Health and Human Services Committee Meeting Transcript – 8/8/2018 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/8/2018 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/8/2018 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [2:03:15 PM] >> Houston: Good afternoon. I'm councilmember Ora Houston. A quorum is present. So I'll call this meeting to order at 2:03. This is the health and human services committee of the city council. We're in city council chambers, 301 west second street, Austin, Texas. I want to remind you if you have a parking ticket to be validated, if you will see the young lady over here to my right with her hand-held high, we can get that validated for you. The first item on the agenda are the minutes from the June 13th meeting. Please take a moment to review those minutes and then I will accept a motion. >> Move approval. >> I second. >> Houston: It's been moved and seconded that the June 13 minutes be approved as drafted. All in favor say aye. >> Aye. >> Houston: It's unanimous on the dais. Next we have citizens communications. If you have signed up to speak regarding an item not posted on the agenda you will have two minutes to voice your concern, and we have time to have 10 speakers. So the first speaker is Andrea Schwartz. If you will come to this mic right here, we would appreciate it. >> Hello. My name is Andrea Schwartz, and I've been actively volunteering for seven years with the large dogs at Austin animal center. I volunteer four to five times a week regularly. To start on a positive note, [2:05:16 PM] I'd like to acknowledge that Austin is doing a great job when it comes to saving shelter animals' lives. That's something we should all be very proud of. However, when it comes to providing quality of life for the large dogs at the shelter and taking care of the dogs at the shelter, Austin is falling very short. At any given time we have approximately 200 large dogs available to take out. Many of these dogs stay at the shelter a very long time. In fact, we currently have 44 dogs who have been at the shelter over 100 days. Our current longest stay is Zach's and he's right there and he's spent 340 days at the shelter. He's right behind you with his big tongue. In order to stay happy and healthy, our dogs need daily breaks from their kennels, particularly the longest stay dogs. Unfortunately, the reality is that large numbers of dogs don't even get one break a day. So many of our dogs are house trained, including Zach, up there. Because of their house training they hate to soil their kennels and will hold it as long as possible. For a house trained dog like Zach, it's simply inhumane to have to hold it so long and not even get one potty break a day. We also have a lot of high energy dogs who need exercise daily to stay sane. I've seen too many high energy dogs deteriorate due to the stress of confinement. It's simply inhumane that they don't get out everyday. In closing, Austin needs to do a much better job of taking care of its large shelter dogs. In order to do so we need paid or contract dog walkers so that every dog gets at least one kennel break a day. Please support quality of life and please support taking care of our dogs by [2:07:16 PM] committing to paid dog walkers. Thank you. >> Houston: Thank you so much. The next speaker is calissa Barlow. >> [Inaudible - no mic]. >> Houston: After who? >> Katie Blackwell. >> Houston: Ms. Blackwell if you will come on up. >> Good afternoon, councilmembers. We are here today to ask you to include funding for paid dog walkers out of the animal services donation fund in the 2019 budget and to also request a performance measure that reads: Average number of shelter dogs not getting at least one kennel break per day, also known as at the shelter average daily in count. Austin animal center is known for being the largest no-kill shelter in the United States. Our live outcome rates is unquestionably among the highest in the nation. However, this should not replace the basic care we provide to dogs in the shelter, which should include at least one daily kennel break, preferably two. This year there have been many days whereas many as 60 dogs did not get a kennel break. It is important that Austin animal center value not only live outcomes, but quality of lives in the animals in their care. Many of our groups have many at city council meetings and on June 26th we met with the interim assistant city manager Sarah Hensley and chief animal services officer Leeann shennenfield. At this meeting icam Hensley agreed to fund dog walkers out of the performance fund and agreed for a performance measure of average shelter dogs not getting at least one kennel break per day. Although we are pleased to have iacm Hensley's verbal agreement, we also ask for [2:09:16 PM] your support as councilmembers by asking you to include funding for contracted dog walkers in the 2019 budget and to also ask you to include a related performance measure that reads: Average number of shelter dogs not getting at least one kennel break per day. Thank you. >> Houston: Excuse me, Ms. Blackwell. Do you know how much money is in the animal donation fund? >> 400,000. >> Houston: I'm sorry? >> $400,000. >> Houston: Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Houston: Ms. Bar low. Barlow. >> Hello. I would like to say that I support what Katie Blackwell said. And that's it. I would like to say that I support what Katie Blackwell said. >> Okay, thank you. Appreciate you coming down. Kathie mul Kerr. >> That will do. >> Houston: No, I'm sorry. I'm sure that's not right. >> Melker. Good afternoon, thank you for allowing me to speak today. I'd like to address some concerns with the Austin animal center's process of handling stray and lost cats and kittens that are brought to the center by citizens who care and have compassion for the animal and see they may be in distress. Over the last several years I've worked with lost and found pets and reuniting both dogs and cats through volunteer efforts throughout the county and also surrounding counties and work closely with all of the shelters. Austin animal center is the only shelter that returns lost, friendly, tame, social [2:11:17 PM] cats and kittens back to the street with no caretaker. Thousands -- thousands of cats and kittens are returned each year. In has gone on since 2011, initially modeled after a program in Florida. However, the criteria and the process has regressed and turned into something completely different from the original model. I'd like to request a performance measure for the number of healthy, friendly cats and kittens returned to the street without a caretaker. When a citizen brings a lost or stray cat to the shelter, they're asked three questions: Are you aware of this cat being fed or are you being -- are you feeding the cat? Do you want to be notified if or when the cat is returned back to the location found? And I just lost the third question, but it's related. Citizens are often shocked when they bring a lost cat to the shelter because they assume it would be kept there where the owner would come and claim it and find it and be put up for adoption if the owner doesn't claim it. The owner doesn't really have a chance to claim their pet if they are taken to the shelter because they are quickly transferred within 24 hours often to the Austin humane society. So taken out of the building, not there to be found and certainly people are not looking at the Austin humane society because they tell people to go to the Austin animal center for their lost pets. What happens to these cats and kittens as young as 11 weeks old one was returned recently to the street? 