pretty generic and pretty awful in some ways, and, you know, we built all these massive roads with huge amounts of asphalt. I estimate there are about a hundred square miles of asphalt and concrete in this city. And that's part of what keeps our taxes driving up all the time. We have to maintain all that. We have to provide services for that 325 square miles. It's a quarter of the size of the state of Rhode Island. You know? So you inherited this. That doesn't really give you a solution, but I'm concerned -- I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm concerned about those hundred square miles of concrete and asphalt. I think that they contribute to flooding. That's land that the city owns. It's public right-of-way, and we could be doing something about it. They contribute to the deaths in the city from traffic crashes. And the serious injuries from traffic crashes. And I think that -- I'm concerned that if we don't adopt a new code and we continue to operate under the existing code, and more important, the transportation criteria manual, there are eleven different criteria manuals under this code that support it and give details. [2:56:11 PM] The TCM is horrible. I've never met anyone who thinks that the TCM is great. And it needs to be rewritten. And I'm not sure what mechanism we have to do that, except to adopt a new code. So I don't believe that codenext is perfect. I don't know enough to tell you how to fix it. I guess I'm just saying that -- [buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Mr. Raushert is speaking, then may Taylor is up, then Ramona Jones. You'll be up third. >> Thank you very much, mayor, councilmembers. It's a privilege to be here to talk about codenext. I first moved I first moved here in 1981, dove springs at that time, we were, what, the 42nd largest city in the country. I have four sons that live in town, mostly because I own some rental property they are occupying, two grandchildren and my father still lives here. Relevant, also I am a realtor. In the last 30 days I've worked with clients I originally sold homes to two years ago, four years ago, 12 years, and 22 years ago. Sew I've seen the coming -- so I've seen the coming and going. A lot of people think we're part of the problem but the realtor association is the one group that works with people in almost every community. I've sold homes in all of your districts over the years. And of course my computer goes off. Also relevant is that I work with the national association of realtors, and I teach -- I'm on their smart growth advisory board and I have taught smart growth classes in 17 different states, 31 different cities. And I bring a message to you that it's like this in my experience they try to change -- any place they try to change code. People come out with outrageous fears that change is gonna ruin everything. What I want to remind those folks is that if we do nothing, why would they expect anything different than what they're complaining about right now? [2:58:17 PM] The codes -- this is the 50th anniversary of fair housing. We as a realtor association are not proud of the stances we took years ago, which endorsed homeowner associations excluding other people. It is very important, if we are going to have a and I we envision, we have to be honest that market is not something that the city council can control. It is a result of decisions we made years ago to have a vibrant downtown, which was boarded up when I moved up here in a lot of different places. We made it vital, a place that people want to live. We can't change that demand on very short-term, though, what people say about Austin is certainly helping change that demand in a negative fashion. What we need and what we need overwhelmingly is a lot more housing. You can't, you know, rechange the market. You can't stop the market. It will find ways like condominiumized lots that will a-- make its way into it. We need more housing in every district to keep it balanced so neighborhoods can be protected. By having some density in some areas you can protect neighborhoods but if every neighborhood association doesn't jump in and participate, and if every district doesn't jump in and participate, we will not get any impact on affordability. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Is Clinton Smith here? What about Joyce mchart? You'll be up third from now. Introduce yourself and please go. >> Hi, may Taylor and I live in district 9. I'm here today because I feel unbelievably lucky that my family and I get to live in central Austin and I want as many as possible to have that opportunity. Our region is continuing to grow rapidly. We can either grow out by pushing people to the suburbs or grow in by making space more more people in the central city. [3:00:22 PM] I think central is better so I want to talk about what it means for a family like mine to be able to live in central Austin. What it means we don't have to live far out and drive into the city everyday. It means my kids are experts at riding the bus as well as biking for transportation. It means that we can cut our expenses by owning only one car. Possibly most important to me, living central means we're able to eat dinner together every night and still get our kids to bed on time, something that wouldn't be possible if we were sitting in traffic every night after work. It means I will be able to proudly enroll my children in aisd schools when old enough. These things are good for me and my family but also for the city. Fewer cars on the road, higher enrollment in public schools, higher ridership for public transit. When people say we should not house more in the central city and let the region sprawl out uncontrollably these are the trade-offs we have to think about. It's not kind or Progressive to block younger generations and new residents from being able to live empty central city and it's also -- in the central city. We have to build more housing in the city and in order to do that we will need to allow smaller lot sizes and missing middle housing types. A lot of the indication around codenext has been focused on make sure the people who are already here get to stay. That's really important and I'm glad we're not losing sight of it. Here's the thing. Some of our existing residents are children and teenagers and remember we're planning for the next 30 years here. They didn't get to buy back when property was more affordable. If we want future generations of people who aren't rich to be able to live in Austin we can't exclude people just because they can't afford a large lot single-family home. I'm tired of hearing families don't want to live in townhouses or condos, that families want big yards and big houses. Maybe so but if they can't afford it then it doesn't matter very much. What I really want and am lucky to have is a place I can raise my kids without having to get in a car every time we want to go to a park or library. [3:02:26 PM] I find tun downable so many in Austin [indiscernible] I don't want to see what Austin will look like 30 years from now if we continue on that path. We have to allow homes on smaller or shared lots if we want Austin to be an inclusive and vibrant city and we have to allow them pretty much everywhere, not just on corridors, not just in certain areas. We need all housing types in all neighborhoods to account for all types of need. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Is Joyce mchart here? You come up and speak. What about Fred Rogers. You'll be up third. Go ahead, please. >> Not yet. >> Mayor Adler: No, no. Go ahead. Introduce yourself and then speak. >> I'm Joyce mchart and I'm representing today at his request, grow panther Clinton Smith. He's unable to be present so he's asked I read a letter that he sent to come to, promayor, did you pro tem, sorry, got it, he sent it to the clerk asking that it be distributed to each councilmember. So you may have it already. If not, I'm sure it will be there eventually or soon. Dear Ms. Tovo and councilmembers, I'm reemphasizing two issues today. One is the action needed on lead poisoning and the other being on past practices, potential practices that's been occurring over the last 20 to 25 years in the city. In reference to planning, in reference to development. I paraphrased that. There are two issues, lead poisoning and past practices, first issue being the gray panther on action pertaining to the poisoning of lead and the lack of action to re-- remediate that. [3:04:41 PM] Led is not just in the water or in the soil after remediation or improper remediation has occurred. It's also in the area and we breathe it everyday. So being conscious of demolitions and changing of neighborhoods and rapid -- in rapid, drastic ways increases not only lead in the air, cad and other heavy melts and dangerous. Back to Mr. Smith's letter, he quotes our rights. As mayor pro tem, our city manager cronk, who is gone at this point, responded to the emails on the need to -- for effective action about lead poisoning dangers as a priority issue. Specifically city of Austin fiscal year '19 budget proposals include it or do not. Without it being in the budget it will not be addressed. While lack of action on public school issues concerning lead which occurs not only and has been identified recently, at five more schools in Austin are experiencing lead poisoning in the water. On a second issue -- and this is, again, in multiple emails -- [ buzzer sounding ] >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Ramona Jones. Would you come up and speak. And then Fred Rogers. Mario Cantu, Ramon Gomez. [3:06:44 PM] Susan tingly, Roger Forman. Come on down. Christine Taylor. What about Peter cesaro. Bring him in. He'll be third. Ma'am you want to go ahead and introduce yourself and then start. >> Ramona Jones, brentwood area, district 7. It sounds like we have a conundrum here, and it sounds serious. And I've written manuals and procedures and stuff like this and I cannot imagine what goes on behind closed doors trying to get this codenext thing together. What I've heard, though, is -- and just sitting and listening to people, what I've come to the inclusion is that the neighborhood plans have kind of been thrown away, and if I were -- if I were king, I would go back and take the neighborhood programs and start all over and get the commonalities about each of the programs. It's kind of like the state and the feds. It's like the states are up to doing everything they can, and then the feds will come in and overrule and find the fairness in all of it. It's kind of like that with the codenext and the neighborhood plans. I don't know why the neighborhood plans have gone away. I came in originally angry and then I got sad. And now I'm just depressed. I don't know what to tell you. Affordability comments from earlier, someone said affordability for lower-income people. And I thought, wow, I haven't heard it put like that. And affordability for middle-income people, and I hadn't heard it put like that. [3:08:45 PM] And why can't we have all of those in our neighborhoods? Our neighborhood plan I didn't realize when I was parts of it way back when enabled that mcmansion that went up across the street from me, knocked down the trees in the middle of the night so they could put it on there, on every square inch of land with no trees. The one that went down the block, it looks like a white office building, one-level white office building, completely out of our neighborhood environment. I don't know why this is happening, why we're letting it happen. I know we've got problems with people coming in, coming in. I don't know what to do. I'm so sorry for you. I'm so sorry for the people that the plan [indiscernible] But we're already ruining our neighborhoods and if codenext comes along I think it's going to get worse. Can we start over? I'll help. Ask the people who come here today to help. Come on if you're complain, come on and let's find a solution and talk about it. We're a microcosm of people out here today of people in the community and I haven't seen that want pro codenext people up. Hint. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Susan tinkly, Roger tailor -- just before you start, Peter cesaro, you'll be up next here. And then third up would be Steve cuner. Is he here? >> [Off mic] >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry? Brent Rogers came back? Fred Rogers. Okay. You'll be up next. Go ahead. >> Hi, I'm Susan tingly and I have two points and one question. First of all, I was reading this beautiful key goals for successful new land development code and the rewrite will do all these wonderful things and I'm totally for all that and I want all that to happen, but what I don't understand is why you would take away the legal enforcability of the neighborhood plans. [3:11:05 PM] I don't understand why that would need to happen. So if someone can explain that to me, that would be great. That's my question. My next two things are points. One is that people have been making this point over and over, that affordability is not necessarily equal to density. And I want affordable and dense is okay, too, but my neighborhood is already very dense. I'm living on a cottage lot. And 65% impervious cover is allowed. And the new homes that are there are not affordable. It's the older ones that I live in. I bought recently that are -- well, that's not really affordable either, but the new ones are on those cottage lots. The small one for 850 square feet is $350,000. And on the very same lot is a second home that's 1100 square feet that's $450,000. So that was an empty lot in a cottage lot area. It's not affordable. Period. So if we're going to be doing that all over the city, I would ask you to really focus in on the affordability part instead of just the density part. My last point is that displacement is the evil part of gentrification. There's good and bad things about gentrification, but that's the bad part. So it seems to me the code is not the only thing causing displacement. In fact to me the largest cause of displacement is the tax structure. So if we're going to do something about displacement, we need to look at the big picture and see what we can do about our tax structure. And I know we have some systems in place to alleviate that, but I think we can do a lot better. And I know we need to fund our schools and of course I want to, but I would like y'all to consider looking at our tax structure to help with that one issue. [3:13:07 PM] Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Step on up, introduce yourself, Mr. Fred Rogers, you'll be at this podium, go ahead. >> Mayor, councilmembers, my name is Peter cesaro, thank you for your service here today and for taking up this issue. I'm a resident of district 9 and real estate attorney. I deal with the current code and the existing code. And it's -- the current code has a lot of conflicts between the various sections and lack of prioritization between different issues, and I think it does need some revision. Unfortunately, draft three of codenext also carries over some of those conflicts and lack of prioritization of city goals. I know that planning commission spent a lot of time addressing the zoning issues, but they did run out of time and there are also other sections such as the site plan, environmental transportation that do conflict with the zoning provisions of codenext. Since draft three is unclear and the layering and the sections conflict with one another at this point, we would ask council to please take time in testing the provisions and testing the various sections and the properties to make sure that we do clear up some of the conflict in the sections and in draft three. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mr. Rogers will be up next. Is Roger Forman here? Christine Taylor. Ursula Carter. Steve kuner. Virginia rose. [3:15:09 PM] >> She's outside. >> Mayor Adler: She needs to come in. David Goth who we're going to call as part of a group. David Sullivan. >> He'll be back. >> Mayor Adler: David Sullivan will be back, have him come in. Mike gorse. Okay. Everybody's to come. Irene pickhart you'll be I think third up now. Go ahead, sir. >> Mr. Rogers, Mr. Rogers neighborhood. [ Laughter ] Hi, city council neighbor. I'm glad we're together again. I grew a beard and glasses and I'm 30 years wrung. I want to talk the land development code and how it keeps people out of my neighborhood. It's biggest tool is single family zoning, one house, one lot. Single family zoning is 88% of areas with residential zoning so 4.6% of Austin is zoned for multi-family. But 55% of austinites rent and 53% of austinites don't live in a single-family home. The zoning map says to anyone in our apartment that you can't be my neighbor. Beyond zoning we have single family compatibility setbacks that put 25 feet between single-family homes and anything else. So even when you get the zoning, all the land may be taken up by setbacks. Day cares, small businesses, even townhomes, you can't be my neighbor. Having more neighbors may seem -- doesn't have to be scary. One of my favorite neighborhoods is Hyde park and Hyde park has all these building types, small homes, big homes, small apartments, small businesses, senior housing, and it's a beautiful neighborhood. But Hyde park was built before the current code and Hyde park wouldn't be allowed to be built today because of zoning and setbacks and other elements in our code like parking requirements. Some say these regulations are important, that we need them to reduce noise and try to keep traffic out of our neighborhoods, but what if we're just keeping people out? [3:17:17 PM] So I would like you to vote for a codenext that supports sensible reforms to allow missing middle housing, small businesses, and most importantly, neighborhoods back into our neighborhoods. Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Please won't you be my neighbor. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Roger Forman. Christine Taylor. Ursula Carter. Why don't you come on down. You'll be next at this podium. Are you Ms. Taylor? Go ahead. Ursula Carter, go ahead. >> Okay. I'm Ursula Carter. And I'm a lifelong austinite. My grandfather moved to Austin in 1928, and my mother grew up here and I grew up here, my son grew up here you. The area where I grew up was on 12th street, a block off of Chicon street, and that area was residential. It had commercial. It had businesses. It was destroyed by urban removal because in terms want two structures on the same lot and my mother had a cafe she rented out in the back where she converted her garage. Okay. So we moved out of there. I've moved to Springdale hills. And bought a house there, single-family houses with nice large lots where we can have gardens, the dog can run around, the kids can run around, and that's what we were looking for, that's what we got. [3:19:19 PM] I've been there 52 years. I wish I had a dollar apiece for all the folks that keep sending junk mail wanting to bite house. Okay? They can take me off their list. It's not going anywhere. As far as affordability goes, I've got friends who grew up in Austin who can't afford to buy a house in Austin. They can barely afford to find a place where the rent is reasonable, you know? I don't know what to do about that. I did know that I'd be very insulated if somebody bought the lot next door to me or the house next door to me and put four little rabbit huts on there and called them affordable housing. That's -- I'm sorry, that doesn't go with Austin, not the Austin I grew up in. People who like apartments can have apartments. People who like duplexes can have duplexes. But what I would like to know is, for example, the area I live in was deed restricted single-family homes. How is that going to be affected by codenext? Has anybody even brought that up? Austin has changed a lot. Some change is good. Some change is bad. Don't tell me that I need to walk to the store, the drugstore -- I didn't do it 40 years ago and I'm not starting now. If I want to go someplace, I'll go. If it happens to be across the street, that's fine. But I will almost guarantee you I'll arrive on wheels because that's my speed. [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. [ Applause ] Mal, do you want to come up? [3:21:20 PM] Did I call your name? I think I called your name, didn't I? I'm sorry? >> Irene pickhart. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, why don't you come up and speak. >> Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here and hearing our comments. I really appreciate that. My name is Irene pickhart. I live in the bryker woods neighborhood, district 10, very well represented there, and I thank you. I'm here with some suggestions for how we can move forward. We talked about some possibilities for common ground, what can be agreed upon. And I think it's very important in neighborhoods like mine where we have localized flooding problems that we not allow more density where the localized flooding will be happening. I think this will cause problems that have not been addressed, that we don't see in the code. I also would like to suggest that around schools, that we don't lose any of the parking restrictions that are in place right now. We really don't want businesses going in across the street from brykerwoods elementary school and deciding they don't need parking for their patrons. We have students, young students, young families, students pouring into that school on bicycles. It's a beautiful site in the morning -- sight in the morning. Sometimes I walk to my work downtown in the state capital complex and I walk right through the area where the bryker woods students are bike to go work. [3:23:24 PM] Let's encourage that. Let's not have businesses putting drive-throughs in where our school children are regularly moving about. Also, I think it's really important that we test drive codenext. You know, it was referred to as an option when it was first presented to the city, and I appreciate that. Because there are some neighborhoods that really wanted to give it a whirl and have moved in that direction. And I think it's a marvelous thing. Let's grow. Let's try things. But I work at the state department of education in science education and I know -- I know the importance of having a hypothesis and testing it. You just don't push yourself in on a brand-new area without trying to it out, gathering data. Why don't we try it in our city? [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. I think there's people that have walked back into the room whose names I called earlier. Is Bertha delgado here? Why don't you come down and speak to us. What about Mike gorse? Why don't you come down to the podium. I'll be the second foreign speak. >> Thank you, mayor, and councilmembers. My name is Bertha delgado, I'm a city of Austin housing commissioner for east Austin and president of east town lake neighborhood association. My neighborhood is going to be affected by codenext. [3:25:24 PM] And I want you all to know you don't see many elders here in their wheelchairs. A lot of elders have died, including my grandfather this February. He still owns his property at 1705 Haskell a block down from bill Renteria and it's disturbing, it's disrespectful for codenext to continue to move forward with their draft after it's been presented to several boards and several community engagements here in our city and the constituents and the residents have been out here protesting, been out here all morning long speaking testimony. This is not our first rodeo, not our first time. We continue to fight our historical and characteristic neighborhoods in our city and you continue not to listen, you continue not to respect our recommendations. We're the taxpayers. We own this property. We built this city. You all didn't. You were elected to sit there as a single-member district to protect and preserve your neighborhoods and if you're not doing your job as an elected official then you need to resign or you do not need to get re- elected. We're tired and we're frustrated. Today is Saturday. We want to be with our families. We don't get paid to be here, and it's disrespectful. It's a disrespect to our community, to our people. We cry every day when we see a home demolished. We cry every day when we see a family that's been displaced. We cry every day when we see the taxes be being raised in our neighborhood and we're continuing to drown out here while our city promotes that you all are the best, fast-growing city through the United States and everyone should come over here and live. But yet our homeless population has risen, our crime has risen, our kids are dying, schools are being closed, parks are being closed. [3:27:30 PM] We're at a threat at every time we wake up there's something on the news and there's something going on here in Austin, Texas. And we are not taking care of it as a city. We are not communicating effectively and working together. Instead we're doing inner fighting with neighborhoods, with urbanists with all of these new people that have moved over here from California and every state you can think of. They disrespect us. They spit at us, and they look at us like we do not belong here. And we do. We built this city. My grandparents did. My parents. Your grandparents. Your parents if you're native. And if you're not a native then you don't have the right to make that decision. [ Buzzer sounding ] -- For our city. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> So we ask you to oppose codenext and we will fight. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Before Mike gorse speaks let me you call some neighbors. Is Steve cunar here? Had to leave. Virginia rose? David Sullivan? I'm sorry? What? Mark wells? And then I'm gonna call then the group beginning with liza Wimberley so that group will go. Mr. Gorse, you have three minutes. >> Thank you, council, my name is Mike gorse and I live in the brentwood neighborhood and I wanted to make a few points. I wanted to -- in general I wanted to recommend that council use the planning commission recommendations as a starting point. I agree about what an earlier speaker said about technical working groups taking a look at codenext and I wanted to specifically talk about transit and transportation, the cap metro board recently passed connections 2025, which is a plan that will create a frequent bus network throughout much of the city and down a few of the corridors, meaning buses running say every 10-15 minutes. [3:29:42 PM] Now, this doesn't mean that every single person who lives and works along this network is suddenly going to give up their car and take the bus. Of course it doesn't mean that. But what it does mean and do is make it easier for people to make the choice to take transit rather than driving and perhaps to not have a car or have one car for the family like an earlier speaker mentioned having. Now you're deciding what to do as far as land development code and what will happen on and near its corridors. We should keep in mind that the city has been changing regardless of the upcoming changes as far as codenext goes and we've been seeing a lot of single-family homes being demolished and replaced by much larger single-family homes. From what I read that's what happened 60% of the time when a single-family house gets demolished. Along these corridors where there's a frequent bus -- where there's frequent bus service you're deciding whether you want to continue essentially to allow only expensive single- family homes and duplexes or allow missing middle housing as it's been called and I think those are good places to allow fourplexes and things such as that that will allow more people to be able to live in places that are better served by transit. This can create more transit riders and -- and improve transit service, which creates a virtual cycle and that gets cars off the road which I think is an outcome that people would want, as well as reducing vehicle miles traveled, which is good as far as climate change. If we continue with the status quo, then it's predictable what will happen. We've been seeing low and middle- income people being driven out of Austin and low-income people especially and a middle-income person might be driven out toward the edge of the city so central Austin is becoming a place only a high- income foreign a large extent can afford to live. [3:31:56 PM] I hope you will consider the needs of those of us who might still live in the city for the next 30-40 years. If I have children I hope they're able to live in Austin as well if they choose. Thanks. [ Applause ] >> Mayor adler:did I call your name? Go ahead. Come on up. Introduce yourself please. >> My name is mark wells, live in the rosedale neighborhood in district 7. I'd like to thank you first of all for allowing us to come down on Saturday because it's hard to come during the week and it's an honor to be surrounded by so many people who care about our city so much. I'm not against codenext, but I'm against implementing it all at once across the whole city. The city often makes little experiments like we did with the noise ordinance on red river, and I don't understand why we can't do little experiments like that with codenext. Why we have to pass this giant bill all at once. I have a story. In about 2000 I moved into our house on shoal creek and the neighbors were passing around a survey to find out how to stripe the traffic lanes on shoal creek because it had recently been resurfaced. After a lot of community input and hiring a consultant and more community meetings, the consultant recommended we implement something called curb islands. You guys remember this? So the curb islands were planter boxes that were planted on the edges of shoal creek and designed to slow down traffic. And what they really did is they did not slow down traffic. They made it more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. [3:34:04 PM] Eventually they conducted experiments with different striping and discovered none of them helped and took out the curb islands and painted the street back the way it was in 2000. So my request is we don't make a huge mistake with codenext and we do little experiments like we did with shoal creek so we can avoid making a huge mistake. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Is Connor Kenny here? Come up. We can call the next one up but it's a group of 27 minutes. >> This one? Okay. Sorry, my toddler is reaching the end of her rope. Hi. I'm Connor Ken any, councilmembers, I'm on the planning commission and I wanted to talk to you about a couple different things. I wanted to make sure that you guys take a close look at some of the stuff that we went in to really fix, a lot of the technical issues, but I mostly wanted to talk about the anti displacement code. Our current code makes it more profitable -- next slide. This is some data that you saw earlier from [indiscernible] I updated it with them. 60% of single-family homes DEM ol issue and replaced were replaced with other single-family homes and the average size of the demolished home was 1400 square feet and new home was 3500 square feet. We have a mcmansion redevelopment kind of playing sweeping the city, and -- plague sweeping the city and this is one of the things we try to address. Next slide. So we reduced the far from .4 to .3 for single-family homes, and you can see in 1990 far was .24 whereas last complete year data was .34. [3:36:10 PM] So mcmansion ordinance is really not adequate to stop mcmansions from being built. It's really kind of a how to weather build your mcmansion ordinance. You can see 67% of the homes last year were between .3 and .4. This is very consistent with what all the builders tell us, which is that the home lots -- the lots are so expensive that they're having to max out square footage he ever single time and they added parking and add a kitchen and things like that for doing a duplex and home in an Adu means they'll build a mcmansion the overwhelming time instead of a duplex when it's legal to build a duplex in most of Austin right now. We reduced basically the far to .3, planning commission recommendation adopted 12-1. I believe every non-real estate connected member of the commission voted for this. And it's just for that single-family home. And if you're building an Adu or duplex you keep the current far entitlements. Next slide. I will distribute this to all your offices. Main thing you can see is the differences between the two means even if someone doesn't build an Adu now, the next person who has the home after them has room to build an Adu within their far cap. So there was a post on Facebook that said codenext wrecks Austin, look across the street. The picture on the right was what they were showing. That's the average thing, that .3 far that they're building today. I think most of Austin would rather see the homes on the left instead. And planning commission also voted to loosen up regulations on duplexes so we can see more side by sides like this. Next slide. Keep going. Then we have a -- keep going. We have a city-wide affordable bonus that we approved that allows you no matter what your far or unit cap, if you want to add an income-restricted Adu you can do that. This is really a hobby and is gonna require city policies to make it work. [3:38:10 PM] There's no incentives attached to it so builders aren't going to build it but a homeowner could. The corridor Adu bonus, this is the one that actually works. I spent months working with consultants and builders and city staff to find a residential scale affordability bonus that works. This is the only one I can tell you. Otherwise they don't work until about ten units or more. What it allows you to do is you can add an Adu to a lot if it's affordable, right, income-restricted and if you do that the square footage that have Adu that you built you can add to the primary units. That's the incentive. So if you want to build that mcmansion but willing to put an income-restricted Adu in the back, you can do that. Want to build a bigger duplex and have a permanently restricted Adu in the back you can do that. We authorize this only within a quarter mile of corridors because we thought the affordable four as you call it because you can go up to four units is more appropriate near the corridors and a great way to add missing middle to the city while at the same time creating on-site affordable units. Let's keep going. So you don't have to build the four units. You could build three units. These are examples of the types of sizes of buildings you could build with this bonus. If you're doing three units that are historic in Austin. If you totally max out all the benefits under this bonus for the affordable four you can build what they are building in Miller today right now. The fourplex oro homes in the shape of a fourplex and each one of these would come with an income-restricted affordable Adu that because of the way the bonus is set up it incentivizes them to be a bigger row than smaller, so about a thousand square feet or so, often the size of the homes getting demolished on the east side. We can keep going. Got some numbers here that show exactly how it all works. We don't have to go over that now. Then the final thing that we approved -- this was another 12-1 vote with only a real estate-connected member of the commission voting against, was to protect the eastern crescent from any upzoning of residential properties by right. [3:40:15 PM] What we did is we looked at any mfi under 50 thousand dollars thousand dollars or was a part of the UT study as showing a highly gentrifying neighborhood. There are some parts of the city that are pretty much already loss. Holly is gone, French place, cherrywood no, longer affordable places to live. Miller never was. The rest of these places can and should be, and we are proposing to essentially rectify the desired development zone and a lot of the policies that are frankly rooted in racism in this city going back a long time that we want to take this area and just relieve a little bit of the pressure on it while taking the pressure off by allowing the missing middle in the transition Zones, et cetera, that you've heard about in the rest of the city. I want to emphasize that the transition Zones that we approved were another 12-1 vote with every single non-real estate-connected member of the commission voting for those transition zone. So I do hope you guys along at the large number of 12-1 and 13-0 votes we had and even the 8-5 votes maybe. We worked very, very hard and put in a lot of hours, I'm getting requainted with my children after the process, to really try and find consensus and compromises. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Pool: Mayor, I have a question. >> Yes. >> Pool: Thanks for this last picture. Can you tell me which neighborhoods are at the top-most of your -- it looks like the triangle there. So that would be burnet off to the west? Can you tell me what neighbors those are? >> So the red one just west of 35s that St. John's there. And then the -- you'll see that's the 183, 935 and that one Orange block south of 183 is basically the stuff between Anderson, 183, burn Lamar. Beauty on, there you go. I will say another thing I talked about yesterday with an eastside community leader when talking about this whole thing, she asked, well, is the anti-mcmansion stuff. [3:42:25 PM] >> Pool: Sorry, I didn't give him -- intend to give him more time to talk to us. Maybe if you could send this to us and identify this ones are there that would be really helpful. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Thank you. >> Okay. Great. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Let's. I'm going to call now a group. I'm going to call the liza Wimberley, Mary [indiscernible], Susan Summers, caz [indiscernible], Chris Reilly, and Timothy bray group. So we're going to begin with liza Wimberley. You have three minutes. >> Hello, my name is liza Wimberley. I'm vice president of Ora. I'm also a long-time residents H of the rosedale neighborhood and owner of a single-family home on a large lot. My husband and I were fortunate to buy this home over 20 years ago. We would not be able to afford it today, neither would my adult kids or actually the majority of people. Living in the urban core allowed me and my husband to raise our two kids just one car, which was a huge savings. It allowed my husband and me to continue to work -- to commute to work by bicycle because living in central Austin meant our jobs were usually within a 10-mile radius of our home and often closer. I don't know what we can do to make single-family homes more affordable today. But we certainly can do a lot to reduce the cost of housing by allowing homes to share the expensive land on which they sit. As a resident of an urban core neighborhood I have absolutely no fear of having a four flex next to my single-family home or townhouse or row house or of having my neighbor build an Adu in the backyard. I don't believe for a second these type of homes would destroy my neighborhood. On the contrary, having diversity of housing would increase the likelihood of my neighborhood becoming more economically and racially diverse and that is a good thing. [3:44:26 PM] We can't continue with the status quo and I think we can all agree that the current code is broken. The third draft of codenext is not perfect. There's a lot that needs work. Fortunately for all of us planning commission's herculean effort brought the third draft a lot closer to where it needs to be. The commissioners passed amendments that will go a long way to help us out of our housing crisis. I'm here today to urge you to take the planning commission's hard work as a starting point and go even further to make codenext work for all austinites. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Mary donated time from [indiscernible] Is that right? >> We have a presentation. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> All right. So hi. I want to introduce you to some current residents of Austin. I know -- I've heard a lot about thinking about people who live here now. Well, this is my family. I have three girls who will one day want to live in their own homes. Are we building enough housing for them to live here? I don't think so. I grew up in San Jose, California, where the median home price is now over $1 million. Why? Because they have refused to build housing as they have broken in their jobs. I contaminant afford to live there. I think a lot of people here would find that just crazy. I can't live that either. They've preserved the neighborhood character. They've preserved the buildings exactly as they are, but now all the homes that are there are totally unaffordable to the average person. So teachers, nurses, service workers can't afford to live there. They have to drive an hour or two each way, which is expensive, it's polluting, it contributes to traffic is the answer to prevent job growth? We're only incentivizing about 1% of new jobs here. People want to move here because we have a good economy. [3:46:29 PM] I'm saying that -- saying that we should discourage job growth is nice if you already have a job or are retired and don't care anymore. Do we want to buttoning a city that have lost residents? I don't think so. If we don't want to become San Jose, California, or a city that's losing people, we need to pass a good codenext to to do the people who live here now and people who are going to move here regardless of any incentives. I've attended lots of public hearings and I always hear the same concerns about traffic and cars. We've made housing expensive for people and free for cars. This is crazy. Do we value cars over people? I certainly don't. Next slide. So I had to do this. Won't somebody think of the children? Where are they going to live as they get centered are we going to force them to be driven he were or make a city where they can walk and bike to the corner store, friends' house, et cetera? Speaking of children, my children are growing up in an environment where climate change is very real. Ice sheets are disappearing. 28% of greenhouse gas emissions coming from transportation yet we keep to do thing for cars. More than 30,000 Americans are killed every single year due cars. And you believe who is overrepresented in that? Older adults, people of color, low-income people. Yet we keep building things and focusing on cars and ensuring that they can be parked for free anyplace. Why do we do this? With the U.S. Pulling out of the Paris agreement, many city mayors, [indiscernible] We negligent one of our most important tools which is freebie the way to discourage automobile use. We can end parking minimums such as Buffalo, New York have done. Parking continues to be built. Ending parking minimums does not mean no parking will be built. [3:48:31 PM] It means each property owner will decide what they need. Planning commission has recommended this step and I highly recommend it. I also hear people concerned about watershed issues, flooding, impervious cover. If you care about impervious cover, you should advocate for abolishing parking minimums. Car spots are impervious cover by the way. Next slide. So this is just another thing to give you a diagram of transition Zones and compatibility. Planning commission has done a great a work on here. As you can see, one person's right to not view anything other than single-family homes prevents 80 families from finding a place to live. And I live in a transit-oriented development and that sort of thing should be exempted from compatibility completely. So and Connor Kenny mentioned a large portion of demolished homes are replaced with much larger single-family homes and they're not just much -- they're just huge. So if we can replace with a fourplex then -- sorry? Sorry. If they -- if we can replace them with a fourplex and have [indiscernible] [ Buzzer sounding ] That would be helpful. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Susan Summers. [ Applause ] Is Jason Brigman here? You have six minutes. >> Hi, councilmembers. Mayor Adler. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I'm here today and I want to talk actually sort of about values and leadership in our city. And sort of my philosophy of leadership and values that I use in my activism here. I'm going to talk to you today about formationial year in my development as a young person. It was basically my junior year of college. The summer before my junior year at college I had a summer internship in Washington, D.C., which is a community for homeless women, women experiencing homelessness. Full service, they have everything from entry-level day center up through supportive housing there. [3:50:34 PM] And we spent -- before I was allowed to interact with the women in the community or work there we spent two days talking about the biblical kept of hospitality. And emblazenned on the front of that gate - - and this is -- seeing this gate for the first time is one of the most still to me, like, formationial experiences in my life was a bible verse which says youial treat the stranger as the native among you and you shall love him as yourself for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the lord your god. And so I had an amazing experience that summer, and then the next year I went back to school and I was president of my is a sorority and I was flown out to a program called leading for values, which sounds cheesy, but what they told us over and over and over again is if you put your values first everything else will be for the good. So those two experiences I was, like, hospitality is, like, the number 1 spiritual value that I have. And thinking through that, when I came to Austin, I started learning about the housing crisis that we have here and my friend Sonya in San Francisco often says "It doesn't matter if you have a shortage of housing. It doesn't matter what your distribution mechanism is, whether you do it through pricing, whether you do it through wait lists, through who got there first, if you don't have enough housing you don't have abundance." So to me abundance, a community of abundance, is the prerequisite for that hospitality. So the reason I'm talking to you today about these values is that I think it's important, you are our leaders. We elected you to do the right thing for our city. We elected you to create the community of abundance and of hospitality. And I don't care if codenext -- and to be very explicit, I am a board member of Ora. [3:52:40 PM] We're supporting a revised codenext, not draft three, but supporting basically planning commission recommendations and more, the more that you can do, the more that you can do for abundance of housing, we want you to do. I don't care in a passes with eight of you or, you know, I don't care what the numbers are. I want it to pass. That's what leadership is. So I'm asking you today to make those hard decisions and build the community, the values that we want, and we desire, that I think we can welcome people into our community. Because if we don't I don't know what's gonna happen to the city. I work with UT students all the time from all parts of our state, and UT Austin, that's the refugee for them -- refuge for them. This is where they can to live their lives and be their true authentic specifically I desperately want to welcome those young people into this city. They're austinites too. I beg you please show us that leadership, lead with the values that we know that you have. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: All right. Kaz [indiscernible], you have seven minutes. Is Doug weir here? >> Mayor adler:he is. >> Mayor Adler: And Charlotte -- [ laughter ] >> That's actually Whitney. >> Mayor Adler: I give you seven minutes. We don't have a rile -- rule for this. I'm adding a minute for very little people. [ Laughter ] You have seven minutes. >> I have a presentation. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak, mayor, councilmembers. Today I'll be arguing for a principled approach to codenext. Today I'm joined by my daughters as well as my father-in-law. I'm here to -- when you're considering amendments ask yourself this question each time. [3:54:46 PM] Is this towards making an Austin for everyone? Nothing is quite as unaustin and untexan as to be unwelcoming to new people. Yet some austinites argue that outsiders are destroying our city. It has even become a mantra for them. What makes someone an austinite and gives them the right to be here? Being born here? Being here for ten years? Longer? While Austin does have growing pains, we also have the tools to deal with them. And that does not mean pulling up the ladder on new people. I'm a fifth generation austinite born less than 8 miles from where I live and less than a mile from where I work. My family has lived all around Austin, from holly, chirrery wood, south Austin to dripping springs, I'm also a zed dent of immigrants. However my wife was born in Alaska, not from Austin, but I would consider her an austinite. The housing crisis continues to grow every year, not because of outsiders but precisely because prior generations have attempted to stop growth. The people arguing against houses and jobs mostly already have a house and a job. When people talk about neighborhood character it's not a neighborhood without people. Ora supports more market rate and a $300 million affordable housing bond. We desperately need both. Speaking of Mr. Rogers, look at the neighborhood he highlights. A walkable neighborhood with varying housing types, mixed uses and transit. If we wanted diversity of people in our neighborhoods, we need a diversity of housing types and transit to support that increased density. So that brings me back. Codenext should be planning for the future. You must reject the sentiment to lock our city for another generation plus. Raise your land if you've lived somewhere that wasn't single-family housing. Has anybody here lived in something that wasn't single- family housing? When I was born my parents lived in a mobile home at four points. [3:56:50 PM] I've lived in subsidized housing growing up. A 1940s lake Travis cabin built and expanded by my grandfather now a block outside of lakeway city limits. I've lived in college dorms, army tents, and now a single-family house in northwest hills. So housing is not incompatible with other housing. My next request is to directly -- to firmly direct staff and the consultants to erase parking be requirements for all alcohol-related businesses. It's quite spectacular in this day and age in which the city is starting to look to vision zero that planning staff hasn't taken the obvious steps towards getting rid of parking for our businesses that have alcohol-related activities. If we force microbrews and pubs to be in industrial Zones or to have lots of parking it's difficult for people to bike or walk to these places. Don't limit tasting room size and get rid of parking requirements. This is my bike ride on the right last night due to insufficient bike connectivity, forced to ride down burnet road to cross 183. That's what makes neighborhoods more vibrant, is being able to walk to these kinds of amenities. Now let's talk day care. I have two kids under the age of five. Child care in Austin is very expensive. We pay over $1,500 a month for child care. Are schools incompatible with single-family housing? No. Then would Y would day cares be any more restrictive than schools? It appears that version three has allowed day cares in more zoning categories. That's a step in the right direction but still unsufficient. As housing costs mount, lack of available day cares increase in price. Day cares like schools of all size should be allowed by right in all Austin, not just small, not just large, and not just commercial. All size day cares. Large and commercial day cares should not require conditional use permits. [3:58:52 PM] We don't require that of schools. You should not require that of day cares. Day cares like breweries day cares should not have parking requirements. If they were located inside, more parents would be able to walk there. Allow day cares of all sizes by right and discard parking requirements. Austin is a growing city but we're losing families. Aisd is suffering system wide falling enrollment. The median age of the city is increasing, families are being priced out of aid. This is from the shoal creek future plan. The future of their planning is one in which single-family housing still surrounds schools. Pillow elementary, burnet middle school, Lanier, and Anderson, just across mopac, yet the future plan immediately surrounding the school is single-family only? That's simply ridiculous. On the left is a primary school here in the U.S. Do we want kids wasting their lives away in cars, able to bike and walk to school? You must upzone areas around schools to multifamily. On the right, Anderson high school is highlighted and doss, Murchison and hill are all highlighted. Look at the sea of yellow. That's single-family exclusionary zoning. Single-family zoning is simply incompatible with schools. In conclusion, instead of preserving exclusionary single-family zoning, we should be planning for a more inclusive city. Multifamily enhances neighborhood character. Austin needs a vision and the courage to implement it. To east displacement pressure, council must place measures. The city must pass a $300 million housing bond. Finally to work towards abundant housing we need a codenext that abolishes exclusionary single-family zoning at the core or at the least, one that does not prioritize it like it is in drafts 1-3. People move to Austin for many reasons, like job opportunities, education, great breakfast tacos, the best barbecue in the world and also the escape war Zones and violence. [4:01:02 PM] At the local level, we cannot and we should not look to discourage this influx. In contrast, we can change policy to allow more housing construction as well as aid those most in need. But instead of embracing incremental growth, we have pushed growth to the suburbs. Austin can do better. We must do better. Let's make an Austin for everyone. Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor, may I ask -- sir? Can you -- can you send that presentation to my office? We're working a amendments to the day care -- or everybody. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Garza: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Chris Riley? Is he here? >> [Off mic] >> He didn't make it back. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So those were all the ones in this group? Okay. I have Timothy bray in two different groups. >> I'll go in the second. >> Mayor Adler: In the second group? Okay. What about yash motipara? What about Angela Benavides Garza? Okay. You have time donated by Tom Garza. Is he here? >> My father. >> Mayor Adler: Is he here? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Where is he? Okay. Thank you, sir. You have six minutes. >> Thank you, everyone for being here. Boy, that's a lot of information to take in in one day, so thank y'all for providing us a day to come in. We all work full-time jobs or super busy during the week, so we're really grateful. [4:03:06 PM] You know, I kind of -- you know, I have no political aspirations or agendas, and I want to make that very clear, but I really kind of want to just speak on people that actually can't be here because they're super busy, working jobs or busy with their kids, busy with their families. And I'm trying to see all points of view because we do -- the fact is that we need housing that's affordable. A big reason that my son can't live here is -- inside the city, is because he can't afford the housing here. And I think we need to create opportunities where we can have our families come back -- come home, back into the areas. Right? And so what I feel encouraged by, and I've been to so many meetings, city hall, it's a lot of work that she is putting in everywhere. I'm encouraged that we have a people's plan out there. I'm encouraged that east Austin is coming together and starting to put some real solutions on the board. We need solutions. We can keep having a meeting, meeting, a meeting, a meeting, but until the solutions hit the ground, it's not really solving anything. So we can't bottleneck anywhere. It's so important, I appreciate the fact that we're starting to come together and say we've got to get these solutions on board already. Another thing, I sit down with so much leadership throughout town, west, south, central Austin, trying to figure out what's going all over the place so that we can understand, where can we connect. And the fact is that we have services for the city that we are outpacing in growth, and those services cost money. So we need more affordable housing units on the ground so that we can all share in these costs. We're losing bus stops because we don't have enough people living in the area. I went to those meetings. We're losing kids at schools because we don't have enough affordability options in these areas. And we need our people back so that we can actually keep all these -- all these, you know, Progressive solutions in place. [4:05:14 PM] So I'm -- you know, I can see the work that's coming from both sides of the coin, and I'm always -- I'm going to try to bridge and find the best of both worlds. Right? I appreciate everybody that's doing all the work because I mean, we don't sit in your shoes. Y'all do a lot of work as well. I know there's a lot going on behind the scenes. But what I love is that our people are becoming part of the solution. And that goes what's awesome because when this solution began, it was only with people that came in from California. And I think that's where we went wrong, right there is where we should have had the consultants group, have people that are part of the solution now. And I just -- I love that. I love seeing our people say, you know what, I have a solution. I'm going to bring it to the table. I have a solution, I'm going to bring it. I know this has come in, but how can we work hand in hand with that? It just lights our people up to be part of the solutions. Right? So that's the thing, is how we can work hand in hand and I know a lot of people are -- you know, do this, do that, but anything we can offer to help bridge -- I love the meetings that we're starting to have in the community and we're actually, again, circles that are coming up with solutions and bringing that to the table and helping leadership. We have other ideas, solutions, like having Adu contests from the community, you know, what -- you know, have a contest that brings that in and, you know, something that -- what makes sense for our community. Right? Bringing in our culture into these solutions. Right? Because buildings are being built, but we don't see our culture anywhere in those buildings. Right? So, you know, bringing that into the solution table. So I appreciate that we're trying to find a consensus, but the more that we have our people's voice in those solutions, they will feel like they're a part of that as we progress forward together. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [Applause] Allison hallmark. Is Allison hallmark here? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: And then -- come on down. And then David Sullivan, is he here? [4:07:17 PM] >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: No? >> I'm here. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. And then Justin Irving. Is he here? Okay. Mr. Sullivan will be on deck. Is justice Irving here? What about Kevin quist? Mr. Quist, you'll be the third one up. Mr. Luna? You'll have six minutes. Go ahead, ma'am. >> Hi, council, hi, mayor, I've left and come back, and I think you've heard a lot of good comments today. The community is coming out, they're expressing their displeasure with codenext. I don't think codenext is all that -- it need some changes, and the planning commission has worked very hard over the last couple weeks and fast and furious, that I hope y'all listen to their comments and the revisions they'd like to make to the code, and then extend your deadline because we can't get this done right under your current deadline. I'm through. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Thank you very much. >> All right. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Sullivan is up right now. On deck as we said just a second ago is Mr. Quist. Is Monica Guzman here? Don't see her. Is guy Oliver here? You'll be third one up. Mr. Sullivan, you're up. >> Okay. Thank you, mayor, councilmembers, city manager, my name is Dave Sullivan. I'm here to say why I support codenext. Affordable housing bonuses more widespread, creating more opportunities for household affordability. Although the code now has limits at 60% median family income for some of the density bonuses, the new code has a rule that allows lower income folks using vouchers, so you cannot be -- you can't be turned away if you have a voucher, so long as there's space under the 60% housing. [4:09:25 PM] The availability of the density bonuses, on commercial properties, is also a good thing because if you allow a larger commercial building and you get cash, then I can go into pooling -- that can go into pooling money for affordable housing elsewhere. There are better descriptions and illustrations. People comment on how long the code is. One reason, we have illustrations showing how the form -- you know, the form site development standards are applied. The document is long, as I just mentioned. At least 200 pages that say this page deliberately left empty. I think that's for the hard copy, but you don't need that on the online version. But it's a downloadable .PDF so it's easy to search. The standards for new suburban subdivisions are better, block lengths and sidewalk requirements and for pedestrians on longer blocks. The roads in private development would be required to meet city standards, unlike, for example, the domain where there is no continuous sidewalk connecting breaker lane into the development. Under codenext, that would be required. There are new requirements to add stormwater detention where they do not currently exist. Currently, if you redevelop a commercial property and do not increase the impervious cover, you do not have to do stormwater detention. Under codenext you do. The new types of parks that are created better fit the type of park into the development and give you choices for whether they would be parks or squares or preserves. There's a preservation incentive in single-family housing that may help preserve some single-family homes where ads are added. In addition, I was on the zero waste advisory commission, and we passed the construction and demolition ordinance which will eventually require the preservation or the recycling of single-family home waste, if a house is demolished. [4:11:28 PM] That creates a -- an incentive to not demolish a home. So there are at least two elements that can help slow down demolitions. The threshold for traffic impact analyses has dropped from 2,000 trips per I take to 1,000 trips per day, meaning new opportunities to pay for sidewalks and interactions, and also transportation demand management tools to encourage developers to put in -- [buzzer sounding] >> -- More bike racks. If you can't pass codenext, please at least pass the tax to postpone -- >> Mayor Adler: Would you go ahead and send that list to observe, please? >> Pardon me? >> Mayor Adler: Send your list to everyone, please? >> Yes, I will. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Next speaker we have -- [applause] -- Sir, why don't you come on up. Guy Oliver will be on deck. And Nina Faulkner, is Nina Faulkner here? What about bill Morris? Is bill Morris here? You will be third up. Yes, sir. >> Good afternoon. My name is Kevin quist. I'm a civil engineer and student at UT. I study urban planning on the side, and from my observations, the restrictive land development code and wall of single-family zoning surrounding downtown create a myriad of interconnected problems within our city. Namely, let's begin with suburban sprawl. Since 2000, the population of Round Rock has risen by 200%, and Buda by 500%. Most of these new residents commute to Austin in single occupancy vehicles. Obviously, transporting everyone in cars is environmentally harmful to our air and water quality and it also contributes to another problem, Austin's notorious congestion. And from a broader perspective, why would a city house its workforce far away from its offices? [4:13:29 PM] Logistically, the commuting miles driven by suburbanites makes no sense when we consider that these workers could be housed closer to downtown, in condos and apartment complexes. All in all, building horizontally rather than vertically is a logical, financially expensive, and environmentally unsustainable. As such, maintaining the current single-family zoning in areas like Hyde park and Bouldin creek is a mistake, and I believe these areas need to be upzoned. So let's talk about affordability. As we all know, land values close to downtown have skyrocketed due to their unique location and scarcity of housing. Our affordability issue pushes many austinites out of their homes, as Susana Almanza will gladly tell you. What she doesn't seem to realize is that the addition of multifamily complexes actually reduces home prices and consequently, displacement. This is simplify and demand and has been proven time and again in city after city. If the new code lifted the apartment complex ban throughout core neighborhoods, our housing prices will drop, homes will be created for new austinites, displacement in east Austin will be mitigated, economic inequality will be reduced, and less people will be homeless. If there was one thing I could change about the land development code, it would be the compatibility standards, these laws which have racist origins, restrict any sort of density whatsoever. Even if a landowner wants to change their zoning and redevelop their home into a duplex or multifamily condo, a single-family home next- door will prohibit this. These backwards laws are a restriction on personal liberty, and I think it is time that we drop them. Finally, I think that we can all agree that density should be added along the imagine Austin corridors. [4:15:29 PM] Like it or not, Austin is changing and we need to be flexible in order to accommodate growth. Density on the corridors is a meeting place that a majority of us can see eye to eye, and at the very least, I expect to see provisions allowing apartments along these corridors passed. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Hold on, please, sir. Sir? >> Tovo: I have just a quick question for you. You were talking about -- you mentioned two neighborhoods in particular, Bouldin creek and Hyde park, and talked about changing the single-family zoning within them. Both of those areas have apartment complexes within them. One of the speakers earlier talked about Hyde park as having a mix of housing. Were you suggesting all of the single-family zoning in those neighborhoods be converted to multifamily? >> Yes. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mr. Oliver is going to speak, and then Mr. Morris. Is Tom Fitzpatrick here? You're going to be up third. Mr. Oliver. >> Mayor, councilmembers, my name is guy Oliver. I've lived in Austin all my life. My family owns real estate around Austin, most of which is auto-related uses. I'm here to talk to you today about our existing permitted uses become non-conforming under codenext in a solution allowing the uses to remain permitted. I participated in one form or fashion in almost every neighborhood plan in the last 18 years. I've also attended most codenext open houses, exchanged emails with Greg Guernsey and staff along the way, made extensive comments on the proposed zoning changes to our properties under all drafts of codenext. The handout that I believe is on the screen has some information on it. At the top are problems and solutions for non-conforming uses under codenext which I will detail in a minute. Around the middle is a definition of non-conforming from the city of Austin website I will summarize by saying it greatly restricts the ability of uses, you will see a listing of codenext zoning categories and various auto uses permitted, prohibited, or require permits. [4:17:37 PM] To summarize the top of the handouts, some of the issues with non-conforming, it requires changes to become a permitted use. Many banks are unwilling to loan on non-conformed uses as businesses may not be able to function in a foreclosure situation, limiting future expansion for new or existing business owners. Another concern I have about codenext, while I participated in many neighborhood plans over the years to keep our uses permitted, codenext generally ignores that participation and makes them non-conforming uses. This is all very confusing because I thought the purpose of codenext was to simplify and streamline zoning and not create additional problems for property and business owners, many of which are smaller businesses with local ties that have been serving their communities for decades. So what can you do as council to solve this issue? My suggestion, all uses allowed in existing zoning categories continue to be permitted under codenext. In closing, I want to thank you for your time, attention, and service to citizens of Austin, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you V ery much. Bill Morris, then Tom Fitzpatrick. Is Valerie frue here? Valerie? What about Karen Collins? Karen Collins here? What about Hannah frankle? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Yes? I have Hannah frankle who has some time donated by vaidi Murphy. You'll have six minutes when you get called. Sir, go ahead. >> Good afternoon, mayor, mayor pro tem, councilmembers. Thank you for dedicating a Saturday to this. Let's take a breath from all the detail for a few minutes. [4:19:39 PM] First my name is bill Morris. I'm a working real estate professional across the entire city and in fact the five-county metro area. I Smith to you the realtor profession brings the broads perspective to this, with very few exceptions, everybody you've heard from today has been or will be a client of a realtor at some point. We represent everybody who touches real estate in any way. Now, the simplification I'd like to do, rather than arguing about codenext and what are the details, is to present you with what I think is a completely obvious binary choice, which is the first choice you have to make before you get to arguing about the details. The first option is to accept the fact that the worst code in the united States is good enough for this great city of ours. I find that unacceptable. But if you find it acceptable, then you're also accepting the gentrification and the displacement that the current code is causing. And you're accepting the sprawl that results from that, and all the consequences of the sprawl. You're acknowledging and voting for, if you choose this option, to continue hollowing out the city and aid and all of the horrible consequences that come from that. And finally you're making a conscious choice to turn the city of Austin into an enclave for the wealthy. Your choice. Not mine. The alternative is to vote for a bold, new step to a different and better future that honors division of imagine Austin, that accommodates growth in a deliberate and planned way, that provides the environment culturally and economically and populationwise to really have a functional, multimodal mobility system that will allow austinites to live, work, and play where they want to and do those things close together, and in truly functional centers. [4:21:56 PM] That's the choice. Plan a, don't change anything. Let what's happening now keep happening. Plan B, choose a better future. Assuming that you're going to -- I think this should be unanimous, that you do want a better future than what we have -- going through right now. Take up the planning commission's recommendations as your base motion, put together a task force or task forces to deal with the non- zoning issues, and then take that bold step. What I hope for you is the courage to make that decision. Thank you. [Applause] >> Mayor Adler: I called -- I called Hannah Franko but she's part of a group. Sarah cook would be the next one. Is Sarah cook here? You'll be up, I think third person. Sir, you want to go ahead? Mr. Fitzpatrick? >> Thank you. Mayor, mayor pro tem and councilmembers, thank you again for spending all your time with us today and for all the time that's been invested in this and I also want to thank the members of the zoning and plan commission and the planning commission for all the time they've invested in this, as well as all the citizens. I'm here just to ask you to vote no on codenext. Lining the last speaker, I think one of the first questions we should ask is, do we like having the worst land development code in the United States, but the second question we should ask is, could it be made worse? And I think a lot of people would say that, yes, it can, and that codenext does, in fact, move in that direction. I would like you to take the recommendation of the zoning and platting commission to say this is a failed project. Let's stop it here and learn everything we can from it. I agree with Dave Sullivan, there's lots of good ideas in codenext that we should take from the process and move into the next version of this project. But codenext has failed and I would like you to vote no. I'd like to -- the zoning and platting commission referred to their October recommendations which they felt were ignored or not responded to and the final comment in that is the zoning and platting commission recommends that when the entire city is mapped, increases entitlements in far, height, number of units, should be avoided. [4:24:18 PM] Up front, upzoning, gives away the only leverage we have for creating income-restricted affordable housing, can jeopardize the fabric of Austin's neighborhoods and is near impossible to remedy when mistakes are made. What we know is that the current draft of 3.6 or whatever it is of codenext is full of errors that will not be able to be remedied and we should not go down that path. Thank you very much. [Applause] >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. I'm not sure how many more people that we have to go, but earlier we -- the practice was, if you wanted to clap and show your support for your constituent, just do jazz hands because we can move people through quicker if we don't have the clapping in between. That slows everything down. So I'm asking you all to please just use jazz hands. They'll know that -- the community knows that you're supporting them, and that gives us -- just keeps people moving through or we'll all be here most of the night. >> Mayor Adler: That worked really well this morning, so thanks for that again. I think I called someone else? Did I call someone else? Why don't you come on up. Introduce yourself, please, then I'm going to go to another group, the Ryan nill group. Go ahead. >> Sure. My name is Erica cook. I live in city council district 9. I want to note speakers have commiserated with y'all but rather than being tedious, I've found today's testimony compelling and interesting. I've been impressed with my fellow residents and delighted by the passion and effective -- fervorthat's been shown. I've tracked arguments today and I don't know that I can add to the specifics but I want to lay out some themes that have emerged to me. [4:26:19 PM] First, I've heard that this code betrays the vision and promise of imagine Austin and its stated objectives to communities and neighborhood plans. Second, I've heard that development of the plan has paid lip service to community participation, but few feel that their comments and input are reflected. Third, speaking of breakdowns in the process of codenext, the corridors and their implications have not been circulated to the people affected. While some speakers have bemoaned the fact people can't spend the day here, I imagine there would be hundreds more who would attend if they knew what is in codenext and how it impacts them, especially with the recent additions to the corridor list and the upzoning that is included with that. Fourth, I think the same is true for many folks who live in non-conforming and complying structures. With the current amended code these structures would be unimprovable. If we think that displacement is a problem currently, I think this process will only accelerate that. Fifth, I've heard that infrastructure capacity including flooding concerns can't be quickly dismissed. Any additional density needs to consider what our existing infrastructure flood control systems can handle. Similarly, we need to be confident that our multimodal transportation systems can support increased demands, and I hope we'll keep planning for additional public transportation regardless of what happens with codenext, including sidewalks, bike lanes, and crosswalks. And for the record, we desperate by need an on demand cross like at 46th and airport to promote walking and bus access in that area. Sixth, I think we've heard this time and again, density doesn't equal affordability. Missing middle housing isn't affordable by its definition. It's a type of housing, not a price point. Density entitlements will increase tax prices immediately as land prices jump. Often the existing housing stock is the affordable housing stock. Further, I believe that the small lot amnesty structures you saw from north loop aren't affordable. There's a new build at that's on the marked for $624,000. Is that affordable? [4:28:20 PM] That's with amnesty. I do want to add some things that I think we could do immediately and I'd ask council to charge the city with. First, send your goals to neighborhoods and communities. Articulate your most basic principles and your objectives, if they've deviated from imagine Austin, and let us help. Challenge us to do the good work that we all want. Let us jump in and participate as another speaker suggested. Second, do real and immediate things to address affordability. And this could include funding right to return programs -- [buzzer sounding] -- And other things. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Okay. >> Houston: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Could you send all the information to me and the rest of the council? Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. We're going to begin here with Ryan nill. You have time donated from Tyler Markum. Is Tyler Markum here? Is Jeanine Garrett here? Okay. You have nine minutes. >> Thank you, mayor. Hello. My name is Ryan nill. I'm on the board of the Austin cooperative business association and I've lived in housing cooperatives for ten years. Cooperatives are a type of democratically-managed property, managed by its tenants democratically, and I think there are three main reasons why I and others have been greatly impacted by co-ops and why I think co-ops should be greatly encouraged in the city of Austin. The first reason is their social impact. My first experience with co-ops was in the west campus co-op. When I first walked in there was a group of people studying in the living room, guys playing ping-pong and a couple people cooking dinner for the whole house in the back in the kitchen. When I immediately walked in, I realized this was somewhere I wanted to be. It reminded me a lot of spending the Summers with my large extended family in California, and it was something that I definitely thought was missing from my life, having grown up as a nomadic military brat. [4:30:25 PM] I lived in ten different homes and attended seven different schools by the time I was 15. So I really felt that the kind of skills that I learned in that social environment helped me become more socially intelligent, move beyond social anxiety, and I've definitely heard testimony from many other people that they've had similar experiences. The next impact is an economic impact. And a lot of this has to do with the social aspect of co-ops. For one, I mentioned community dinners. When you have people that cook for you, you do not have to cook. We also have people that do all the shopping for the household, so I live -- right now I live at the la reunion cooperative apartment. We have 36 residents and one person does all the shopping for most of the households. This saves a lot of time on trips so people do not need to make trips to the grocery store or even need a car, and I'm sure you've heard that one of the challenges of living a car-free lifestyle is purchasing groceries and that's something that we have really gone far with. Additionally, because of the social aspects, a lot of socializing and friendships occur within the community. So you don't really need to go travel much for community. And I think all that is reflected in car ownership statistics that the acba has gathered. The lowest co-op car ownership in a co- op is college houses and they have car ownership of 39%. My cooperative has a car ownership rate of 07% and we're near anderson/lamar. For comparison, 95% of Austin households own at least one car and the average American household owns two cars. The average American household is 2.5, so that means 75% of men, women, and children in this country own a car, and that doesn't count people that drive leased cars. Additionally, because it's democratically managed, that means that the residents, they decide where the money gets spent. They decide how much they're going to pay for rent themselves instead of having someone else tell them how much rent they're going to pay. [4:32:33 PM] And because people are doing these things on their own, people develop skills to lower the costs and do the work themselves. So some people know how to cook, some people do not know how to balance a checkbook, so you need a diversity of skills and co-ops have a diversity of people reflecting those skills. And these costs are reflected in price studies that the acba has done. Our costs are 40 to 60% of comparable neighborhoods, or of comparable properties in their zip codes. And in the community housing expansion of Austin, a co-op property that operates in both the zilker neighborhood and the Wooten neighborhood were able to have 60% of our residents who have in connection of 30% mfi affordably. The final impact is educational. As I mentioned, people have to learn how to do maintenance and basic finance, but you also need to deal with conflict, how to cook, how to be a leasing agent, how to evict people, unfortunately. For the larger co-ops, you get to be often -- you get to be on the board of a large nonprofit, potentially a multi-million-dollar nonprofit, and work with hiring and firing staff. Personally, I learned a lot about democracy. I was really apathetic about politics, and I know that's an increasing trend for declining faith in democracy, and I think that co-ops have kept me away from that trend. It's not just us, the co-op community, that thinks that we should -- that co-ops should be allowed more broadly in Austin. In the strategic housing blueprint, it calls for a reduction in zoning barriers, density restrictions, and band to her parking requirements for collaborative living arrangements and specifically co-ops. The code advisory group recommended improving the co-op definition in the code, changing the occupancy to two unrelated adults per bedroom, and lowering parking limits. You the council have passed a couple of recommendations supporting housing co-ops in the past. [4:34:34 PM] For codenext, we hope to see an improvement in the definition. The current definition I think would allow properties that are not cooperative. We suggest using a definition that emphasizes the tenant democratically managed nature of co-ops. We think co-ops should be allowed in all Zones. As it stands, we're worried we could have a co-op that adheres to all regulations but because it's not allowed by rights, an neighbor could complain and threaten a co-op, whereas a stealth form that adheres to all the regulations would not be threatened by that. Also some large holes missing in draft 3, and particular co- ops are not allowed in mobile home areas. Additionally, we want to see the cag's recommendation of reducing occupancy limits to two unrelated adults per bedroom. Co-ops essentially operate as a single housekeeping unit as I mentioned earlier and this reduces impact of occupancies compared to the same property with the same residents who operate as multiple different housekeeping units. Finally, we think that co-ops immediate to be included in the university neighborhood overlay language. They're currently not in there, and that's the language that gives uno properties access to the density bonus and affordable requirements. I think it's an oversight because the definition was separated and I assume that maybe the person writing it was not aware of that, so I think that's a real easy retaining. Co-ops are a tried and tested model of affordable housing. They've been operating in Austin since 1942. Someone earlier told me maybe since 1930. They were around in many different cities. Madison, Wisconsin, has co-ops written into their land development code. In New York City, habitat for humanity is developing primarily housing cooperatives. Cities such as Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, Berkeley and Boulder all have cooperative communities. I hope you'll incorporate these changes into codenext. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [4:36:36 PM] Donald Goff. >> Thank you, council, thank you for giving up your Saturday. It's very much appreciated. I probably won't take all three minutes. I just want to go big picture about the cooperative thing. We've heard a lot today about how codenext is not going to do anything to help with housing affordability. I think I heard that a lot this morning, particularly. But I want to point out that co-ops have been quietly doing housing affordability -- exactly housing affordability for years. Ryan kind of said kind of very quietly that we're 40 to 60% of market rate. I think that's an amazing number. We have a unit, whether it be a large house or a apartment, and we are -- have people paying half the rent that people next-door would be paying. That's a really good success story, and I want to make sure that codenext allows for more co-ops in more places. It's the kind of thing that will grow up if we just have fertile ground for it. And we will grow them for you, so...the other cool thing about co-ops, Austin being the most economically segregated city in the country, something we've all heard about probably council is aware of, co-ops tend to span multiple income groups. That's been my experience. I've lived in two different co-ops, one that Ryan mentioned, and we had folks that were high tech professionals and we had folks who were retired living on social security, which you almost can't live on, but they were doing it. And the co-op system helped a lot with that. In addition, they tend to be multigenerational. We had a lot of older folks who are, you know, difficulty getting to the store, difficulty, you know, carrying out maintenance, stuff like that. The community around them helps. So I just want to make sure that co-ops are an important part of Austin. They could be a much bigger part in providing affordability to Austin. Just want to make sure that codenext is going to help that happen. I appreciate it. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. [4:38:37 PM] Beth Ivan, and you have time donated from Carol lily. Is Carol lily here? >> She's not here. >> She's not here. >> Mayor Adler: All right. You have three minutes. >> Hello, council. Thank you for hearing our thoughts today. My name is Beth, my home is rosewood cooperative in district 1. In housing co-ops the residents have the power. We make decisions through democratic voting. We pool resources and we operate at cost. The result is a rich, affordable, empowered community filled with folks of mixed demographics and backgrounds. [Indiscernible] Is half of the cost of properties around us, as you've heard and we have committees that hone skills, such as accounting, maintenance, community outreach. And we're able to live in areas of Austin that we wouldn't normally be able to to, closer to our jobs and public services. I want these benefits for more of my fellow austinites. I've lived in co-ops for seven years and it's been the most formative aspect of my life. Co-ops allowed me to minimize my college debt, gave me experience that helped secure several jobs, and provided me with a continual network of friendship and support. But this prosperous way of living is now threatened by codenext, largely due to something that's simple as an ill-fitting, inaccurate definition which doesn't reflect co-ops as they currently exist. This would nullify properties that have been providing affordable housing to austinites for decades. The draft also constrains co-ops to Zones which are inevitably going to be bought out by wealthy developers to build luxury properties. Co-ops are created by the residents, which can only happen if they have access to affordable properties in which to create these communities. To help co-ops survive and thrive, we ask council to adopt the changes recommended by the Austin cooperative business association, including, as Ryan mentioned, a change definition, allowance by right in all Zones, changing their occupancy limit to two non-related people per bedroom, and granting density bonuses to co-ops in grouped residential zoning. [4:40:42 PM] We need to confront affordability and gentrification head on we can't let our city languish into traffic, value, and displacement. We're going to need a patchwork of affordable housing solutions to do this. And co-ops are a valuable addition as they're incredibly self-starting and self-maintaining. They preserve older properties and embody the spirit of Austin that so many hold dear. Empower us to do our part by creating more friendly conditions for co-ops in codenext. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Yes. Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I have a quick question for you. You referred to some recommendations that have been submitted. Did you send those to all of our offices? >> We can if it has not already been. >> Tovo: It may have and we may have -- do you have a sense of -- >> I'll send an updated one. >> Tovo: That will be great. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Send that to everyone, please. Thanks. Okay. Dan -- Daniel Hardesty Lewis? >> Okay. All right. [Inaudible] Is coming up but that's not necessary for the moment. My point is simple. The most recent draft of the code includes a definition for democratic cooperative housing and I commend the planning commission for it. Certainly one of the only evidence means to preserve the residential neighborhood -- I'm sorry -- residential nature of a neighborhood through wild increases in prices of such a neighborhood's houses is through banding together the form of a democratic cooperative. In the early half of the 20th century, cooperativization provided the survival for the survival of many families of farmers through the great depression in increasing corp.ization of their trade, in the United States, in particular here in Texas, there were cooperatives here in Texas. With upwards 08% of the citizens of the united States currently having yet to experience the recovery of the great recession -- from the great recession would be foolish for the city of Austin to adopt a code which restricts the locations where cooperatives may be established. [4:42:53 PM] My very own cooperative, the world house of Austin, prides its origin in those times late, 1930s, since Ryan was the person who spoke to, late in the great depression. That's right. It still exists today. I currently live in it. It's provided affordable housing for students since those days. Early drafts of the code permitted the wide existence of cooperatives, throughout the residential areas of Austin, yet the most recent draft, draft 3, struck any possibility of housing cooperatives from r2 residential areas. I advocate that the possibility of democratic housing cooperatives throughout the residential areas of Austin. I believe, and I know from having witnessed it in other cities such as Boulder, Colorado, that the cooperative house forms a robust basis for a model of affordable housing for the city's families, in particular for those who do not live in the upper echelons of income. Allow the city's residents the option of the cooperative, in whichever residential area they please. Do so, so that today's residents Mayweather the lingering effects of the great recession, many of whose residents have yet to see -- yes - - whether the city's changing affordability landscape, and do so together, help prevent the increasing corporatization of housing. Cooperatives will allow current residents and families to do so, just as they have been since the great depression. Just as they are currently, the last ends of the great recession. I myself have recently engaged and have considerations as to appropriate long-term housing for my family, we have concluded the cooperative is an ideal model for it. We have concluded that cooperatives are an ideal model for it. Will you? The majority of cooperatives in Austin find themselves -- here's where this point comes up -- in the previously mentioned r2 Zones. You may proceed to them. I include all of them, not just the ones in r2. Continue, please. I assure you that the vast majority of -- [4:44:59 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Sir? [Buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for your time. >> That was the last line anyways. Three minutes. >> Hello and thank you, council, for sharing your Saturday with us. I'm Laura abing, I live in district 9 co- op and have lived in co-ops since I moved to Austin three years ago. As a passionate proponent of cooperative living I'm asking Austin to take up the recommendations by the Austin business association, creating a more accurate definition of cooperative housing and changing the occupancy limit. Under the language, the current language of codenext, third draft, over 09% of existtion co-ops in Austin would not be allowed. We ask that the zoning be expanded to be allowed by right in all Zones, including r2 Zones where many Austin coops already co-ops rereside. I field housing inquiries from the community and there's not a week that goes by that I don't receive messages from folks looking for a co-op to live in. My timing was incredibly lucky and I'm so grateful for securing my spot in my co-op. Living there has been such a formative and empowering part of my life and is the only way I'm able to afford living centrally. In fact, my co-op is 60% or so cheaper than the rental rates of surrounding properties in Bouldin creek. We also enjoy countless other benefits, sustainable living, democratic governance, and shared resources. Co-ops are truly -- truly are a community based affordable housing option in line with Austin's Progressive values and history. It can also be an important piece to Austin's housing crisis solution. My co-op has been around for almost 40 years, living harmoniously in our residential neighborhood and providing empowering, affordable housing for hundreds of austinites. There's such a stark scarcity of open co-op spots for Austin adults currently, and I'd saddens me to turn down those folks each week that message me. I hope the council sees the immense benefit cooperative housing offers to the city of Austin, the strong support is already has and how important it is that codenext supports its future. [4:47:05 PM] Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> So, honorable councilmembers and mayor, thank you for sending the Saturday with me. I'm here to speak to you today in behalf of cooperative housing being supported as an affordable housing tool in codenext to expanding cooperatives to all Zones in the city and otherwise altering regulation to facilitate cooperative housing development. I hope you will accept the Austin cooperative business association's recommendations and move forward with codenext while seeking to improve it. I've lived in cooperative housing for ten years and am a co-founder of la reunion cooperative, a multifamily cooperative in district 7, near the intersection of Anderson and Lamar. I pay $445 a month which includes my groceries, seven hot meals a week and an amazing community. My cooperative is considered deeply affordable by hud standards, to those earning less than 25% area median family income. To maker we reach those who need it. We accept voucher holders, section 8, and nonprofit partners. I love in a community that is diverse in race, age, and income. I live in a neighborhood and I believe I belong in it. I live in a multifamily building. I may never be able to afford a home in Austin. And I think I still deserve to be considered as a long-term stakeholder in the neighborhood. When starting my career as a social worker, my affordable rent allowed me to work for nonprofits I cared about with nonprofit wages. Now in my work with clinical mental health I'm able to offer sliding scale rates and take insurance I would not be able to rationalize working with if I did not have an affordable home. I believe mental health is important and I'm glad that I'm in a position to help those who have trouble affording it. As a small business owner I've been able to launch a practice before the age of 30, paying a higher proportion of income in rent. [4:49:06 PM] And I have commitment to democratic process and desire to contribute in other ways. I've served as a city commissioner for two years and was recently termed vice president of my neighborhood association where I was instrumental in getting more than $80,000 of park infrastructure built. Again, I believe I belong in my neighborhood. As a person, my cooperative community has supported me through some of the worst times of my life and I'm so thankful for it. All in all, I believe I've got it pretty good. Lucky me. Right? I think most of us in this room have it pretty good and we have an obligation to not be selfish, to pay forward our good fortune by making policy choices that offer the most good to the most people. I'm here in support of the easing the development of cooperative housing standards and regulations because we don't develop proactive approaches to affordable housing, we will lose much of our -- we will lose most of our existing affordable housing. There's a lot of research data and history to suggest that cooperatives should be one of the tools to address this, which I and we are happy to provide. Cooperatives operate by self-management from their tenants, eliminating overhead and allowing cost savings and stability in rents and policies. As you've heard from several people, we pay 40 to 60% of the rental rates of surrounding areas. [Buzzer sounding] >> You all have an open invitation to visit us for dinnertime if you'd like to see what all the fuss is about. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: You guys were great. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Great modeling. Okay. Let's pick back up here on the list. >> Pool: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Pool: There's been a request that when you call the name of the people, you also indicate what number on the list they are because people are listening in and they know what their number is and that will give them a general idea about when they'll be up next. >> Mayor Adler: Be happy to do that. >> Pool: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: I think we're at 121. [4:51:08 PM] Lonnie stern. What about Kyle Hoskins? What about Susan Sullivan? Josea Stevenson, why don't you come on down. Is Joe gessling here? You'll have six minutes. Nina here? You'll be on deck. You have time given to you from Alex master's grossling. Here? Yes? Thank you. So you'll have six minutes. And the third one up is number 130, Roger Taylor. Is Roger Taylor here? No? What about what about Angela Richter? Is Angela Richter here? That was 134. What about aloa Matthews? You're here? Okay. Aloa Matthews has time donated by David Caroli. Is he here? >> Here. >> Mayor Adler: You'll have six minutes, Ms. Matthews. Why don't you go ahead, sir. >> Thank you, mayor and council. My name is josaiah Stevenson. My wife and I rent our home in district 9. Just a personal note about that before I get started, one of the things I hear a lot from those who don't want Austin to be as welcoming a city as it could be is the open stigmaization of homes like mine, and implicitly families like mine that live in them. [4:53:09 PM] Under euphemisms like compatibility. What's incompatible about us, about our homes? I also serve on the board of aura, Austin for everyone. Codenext working group. How do we get closer to Austin for everyone in codenext? We want abundant housing throughout central and west Austin to allow more people to be able to afford to live where a lot of them want to live. We especially want more housing on and near existing and planned transit to allow more efficient and more reliable service, more housing near parks and schools to increase access to those. I want to take you through a thought experiment. Imagine that we regulated food in the same way that we regulate housing. We regulate food a lot in the U.S., and that's good that we do that, but the way we regulate housing is structured very is he differently, and it causes a lot of problems. Let me talk about what I mean. If we regulated food the way we regulate housing, you probably couldn't grow corn next to wheat and you definitely couldn't grow either one of those next to soybeans or berries. You couldn't grow food on a plot of land. If you wanted to switch from wheat to straw berries, that's a costly, long rezoning process. If you were required to have a certain number of loading docks for a particular number of truck, whether you use that kind of truck or need that many loading docks or not. What would happen if we did this? Well, each plat of land would be a lot less useful for growing the food we need. We'd have to do one of two things or more likely a little bit of both of these two things. Start growing food on a larger number of plots of land and really more land dedicated to farmland. And generally that's going [4:57:46 PM] we haven't -- we would%-@never welted H we would never do this with food, right? This sounds insane. But we did it with housing in 1984. And we continue to layer on these kinds of restrictions and make housing more expensive, especially for the neediest and most vulnerable in our community. It doesn't make sense to -- to have restrictions that all that they do is reduce the amount of useful stuff, whether that's food or shelter, basic human needs that we can produce with our scarce resources. And so in codenext I urge you to allow more housing on the limited amount of land that we have. So that more people can afford shelter that better meets their family's needs. Thank you. [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I think I called Nina renaldi. Why don't you come down. You had time designated from Alex, I think'd that, so you have six minutes. >> I also have an image. >> Mayor Adler: Then I had Roger Taylor, which I don't think was here. Angela Richter was not here. And then did I call eloa Matthews? And she's here. And then I'm going to call the group after that that is the Nicole Wei group. Go ahead. >> Thank you, mayor Adler, mayor pro tem, and all the councilmembers for having us here today. My name is Nina renaldi and I'm a rent iran the brentwood neighborhood and president of Ora. I have something to share with everyone here today. Earlier this year, I sat down with my parents and went through a couple of boxes of old family photos and childhood stuff, and the most interesting thing that I came across that day was this little certificate that's on the screen here that Brackenridge hospital gave to my parents when I was born. [5:00:02 PM] It says "This is to certify that Nina [indiscernible] Is a native austinite with all of the rights and privileges of being born in Austin, Texas, on this date of June 4, 1990." I bring this up now at a public hearing on the overhaul of our decades' old land development code because I think it advertise legitimacy of an austinite's to some extent birth right. This piece of paper is obviously a joke and it's cute but there's a rhetoric that crops up around codenext. We don't need to pit long time austinites against those who make less money. Unfortunately our current land development code does just that by enforcing conditions where housing is scarce, particularly the kind of housing in demand by low and middle- income families. Some people move here in search of a more tolerant environment that will embrace their sexual orientation or gender identity in a way that doesn't happen where they were born. They move to avoid persecution in their native countries. A small handful move because the state they come from has failed to address its affordability crisis. And they move here for schools and for jobs. Let's welcome them with open arms. In order to champion inclusion let's impact land use policies that include. When we talk about planning for growth and change I also want to say as a resident of district 7 that has long past time for west Austin residents to do our part to welcome greater numbers of new neighbors rather than pushing it all over to east Austin. A great number of west and central Austin neighborhoods have long been affluent enclaves. There are also lots of neighborhoods there that didn't start out this way but that have become more exclusive over time in the context of our housing shortage. We can make these neighborhoods accessible to more families from different walks of life if we allow an abundance of diverse housing opening there's. [5:02:07 PM] I'd like to name some neighborhoods here. Pemberton, tarrytown, Travis heights, Bolden, bryker woods, judges hill, old west Austin, rosedale, brentwood, allandale, crestview, balconies, zilker, Hyde park and northwest hills. These are the kinds of areas I'm talking about where we need to add the type of housing that is accessible to families who don't make a 6-figure salary. If we do it right, yes, these neighborhoods will end up looking different over time. Austin should have continued to allow incremental increases in density over the past 30 years in order to accommodate population growth. We can use codenext as a opportunity to rectify the affordability issues perpetuated by our current code. I ask you to ensure that diverse housing options can be built easily and next to each other throughout all of our neighborhoods, even in what we refer to as the neighborhood interiors. Four flexes, six mechanisms, row homes and ads are great and should be legal everywhere. The certificate that I'm showing you doesn't say exactly what my rights and privileges are as a native austinite, but I'm pretty sure they mean that it's my right and privilege to ensure that the next generation of native austinites can afford to live here. It's my right and privilege to ensure that our policies align with the values that we hold dear. It's my right and privilege to uphold a vision for our future that is built not on the fear of having to look at a fourplex next door but of welcoming all the families that want to share our city with us. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Renaldi, happy birthday by the way. [ Laughter ] >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I think I called eloa Matthews. >> Houston: Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: As the next speaker is coming up I would like to tell the the captioner that aura is aura, not Ora. [5:04:10 PM] [ Laughter ] So I know -- thank you, but no. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Pool: Could we remember to announce the number of the speaker, what number is Ms. Matthews? >> Mayor Adler: Number 135. >> Thank you. Thank you, councilmembers. My name is eloa Matthews. I live in district 9. I'm going to talk about specifics in the code but first I want to tan my neighborhood and family's place in it. The picture you'll see over here is of my mom and dad and my sister, my dad on the eve of d-day in their home, my grandmother's home in Dawson. And Dawson and Sherwood oaks, where I live now, by St. Edwards have always been complete communities. This photo was taken after my grandparents built their house in 1933, and I'll see the chart of the house, the valuation of it with no improvements, how it's changed over time. In 1933 they built their house for $2,000, the land and my grandmother was very proud to say that did not include the glass in the windows because they had come from a house that had no glass in the windows. In 1983 the house, when my grandmother died the summer I graduated from college, the house value was $17,000. So over 50 years it went from 2,000 to $17,000. That is a factor of eight. And then by 2003, when the house sold again, Rosie ariaga lived next door to my grandmother, bought the house, and she sold it for $250,000, which is a factor of 15 in 20 years. On the next -- oh, that house was torn down and a duplex built there on each side -- and each side sold recently for $350,000. [5:06:11 PM] So that tells you the math on that. The next slide -- or the next picture shows you the number of affordable housing units that have been built in my neighborhood since 1968. Close to 700 and another hundred are being planned on old wood land and south I-35 this year. Even though over this time period these affordable housing units have been built the same thing was happening. The land value in our neighborhoods were going up, and that's because there was a lot more investment, commercial investment in building a multi-family. If you could go to the third slide, please after my father died on active duty in 1963 my mom moved her kids back to Austin and she bought a house in Sherwood oaks. This is a flyer from the original Sherwood oaks development. She was a high school graduate with three children under the age of five, and she was able to buy a home for $12,000. Think of that, if that could happen today. I grew up in a racially diverse, complete community, where all my African-American friends at Fulmore middle school and my hispanic friends at Fulmore middle school lived in single-family homes. This is a moral dilemma that this city has. I heard someone quoting leviticus earlier, and I would say this is a moral dilemma like leviticus. Been told that 23-1a-5020 under rules of interpretation is going to trump the deed restrictions, the deed restrictions that exist sometimes exist for public safety. There's -- I served on the city of Austin flood mitigation task force, and we made -- sometimes we need those deed restrictions for that. My other concern is that everyone on my neighborhood association executive committee, no one knew that this was their notice for codenext, that their zoning was going to be changed and that's a concern. [5:08:23 PM] These are informed people, and they -- no one understood that. Finally, I'd like to say that the zap recommendations I think would solve a lot of the problems that we on the flood mitigation task force and that my neighborhood is facing, our neighborhood plan contact team has had one request for a Flum amendment since January of last year. Our neighborhood plan accommodated much growth in entitlement increases in our neighborhood. They haven't been able -- they haven't needed to come to us. All of the development that's gone on in south congress has occurred with one Flum amendment since January of 2017. And finally I would like to say that the neighborhood plan designation overlay being removed is not good. How are people going to know there's a neighborhood plan there if that designation is removed? Finally, also, the environmental commission regulations on drainage for residential redevelopment. Those were recommended from the flood mitigation task force. They will help with lot to lot flooding in the local hazard areas. I'm not talking about creek flooding. We can follow Houston finally on creek flooding, but the recommendations that came out of the task force that are in the environmental commission's final recommendations would go a long way to help with lot to lot flooding. So thank you for listening. I guess someone quoted leviticus earlier, I can say god bless you. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. All right. Let's call the group up higher. This is a group put together arranged from 114 up to 161. Nicole Wei. Is she here? Okay. What about Megan Kemp? No? What about Greg Anderson? My hope is to do the group and break for dinner unless we end sufficiently before 5:00. [5:10:29 PM] We'll go until 5:30 and then break for dinner. Mr. Anderson, you had time donated, I think. Is that person still here? >> Ted? >> Mayor Adler: Let me check and see. In the back of the room. All right, you have six minutes. >> Thank you, mayor, mayor pro tem, I think Mr. Murphy -- >> Mayor Adler: Actually, two people -- >> Ted is enough. >> Mayor Adler: That's enough? Six minutes. >> Okay, thank you. Mr. Murphy is grabbing a powerpoint. Thank you all for being here today on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. It's pretty rough with the windows open. Sinclair black, professor black, amazing guy, I had to work really hard to get into his class because it's pretty difficult to get into that class, shared with you tonight that our current land development code he put it was oppressive and irrelevant. I'll add one more word, garbage. For anyone who works with it, you want it to be able to work for your city, this is what is building your schools, hospitals, housing. Everything. Anyone who works in it I share with you right now they're gonna tell you it's garbage so I would hope that nobody is actually looking at -- maybe we don't need to adopt a new land development code as an alternative because what we have today is absolute oppressive and irrelevant. I'll stick with that from here on out. It's also fun to remember why we're here, where codenext was born from. I wish it was never named codenext. I wish it was called the rewrite of our outdated land development code, but there you go you. It comes from priority program eight, revise Austin's development regulations to promote a ca compact and connected city. Now we need y'all's help to get there. From the blueprint, it's important to see -- one of the things we'll talk and hear a lot about is reduction in parking. Some folks are pretty excited about that, thinking it's going to go bad and a lot of folks who care a ton about affordability love the idea. Thens are also the added benefits of sustainability and transit ridership and those fun things but remember page 38 that talks about for the same size unit requiring parking suddenly jacks up how much you have to earn -- you're talking service sector, janitors, just a ton of folks that more and more by the day can't afford to live in Austin. [5:12:39 PM] Austin habitat for humanity turns away 1,000 unique callers a month. We just don't have the capacity. And these are people that are, you know -- there's not capacity at our fellow housers as well. We all talk to each other about this and we're all devastated by it and we're not gonna get there just with the go barns, it's an amazing advancement, will do great things to move the needle for so many lives. But the market has date of birth there today. This is one thing we'll do to really help, better parking requirements. Two things planning commission passed, eliminating parking requirements in uno and tods. I would hope each and every one of you look at this as no-brainers. Uno especially. Probably makes more sense here than anywhere else in the United States. You have the amazing university of Texas, A&M is also great, councilmember Garza, right here 60,000 students across Guadalupe and you have how many -- I heard the other day about 11,000 bedrooms in uno but I stalked to the student body president, incoming, and he said there's -- we'll more than double that. So many students love the idea of being able to wake up, roll out of bed, walk across the street and you're at class. Don't have to depreciation try and catch a ride, you don't have to find your way to get across seven, 8 miles. A lot of us do that. A lot of people have to travel that far. Students more so than any other generation before really don't want to do that, don't want to waste gas, waste the time, they don't want the headache. To get a lot more bedrooms there would be an amazing thing. They are leasing up all the bedrooms in a brand- new building and can't even lease up all the auto spaces because we require too many spots for ooze. Why don't we allow for more bedrooms over there. Then Ts, that's a no-brainer as well, we require parking right next to an area we're trying to say this is transit rich. Let's allow this area to thrive without automobiles but we're not letting that happen. Again, that's current code. [5:14:40 PM] You inherented a really terrible code. We're not pointing fingers at you for that. This is another page from the strategic housing blueprint. This is how we're supposed to achieve 60,000 big a permanently income-restricted affordable units in the next ten years. The biggest block includes expanded density bonus programs. There seems to be a lot more fear in Austin of 120-foot building than our unaffordability crisis, and I would just question, like, who are we hearing from with these fears. People are okay for a taller building as long as we're getting community benefits out of that. We can do that. I also hope you look long and hard at PC recs we'll get more affordable housing programs where the market wants to deliver them. We can't say Austin is full in the middle maybe you can build where people don't demand to live. That's just not going to happen. We have to be reasonable with that. Broken occupancy limits. Remember in 2014 we passed interim measures that were -- stuffed dorm issues going on, current code couldn't quite adjust to everything going on. Knowing codenext was in the process we would have new tools, r4, lm, different levels of zoning that allow for different levels of housing to be create where had the market is demanding housing. Not to say we're not going to allow housing, which is kind of what this did for a little while but for those areas experiencing stealth dorms they had new tools. It doesn't matter if it's the Austin tenants' council, Austin housing commission, we have got, got, got to fix this. It would be unethical to keep these low occupancy limits in our code. I mean, if you think about it today I know of people that are living five deep, six deep, not because they want, to my god I'd love to have five roommates, very few say that however people do want to live where they want to live and can afford to live and do what they need to do. [5:16:48 PM] This is going to have a compounding effect. And so if we keep this in here longer and longer after ten years you're talking 15% of your housing inventory, then 30%, then 45%. I think I had three minutes donated. >> Mayor Adler: That was your three minutes donated. You've gone six minutes. >> That was six minutes? That's amazing. Really. No, I'm done. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: You're done? All right. Thank you. >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Garza: As we go to the next -- I heard you say -- I don't have a question -- that we're breaking for dinner at 5:30. I was wondering as we get closer if we could consider not taking the break, we could take turns grabbing dinner in the back, the monitors are orientation but I just don't -- I just don't want folks to wait another hour on a Saturday while we take a different break. Just a suggestion we can think about as we approach 5:30. >> Mayor Adler: We'll bring that up in just a moment. Let's keep going. Corey hart here? You have through three minutes. Is Angela [indiscernible] Here? You'll be up next. Is Annie steinhowser here? You'll be up. Then Tim bray go ahead. >> Thank you. One of the things I have not heard talked about today -- I'm a small business owner. My business is driven by people who live in my neighborhood, who live in my surrounding area. Within this year alone, my business has lost 25% of its memberships due to people moving out of the area. Not just out of the ca city of Austin, but out of -- out to Buda, Kyle, Houston, and that's having a direct impact on me as a small business owner. Codenext might not necessarily solve that but it's not going to hurt it. We've heard a lot of rhetoric today about codenext remembering Austin -- wrecking Austin. [5:18:51 PM] That's a big theme going around. It's not going to wreck Austin. It is going to be a policy that's going to be implemented that's not going to be perfect but it's going to help -- help and prevent problems that are currently occurring. One of the things that I continue to hear is neighborhood plans. About how codenext is violating neighborhood plans, about how it is interrupting something that a group of people have come together in a specialized area and been able to map out. Neighborhood plans primarily are based on racism and bias. It is based on a group of people who are centered in a core area who have a core value and are trying to keep a neighborhood character that is just, quote-unquote, trying to keep things the same. We do not need to keep things the same. We need to throe out neighborhood plans, break neighborhood character. We need fourplexes, triplexes, duplexes, condos, townhomes, anything that gets people moving in and having a place to live. To be pushing people out to the central -- out of central Texas, to Buda, to Kyle, who need to live and work in the city of Austin is wrong. It's just wrong. And we're doing it based upon old, outdated, antiquated ideas and concepts. I'm not concerned about my children and where they're going to live. I'm concerned about the people who don't live here now and what their children have. Their children are losing out on this city. Their children have already lost on this city because they're gone and not coming back. We need to stop people leaving. We need to give them a better option. Notice today primarily gentr here. [5:20:55 PM] Where are the people of color? They're not here. They don't live in the city anymore. They're not engaged in this process. We don't let them. We've pushed them out. I'm not saying codenext is gonna fix it, but it can help. Thank you. [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Houston: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Houston: Just wanted to know that I worked three and a half years on the upper Barton creek contact team and I think that that was fairly disrespectful because we worked very hard on it. It was not racist. So I object to that language. [ Applause ] >> Mayor Adler: Angela [indiscernible] Hart. Why don't you come on down. Is Annie steinhowser here? Why don't you come to other podium. Three minutes. >> Mayor, I believe I have some donated time. >> Mayor Adler: Is Andrew turner here? Okay. You have six minutes. >> Good afternoon, good evening, council. Thank you for your service and for being here. There was a very interesting second amendment rally outside this morning. I don't know if y'all caught that. It's a tough issue, and really based on what you personally believe in. Some glad we have a -- I'm glad we have a simple technical issue we can focus on in here today. That one outside was tough. As a city we've committed to the climate on this planet, committed to providing opportunity for more austinites, committed to diversity and employment and who is allowed to apply to work where. And we need to continue to commit to allow that through providing housing choice. This process has brought a lot of misinformation, a lot of very disappointing rhetoric, and I hate to see people who, as you can tell from the rally outside, generally agree on most things, come to each other's necks on like I said what should be a relatively technical issue. Through the hearing process -- and I have the honor to serve on the city of Austin planning commission as one of mayor Adler's appointees and we've heard a lot of the same testimony and a lot of the same concerns that you've heard. [5:23:00 PM] Everyone is worried about displacement, gentrification, housing affordability, lack of affordable housing for the people who are truly struggling and I want to remind us all that's all caused by the status code, if you will, not by what's being proposed in codenext. Unfortunately, just because people believe something with all their heart doesn't make it true. I'm hoping that as you continue in this process you'll base your decisions in data, you'll think of those who are not in the room today, and of course the people who have already been displaced but also just the people with young kids, the people who are working multiple jobs, the people who are not able to participate for other reasons. I'm so glad that did we had a roomful of people today, regardless of whether or not I agree with them. I think it's great to have so much participation. But I can honestly say that in my process on planning commission, what's kept me engaged, involved, is disagreeing with a lot of those opinions. I've heard from fellow commissioners that families don't want to live in duplexes. That we should preserve high occupancy limits to ensure neighborhood character. And I think I also take the award for the most tearful planning commissioner. I think I've cried at least three times up on the dais, most recently discussing occupancy limits because I was able to share when growing up in Austin raised by a single mother we were very poor and shared a two-bedroom apartment that I think was less than 750 square feet with another family because we had to. And I want to make sure that we're not only speaking for the people who are in the room but, like I said, the people who can't be here with us. Another example I've heard commissioners state they want to preserve central Austin for the nice people. I'm a nice person. I want to live there. And I want to be able to choose to live wherever I can, regardless of being able to afford increasingly larger and larger single-family homes. I'm hoping that we'll apply whatever changes we come to as a consensus, that I know you'll work very hard to make over the coming weeks. [5:25:08 PM] Uniformly across the city, I think we've seen unintended consequences while we've been able to preserve our environment through things like the sos ordinance. I think that caused undue development pressure that caused lot of the displacement and gentrification we've seen on the east side. We need to make sure changes are applied uniformly to the city. Please help us to continue to reduce minimum lot size, allow more types of housing in more areas by right. It needs to be easier to build more homes and types of homes for more types of incomes and it really is that easy. And help us maximize affordable housing with policies like the affordable Adu bonus. This is a great opportunity to take the best input from our community and our consultants and marry it into a policy that can help preserve affordability in Austin. So in conclusion, codenext is an -- isn't a megabyte, not going to solve all of our problems. It's just a policy decision and it is a difficult decision that you'll all be making together over the coming weeks. So please consider the data, consider the people who are not in the room. We have opportunity to look at a lot of the evaluations, a lot of the mapping, decide what policy levers you want to pull based on the outcomes that you want. Do you want more abundant, affordable housing? Here's the lever that you get to pull. And I hope we won't only base our votes on our gut feeling but on that data to institute the values that I know that many of us share. So there's nothing incompatible about more people in our neighborhoods. I hope I'll keep that in mind as you work through this task in front of you and thank you all for your service. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Annie steinhowser. Is Tim bray here? You'll be up higher. Go ahead. >> Hello, my name is Annie steinhowser, and I am a nurse in an intensive care unit a premier hospital in central Austin. [5:27:08 PM] I noticed a lot of the testimony from earlier has been about homeowners who are concerned about how codenext will affect their neighborhoods. I'm not a homeowner. I rent my home, as do most austinites. I'm 30 years old. Just a year shy of the median age in Austin. But my generation also isn't who I think the majority of who you've heard from today. I grew up in rosedale neighborhood in a house my parents bought in the early '90s. I can remember as a child watching the single family cottages that were in that neighborhood get torn down and replaced with large houses. I can't afford to buy a home in the neighborhood I grew up in even though I work full-time in that neighborhood taking care of the people who live there. The majority of my coworkers commute from Round Rock, pflugerville, anywhere else they can afford to live. I love my work, but I know you as a nurse I will never be able to afford one of those large house that's continue to go in. But I would hope that with a comprehensive code reform like coax maid maybe I could continue to live in and serve the community I love. Please support abundant housing. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Is Patty sprinkle still here? You were number 53 you. We skilled over you. You'll be the next speaker. Go ahead. >> I'll be the second 30-year-old in the room talking about renters. I'm here to talking about how we can't address the problem of gentrification and displacement without addressing the issue of affordability. The conversation about displacement has focused on long-time homeowners. The long time homeowners are a minority or the of the population of Austin. 55% of austinites are renters. 53% live in something other than a detached single-family house. 80% of low-income residents in Austin are renters and two-thirds of African-Americans and hispanics in Austin are renters. When you focus exclusively on homeowners we are missing the overwhelming majority of low-income people and most at risk of being displaced. [5:29:11 PM] It's probe problematic when we put long time homeowners on a pedestal above other people when the ability to live in one place for many decades is a privilege many people don't enjoy. According to the U.S. Census the average person moves 11 times in their life and three times after the angle of 40. People have different housing needs at different stages of their lives. They move out of their parents mayor, get married, divorced, have kids, changes in income, or just need something smaller as they age. When we talk about new housing or the availability of housing we aren't just talking about people moving from other places. We're talking about people moving from one place to another all within Austin. Only focusing on keeping a select group of people in their homes and not creating places where people can move is not sustainable. It won't sustain people, won't sustain communities. That doesn't mean we shouldn't take steps to keep people in place but it is more important we have affordable places for people to move to. People moving in and out of a neighborhood is normal and natural. Gentrification is driven by low-income people no longer being able to move into a neighborhood to replace those that have moved out is part of the normal ebb and flow of life. People are in the same market as the people outside of Austin looking for a place to live here. When we don't have enough housing the divide isn't between old and new austinites. The divide is between those wealthy enough to afford higher prices and those not. We can't stop people without want to go move here, not without making it an undesirable place for everyone. Austin's growth isn't new. We've been doubling in population every 30 years since 1850. We can't build a wall around Austin and make California pay for it. [ Laughter ] [Indiscernible] Displacement and other problems by creating conditions where we have enough housing for and we need allowing the supply of housing to keep up with the growing population. The access assist focus on the single family character of my neighborhoods marginalizes many people who can't afford single-family homes. It's a view that ignores people who have problems a lot more basic than whether a car is parked on the street in front of their house. [5:31:13 PM] All the problems we vee happening under the current code. If we keep the code we will continue to get worse. We have to be proactive. The longer we wait to deal with this the worse problems will get. People are priced out new. Neutrality isn't an option. I urge you to make a real dent in our affordability crisis that reduces traffic, including environmental sprawl. Try to think about everyone. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Thank you. >> Okay to go? >> Mayor Adler: You have three minutes. >> Thank you for letting me speak today. Good afternoon. Why am I here? For the last 15 years you've been asking know events like this. You've been asking for my ideas and my feedback. And I'll repeat once more for the record I'm not against growth. I just want it done in a sustainable way that adds and maintains public green space and doesn't add to urban flooding in my neighborhood already. In my vision there's a sidewalk and a safe way to cross the street for everybody, no matter what part of town you live in or who your councilmember is. But alas, I've come to think of Austin as the city of perpetual planning where the basics never get addressed. This proposed code is a hand-off to the development community with disregard for the crumbling infrastructure, lack of water, no sidewalks in most parts of town, urban flooding along many waterways and mostly to the citizens participating in good faith in this process. While I'm dismade we as a city have invested so much in this pros, an appalling 8-plus million it will not do anything accept hasten the removal of those who have called Austin for home for generations. With the PC's new guidelines on transit Zones and compatibility it's even worse and it's done with little scrutiny by a group whose membership vitals the city charter. But it's -- violates the city charter. It's okay not to follow that part of your oath of office. Who does this new code benefit? It seems we really can't say no to anything new, soccer stadium festival on public land and the alcohol sales that go with it. [5:33:18 PM] Booze is big business in Austin. The may three, 2018, statesman reports alcohol sales in Austin in March at $80.3 million. There's a lot of money to be made with a brew pub on every corner, a lot of money to be made scraping affordable small ranch exponentials building high end housing. Don't kid yourself this proposed code will generate more than a trickle of affordable units for those displaced by rising rents and property taxes. Even the experts say it will be 25-30 years before these units being built now are become affordable for the second owners. Yet here we are in the city of Austin, 97 acres of affordable housing right now where I've done many births, I'm a midwife and nurse, I want everyone to know that, 97 acres of affordable housing is slated to be torn down off pleasant valley road Riverside drive, pushing lower income folks and students further out to the margins. That's that's right, it's the the highest and best use of the land. A sanitized city for the haves with smattering of affordable housing for the rest of us here and there. It's not simpler, this code, despite extensive public outreach it does not reflect the will of the people of Austin. There are a lot of people who aren't here today. I had to work myself and come back. There are many who can't be here, older people like me who was once young when this process started. [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> So do the right thing. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Councilmembers, it's 5:34. Two things. First is when we adopted the resolution we said that this meeting would be over at 6:00 unless extended by a majority of the council. So we need a motion to extend past 6:00 to hear the remaining people. Is there an objection to extending past 6:00 to hear these folks? Yes, councilmember pool. >> Pool: I don't have an objection to extending past 6:00 but I think we might want to indicate whether we are going to close the sign-up for additional speakers. [5:35:19 PM] >> Mayor Adler: We had talked about doing that, that we would extend it for the people who were here by 6:00 and wanted to sign up. Okay. We will close the sign-off at 6:00 and without objection we will continue. The next question we have is do we want to go ahead and keep hearing from speakers, let people maybe go back? I think it would be fine if you wanted to go back and grab whatever the food is and bring it back out to the dais. There's a television for there for people who want to watch it back there, still hear what people are saying but feel free to bring it back out to the dais. I apologize for that being unseemly, but at least we can continue to hear people's testimony. Any objection to doing that? Okay. We'll go ahead and proceed that way. Councilmembers, feel free to move back. Brian king here? You'll have three minutes. Is Angela Richter here? Why don't you come to next podium. And then on deck would be Micah king. You'll be third. Go ahead, sir. >> Thank you, mayor, council. Brian king. I had a whole list that I was going to run down of the things I think are wrong with codenext and parking and compatibility and transit Zones. I listened to two hours of it this morning that's been adequately covered so I'll jump to another area. Realtors say the three most important things are location, location, location. In writing a quality code I believe the three most important things are trust, trust, trust, and I think we've lost that. I think it's gone so far off the rails that months ago I gave up on it. I've been tracking, I've been at the table, I've been there. And I pulled back. This is so far off the rails it can't be corrected. Several years ago the south Lamar combined neighborhood plan started. [5:37:22 PM] It got suspended. We went through the planning process for months and months and months and months and couldn't come to agreement to get our plan, what we wanted, Barton hills, zilker, south Lamar, Galindo, who did I live snout one more. We went through mediation. Council ordered us to go with mediation and we worked with planning department through a couple, three months of mediation and still couldn't have our plan. I was angry for a while that we couldn't have our plan but now I'm glad we don't because it looked like it would be thrown out anyway so all of that work would have been for not. So trust has got to be established. Junk dun kin mentioned a couple months ago the trust wasn't there, how can you build a department and code when trust is not there with the people. That's got to be reestablished. I believe this plan need to be rebooted. Start over. We're not gonna be able to solve the problems with the current level of thinking we've got going on. We need to do it under new management. Zucker told us that. We didn't listen. It's been two or three years. We've just fuss fessered in that and we've got to -- nine dysfunction is there. Everybody has talked about it. I'm truly believing and that's why moseying got behind the petition drive because I felt it's not going to get on track, this is the only way we'll have to get there. I put my energies into gathering petitions and talking to people on the hike and bike trail, telling them about what codenext was all about. Most people didn't know what codenext was. The branding, they didn't get it. The zoning? They knew that. They had already heard about the density push. Already heard about the parking stuff. They didn't know about codenext. When my neighborhood started back in the 2000s, most neighborhoods, do it's over a crisis. It's a zoning case that pulls people out, says what's going on next to? And they get involved. Next to me? And they get involved. People will be that way on codenext. When something changes next door to them that they had no idea was going on because it's not being disseminated well. [5:39:25 PM] So, again, I think it needs to be rebooted. I think we need new management. I think we've got a new city manager. He can wrap his arms around this thing. [ Buzzer sounding ] I've talked to him a couple times 37 that's my 2 cents. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Angela Richter is number 134. Micah king is coming up next. By the way, is Jeff heckler here? No. You'll just have three minutes. Go ahead. Mr. Richter. >> Great. So I'm Angela Richter, executive director of save Barton creek association for those that don't know me. We're one of several environmental groups that have not come out for or against the code but really still waiting to see what the final proposal is. And we see several areas for improvement. You guys have all received a letter from us as you know. I also want to thank the regional committee of the Sierra club, their conservation group, clean water action and environment Texas. All those groups have stood behind our positions on water quality, flooding, and water conservation and you've heard their testimony. Generally -- I'm not going to repeat all of the points because you've heard them. Generally what we've asked for is for reinvestments to adhere to impervious cover in their zoning so that they do their fair share to prevent flooding. For landscape and building guidelines that save water to prepare for a future of climate change and continued population growth, for requiring more developments to treat their run-off and use green stormwater infrastructure for water quality treatment. This would include hopefully new roadways in subdivisions. These water quality improvements will ensure we keep our creeks clean. So that's -- those are our general populations. There's also a few things that have come up lately with the environmental commission, planning commission recommendations. [5:41:26 PM] I would first urge you to take a close look at the environmental commission's recommendations, including their recommendation to lower the water quality limit to 5,000 square feet. I appreciate the work that the planning commission did on draft three. You know, I think they have some good ideas but I would like to point out a couple places where we don't think you should follow their direction. They recommended removing the flood and drainage committee for missing middle housing and ads. There needs to be some reliable way to ensure that neighbors aren't flooded and it can't be reactionary, as in waiting for, you know, a flood to happen and the neighbor to complain. If there's not an engineer certificate and you find another way to do that, you know, potentially even the city going out and looking at each of those, whatever you decide to do but there needs to be a reliable way to do that. The planning commission also recommended giving 90% impervious cover as a development right, waiving other requirements. That's something that really can't be done unless there's clear prioritization of what requirements can be waived and certain requirements that are public health issues like flooding are not included in any kind of waiver. Finally, we ask you to implement the water forward recommendations. Our 100 year water plan today. And as I said, you know, you've heard from several nonprofits that support these proposals. We really hope to see a land development code that meets our environmental goals. [ Buzzer sounding ] Along with all of the other important goals that you've heard from today. Thank you. >> Tovo: Thank you very much, Ms. Richter. Next up is Micah king. Is Jeff heckler here? >> He's gone. >> Tovo: Thank you, Mr. King. You have three minutes. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem tovo. And thank you to the rest of the councilmembers here today. And thank you for listening at this pivotal moment. [5:43:28 PM] I know your task isn't easy and so I thank you for your time. Three quick points. First, like property owners throughout Austin, several of our clients at had you ever been Blackwell have zoning that does not allow for housing, even though the properties are ideal for housing, they're currently zoned cs, many of them, and then would be zoned f-25 under draft three of codenext. And most of those properties should allow for housing, and as another example, the central health property, former Brackenridge hospital site would not be zoned for any residential use whatsoever under codenext, and we believe that zoning it for a mixed-use would allow it to contribute a connected, compact city through downtown core zoning. Second, there are also properties that have conditional overlays that are no longer needed. And codenext zoning would actually help to not need those conditional overlays in certain instances. I know it's not always that simple, but we need to take a closer loom. >> Kitchen: Examine those properties where we can move the confrontational and move forward with more transparent zoning categories. Finally codenext is on trial because of the perception it has failed to incorporate community input. The signage chapter is a prime example of that. And there has been no stakeholder review process, no community input process, no discussion at planning commission, no process whatsoever has gone into the signage chapter. This is a violation of good governance principles, and I know that there are good reasons for not releasing it until draft three, but the fact remains that it just has not been vetted by the public yet. It would remove and modify important policies that council has agreed upon in the past, and it ignores direction from council regarding different policy matters. [5:45:37 PM] And so I ask you to examine whether we really should move forward with it T or if we should table it and pick it up after the coax process so that we can have a thorough vetting process. You all have a handout that lists the properties that reference some of these issues. And I'm here -- thank you for your time. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Is Tracy witty here? Is John [indiscernible] Here? No? Oh, yes, you have six minutes. >> Thank you. Mayor, mayor pro tem, council, thank you for the opportunity to speak and for your time, energy, wisdom as you take up challenging conversations about how to revise our land development code. I'm Tracy witty and for 17 years I've lived with my husband in sweet hills district 1. It's the best place I have ever lived and I'm grateful for the people and history I might never begun to appreciate had I landed elsewhere. We've paid consultants more than $8 million to get to draft three and nobody is happy with it. Our zoning and platting commission advised it cannot be fixed and planning commission recommended hundreds of amendments over the last few weeks, dozens of which represent a significant departure from the code and text you've asked citizens to review since even if. It's starting to look like fixing our current code is a better alternative than pushing forward on utterly divisive options as a base motion. It's not too late to take a different tact and steer towards a inclusive and citizen-led effort that will promote equitable growth along corridors and within centers not all around them. It's not too late to avoid drawing a red line through all the plans and agreements that preceded codenext. However you decide to move forward please help us sort out what Austin's current housing capacity is versus what our demog ter says we will need based on our share of regional growth versus how some members of our community aspire to increase that share. [5:47:41 PM] The base capacity and map numbers provided on presentation after presentation keep changing up and down and they have not provided a credible explanation as to why. How do we trust that a proposed solution to our housing needs is the correct one if we don't clearly understand where we are and what we're endeavoring to chief. He said he was told to use the five county projection and was given no other option. Why not? Whatever the reason why not give ourselves that option now? If you're considering using planning commission recommendations as a base motion I urge you to please not do that. I appreciate the commission's dedication and hard work but motion after motion was aimed at unwinding negotiated zoning compromises, hobbling homeowners and wiping out compatibility protections for anyone in any small scale house to quote unquote unleash the corridors. [Indiscernible] Carve out four blocks of upzoning in both directions across neighborhoods that barely have four blocks to officer? Planning commission recommended increased space and bonus heights for mixed use and main street Zones mapped along corridors and even within neighborhoods, expanded where intense uses are permitted and advised that blocks of single family duplexes and ads behind corridors be mapped with apartment zoning to turn off compatibility triggers and permit parking facility development. It was posited this would enable corridor properties to achieve their potential and parking facilities would, quote-unquote, prevent commercial creep into the neighborhoods. A special scenario for gentrifying areas would give houses behind corridors and apartment zoning that only permitted single family duplex and Adu uses unless an affordability bonus is accessed to build an apartment complex or perhaps a complex with a parking facility. The theory was this zoning would not trigger turnover or displacement and result in less demolition. Unfortunately the amendments the commission ultimately made to their corridor mapping aren't available and there was not any discussion about the basis of these anti-gentrification assertions. [5:49:49 PM] [Indiscernible] Trapping people in a zone that turns off expandability makes their housing useless desirable to themselves and others would do anything other than hasten turnover, DEM explic encroachment. It would be helpful to know the details of the analysis behind that proposal. Finally I'd like to remind you of a candid moment from the consultants that for me underscores what is at stake, last may econorthwest showed a slide about how density bonuses work. Giving away more entitlements within the same building form or giving away a bigger building form means developers can pay more for land and so more landowners may be willing to part with their properties. This suggests it is actually about induce people to give up and sell out, stripping compatibility protections and increasing land values to affect displacement, voluntary or otherwise. We have to do better that that even if it means admitting $8 million got us nothing of what we need. Please consider whether we can do better by fixing our current code rather than adopting a new code and map widely rejected as the product of an opaque and top down process. We have no zoning petition rights in this process, the proposed zoning is adding capacity that far exceeds what the city demographer estimated we need and many of the tactics read as extreme, coercive and designed to teach us no compromise we reach about how to accommodate growth will be honored. I know this is not what any of you intend and I had hope you'll find a way to restore our -- based on accurate information. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Pool: Mayor, I have a question for Ms. Witty. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Thank you, Tracy, for being here. You mentioned in your remarks that Mr. Frigenisi advised he had been told by staff to use msa numbers for housing, for the numbers of housing, rather than our city demographers and I remember the numbers on that sheet, it was like apples and Oranges, there was one number that was city of Austin and comparing with the msa and a number of us pointed out that discrepancy was confusing and shouldn't have been made. [5:52:02 PM] Can you give me -- who on the staff was it? Did Mr. Frigenisi say who on staff had directed him which numbers he should use and which was not allowed to use? >> I was told that by someone else, who was in a meeting with Mr. Frigenisi, and he said it to that person so I'd be glad to tell you who that is later. >> Pool: That would be great. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: The next speaker is Carl Reynolds. Is Scott gross here? Scott gross? What about Eric Standridge? Come on down. What about -- while you're coming down, what about Robert preliosco? What about Mary Cunningham? No? What about Mateo barnstone? You'll be up on deck here. Is Philip Wylie here? You donated your time. No? Okay. You have three minutes when you come up, but if he walks in you'll get six. And is Laura cooper here? You're signed up as number 151. You'll be the third speaker. Sir, go ahead. >> Good evening, mayor, mayor pro tem, councilmembers -- >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry, yes? Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. >> Good evening again. My name is Eric and I have been fortunate to live and work in district 1 for the last 18 years. I can only speak to my own experience but I think we all have our own version of how this place rubs off on you. For me it was the moment I realized I was advocating against my economic and professional interests and did it anyway. We don't have a perfect history of course but when given choice we tend to protect our environment, help our neighbors and advocate for those that don't have the same opportunity. All the while preserving the essence of what makes this place special. [5:54:03 PM] We are lucky to have our -- I watched hours of votes to try and comprehend the final recommendations. I am at a loss. I witnessed sweeping last minute changes to compatibility, petition rights and public land with little or no documentation to public vetting. To believe the planning commission we only have to rid ourselves of the protections of our heritage trees, neighborhood plans, public space and any sense of compatibility or petition rights and then and only then could the city be affordable. The truth is that economic and educational opportunities, the character of our neighborhoods, quality of our environment is why people want to live here. The vast majority of housing costs are created by the market. Not the code. I witnessed commissioner Anderson offer an amendment to upzone selected schools recording this is what aid wants. Is it? Zoning entitlements on any public land should be the product of public input and negotiation. We should not be curtailing the public discussion of community benefits at the same time incentivizing the shutting or sale of certain public schools. Thankfully that motion surveilled urge you to keep public zoning on public land. The recognition of our parks and schools as public space is a success of the mapping process. Petition rights do not block rezoning. The higher threshold encourages dialogue and compromise and results in better projects and more participation in the process. Three quartz Marge or the to rezone the city should be the minimum threshold for a ordinance that will categorically have more impact than an individual property rezoning. Absent a ballot measure the -- ensure that all districts are created equitably -- treated equitably, sorry. The diverse affordable neighborhood I live in and I'm here advocating for likely won't be here after codenext. We don't have the luxury of location. We are effectively a transition zone. [5:56:05 PM] Our historic schools are on the targeted list for upzoning and redevelopment, our petition rights undermined by commercial interests, direct experience with dense overgenerous entitlements -- the eratioer of historic fabric and the destruction of citizens engagement is not a model to emulate citywide. Codenext should create more equity, promote more engagement, and responsibility. [ Buzzer sounding ] -- For the next generation stewards of our city. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. You'll have six minutes, since Mr. Wylie was here. Laura cooper will be up next and then what about Cathy Smith? What about Jessica Ellie? You have donated time from Sean ockland. Is Sean here? You'll have three minutes. You'll be third. Go ahead, sir. >> Thank you, mayor, mayor pro tem and council. My name is Mateo barnstone. I'm dedicated to building places people love in central Texas. We support you moving forward with codenext using the planning commission amendments as your starting place. The narrative of a choice between quality of life on one hand and inclusivity and affordability on the other is falls. Codenext is an exercise in bothand, not either/or. By adhering to fundamental principles of urban design we can have high quality neighborhoods with a diversity of housing options for Austin's diversity of people. And we can develop the complete communities that are envisioned by imagine Austin. This isn't a new or experimental idea, it's old and time-tested. It's the way cities were built for thousands of years prior to the advent of auto oriented codes that segregate and disconnect. That is what the code does today, it segregates and it disconnects. [5:58:07 PM] In other words, it sprawls. It segregates people from each other and disconnects people from their daily needs, wants, and desires. I submit that this is not the path forward for a city with Austin's ideals and values. Codenext offers us the possibility of proximity and integration, and a network with complete communities. A network city with complete communities. We should aspire to have the city that makes room for the butcher, the baker, the candle stick maker, the banker, the lawyer, the doctor, the coder, and the laborer. They're all essential and they should all be welcome. Our current code was state-of-the- art in 1984. The high watermark of suburbanized city codes. Three decades of amendments have resulted in a dysfunctional mess that prioritizes planning around cars and penalize development that emulates Austin's historic neighborhoods. While planning for your honorrism and complete communities is possible, it is a very heavy lift now. A builder with vision must have the wherewithal to withstand years of public litigation and very patient capital, and as long as those conditions prevail, walkable urbanism will be rare, precious, and priced out of the range of most people's means. We need to make complete communities the default pattern of development, not the exception. We will forward our specific recommendations and requests that we sent along to the planning commission. Our big picture suggestions here are deemphasize auto code and planning, allow for people to live in close proximity to their daily needs, wants, and desires, plan for human scaled streets and places, require the things that will make walking a useful pleasure, proximity to destinations, shade, sidewalks, active and safe streets. [6:00:08 PM] Allow a diversity of housing types for the diversity of Austin's residents, and take a longview. Consider the city we want to create, not the city we've inherited. I'm going to steal from [indiscernible] Here. Consider the client, a slow, linear, horizontal, max three miles an hour walking creature with a great interest in other people. We're all human. Let's plan for a city built for humans. Ahead of you are hundreds of decisions. If you make enough of the right ones, you will move the city towards this promise of proximity, integration, and walkability. I thank you very much for your time. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Hi. Laura complete thank you guys for hanging in there for all of this. I came in here with note cards. Over the course of the day I've seen a number of ways my concerns can be other people's hopes. It's not so black and white as when I first showed up today. I can see how hard it is to reconcile such a wide array of beliefs and fears. I think we have a tendency to categorize things into good and bad. And I've been guilty of that today. I arrived up in arms ready to rally for single-family homes in central Austin. I still advocate for the rights of homeowners in central Austin but I see the fear of others that without density, there's no housing. And I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. This day has helped me to crystallize my concerns. Being against codenext should not make one an entitled nimbe. Being for codenext should not make one a greedy developer or a culture-crushing millennial. [6:02:09 PM] I believe there are enough drafts of this codenext that I cannot support it without clarity on how to address these issues. The ones that I still have are the lack of neighborhood input into what's happening into the communities, the transition Zones which in my neighborhood, which is heritage, eliminates the entire neighborhood. If you go in five blocks in either direction from Guadalupe and Lamar and 29th and 38th, that's it. That's our whole neighborhood. So I'm concerned with how -- whether or not this is meant to wipe out our neighborhood. I live in a historic home. I have no idea how that will be impacted by any of the new zoning. And the other problem that I see is that the development -- staying on the corridor is important to me. I think that's fine. I agree with it, but 34 they 34thstreet is being treated as a corridor that understand that goes right through the million dollars of the neighborhood. I believe everybody here wants to do the right thing for the city. This needs to honor the people. I see how the historic neighborhoods want to keep local bars, local businesses alive, and I'm worried about what will happen with the changes that are to come. This is the biggest game changer I've seen in my 30 years here, and my biggest hope is that we can just slow this down so that the people can have their fears addressed so that we can make sure that the changes that are necessary are actually benefiting the people who we're hoping they benefit. We want to look at who is being benefited by the density that you're looking at. Who is going to be moving in and who is going to be being displaced by it? And I don't think that moving this quickly is going to help us answer that. I'm going to try to believe that this is not about the almighty dollar, and I'm going to try to believe that this is really about affordable housing. [6:04:15 PM] I'm -- [buzzer sounding] That's it. >> Mayor Adler: Excuse me. Excuse me. Miss? Ma'am? Ma'am? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't catch your name and I don't know who -- >> My name is Laura cooper. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Cooper? >> Uh-huh. >> Mayor Adler: The way you began, what you said, is my overwhelming conclusion here today as well. Thank you. >> Wonderful. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Jessica Ellie. >> Ellie. >> Mayor Adler: Sorry about that sand Sean is not here, so you have three minutes. Peter morales, is he here? You'll be at this podium if you want to come on down. Is Arlene Youngblood here? You'll be up third. Please proceed. >> Hi. Thank you for your time. Bon apetit to those members in the back. I hope you're listening. I'm co- chair of the govalle neighborhood association. And I had few slides I wanted to share with you. You can just fast-forward to the second one. These are some pictures that any neighbor sent me this morning. It illustrates what value was in the land. I mean, gentrification is something people have been talking about, but we had this conference pullup -- those three bus loads came three times. They brought 200 people, not from around town. They were there to learn about house-flipping and how to get the most value out of the land. And I went up and talked to them about how maybe there are other ways to treat property. I did a little bit more research, and I actually think it's kind of a pyramid scheme. Anyway, we need help devaluing the land. So can you click to the next one? Govalle has done a lot. We're not a nimbe neighborhood. We're going to have the first housing first apartment building. That's where you put homeless in a house. Yep. That's in our neighborhood. We also have the Jeremiah a project in the govalle neighborhood, which does wonderful things. [6:06:20 PM] I think you could help them most by -- could you go to the next slide? Okay. So the proposed codenext is keeping as much of it as possible, and I would argue it would be better to change those mu-4s and the gray ones are the ones that were light industrial, to change these corridors on 7th and Cesar Chavez to mu 1 and mu 2, doing so would make the land less valuable. What I've seen is, it's just luxury developers that want to come in and build apartment buildings. If you make it so they can build less apartment buildings, the value of the land will be less, and then in exchange, the market would be cheaper for groups like gndc to buy land to do their projects. I'd rather see groups like gndc building affordable housing than the density bonus. That's pretty much all I want to ask, is that those units, that 7th street and Cesar Chavez, not be considered a heavy use corridor. We have airport boulevard for that, and it would really help preserve the character of the neighborhood if, instead, those were changed to mu1 or mu2, even still with the density bonus you can have 30 units per acre, and we have really big lots in this neighborhood, so we'd still get some pretty hefty developments with that. And also, I just wanted to say learning about co-ops earlier was kind of cool, having those come out and talked the neighborhood, if you could incentivize that as well. That's all I had to say. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. So before -- let me check here. Other names. Is don laten bur Woll here? >> [Speaking Spanish] Thank you for giving me the time. My name is Peter moles. I'm vice president of morales development. I'm also a district 5 resident. I live in the city of Austin. [6:08:20 PM] And I work in the city of Austin. I'm actually a land developer and I've learned a lot from being here today. I heard a lot of very interesting and very informative information from a lot of folks. I support codenext in its current form. I think it needs a lot of work. I think it's moving in the right direction, but I am here to talk about affordability, which is what the reason I came here, I'm speaking as an Austin resident. And I think that part of the problem in the city of Austin as far as affordability goes has to do with the city of Austin. The city of Austin makes it hard for us developers to make properties affordable. Our tap fees, water recovery fees, and meter fees and the -- the permitting fees have tripled in the last three years. And we have to turn around and give that to the buyer. We -- once you got into the city fees, realtor fees, our interest on our loans and everything else, we're putting a $300,000 home on a $200,000 lot. You've got all those fees associated to it. We turned it into a little $300,000 house, we turned it into a 600 or $700,000 house. A lot of us developers don't make the kind of money that a lot of people think we make. We just make a living. And I'm here today because I think that doing density will help, but a lot of the problem has to do with the lots themselves. So a lot that was purchased 20 years ago for $2,000 is selling for $250,000 now. The person that sold that lot made more money than me. And sometimes realtors make a lot more money than me. And right now I think a lot of people have a misconception of developers, thinking that we're out trying to tear up neighborhoods, and we're not. We're trying to make a living. And I really think that something needs to be done to make housing affordable inside the city of Austin. [6:10:23 PM] Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Hold on a second, sir. Councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: I'm sorry, circumstances I didn't catch your name. >> My name is Peter morales. >> Kitchen: Thank you, Peter. >> Mayor Adler: On deck is Arlene Youngblood here? Why don't you come on down. Sorry I skipped over you. Sir, go ahead. >> Mayor, councilmembers, I'm don laten Burwell. I'm an architect, a resident of Austin 34 years and brentwood homeowner since 1984. I'm also one of your appointees to the board of adjustment on which I proudly serve. I'm here today to deliver a letter from the brentwood neighborhood planning contact team in opposition to codenext as it is today. Our neighborhood plan was enacted in 2005 after almost two years and hundreds or maybe even thousands of hours of volunteer time. At the heart of our plan was the desire to maintain our neighborhood character. To ensure that goal we supported greater density versus duplex development and ads within the core of our neighborhood while championing high density along Lamar and burnet road corridors, including vmu. Now that willingness on our part in addressing housing supply and affordability in central Austin has put a target on our back. Sandwiched between two designated corridors, the very essence of our community is at stake. In codenext, we've lost the hard-fought protections of compatibility, neighborhood plans, and other measures that were meant to preserve existing central city neighborhoods as promised in imagine Austin. Please don't misconstrue brentwood's dedication to inclusiveness to being abandonment of the core goals of our neighborhood plan. The codenext document process and administration are structurally and fundamentally flawed, and central city neighborhoods like brentwood will be the sacrificial lambs of this ill-conceived effort. [6:12:35 PM] We ask that you join the thousands of dedicated and concerned Austin citizens who oppose this unfortunate rewrite of our land development code. I thank you for your time. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. On deck, we're going to double back and get to 102 and 107, yash [indiscernible] -- No, no you're next. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: But on deck after you will be him, and after him billboard Monica Guzman. Please go ahead. >> Good evening everyone, mayor, councilmembers and staff. My name is Arlene young blue. I'm a long- time east Austin resident and district 1 is my district. I advocate for east Austin pools. I serve on the montopolis friendship board and have participated as a consultant on affordable housing for the city of Austin in 2016. I, too, have been affected by the high property taxes and have had to protest my taxes for the past three years. Codenext needs to be reevaluated for its potential effect on supporting and perpetuating a resegregation of our city based on race, class, cast, and particularly our senior citizens. I know that the appraisal district determines property taxes for its citizens. My concern is that the developers and business people, they pay their portion. Also, alternatively housing needs to be available throughout the whole city of Austin, not just one particular district, that it's distributed throughout. And also that when there is affordable housing, that Ada compliance there is for those new residences and also that our senior citizens, those of us who are getting older, that we are addressed as well. Thank you so much for your attention. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Monica Guzman will be on deck, and then is Zenobia Joseph here? [6:14:36 PM] Ms. Joseph, you'll be third up. Go ahead, sir. >> Hello city councilmembers. My name is yash [indiscernible]. I live in district 10. I am not native austinite. I was born and raised in this very little city called Mumbai in India. Just got 12.5 million people spread across 253 square miles. That's about 53,000 people per square mile. Old story, I'm not going to bore you all today. Y'all have heard a lot. I grew up in a 600-square-foot flat with nine of my family members. That includes my grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, their kids, my sister, and my parents. The kids were fortunate enough to share the bedroom along with all the other elders, not having to live in the living room. I know this is very small as compared to what the American standards usually recommend. But thankfully, I was very fortunate. After attending grad school, I moved to Austin in 2013. And fortunate enough I was that I found an employer that was responsive to my Visa so that I could be employed. Austin gave me a very good chance and a career to move ahead in life and give really good prospects for family, and hopefully the family that I do intend to grow has a lot more opportunities than what I have seen. So to me, Austin isn't losing its character. It's building its character as time goes by. Slow and steady. The city doesn't need to market itself. [6:16:36 PM] [Indiscernible] Itself is pulling it in. I'm pretty new to codenext. I've been -- I've been listening, hearing, reading, so I'm really surprised at how much emphasis is really put on neighborhood character. And how it really does matter if we should really try to preserve this neighborhood character, by restricting ourselves and not growing, and letting more dense housing come into these areas. Additionally, I also want to mention that if we do have these neighborhood themes, these contact themes as we call it, we had -- I heard a lot of different neighborhood council, committee members, representatives come in here and speak. I frankly do not know -- I live in district 10 -- I do not know if in my area if there's a neighborhood council meeting, where it's held, what's going on. So love for this cannot be a mandated person to person meeting. There should be -- [buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes. Hold on. Excuse me. Sir? Councilmember alter? >> Alter: I'm your councilmember. I'm councilmember alter. If you email us at district 10 at austintexas.gov we can put you on our newsletter and you can find out when we're having meetings and other stuff. We'd love to have you participate. We only have one neighborhood in district 10 that has contact themes and neighborhood plans, which is why, in terms of that particular connection, that hasn't been made. We only have one of those billions in district 10. >> Thank you, ma'am. I'll keep that in mind. Look for my email. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. After Ms. Guzman and zennobia, James stone oaker, is he here? [6:18:40 PM] What about Susan Thompson? No? What about Tom Wald? I'm now 173. Eilers? What about Sarah Simpson? Okay. You'll be third up. Ms. Guzman. >> Good evening. My name is Monica Guzman, native austinite and district 4 resident. I want to start by quoting mayor Adler from his 2018 state of the city address when speaking about codenext. Folks, we're going to take as much time as we need to get this right. Also a few sentences later, he said we can get it done this year. In my opinion, those are very contradictory statements. Now, I first learned about codenext during the summer of 2013. I attended a codenext listening session in kealing middle school. I was aamazed at the cafeteria and disamazed by the lack of diversity. It's surrounded by multiple rental properties, mainly populated by low income people of color, yet I didn't see them there. Fast-forward 2016. The community, I questioned why they weren't scheduled one per district, why in low income communities, why no interpretation services for multilink really refugee communities? I was informed there wasn't enough demand for interpretation services to meet the 5% threshold. For starters, the 5% threshold is for translation, written services, not interpretation. Second, how can anyone, any community make a request for services when they had no idea codenext was happening? The codenext team did not schedule an event for the Spanish speaking community until June 28th, 2017. Let me repeat that. June 28th, 2017, four years into the process and three weeks after the comment deadline on draft 1. In October 2017, the zoning and platting commission held a listening session at the Asian American resource center. [6:20:41 PM] To my knowledge, I was the only resident of the area in attendance. That speaks to lack of outreach in getting the word out there. I was also saddened by the welcome of interpretation services, considering it's a diverse, multilingual community. Now, 2018, the public hearings. Three of them, centrally located making it challenging, if not impossible, for the most vulnerable to attend. The one hearing in the eastern crescent at the rec center lacked certified interpreters. City staff and contracted public relations failing to engage from the get-go. Do we see a pattern here? Continuation of systemic inequities. Now, I'll credit the attempts and successes in providing transportation, translation, and interpretation services, refreshments, children's activities, but those did not come without a push from the community. I'm going to shift gears for a moment to share an observation I made about a week ago driving north on 35. As I entered the downtown area, seeing the ongoing construction, I realized I wasn't seeing Austin. I was seeing Dallas. I don't mind visiting Dallas, but I don't want to live there. I'm not Andy growth or antigrowing but Austin is home to almost one million people. It's not a movie set. Native residents of Austin know when you build, they will come. They're already here. This is evidenced by rapid unmanaged growth tipping the gentrification needle, resulting in economic segregation and displacement. I do not understand the rush for an approval vote considering codenext is a flawed process, a process where the city put the cart before the horse, when planning a community, you must first engage the community. Plan together. Then and only then write the code to support that plan. In closing, I ask you to take a moment to pull up the city of Austin organization chart and notice who sits at the top. [6:22:44 PM] The Austin community is boss. Not developers, not real estate entities, and certainly not those yet to come. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. After Ms. Joseph and Ms. Simpson, is John David Carson here? You'll be up third. If Ms. Simpson would come on down to the podium. Go ahead. >> Thank you, nare, councilmembers. I'm Ms. Joseph. This is related to 23-9, transportation. I specifically wanted to mention that there is language in the draft that specifies the sidewalks and so to Ms. Youngblood's comment, I would ask you to make sure that you comply with Americans with disabilities act. It is specified, I want to say it's 23-9(e) 6010. I want you to recognize there's some permissive language there so if you could just make it specific. Then there's another section that talks about three- quarters of a mile. That is exact amount of distance that's required for paratransit. So if you could just make sure that the language is similar and that it is actually mandatory and not permissive. I do want to recognize that you do have an imagine Austin on page 3-112, Parmer lane and dessau. However, what I want you to understand is that if you do not have an interlocal agreement with capital metro you're just speaking in vain. So one of the things that's problematic, mayor, is that dessau and Parmer, I actually asked twice on December 5th, 2016, for them to take a look at the growth in that area. You have Samsung to Dell, and three moving there by 2019. But the staff never did take an analysis of the growth in that area like they did in Hyde park. So I want you to recognize, while there is that language in imagine Austin, that corridor actually has no transportation. [6:24:44 PM] So you have affordable housing in the middle of Parmer lane and it's approximately three miles for you to get to the bus stop on dessau and Shropshire. The 392 bus route. When you go further down Parmer lane, when you're at Parmer and loop 1, I want you to recognize that you have approximately 93 people that Deboard the bus. Two-thirds of the people go to the shopping center to work there. Starting tomorrow, because we're on the eve of cap remap, I want you to recognize, mayor, respectfully, let's just call an ace a ace, a spade a spade, and racism what it is. They have actually eliminated the service for people that have to go to work there. They have to walk to the bus stop from metric. However, I want you to recognize once again in councilmember kitchen's district on convict hill, 2.9 riders board the bus there, 30 minutes. What I want you to understand is that it was mentioned earlier that you need to adopt the corridors that are mentioned in the plan by the planning commission. However, there is watershed restriction. On November 7, 2016, at the work session, capital metro has it on their slides, and you can find the video online as well. What I want you to understand is while some people might want that to be a transit corridor, there are restrictions there and you need to look at the watershed restrictions, mayor. I want you to understand as well, when it comes to affordable housing that on [indiscernible], the individuals that live at the reserves, Springdale, will have to walk all the way to H-E-B, Mueller, to catch the bus starting tomorrow. [Buzzer sounding] What I want you to understand is that you do have an example of an interlocal agreement from November 15th or so, 2015, as it relates to the public involvement between aid, the city of Austin, and also capital metro and I would ask you to use that as a model for this as well. Thank you so much. >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry. John David Carson will be up next, and then the speaker after that will be Eric Goff. [6:26:44 PM] Go ahead, please. >> Hello, members of the council. My name is Sarah Simpson. I live on Patterson of a in district 9. I'm a practicing architect and urban designer. As someone who works with land development codes on a daily basis, I'd like you to forge ahead with the codenext process. The code now a relic of the 20th century is today an impediment to the overall well-being of our community. I've seen it firsthand where I purchased my home six years ago, where it encourages super size mansions for the wealthy and prohibitive unit maximums, it makes impossible housing types that could serve lower and middle income households. It perpetuates our city's reliance on the automobile. Where it excludes more people from being able to live within our existing city limits, it incentives low density sprawl that worsens traffic congestion and eats away into the hill country and agriculture lands. It's doing all of Austin's citizens in the regional environment a disservice to benefit only a few, which is why the current rewrite is imperative. Calls to abandon this effort are simply sad reminders that when the going gets tough, many people would prefer to sweep others' problems under the rug and simply maintain the status quo with what I can only suspect is an underlying motive to delay into perpetuity. However, this opportunity to rewrite the code is an opportunity to confront 21st century issues with 21st century solutions, and to revert back to 20th century code would be an embarrassment for our city. I urge you to please continue forward in this process, no matter how long it takes. That being said, the current draft needs serious work and streamlining [indiscernible] The planning commission's lengthy process. I'm also here today to ask ask that you redirect codenext trajectory to ensure more environmentally sustainable future for all. [6:28:50 PM] Revise codenext to allow for housing diversification to serve more diverse populous, to enable more equitable geographical area of housing supply and reverse exclusionary housing trends to incentivize multimodal outcomes and prioritize active and shared transportation, to lower the burden of high transportation costs associated with mandated private car ownership, to accommodate growth within our existing city limits and relieve pressure on ex urban sprawl. The best place to start is to eliminate arbitrary unit maximums, reduce minimum lot sizes, eliminate parking minimums, ease residential compatibility standards, and increase allowable building types across all neighborhoods. At the same time, neighborhood controls need to be neutralized amongst all citizens for the rights of renters and homeowners. If research and holistic data is allowed to guide the process, you can't go wrong. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Is Aubrey Dale here? Aubrey Dale? No? What about Jamie Maxwell? No? Andrew Joseph? You'll be third person up. Go ahead, sir. >> Mayor and council, my name is John David Carson and I live in district 9 in the Clarksville neighborhood. There are a myriad of issues related to codenext I'd love to touch upon. With three mints I'm going to address just one. Parking requirements are development standard above all others that shapes our cities. Research now indicates parking requirements as the fuel that drives auto dominated sprawl development and negative byproducts. What do we know? We know parking lots unnecessarily increase runoff and degrade water equality, creates vacant spaces between homes and businesses that prevent walking and biking. We know parking is an inefficient use of land that otherwise could be occupied by productive uses such as housing or places of employment. We know that this land waste increases scarcity and forces people to literally sprawl out in search of housing. We know this creates barriers to affordability as people are forced to own money pits on wheels and lose large percentages of their life sitting stressed out in a car instead of being economically productive or spending time with their family. [6:31:05 PM] There are health epidemics and results in 40,000 auto deaths per year. It erodes our social connections. We know building and maintaining rose sucks up all the transportation funding leaving next to nothing for investment in equitable, efficient, and sustainable public transit and transportation options. I'm not being dramatic when I say we know that minimum parking requirements are the culprit that sparks this vicious cycle of destruction by requiring loads of parking that falsely appears free to users. It's not an exaggeration to say our citizenry has been trained to act as though the right to a free parking space is more basic an American value than a right to housing. Subsidized parking and driving is a policy decision that our citizens -- our cities have forced upon us by minimum off street parking requirements. But it's not an inevitability and we are ready to change. There's been a double digit drop in the percentage of Texans over 16 that even have a driver's license. In 199489% were licensed. That dropped to 75% in 2015. This is an easy fix, and I applaud the leadership and courage of the planning commissioners that recommended that minimum parking requirements be removed entirely from codenext. Of course, removing parking minimums would not mean there won't be parking. The car is still a useful tool that has its place and developers and their banks will continue to require off street parking for their products. Where parking is provided, Ada requirements will apply and a baseline accessibility requirement if a project opts to forgo parking. I urge you to get rid of parking everywhere in Austin and unable a more affordable, sustainable, and healthier Austin. Pass and improve codenext for the future and not based on the mistakes of the past. Thank you for your service and for your time. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Is Jamie Maxwell here? Andrew Joseph? Carla Kenyon? James Anderson? Scott Mccarter? [6:33:09 PM] Jessica Glenny? Okay. You'll be up in just -- in fact, I think you're up next. Is John David Carson here? >> I just spoke. >> Mayor Adler: You just spoke. Got it. Go ahead. >> Howdy. I'm Eric Goff. I live in district 3. And I could talk about the details of the policy before you, but I think you know my opinions on most of that instead, I want to express that this is really a unique opportunity for you to decide the future of our planet. One of the key issues in the world today, not just in Austin, is what is the future of cities? Cities are increasingly where people want to live and are moving to, and as a result that, we have this policy crunch. We've created a scarcity of housing, of places to work, and many of the things that have led to the charts that you saw of people's home values going up and up and up. And that scarcity of housing affects people's lives every day. And if you could address scarcity and move towards abundance, you will improve the lives of everyone in Austin and set an example for the rest of the world on how to have a city that moved from the 20th century to the 22nd century. You could work to eliminate or significantly mitigate the 35% of our carbon emissions that come from transportation by allowing people to easily choose to walk to a convenient location in their neighborhood. And we can set an example for the rest of the country on how a city can grow up. That's the choice before you. And I hope that you seize that opportunity rather than trying to come up with a compromise for compromise's sake that leaves no one happy, everyone dissatisfied, and for some other city to hopefully finally address this new emerging concern for how a city can be an engine for creativity, for culture, for people being people. [6:35:34 PM] I would argue that it's increasingly true that the natural ecosystem for humans is cities. And this is your chance to really achieve that and move forward with a values-driven approach to this topic that can make a global impact and make you all in the history books. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Is Carla -- come on up. Is -- then you'll go there. What's your name? Have I called you yet? >> Andrew Joseph. >> Mayor Adler: Andrew Joseph. Okay. You can come up here. You'll be right after him. Go ahead. >> Okay. Thank you for all your hard work and for listening. My name is Jessica Glenny. I'm from South Africa and have lived in Austin almost six years. I'm now an advocate for affordable housing and sustainability. I don't own a car. I support codenext but recognize that it is far from perfect because it does not allow for enough development along the imagine Austin corridors, does not incentivize enough affordable housing, and it still supports low density, car-oriented development. But it's a start. It would be an oversimplification to say that this is purely a supply and demand issue, but we have to look at the things that we can and cannot influence. We cannot stop people from moving here. That's the demand side. Even if we could, that would be protectionist, exclusive, and unjust. But we can influence the supply side. I see Austin's supply side as a pie with more people coming to the table, the just thing to do is to make more pie. There are two ways to grow it. One is to grow out, sprawl, the other is to grow up, density. Another way to increase access to the pie is to cut it up into smaller pieces so that more people can have some allow people to be innovative and live in small units. [6:37:42 PM] The first option, sprawl, represents environmental degradation as we turn our beautiful greenbelt into suburbia and more roads, resulting in traffic congestion, and transportation not being viable due to not having enough people to fill seats on buses in low density routes. What is worse, though, sprawl will result in more socioeconomic segregation because what will happen is that people with the best seat at the table, with the biggest budget, the highest bid, will be able to have the pie with the houses in the most desirable location, in the center of Austin. The rest will be pushed further and further out. We're seeing this due to the current code. If we keep single family in the heart of Austin, it will have great character but be too expensive for most of us. The second option, growing up and increasing density, represents accommodating more people in a sustainable way that will support multimodal public transport. This needs to be environmentally friendly and resilient with green infrastructure. We've heard a lot of fear today that increased density will only exacerbate the crisis. Please pass a code that encourages missing middle and truly affordable housing, not just more luxury condos and mcmansions. The tension is that this density represents change, which can be scary for some. Unfortunately, we need the change to change the city fabric to accommodate everyone. People think that increased density is increase in cost, but the root of the problem is increasing demand, which we cannot change with too little supply. There must be a way to grow while maintaining the special essence of Austin. What does that mean to me? It's not about what the housing or neighborhood character looks like, it's about people. [Buzzer sounding] >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Austin means inclusivity and diversity. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Come on down and speak. Come on. Just before you start, is Tom -- is Kyle Hoskins here? Okay. [6:39:42 PM] You'll be next P. Go ahead. >> Hello. My name's Andrew Joseph. I'm a renter in Clarksville, and I moved to Austin ten years ago from a north Texas suburb to go to UT. Back then you could find a one-bedroom apartment in Hyde park for about $500 a month. Today a student is lucky to find that same place for under $900 a month. I ask you to consider the fate of that person who can't afford that kind of rent increase. Do they simply disappear off the face of the Earth? No. So they move further from the city where housing is much -- where housing is more affordable, but where jobs, transit, parks, connections, and affordable housing are much less -- sorry -- are much less common, where they spend long hours sitting despondent in a wall of traffic along I-35. I've heard a great deal from a lot of people speaking about the importance of neighborhood character. But what is the character of a neighborhood which ban issues members of its communities to an isolated corn field in Williamson county because it refuses to build housing to support them? It's not restricted to those wealthy enough to purchase a home, it is a right of everyone. I urge you to vote -- urge you to vote for a code that allows for abundant affordable housing. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Is Tom Wald here? Why don't you come on down. Go ahead, sir. >> Hi. I'm Kyle Hoskins, and I'm pro planning commission progress, pro $300 million housing, pro right to stay, pro clt's, pro widespread middle housing within a quarter mile of corridors, pro relaxed compatibility to make that happen and pro parking requirement reform. So many positives related policy tools and tools within codenext, I'm looking forward to y'all implementing to help curb the unintended consequences of rapid growth. [6:41:45 PM] I agree with the mantra that we need to focus on the people that live here now. But that's the opposite of what the current code in draft 3 map accomplish. Instead of providing opportunity for the children and grandchildren of those who live here, the code acts to limit land for the effluent people moving here. In a housing market, the wealthy tend to win. How do we keep the wealthy from taking over our neighborhoods? Right to stay policies and other subsidies can help ensure Austin is inclusive of other income residents. But ensuring the middle class has a place to live in Austin comes down the-to-a lesson we teach our kids. Sharing. Because we have limited land and the richest get priority, sharing is critical. Sharing the cost of land drives down housing costs and better yet, triplexes, fourplexes and multiplexes tend to be less favored by wealthy folks, giving middle class families a better chance in the housing market. Where do we share more land? There's a consensus that we should share along corridors. But the disagreement appears to be how much sharing? The draft 3 map puts most of the housing opportunities directly on corridors. But I imagine not many families prefer to raise their kids on the same block as a busy street. I believe extending middle housing out a quarter mile from the corridors with at least r3 zoning will be enormous benefit to the middle class now and over the next 100 years as these shared homes filter down. Speaking of the future, it's widely expected that in 20-some years, the total number of personally owned cars in the United States will be less than the total today. I believe it's short-sighted to require parking in the quarter mile along corridors. Given our community values and the imagine Austin plan, I believe the nine items I mentioned in the opening to be consensus items and I look forward to the implementation in which ever forms y'all deem best. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mr. Wald is going to speak, and then I'm going to ask is James Anderson here? [6:43:49 PM] What about Mary Owens? Mary Owens is here? Why don't you come on down. Is Bobby levinski here? Bobby levinski? No? Tyler Stowell? You'll be third person up. Could, sir. >> Thank you very much for your time. One thing that I was talking about a friend about a year ago about one thing I would have liked to have seen with this process. First of all, my name is Tom Wald, I live in cherrywood, district 9, boggy creek neighborhood area. I was speaking with a friend about a year ago, and said that ideally, there would be a values -- people would be able to talk about their values and then discuss the facts of how reimplement those values and that would be what the codenext process would be about. I think that would have been something that would have had to have been led by a nonprofit or community organization. And I think there's been hints of that here and there, but I think a lot of things, a lot of times, some of our worst values aren't made public and those are nevertheless being incorporated into this. So I want to just list some of the values that I have and just say what that has led me to want out of codenext. So I support housing. I support affordable housing. Housing the homeless, affordable transportation, families and other people, a diversity of people living in our city. Aging and thriving in place. I'm against displacement. I'm against people having to drive so far. I support a stable climate. I support Austin action against climate change. I support lowering our costs to meet our local public needs. I support bicycling in major part because most austinites through surveys want and -- want to be able to bike more, yet are held back because of how we built our city, both road designs and distances we've created. I support walkable neighborhoods and so does just about everyone else as evidenced by high demands. Better transit, vision zero, zero transportation fatalities and zero serious injuries. I support trees, parks, clean air. I also value my neighborhood and I value Austin. [6:45:53 PM] Therefore, I support an opportunity for a land development code to advance those values. And I support more housing in high opportunity areas near job centers. I support the choice to not build car parking as long as Ada accessible parking is available. I support smaller lot sizes. I support facilitating more six- plexes. For example, other policy changes that support that, values varied by many others. I want to add something, this is not in rebuttal to you, councilmember Houston, but just something that I've heard throughout the discussion about neighborhood plans. I've served on the upper boggy creek neighborhood planning team for a number of years. I've served on neighborhood organizations for much -- probably most of my adult life, and I believe in neighborhood organizing. One of my observations, though, such organizations fail in so many ways they fail to be representative of their geographic areas. City audit of neighborhood planning teams found mine to be one of the best in this regard but even our current non-compliant bylaws put Texas gerrymandering to shame. There's a lot of -- it's bad. Furthermore, neighborhood planning teams are ill equipped to address region wide issues, even though I commend the mostly civil and informed conversations we have at our neighborhood planning team. [Buzzer sounding] I've lived in my neighborhood over some years. I'm concerned that neighborhood plans don't serve the common good. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Mary Owens. What about Tyler Stowell. Come on down. After Tyler is chivas Watson here? Okay. What about Rachel Zuniga? No? So you'll have three minutes. You'll be up third. Oh, there she is. You'll have six minutes and you'll be up third. Go ahead Sunday hello. >> Hello.I'm Mary Owens. Our group was founded in 2015. [6:47:53 PM] We have members are who rent, own, or operate a business in zilker. After discussions, workshops, listening sessions and online voting, we established a position on codenext. Overall, our organization supports codenext, draft 3. And we've made a couple of -- with a couple of improvements we recommend. We strongly support the changes to auxiliary dwelling units, particularly that adus can be in front of the main structure which will foster more preserving the little old houses and allowing the larger new house to be built in back. We support allowing duplexes on the 5,000-square-foot lots that will allow for more infill development. We support the set back averaging, instead of having is 25 feet, there's a lot of glad to see that those people can continue to build close. We support the reductions in parking. We do not support the height restrictions, particularly in zilker, we had really hoped to see third stories being allowed and increased far to allow for that. We're very disappointed to see that there's still this garage door issue in zilker, that there's some people who call code enforcement, if you put a garage door on your carport because technical it puts you above far. We hoped that issue would resolve. It has not. On environmental things, friends of zilker does not support adding language about no adverse impact on residential lots. I was -- the zilker report can't begin to touch -- I spoke to y'all twice about my garden wall that I was trying to build because I didn't want my house to flood and I couldn't meet the no adverse impact because my little wall would cause a puddle in the neighbor's yard. The city eventually did a $42,000 study, thank you, to determine I can have a garden wall and not have my house flood had they don't want to see strong environmental regulation in our neighborhood. [6:50:02 PM] It's not needed or practical on little lots. You can't have affordable development if you're spending $40,000 on engineering work. Let me think of the other things. We are against the occupancy limits. Currently the occupancy for duplexes is six. We believe that's too low. We would like to see the occupancy for duplexes be higher. We don't -- we haven't seen a problem with stealth in our neighborhood. We would welcome having more people being able to live in units if there's room for them reasonably. We support living the impervious cover for sf -- whatever they are, r2 now, at 35%. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Pool: Mr. Mayor? If you could send that copy to us if you haven't already. >> I will. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Is Diane Larson here? You'll be up third. >> Thanks, mayor and council for the opportunity to speak today. I'm Tyler Stowell. I'm architect and homeowner in the highland neighborhood. I'm co-chair of Austin's codenext advocacy task force, but I'm speaking today on my own behalf. My career as an architect in the city has been a good one so far. I didn't have trouble finding work after graduating from UT. I started out working for a well-respected architect designing high end homes in west Austin but found the work to be unrewarding, despite the incredible design freedom and huge budgets. The luxurious homes became monotonous, and while appreciative of the process and product, it was hardly demographic, in fact, they were the top 1%. I found my way into commercial and multifamily architecture, recently focusing student housing in west campus. The work is rewarding in that it provides homes for more people close to their work and school, and the clients are a sharp contrast to the luxury home market. These are large development corporations and real estate investment trusts making calculated investments to maximize profit. [6:52:06 PM] That's not to say there aren't common goals between profit-seeking developers and the general public. The return on investment equals more homes for more people, more parkland, better streetscapes and tax base for city services. Sometimes we want what they want. But this type of architecture still isn't scratching my itch. These large developments are expensive and complicated, involves a team of consultants and years before -- years of work before coming to fruition. Sometimes plans are squander. These large developments are risk averse and generic. They overestimate the needs for parking due to conservative lending institutions, and when tens of millions of financing dollars are on the table, it's hard to blame them. These large developments have a tricky -- have tricky details and often cut corners. Many of these developers are based in other cities or states and profits rarely stay in this community. The type of architecture I yearn for is nearly impossible. It's enter between a luxurious home and family block. Auto four flex metroplex, apartment building or three flat, a cornerstone on the ground floor. The type of architecture I'm passionate about is not the 1% or giant development corporation, tights local developer who wants to provide modest housing for everyone. It's the couple who wants to live on the ground floor of a three-story townhouse and reretire on the passive income coming in from the two rental units above them. For the you'll entrepreneur who wants to build a store front and live above it but can't afford expensive underground parking. The type of architecture we need is missing middle. I believe there would be a ground swell of small local developers who would make the dream a reality if given the opportunity. I want to provide neighborhood scaled housing in traditional mainstream developments that aren't allowed in today's code. Please allow me to fulfill my dream. The package of the planning commission amendments take an important step forward in this direction, allowing compact and connected development. [6:54:07 PM] [Buzzer sounding] Through. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. So Chris Allen. Is Chris Allen here? No? What about Regina Allen? No? Teddy? You have six minutes. >> It doesn't matter where I come from. I've lived in district 1. Ms. Houston knows how well I labor there. Pio, been in your district as well. Greg, your district. Jimmy, you know I lived in your district. And currently I'm in Ms. Allison's district. That means I care about the city. Really. But in that, I've gained a true care for the city. No matter where you are. Whether you're in Brodie hills or wells branch. I care. And we have a collective of people who also care. We are urging you to reconsider this housing code. With all due respect to my councilmember, on may 16th, I turned 31. I celebrate no birthdays, so I decided to celebrate it at the town hall meeting. A codenext town hall meeting where everybody with codenext questions, but nobody knew about the people's plan. Nobody knew that just the day before you all had allowed a resolution until August 31st. I thought that was a bit confusing and I thought I'd speak up. I was the only black man. There was one other Latino, but I was the only person under 38. I was the only person who worked in restaurants on 183. The only person who worked in the retail businesses on 183. So I thought I spoke for underrepresented minority. This is the next biggest step in the long historical process where the landlord and big money liquidate work with families for their own narrow gain, dressing it up in whatever words appeal to most white liberals when it was smart growth the focus was all on the environment. [6:56:12 PM] When the focus was paternalism towards communities of color, we called that urban revitalization. That joke. Now the buzz word is affordability, and that's what they're promising. You have been told over and over again that you can't use zoning to make our city more affordable, so we know this is a lie. The truth is that the codenext initiative will make the rich richer and drive working families out of Austin. Point- blank, period, and Pio, you aren't looking at me, but that's in your district. It's your district. Ora, in your district. With all respect. What's really terrible is when you know the history but you're forced to do it over again. Don't repeat the mistakes of Austin's past. I think we've had a plethora of testimony today from all sides of Austin that have showed you we oppose codenext. This is on the basis of two major concerns regarding the policies harmful impacts on the displacement of low income residents and residents of color. One, codenext does not include any mechanisms for producing housing affordable to low income people. It relies on existing programs that opted into by developers, density programs. Such programs are disincentivized by codenext because developers can build more density without agreeing to produce units with these minimal affordability standards. Two, codenext would accelerate gentrification, hurting poor neighborhoods predominantly of color the most intensely. It would do this in many ways. We don't have a big community of color, but we do have a lot of people who work in the businesses that nobody cares about, and we need you to step up. 2a, by upzoning and increasing allowable land uses of a property, the property value will be reassessed to be much higher value, thereby increasing property taxes which burden both low income homeowners and renters. And an inability to pay rising property taxes or rent due to landlord's increasing rent to pay property taxes have been cited as a central direct cause of displacement by low income homeowners and 2b, you can see I put work into it, allowing developers to build for market race housing would cause property values to increase as these units are sold on the market to high-income mostly white renters and homeowners. [6:58:35 PM] Although we are opposed to the housing code -- the house-related code policies in codenext and believe there are likely beneficial policies and sections regarding other areas of city code, such as transportation, codenext has been written as a package from which the housing codes cannot be separated. As a result, we do not recommend that the city pass codenext. As the housing crisis is a present danger, harming low-income residents and residents of color in our city. I am formerly incarc raced. I tell you not as a threat but because I canvass the streets of Austin. You pass this code and chaos will happen in this city. I don't want that to happen. I don't. Truly. I want us to be neighborly again. Know each other, not for professional titles, mayor Adler, but because you're Steve and I'm Chevis. I moved from Atlanta. I didn't want the big city anymore. Like Monica said I'm progrowth but if I wanted Dallas I'd move there. I liked Austin the way it was. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Hi, everybody, thanks for staying so late for us. My name is Diane Larson. I live in the brentwood neighborhood, Leslie pool is my councilmember -- councilperson. I started out ten blocks down to purchase a house and I'm one of the affected people from the affordable housing issue that we're suffering now. We paid less than $70,000 for a two bedroom, two bathroom house, which is now according to our tax records worth over $550,000. So as a new retiree and my husband still working, we're looking at where else can we go to find a place to live that we can afford on fixed income in the years ahead. We can sell our house to a developer who would put a fourplex on it. [7:00:35 PM] We have lived in this neighborhood for a long time. The neighborhood has been supportive of multiple kinds of housing from multiple incomes, but as things have been going the last probably five years, it's been developers coming in raising old houses that are perfectly livable, where someone could buy it and then remodel the bathroom or the kitchen as they go, but yet they're putting in three-story duplexes on little tiny lots, using waivers with the current code. So my question is, even though there's a lot of issues with the current version of codenext from what I've seen, is there a way to go forward with this code that can fix the problems that we're dealing with with the current code? What are we going to do about when you get built up to the point you can't do it anymore, what is that going to look like? If it's going to look like Dallas or Houston, then a lot of people aren't going to be very happy. We have a very livable neighborhood. It's walkable. We're on a bus route. It's very convenient to downtown, to anywhere I want to go is within 5 miles. I'm just very concerned that codenext, with the issues it has in it now that promotes flooding and gentrification that it's not gonna work. And I've been to -- this is my third meeting. This is the first time I've had an opportunity to talk, and I've heard from a variety of people with all kinds of different ideas that I hadn't heard at the neighborhood meetings where everybody kind of felt the same way. So I appreciate having this opportunity, and I really am concerned that not a lot of people in Austin are aware of the changes that are gonna happen to their neighborhood and what that's gonna mean, not just to the character, but what about the habitats? What about the trees? What about the greenpeaces? What about flooding? What about infrastructure and why can't the grocery stores keep up with the amount of people that are buying groceries? [7:02:41 PM] Little things like that I think the growth issue really needs to be looked at as how much -- how much is too much? And what is enough? [ Buzzer sounding ] Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Carol Mcgraw is going to speak and then is Alicia hagerton here? What about Kelly kook cook? I'm sorry. Okay. Kelly cook. Different Kelly. No, no. Take your time. We didn't mean to keep repeating your name. Andrew Allison or Allison Andrew. Okay. You'll be here if you want to come on down. Thank you. Go ahead. >> Mayor, mayor pro tem, councilmembers, I'm Karen Mcgraw. I am an architect. I live in Hyde park, and I'm the district 9 planning commissioner but I'm speaking only for myself today. I was not going to come down here but of course I had to watch this and as other commissioners said things I decided I better come down here. So, oh, I did bring this because this is what I call the classified ads, the planning commission amendments, and I have to say that process really hurt my brain a lot so I hope my brain has come back this week. But the thing that you heard earlier was this anti-mcmansion thing about reducing far to .3. I worked on the mcmansion task force so I think all these numbers are kind of in me. And what was said was it was voted on by planning commission 12-1 with a real estate professional voting against it. Well, that was me. I'm a real estate professional. I'm an architect. I work for homeowners and small business people, and I do preservation planning. But I wanted to explain that vote. [7:04:42 PM] Because my feeling is that .4 -- if we hit that it was pretty good, but the idea that restrict people from using that as a home is too restriction stiff and I think we'll send more families to the suburbs. I have a 32-year-old son who moved to cedar park to get a 2400 square foot house in a neighborhood where nobody was threatening to rezone or sell the park or any of the things happening around here. So I really felt like that was not a good way to keep families in Austin so I wanted to explain that to you. And I voted against a lot of the things on the planning commission because I felt like they were really trying to lose the code tremendously. And I think overzoning is pretty dangerous, to overzone the whole city. I think when we are trying to add density I've done a lot of neighborhood planning, worked with lots of groups of people who disagreed and come to agreement, and I think we have to do fine-tuning, we have to do directed growth. We have to know where we can do growth, not just everywhere. So I have a lot of issues with changing compatibility, mcmansion, and I made a motion on the planning commission to put the neighborhood plans and nccds back in as overlay districts and it was voted down. But I feel strongly that's a great way to work with our planning. Stakeholder participation is very important to me. I offered that on several things for mapping and other things on the planning commission. That was turned down. I think there's a difference between input dots on the map and actual participation when you're having a conversation with your neighbors about what's gonna happen in the future. That's very different. [7:06:43 PM] I also want to say I think Austin is a welcoming community with a great culture and I hope the people who think it's not welcoming will somehow change their minds. I think we are welcoming. I think we have to worry about directing growth, fine-tuning our city and including people and I don't think codenext has done that in a very effective way. I have a lot more things to say. I'm not gonna try to fit much more in tonight, but if I can help any of you with anything, work I've ever done, I'm very happy to do that. Thank you so much for staying so late. >> Mayor Adler: Is Lonny stern back in the chamber? Okay. 121, but now back in. Why don't you come down to this podium here. Go ahead and introduce yourself and start. >> My name is Kelly cook. The photos I'm going to show you , this is a unit being built directly across the street from where I live, it's on a commercial lot that was pretty much vacant for over 20 years, right? And they've had several passes of ownership since I've lived on that block for 15 years -- almost 15 years now. And because it was zoned commercially, this unit pretty much has whatever it wants to -- it can build three stories high. You can see in the photo how it's drastically higher than neighboring units, right? And it will shadow everything around it and block any views and what have you. But more importantly, if you look between the two units, that's where the draining is as well. So it's basically being built on clay with little structural thought put into it on these kinds of riffs, right? [7:08:54 PM] And it is not being built with very much funds from what we can see. But that's not really the issue here. The issue is that these are the problems that I worry about with codenext, where people will be able to put these kinds of units in the middle of single-family home residences -- neighborhoods, that is, and pretty much overshadow and take over a whole block that has -- all the people that live on this block have lived there at least 20 years, and the unit right there next to it, to the right, those two units to the right of that are low-income units. The gndc has those units. The gndc has really been putting a lot of energy and housing into the community to keep a balance for affordable housing. It's not like there isn't any in our neighborhood. There is a low turnover rate in our neighborhood because people love living there, and they just don't flip the houses. It's not -- there's a real neighborhood. You know? We have a very valuable community neighborhood association that really puts a lot of thought and time into how to keep the neighborhood affordable and diverse and so when you see units like this being put in that are going to be flipped pretty much, probably -- I would expect they will ask somewhere around 700,000. Expect they will get that. It's going to be four units there, so it's all impervious cover. No yard. Just stack, stack, stack, right? And that's a frightening thought of what Austin could become with this. I know that this is not just about affordable housing because it's also about bringing in businesses to neighborhoods that otherwise wouldn't -- [7:11:05 PM] [ buzzer sounding ] Anyway. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Last thought, which is that the churches have been -- >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Houston: Mayor, excuse me, I needed a clarification. Here I am over here. You used an acronym, was that Guadalupe neighborhood? >> Yes, they're very key in the neighborhood. >> Houston: I just needed to make sure that was the acronym you used. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Is Andrew Allison here? Why don't you come to this podium. Is Zack seaback here? Anybody else signed up I have not called? Okay. You'll be last. Go ahead, Mr. Stern. >> Thank you, everybody, for making this time available. I was here earlier and I had to go to work and you're still going so thank you. I've been a 17-year resident of district 1, and then recently moved to district 3. I'm here today to talk about parking, taxes, and displacement. I am in favor of codenext and partly I want to talk first about parking which costs 15,000 to $50,000 per spot. And these costs are passed on to buyers or renters or the project isn't built at all. And parking is being used in this debate as coded language. It's intent is to make it too expensive to build and further it encourages people to drive. If you have a place to put your car, then you're gonna bring it instead of carpooling or trying transit or biking. Now, in Chicago, you might have three-story walkup with two units on each side and might have to build six parking spots for that. Here it's a parking spot per bedroom so you're talking 12 or 18 spots, making it very difficult to build that unit. To be clear I don't believe a six-story walkup should be built everywhere in the city. Probably shouldn't be built anywhere further from half a mile away from a high frequency bus stop. Claim that parking is an issue is one step away from saying people shouldn't park pickup trucks in their neighborhood. [7:13:12 PM] Sure the prohibition is about parking but it's really about the character of the neighbors moving on. We need to focus on using land to house people, not cars. The current code still includes higher parking requirements for things like bars and restaurants rather than retail or office. And that's difficult because in the future we don't know what we want the bottom floors to look like. We want to be able to convert uses and as things like Amazon expand I'm not sure that we really need retail at the bottom of all of our buildings. Perhaps we need a grocer or a small cafe or eatery or coffee shop or working space. People talk taxes and those who little in single-family homes worry that increasing what is allowed to be built on any lot will increase its property value and taxes. And actually the opposite is true. And when did a property owner builds a house, maybe a big fancy one, that does impact the property value of every single family house in the neighborhood because houses are comparable to other houses by the appraisal district. Conversely when a property owner builds a duplex or a fourplex that property is now removed from a comparable property for single-family homes. And therefore will not increase the valuation of other single-family homes. Let's talk about displacement. People are more likely to be displaced by not building. Pflugerville and manor and cedar park, Leander are booming with some of the highest growth rates in the country and they may be nice places to live but many moving had there had intended to live inside Austin and were priced out. Yes, some want to live in a single-family home but that's a phase of life like living in a dorm room or having a roommate, something people do at some part of their life. [ Buzzer sounding ] >> Thank you very much for your time. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Roger Taylor, you can come on down and speak sir. Please go ahead. >> Thank you, Andrew Allison, live in the pemberton neighborhood in district 9 and I'm the founder of a company that employs more than 600 people in Austin. [7:15:13 PM] I'm here today to encourage the council not to get stuck in old Austin politics. This old debate about thousand handle our growth. Here's the thing we already know what happens when we adopt policies that exclude people. We know what happens when we ban multi-family buildings, when we push housing into the hill country, when we force everyone to buy or rent a parking space, when we only allow development in poorer neighborhoods and build walls around richer neighborhoods, when we say yes to every -- we get what we have today, the most segregated city in the country, fewer families living in our neighborhoods, young people can't afford a home, longer commutes, less time with loved ones, harder to afford anything else on top of the rent or the taxes, a lonelier, more economically insecure city. We've already been living with these policies of not in my backyard and lived with them nor a generation. We've already run this experiment and it failed. If these policies created the problem, how can they possibly be the solution? We can't keep pulling the ladder up behind us. When we do that we condemn young people, marginal lies communities, all working people to bear the burden of our manufactured scarcity. They pay the high costs, make the long commutes, they get displaced. What is the value of a code that benefits only the very wealthy? What is the value of preserving our neighborhood character if it means abandoning our morale character. So the responsible is yours. I understand there's pressure to keep the status quo and I hear there's desire to avoid that pressure by compromising. Compromising between the failed policies of the past and proven solutions to affordability and transportation. But when you kick a can halfway, guess what? You've still just kicked the can. There's no virtue of compromise between the right thing and the wrong thing. And, yeah, you're going to catch flack from folks who have an interest in keeping things just as they are but you have the power to relieve anxiety, loneliness and insecurity for millions of people including generations yet to come through your work here. [7:17:21 PM] I hope you do it. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Before Mr. Taylor begins why don't you come on down. What is your name, I'm sorry? >> Alicia himself Agerton. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Mr. Taylor. >> Roger Taylor junior. I represent my home. I'm part of district 1 with Ms. Houston. I'm a native austinite. I grew up here, graduated from Reagan high school. Graduated from Austin community college. My dad is the founder of J.J. Seabrook neighborhood association, where I am currently president of J.J. Seabrook neighborhood association. My dad was a long standing president of that association. Dr. J. Seabrook's home is at the corner of Greenwood and mlk. Today I come to say I'm against codenext and I'm not representing the neighborhood association. I'm representing my household. With me saying that, I think it needs to be revamped, DEM ol insider, rewritten -- DEM monthlyished, rewritten, at the same time I think the committee needs to be basically revamped and I think it needs to reflect those persons that are in those communities. Such as mine. We need people of color. And I just happened to be at home just now and didn't think I would make it back. I was watching this on TV and I said I need to get back down there and say something because I don't see any people of color in here. And I guess it's because all of them have been displaced. So what W that being said I'm trying to my best to keep my home. My property taxes are skyrocketed, my dad passed away in 2012. I moved back here in 2014. And I back to a city -- I was living in Dallas for six years. I came back to a city that I love and I notice that it's not embracing me as an African-American man. [7:19:21 PM] So with this code, I don't see how it's gonna benefit those people of color, the history of east Austin is diminishing every day and I don't think it's fair to me fair to those older citizens that are black as well as hispanic citizens. As you guys are looking at this, look at the historical parts of east Austin. I drive through east Austin every day to come to work. And I'm disappointed in what I see. I don't see an area that I used to grow up -- that I grew up in. I'll say this one more story and sit down. My dad used to tell me stories about him going and working in west Austin and after this time of night he used to tell me, son, after 7:00, if I didn't have my behind back on the other side of 35 east after 7:00, I run the risk of getting lynched in west Austin. My dad didn't have a choice in where he wanted to live. Most African- Americans that live in east Austin were forced to east Austin. And then have been forced out. This right here, this code, would basically increase and accelerate gentrification and continue to push people out. [ Buzzer sounding ] So please consider that. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, sir. >> Thank you. Ms. Hagerton and then Zack Seaberg. >> I'm the president of friends and Austin neighborhoods. I'm sure you've read the position papers that the super majority of our members have submitted. I'll talk about some of my personal opinions on some stuff at a high level. It scares and saddens me when I hear housing affordability talked about the way we talk about climate change on a national level where we debate whether the rising costs are the result of our own forces when we debate whether housing scarcity is even fiction near to economic prosperity and I feel like the longer we have these conversations, preserving an Austin of your -- the longer that we stay dedicated to the myopia are driving affordability. [7:21:44 PM] The much ado about nothing about housing scarcity impairs us all by allowing more people to have access to it, to live near to it. We won't be able to combat those rising costs by sharing them with other people. The consequences of kicking this can further down the road or accepting not knowing has a reasonable political position have not been fruitful for our communities. That's what's caused our rising unaffordability and economic segregation. And now that change is eminent, despite this process being a multi-year long scenario, I hear a lot of people talking about on the talking points that essentially boil town to encasing Austin central neighborhoods in amber. I can't get on board with the idea that preserving industrial post-war segregationist development patterns is a virtuous legacy for any city, much less one like Austin that's supposed to be Progressive. So I'm from rural south Texas. I'm 37 years old. I have a professional career. I've never had any major medical hiccups, went to an in-state school, relatively affordable. Like most austinites I rent, for the past seven years in a cohousing situation smack in the middle of d9, got decades' long legacy of being in that place, but I think the co-op coalition did a really great job outlining the mentality and financial benefits of living in an arrangement like that. Even with all those things going for me, the probability that I will be able to amass something that looks like a down payment for single-family homes in Austin that sit on five to 7,000 square foot lots with big yards, lots of parking is slim to none for me, even in the next decade. Even when it comes to attached housing types, those stocks are slim and competition is tight for those as well which makes prices rise. [7:23:55 PM] I can't even imagine -- >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Home ownership looks like for people like me. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Anybody else signed up other than Mr. Seaback? Council, this is our last speaker. >> My name is Zack seabag and I'll be brief. I support a codenext that lets us build more housing in Austin. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Council, that's bringing us back up to the dais. Is there a motion to close the public hearing today? Mr. Flannigan makes that motion. Is there a second to that motion? Mr. Renteria seconds that motion. Discussion? Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Mayor, what happened was when we decided not to take our dinner break, a number of speakers left thinking that we would be back an hour after -- you know, at 6:30 and pick up so I think they had us staying here late tonight and given the fact that as we move forward there will be a lot of changes to the documents, I would like to see us keep the public hearing open. >> Mayor Adler: Discussion? Mr. Flannigan. >> Flannigan: If we wanted to contemplate allowing folks who showed up and signed up speaking at another time I might be open to that but I'm not going to support continuing an ongoing, unending public hearing. We routinely debate cases and make changes without reopening the public public hearing. I don't think we need to be doing that here. Again, if people did do that, even though it's an hour later than we said we would have been back had we taken a formal dinner break I have no person people coming back to speak later but that's as far as I'm willing to go. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Yeah are we suggesting closing the public hearing for the rest of the codenext process? [7:25:55 PM] Is that the motion, we would not hear anymore public it will at any future reading of codenext? >> Mayor Adler: My sense is -- >> Tovo: I was asking the motion maker. >> Mayor Adler: I was going to say it closes the public hearing today and a majority of the council could certainly open the public hearing whenever the majority of the council wanted to do that. >> Tovo: I can't support the motion to close the public hearing. We've adopted a process where we -- we haven't adopted but are discussing a process where we'll talk about consensus points. It's gonna be a couple weeks until we even start talking about amendments. There is so much ahead of us and the community in terms of what this document will look like. We haven't even told the community whether we're working from the staff version or the PC version or some other version? So there's just no way I can support closing the public hearing and having to proactively reopen it. I think, that does not serve our community well. >> Mayor Adler: Further discussion. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I guess I hadn't been thinking of this in terms of opening or closing a public hearing for codenext because as the mayor pro tem is saying, we have a much more to go in our process. So I've been expecting that we would -- we would obviously need more public input at different points along the way. So I was just thinking that these two were -- these two dates that we had set was just what we were setting right now. So I think we're just talking about ending today's, you know? I would expect -- we haven't even, you know -- we don't even have a motion on the table. So at that point I would think by law we would be required to set a public hearing later. >> Mayor Adler: So my -- do you want to repeat that? >> What you've had today is the public hearing the day before and today, the public hearing required by state law, everybody being able to come and speak. [7:28:00 PM] If you close the public hearing you can still have people come talk when the items come up as you want to. So my suggestion would be to close the public hearing today but then allow people to come and talk as you debate codenext going forward. And if the planning folks have any different opinion, jump up and say so. >> Mayor Adler: So my sense in this is I'm gonna support the motion to close the public hearing. Recognizing that it would take a majority of us to either open or close the public hearing at any point. Just so that we close the hearing that is required by law. But if we change this and we end up with a product at the end, I'll tell you now that it would be my intent to vote to open a public hearing. So that people have a chance to speak to a final product. >> Can't hear you. >> Mayor Adler: I said it would be my intent to vote to open a public hearing if -- when we -- if we get to the place where we have a final product. Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: Mayor, I think that the semantics might be getting to us here a little bit because my understanding is we've set these couple of days for public testimony and then as a dais we should set which other days there would be public testimony and that we're gonna have some days where we're not doing public testimony because we're just work sessioning our way through this. And so I think the semantics of closing the public hearing sounds like we're not going to hear from anybody anymore but really it's a motion to fulfill our legal requirement on the public hearing side and then I'm sure and I would support making sure there are other dates where we are going to have people testify on things but we just can't have people testifying on things every time that we are workshopping because I think the point was to have two big long days of public testimony workshop stuff the best we can and decide as a group when or if it's appropriate to have people testify. [7:30:01 PM] Otherwise we just obviously don't have time to talk to one another. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston, then councilmember Garza. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. My concern is that there's some questions that I have for staff. You talked about being able to have that conversation when a product, but there are some things that I think we will be talking about in between -- not the minute details but some overarching things like chapters and how does zoning and platting recommendations crosswalk with what the planning commission's and which section do's the -- and so I think we need to be able to -- and, again, it's up to the dais of course -- be able to have input from the community about specific sections and not a product. Because once the product is out there, then that's it. They can talk to that but they can't massage it and we can't hear the messages they might want to give. So if this is strictly to do something for state law I'm willing to do that but I need to have some concern -- some assurances that at some point it's not gonna take a super majority to say we need to have another public hearing on, say, part of the code that is complicated and there are questions about it on the dais and we might need to have some testimony on that. >> Mayor Adler: I misspoke if I suggested otherwise because I agree with everything that you just said. I saw this as closing the public hearing that was required. I think that a majority of us could open it up. There's nothing to stop people from inviting people to come testimony even outside of a public hearing if there are people that we want to see. We would have that option as well. I didn't see this as a significant decision in that respect. [7:32:04 PM] Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: I think this is semantics because I think whenever this comes up on the agenda when we finally vote there's always a public hearing. We'll hear speakers again. This isn't cutting off -- this is because the -- my understanding, the postcard was sent out that showed here are the public hearings. It's a legal thing. We're ending testimony today. Closing the official notice. But any time this will be on the agenda for any reason there will be the opportunity for speakers to speak. Is that correct? Planning staff and legal? >> Jerry rusthoven, planning and zoning. You are correct. This was the legally required public hearing which was posted in the newspaper and through mail notice, the postcard was a courtesy notice, but, yes, we feel that this fulfills our obligations to conduct a public hearing regarding a code amendment. >> Garza: When this is placed on the agenda, for example, fast forward to the final vote, there will be an opportunity like with any other agenda item for people to come and speak, right? >> If the council wants to hear from anybody they may invite them to speak or may call them from the audience but whether or not they want to open it up for speakers again is a different issue. We just feel we've obligated the state legal requirement for having a public hearing the past two days. >> Garza: Then I guess it's kind of a misunderstanding. Is this, like, a zoning case, where it's first reading and we've said we're closing the public hearing for first reading and then we don't allow speakers for second and third? Is that what you're saying? >> You could do that if you wanted to. Or just like on a zoning case sometimes you close the public hearing and you have it for second reading and say I would still like to hear from the neighborhood and see how the negotiations negotiations have gone and you can call them up to speak. >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to speak, Ann? >> I just want to reiterate you can close the public hearing today. This is the legally required public hearing. Public notice went out, courtesy postcards went out. You can cloys the hearing. [7:34:04 PM] You are able to call people up to allow people to speak other times you talk about it. You indicated that you wanted to have some work sessions and then some voting sessions. In the work sessions I think that's posted for next week already there are no speakers because you -- that was your work session piece of it. But you give us direction about what you want to do when you have the voting you can let people come and speak. Closing this public hearing is just the legal requirement. So but you can always have people come speak later as you do on things all of the time. >> Mayor Adler: For what it's worth I will go on record right now saying if this comes back to the council for a vote I'm ready to open it up -- I will vote to open it up for public hearing, for public testimony. Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: So if I understand, city attorney, when we post this on our agenda, we will not be required to have public testimony? We will have fulfilled the requirement today? So unless we vote -- so I guess maybe I better give you an opportunity to answer that question. >> You have fulfilled the legal requirement. >> Tovo: So we will not be required to have public testimony when it gets posted on our agenda for action? And so, you know, to me I think that's -- I think that is significant. And I know we've had this discussion before, where we've closed a public hearing and then we've talked about reopening it but it wasn't noticed for open public hearing. You know, to me, again, I think that there is -- I think that there is a lot of work ahead of us and I think we need to let -- especially in this process where we have many community members who -- from various perspectives who have said they have more feedback and they think the process needs more work. I think today closing the public hearing sends a signal to them that we probably don't want to send. [7:36:05 PM] And so if there's a will to hear from them when we're voting, I think we leave the public hearing open. We never have testimony from the public or very -- almost never have testimony from the public at our work sessions so I don't think -- I don't think leaving the public hearing open today creates an expectation that we're gonna hear from them in our work sessions or our deliberative sessions we've exiled but it does create an expectation that we'll hear from them as we're moving forward toward voting on our agenda. >> Mayor Adler: Further discussion? Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I don't know if this helps, but we could also take two actions today. Could we not? We could close this public hearing but then we could also vote that we were going to accept public testimony at our sessions that are -- not the two work sessions that are scheduled but the ones later in the month in June that we're scheduling for taking action? That would accomplish the same thing. I don't know if it helps but it would accomplish the same thing. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: I would feel more comfortable voting on that once we're closer to the days where we want to take testimony. My concern -- we're going to take public testimony. There's no way we're going to take huge votes on codenext -- it's not like we're going to pass codenext and not have more of these hearings. What I'm concerned about is if we set a date for public testimony and it's days that we want to be voting on resolutions, finding consensus, doing work in this chamber, once ten people feel like they have to come and push their position then all three or four other sides all feel like they have to get there and then they lose time and we lose time where work needs to be getting done and I trust that -- between us we can figure out the dates where it makes sense to have public testimony because we moved forward along enough in the work that people feel like there's something for them beyond what has happened today and the last time that they could testify on that that's new. I'd rather close it knowing and trusting of course we'll set other times where people come and talk but instead of just giving people all these dates where they have to organize Facebook events and get child care and be here for hours. [7:38:17 PM] Let's be thoughtful about it as we figure out what those days should be. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: My only concern is I don't want this to be misinterpreted. We're in an environment right now which is a very dicey environment in the community, and our actions continue to be misintercept intercepted and I'm concerned if we vote to close the public hearing that will be misinterceptedintercept interpreted that we're not wanting to hear from anyone else. We're saying that's not the case but we can say it as much as we want and it still will be presented in a way that is not accurate. So I'm not quite sure what to do about that. I'm cautioning everybody that that's what I'm concerned would happen. >> Mayor Adler: How about if we did this. I'm trying to think how we could proceed at the end of the month or at the end of whenever the period of time is. Let's assume for a second that we're able to reach some significant consensus and we're giving that kind of direction to the staff. We've given them direction on a map, general principles, let's assume that that happens at some point. And then people are going to out to their districts to talk about stuff. It seems to me that we're going to have a public discussion on this and it's either gonna happen at first reading or second reading. I don't know which one it is because I don't know how we're going to set that up. But we could certainly say we're closing the public hearing today but we're also committing to open it up for public hearing at at least first or second reading of this matter. >> Mayor? If I can jump in. You have two choices I think on the public hearing piece of it. You can either continue the public hearing and you need to do to a certain date our close the public hearing and if we have to have another public hearing we have to renotice it in the newspaper, send it out, do all the proper notice. You've met your legal obligation under the notice requirement. >> Mayor Adler: I'm not talking about setting another public hearing. I'm saying that we're committing to ourselves with our vote to open it up for public testimony, different from a public hearing. [7:40:22 PM] >> That's different and perfect. >> Mayor Adler: I would recommend we close the public hearing but that we commit that at least on either first or second reading we will open it up for public testimony. We may decide when we get there what's the appropriate time or place or how to do that. >> Renteria: Mayor, I'm willing to go where we can keep the public hearing open but during our work session we should be able to delay that public hearing until we're ready for public hearing because we need to really get down to business of deciding how we're gonna proceed. I have no problem leaving the public hearing open but make sure that the next work session that we have we're not going to be accepting public comments because we need to get this -- figure out how we're going to proceed with codenext. So if not we'll just -- might as well just keep it open all the time and say, okay, we'll spend about three or four hours taking testimony. I don't know how late my colleagues wants to stay up during the week. I'm open for staying as long as I have to. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Houston. >> Houston: Could somebody just explain the difference between the public hearing and public testimony? I know the public hearing is required by law. So everybody has to be noticed. What's the difference after we do the notice? Because we've already noticed. We could just keep it open and at the point we decide to have another one? Is that called public hearing or is that called a public testimony? >> The difference is under state law there's certain things you have to have a public hearing about and this is one of them, zoning. So you have to notice it in the newspaper, everybody who comes gets an opportunity to speak. That's different from having public testimony, where on any item you talk about during a meeting, whether you're going to do a fee waiver for something, people can come and testify. They sign up and come and testify. That's not state law required. [7:42:22 PM] That's because y'all are happy for them to do that. So now in the public hearing that we're in, you've given notice. It was these two days. We're finished with that. And you would close the public hearing. And then allow testimony at other dates, I believe you're gonna have voting sessions on June 21, June 26, June 27. You could say we're going to have testimony one or all those times. But if you're going to continue this public hearing you're going to have to continue to a date certain or you're going to have to renotice the whole thing again. >> Casar: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: And my only concern with picking those dates is we still may be wanting to stay in work session at that point if we haven't progressed far enough so I wouldn't want to set it for a date certain because we just don't know. >> Casar: I think it was councilmember Flannigan and Garza that made the motion, I want to know since we're posted for public hearing and for our process, if they would just have their motion be close the public hearing and that we will take public testimony on either first or second reading? Or was Pio the second? If we could do that -- >> Mayor Adler: I think that was Mr. Flannigan's motion? Whose motion? You okay with that? >> Flannigan: What -- I mean, it's not -- it's the dais' motion is it not, now, mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anybody have any objection objection -- to that? >> Houston: Say it again. >> Mayor Adler: Closing the public hearing, that way we don't have to worry about resetting it, send out notices to everybody, but we are committing as a group to open this up for public testimony at least on first or second reading. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: So that's what we're voting on? We're actually going to say that so that we're voting to have -- >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: -- Public testimony at least on -- >> Mayor Adler: First or second reading. Yes. Councilmember pool. >> Pool: I think it would be better if it was both first and second because I think there's gonna be significant changes between the two. [7:44:25 PM] And when you make it one or the other, then no one knows really when it's going to be. So I might be persuaded to join the vote to support closing it now only if we say first and second. >> Kitchen: I couldn't quite hear that. >> Kitchen: I couldn't quite hear that. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember pool, would you repeat that? >> Pool: I amend the dais motion to close the public hearing and commit to continuing to take public testimony on first and second reading which we would anyway because people would come and sign up. So I think we should signal to the community that we are welcoming that. There has been significant indication here today and the previous hearing that there's a lack of trust. And this would go some distance, I think, to helping them understand that we are open to hear them. >> Mayor Adler: In the spirit of consensus and compromise, I would agree to that wording. Any objection to closing the public hearing and taking testimony before we take a vote on first and second reading? Mr. Flannigan and mayor pro tem. >> Flannigan: The amended motion was at least first or second. I am entirely uncomfortable determining what first and second reading is going to look like when we have not yet determined hour processes. We might find ourselves first reading text, second reading map. We might find ourselves first reading approving something very high level, only the non-controversial stuff. We might find ourselves on first reading doing something that's not substantial different than affecting the testimony we have today. I don't think there's a lot of value in forcing parts of this community to have access to city hall and people in this community who have the privilege of a work schedule or a family situation to be at this -- in this building at certain times to give them that much more access to come and speak to us. [7:46:35 PM] When you look at the sign-ups, there is a ginormous difference between people signing up from different districts. My district cannot get to city hall, effectively. So I'm going to be doing a ton of neighborhood meetings in my district, as I have already done. I don't think this is a question about making this building accessible breeds community trust. What will breed community trust is us going out into our districts and talking to constituents who cannot come into this building. Many of the people who came and spoke to us today we see on a regular basis. If we want to build community trust, we have to go to the people who cannot come here. So I object to predetermining, that we're going to have two full days of testimony again another first and another two full days at second, or however many more people have the time and privilege to show up. We need to be going out into our districts. Now, if this council wants to join me in district 6 and be accessible to my constituents, that would be something I'd be interested in doing, but that is a logistical nightmare I wouldn't actually ask for. >> Mayor Adler: What if we said first and second reading and we're going to give people the opportunity to speak at either one of the two but not both? >> Flannigan: It's good for me. >> Mayor Adler: That way, everybody gets to speak another time, and they can either speak at the first reading time or the second reading time. Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I have a question for our city attorney. So if we go with the motion that's on the floor for first and second reading, is there any need for council to vote on that? It'll just automatically -- there will automatically be public testimony on those readings when it appears on the council agenda, or will we have to vote to allow it? >> We would post it so that testimony is allowed if that's what you want to do. >> Tovo: Great. And so today's vote would determine how that gets posted. >> Yes. >> Tovo: I'm going to support the amendment for -- I agree with councilmember kitchen that I think there has been a lot of -- enough concern in the community that we need to send a very clear message about what closing the public hearing means. [7:48:42 PM] And so I think the amendment from my colleague councilmember pool accomplishes that by making it very clear today that we would be keeping first and second reading open and wouldn't support an amendment to say one or the other. I think, you know, what we see with more complicated zoning cases is that things go through different changes from first to second reading and there's often a need to have commentary at both stages. And, my gosh, if we do that with a regular zoning case, I think we sure have to do it with something this complex. And I don't want to hear comments later on in the process as we heard, you know, about some of the commissions that there were amendments that the public couldn't comment on because it was after the public portion of it had closed. And so I'm going to support councilmember pool's motion to have it be first and second reading testimony. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: I'm going to support that also, and I'm also going to take up councilmember Flannigan on his offer to show me district 6 because I would like to, but only if you'll come and see district 5 with me. And I understand the concern that you're raising, and it is true, it is true that different districts, because of geography and lots of other things, we see different -- different numbers of folks here. But I think we recognize that, and I just want to assure you that I recognize that, and so I don't see -- you know, I don't see any harm in this particular circumstance because of the sensitivity that we just -- that we just make it clear and go with the -- and go with the proposal that councilmember pool has put forward. >> Mayor Adler: Let's go ahead and take a vote on councilmember pool's amendment to make it end. Close the public hearing, take testimony on first and second reading. Those in favor, please -- >> Flannigan: Are we voting on her amendment to the main motion? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. It's to make an end. >> Houston: One more. I'd like to ask councilmember Flannigan, could we talk with your people through the television setup that we had in district 6? [7:50:46 PM] Couldn't we invite them to testify there without having to come down to city hall? >> Flannigan: The rules don't currently allow that system to be used except for citizens communication so if we wanted to make available that technology for other agenda items, I would caution you of a Pandora's box that opens, but I'm more than willing to support that. >> Houston: Well, we didn't have -- we didn't have a flood of people who signed up for that, but I thought that would be an option that we hadn't discussed. >> Flannigan: I think there wasn't a flood because citizens communication is a substantially different ask than talk about an item that's controversial. >> Mayor Adler: Let's keep that in mind. The amendment on the floor is to add end, for first and second. Those in favor of that amendment, please raise your hands. Those opposed? Fill Flannigan voting no, Mr. Casar voting no, the others voting aye, the amendment is on. Let's now take up the motion to close the hearing, the public hearing, but take testimony on first and second reading. Those in favor, please raise your hand. Those opposed? It's unanimous on the dais. Councilmember troxclair gone. Well, that was a good exercise. [Laughter]. >> Mayor Adler: Only took us a little while to do that. Councilmembers, let me tell you -- colleagues, let me tell you what I handed out here tonight. This has been posted on the message board and it's just something for people to review and to consider. You know, we're all in different quorums here which makes it difficult and actually it makes it impossible for us to really share these things, but this is on the message board now. This builds off of the last conversation that we had, and what this specifically suggests is perhaps on June 5th, we start at 10 o'clock. We didn't talk about an end time but given the fact we're going to be meeting multiple times, I suggest we have a default that we're going to end no later than 6:00. Certainly a majority of us could extend time if we wanted to but the default is going to be that we end at 6 o'clock on Tuesday, if that's something you want to do. [7:52:52 PM] We would start on Tuesday with city staff, consultants very briefly presenting an overview of the recommendations for the code, text and the map, including the errata and addenda. Then they would give us very brief overview and the recommendations from the commissions, the planning commission, zap, environmental commission, historic landmark commission. That will kind of give us the lay of the land. Then it kind of comes to us. The recommendation here is that we then pick up the goals document, which was the document that councilmember alter put on her post a week ago that started this string of posts. It's the document that she and councilmember kitchen and I did. It's really -- it's pretty high level. But maybe we could start there with those goals statement, everybody could read it prior to then, asking the question, you know, are people generally in favor of that, do people like it a lot, do people like it with amendments, does any of those lines give people concern. Because that might serve as a high-level kind of base for us being able to move forward. Once we get past that, assuming that we do get past that, then we would start entertaining kind of topics and questions that right now I think the consultants and staff are working on. What's attached here is not a final product. It is just kind of almost like an example of what that might be. It's kind of a funnel concept where there's an overarching goal and we see if we have general agreement to that, and to the degree that we can, we funnel down and get more and more specific. But everybody be would still be invited to send suggestions in, post them on the board, so that the consultants and staff can see them and the councilmembers can see them. The thought being that if we went through this process, we would do it until we had gone as far as we could on that topic, and then we would switch to another topic and/or question, hoping at the end of that, after the fifth, probably, part of the 12th or all of the 12th and 13th, we would have a my good feel for, pretty good feel forwhether we were actually ready to move forward on this, or what the undetermined items were, but we're not deciding anything pretty much beyond that part of the process right now, which is to set those up. [7:55:28 PM] And with each of those topics and questions, the staff and the consultants would come up and say with respect to that question, this is how it's being handled under current code, this is what our recommendation -- the staff's recommendation is, this is what planning commission's recommendation was, and then they would help us discuss how we would think that should be handled, trying to use a process, you know, similar to the fist to five where people would say I agree with that totally, I agree with it -- or I agree with it but I need some changes made, or I don't agree with it and would still want to be working on it, or I know I could never agree to anything like this at all, so that we follow that same process, but making sure that everybody expresses that, at least that level of opinion so that on the dais, we know where everybody else is, and the community can know where everybody else is. We start that process and just see how far we can get. But anyhow, that's what this is, and I would urge everybody -- I'd want to know what people think about that and I would urge everybody to go onto the message board to make suggestions or changes or proposed alternates. >> Casar: Mayor, first things first, we'll let you get into the substance, I haven't had time to bring this up with the whole group, but when we moved the meeting to June 5th, we did put it on top of the day the city manager and I have my district 4 talk, which was already scheduled, so I would really ask that we be done by 5:30 so I can get through traffic with the city manager up to my talk. I agreed to having it on the same day if we could be done at 5:30. >> Mayor Adler: I think that's fine. We'll say 5:30 is the default. Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: And maybe that's -- thank you. That's a good segue to my comment. Maybe we can talk on Tuesday about what our expectations are for those other days, for some reason, I don't know if this was -- I had these blacked out 9:00 to 5:00, not 10:00 to 6:00. So with the summer schedules and schools being closed and camps being much more limited hours, it does create some challenges. [7:57:35 PM] So I can work around those. I don't know if others are going to experience them too. >> Mayor Adler: It was noticed to start at 10:00, I saw when I picked it up this week, but if it's possible -- >> Tovo: 10:00 is fine. I can make this week work. I think it works well with councilmember Casar, because if he's -- if we're ending early for that one, then that resolves my issue as well. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. But for the ones that we're noticing here on out, I will either notice them to begin at 9:00 or 9:30. >> Tovo: Or we can just talk about on it Tuesday. >> Mayor Adler: We can talk about it on Tuesday. Sounds good. Councilmember alter, and then councilmember pool. >> Alter: Thank you. Mayor, did you post this on the message born and raised already? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. It's on there now. >> Alter: What is the difference in the coloring levels? >> Mayor Adler: That was -- it started out as the sections that the consultants felt like they had had sufficient time -- they had more time to look at those sections than the other sections, and they just want to do differentiate between those. But they're going to be looking at all the sections. They felt most comfortable about the sections that were in bold than the sections that were in gray, is how that started off. But I think at this point everything is still -- >> Alter: So what was the role of the consultants in this document? >> Mayor Adler: The role -- the consultants gave the first draft of this, and then there were some additions that were made by councilmember kitchen and by councilmember Casar. >> Alter: So the questions are questions that the consultants laid out as things that needed to be decided in those buckets. >> Mayor Adler: They were for-examples. When you get to that bucket, these are the kinds of questions that you'd be working with. >> Alter: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: And then on Tuesday, we hope that staff and the consultants will lay out for us what they think the questions are we should really do with, and as early as you guys can post that, we'd like to see that. Today it's more just by way of this is kind of how this idea might look. [7:59:38 PM] >> Alter: And I don't have a solution yet, but I do want to just flag something that concerns me. We have something like 109-item agenda on June 14th, and we were sort of playing with not having any work session, and just looking at the magnitude of the topics that are on that agenda, I'm not sure that's a realistic way to proceed. I don't know that we have to decide that on Saturday night, right now, but it is something that we are going to have to figure out and have a very clear process for how we're dealing with it. We do have two weeks' notice on the agenda so we may be able to get many of our questions answered but I'm trying to deal with a magnitude agenda of that size and codenext at the same time, and given the topics that I saw that were on there, I just -- we do need to give some thought to managing our work over this period so that we can be effective in our roles. >> Mayor Adler: I think so too. I was thinking we wouldn't have that many things on the agenda, either, and it's obviously a big one. Maybe we can all take a look at that and see what things really need to come up now. Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Just another quick question. On the -- there's some sentences in -- italicized. Are those just kind of a sub -- a demarcation of a subthing, or some of the consultants wanted to send you a message -- >> Mayor Adler: I think where you see the italics, that's probably consultant work, and I think they were just trying to delineate one step down -- >> Tovo: Okay. I didn't know if -- >> Mayor Adler: It's not consistent through the documents so -- >> Tovo: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: There are probably others that should be tallicized, too, that are not, but -- >> Houston: This doesn't have anything to do with codenext but I wanted to recognize superintendent crook from del valle ISD who has been sitting with us most of the evening. I appreciate you being here. [8:01:40 PM] >> Mayor Adler: At this point, we urge the superintendent to get a life. Right? [Laughter] But we appreciate the moral support, and it does mean a lot to have you here. In the city so this is important to her as well. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Anybody have any other thoughts about this possible process for us to start off with on Tuesday? Councilmember pool. >> Pool: I'm looking at the June 12th date, which is what we were talking about a little bit ago, and with 109 items on the agenda two days later, I have a city of Austin employee retirement system board meeting in the afternoon. Originally I was anticipating asking that we do codenext stuff in the morning, thinking that I could leave to go to the ers board meeting and miss the pulled items for the agenda. Now I'm not so sure. So do we know, though -- my original question was, do we know on the 12th if we will start with codenext or if we'll start with pulled items? >> Mayor Adler: We don't. My suggestion would be that we have the meeting on the 5th because we may learn a lot at that point, know how we're working through it or not working through it, but make sure on the 5th we talk about how we want to approach it the following week. >> Pool: Okay. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Flannigan. >> Flannigan: So I asked this question at work session about this. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around just functionally how this works if we're having a discussion but we're seeking eight -- not votes, they're -- I don't know what they are since we're not voting. So are they head nods, like -- it's really -- it's a very literal question because I'm accustomed to having a motion and amendments, I understand how that process works, so I'm not sure how this works. And some of the questions that, as I skim through it, are, you know, should there be xyz, well, "Yes" or "No," I can understand how we can find eight people that say yes or eight people that say no, generally, but if it's a -- you know, what is the goal, which is much broader than are we going to be -- are we going to be asking for ranges from councilmembers, like -- I'm struggling to understand how this is going to work on Tuesday. [8:03:57 PM] >> Mayor Adler: I think that we'll find out on Tuesday. But the goal is to discuss the topic or the issue to see if there's a place we can get that -- that measure of consensus. And as we said the first time, the consensus may be around a certain point, say 30 feet, and I'm just pulling that number out of the air. It could either be a height or set back, 30 feet, or it could be that the council gets a consensus saying, well, it's somewhere between 20 and 35. We have, you know, a consensus in that, but not yet a consensus on where it needs to be within that. But part of this is an exercise to see how much agreement we have on this we've never been able to have a conversation with us on the dais to see that. And my sense is, is that we've spent a year now, more than that, with so much of the conversation in the community being to defend really hard positions on things. My sense is, is that the community wants us to see if we can, in fact, move forward and bring the community together. My hope is that there's an interest on the dais to do that. We just don't know. I think to a degree it's taking the temperature of the council and letting the council see where everybody else is because we've never really done that before. And by doing an exercise, it's kind of like the fist to five, we'll know where everybody is because everybody is going to be raising their hand or not raising their hand. I think an associated question was what about a portal with people that have prepared amendments, what do people do with amendments, and I would still recommend that staff give us the ability to be able to post amendments, a portal or something, so that people have amendments, they can start putting on it that so that staff can start, if it's possible, just kind of lumping them together by category or section, because if we're able to reach consensus, that might be something that's useful. [8:06:14 PM] And I get asked that question -- I haven't prepared any amendments, but I know some people have, and I think it would -- if they have and they want to share that with the rest of the dais, more information would be better than not. So I would urge you to help create that space. We're going to get into it, Jimmy, we're going to find out here pretty fast whether this is something that we feel is constructive or not. >> Flannigan: I will choose optimism for Tuesday. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Flannigan: I still think that we are at the place to do the work. It would have been an interesting fist to five exercise to have done a year ago in between drafts 1 and 2 or in between drafts 2 and 3. I also still think we can get there as a council. And I don't think we should be afraid to hash it out. And the sooner we get to hashing it out, the better. And if we can get as much of this, as much as we can before the summer break and give us and the community time to really review actual things and not, you know, deal with easy stuff and then the only thing to review over July is the unanswered, hardest questions, I don't think that moves us forward, either. So I guess I'm going to choose optimism for Tuesday, but I still maintain that what staff laid out prior about all the amendments, them using those amendments to determine consensus and the perimeters, still is my preferred process. >> Mayor Adler: I would add I fully intend for us to take on the hardest, most difficult, most challenging questions. Because that's the hash -- and I see us hashing them out, exactly as you described. This is not an effort to -- this is an effort to confront the hardest questions. [8:08:15 PM] Councilmember Houston. >> Houston: And I appreciate that, but -- I appreciate the conversation and the space to have the conversation, not be confrontational, but have the space to have a conversation, which we've not had. So if we're going to start butting heads right at the beginning, my head is going to explode, because it's a lot to have to try to understand. There's still some sections that have not been completed. And so there are things that we just need to have a conversation about, about where we are on certain -- certain parts of the code and where we're not. And some people may be there. I'm not. I've got a health and human service committee meeting on the 13th. So I mean it's a pretty big week that we're going to be dealing with a lot of stuff. >> Mayor Adler: When I say hash hashing out, I don't mean butting heads. I mean hashing out in a loving and legal way. Councilmember kitchen, did you have anything? Anybody else center anything before we adjourn this meeting for the day? Anybody else have anything else they think we need to talk about? Councilmember alter. >> Alter: I just want to wish Jerry a happy birthday again and say what a lovely day it's been to celebrate with you. Hopefully you'll get to go out -- >> Mayor Adler: I love this. I love this. [Laughter]. All right. It is 8:08 this meeting is adjourned.