11 weeks old, we still have kittens at 12 weeks, 14 weeks being returned. This is when the -- the shelter has space. This happens year-round [2:13:18 PM] during freezing weather, hot temperatures, heat advisories are in effect and they are being placed right back on the street after surgery. And that's a good time to mention actually that some of these cats are already neutered and spayed. Why do they need to be transferred to the Austin humane society? Thank you. [Buzzer sounds] >> Houston: Thank you so much. And our last speaker is pat Valles trellis. >> Thank you, chair Houston and councilmembers. I am here to speak in support of what Andrea Schwartz and Katie Blackwell and Kathie mulger had to say about adding those performance measures and adding funds for dog walkers in the budget. I don't have a lot to add to what the three of them said about their particular issues. They know those issues better than I do. I actually have been focusing mostly on spay neuter, but I support the dog walkers and I also support the cat advocates who don't think that friendly cats should be put back on the street. I think those performance measures you're talking about are a minimal number of performance measures to see that our budget is supporting not only live outcomes, but also quality of life. I want to say that I was really disappointed when I saw the city manager's new budget and the performance measures for animal services. There's just no transparency there. You can't tell what has been funded in the past as compared to what's being funded now. It's very confusing. And I would like you to add some better performance measures starting with these two, but also some measures of animals that are spayed [2:15:19 PM] or neutered at the shelter, animals that are returned intact because I think we should be looking at that. So I just want to reiterate my support for the speakers who have come before me, spoken before I did, but I also want to ask you to just take a look at the whole performance measure issue because I was really disappointed when I saw that. Thank you. >> Houston: May I ask you a question real quick about the $400,000. What is that money usually used for, traditionally what is it used for? >> Traditionally they've had a lot of it go to veterinary expenses. They contract with a veterinary clinic that comes in and does specialty vet surgeries. I don't know if you recall I spoke on that issue when they issued that contract a few months ago. It's been the same firm for a really long time. They sole source it and they just say that they can't do it with any other smaller minority business, so they just do it. It's about $127,000. They have have done heart worm treatment with that money. They have a small fund for fencing assistance. They provide some fencing assistant to people who need help with fencing. There's about seven or eight different things that they budget annually for about a total of about $278,000 a year. The fund usually carries a 400,000-dollar fund balance. Of that 400,000 they usually spend about 278, but during the year when they're spending 278 another 200 something is coming in, so the fund balance has for many, many years stayed at about 400,000. We could use it better by [2:17:20 PM] using it for spay/neuter. You may recall that we spoke about that a year ago or two about the unclaimed spay/neuter deposits are put into the donations fund, but they don't spend that money for spay/neuter. I would like to see them spend that for spay/neuter. >> Houston: Thank you. Those are all the citizens communication unless we missed someone. Thank you so much. This next one is item number 3 on your agenda, is for discussion and possible action. We'll hear an update regarding inspections and related fees for food establishment. >> Good afternoon, madam chair and mayor pro tem and councilmembers. I'm don Hastings, the assistant director for the environmental health services division of Austin public health. And you'll recall that I came before you on may 16 to do an initial presentation to propose a new methodology by which to inspect our 5,000 plus food establishments here in Austin. And for this particular presentation I would like to show the changes that we've incorporated based on the committee's input on may 16 and to answer any questions you may have. So allow me to start by restating the purpose of why we're bringing this program to you. Currently the city of Austin inspects all of its 5,000 plus food establishments with a goal of doing that twice per year. The issue is that many of those food establishments pose very little risk to the [2:19:22 PM] public's health as far as foodborne illness goes because many of those are -- whether it's a drugstore selling items like prepackaged milk and cookies, or a convenience store selling prepackaged goods, those pose much less risk than a full service restaurant with a diverse menu. And our statistics show that the higher risk or full service restaurants that use complex food preparation and cooking processes, those pose two to three times the risk of being the source for a foodborne illness as opposed to an establishment of moderate risk like a pizza parlor or a fast food restaurant. And they pose five to 10 times the risk level versus the low risk categories such as prepackaged sales of -- in drug stores and convenience stores. So a huge risk differential there. And so it certainly would be better for the public's health and an improvement of food safety to inspect the higher risk food establishments more frequently, and because we have very limited resource like most cities, in terms of number of inspectors and inspection time available, that would mean that we would inspect the lower risk establishments less frequently. And that is the core in essence of this proposal before you today. So moving to the slide number 2, we have. -- A summary of the changes reflected in this presentation based on the committee's input on may 16. You'll recall that one of [2:21:25 PM] the committee's comments was that the size ranges we were using to group food establishments did not do enough justice, if you will, to the smaller and medium size establishments. It used a range of establishments with fewer than 10 employee, but then the middle range was 10 to 100 employees and the larger range was over 100 employees. We have revised that scheme to provide a small establishment category of one to 25 employees, a middle range of 26 to 50 employees, and then a larger range of more than 50 employees. Now, that change there did have a significant impact on the revenue streams, which I'll show you later in the presentation. But that significantly changed the number of food establishments in each of the three size groupings. And we'll look at those numbers in a moment. We also deleted the market scale descriptions because they really weren't suitable as objective criteria to classify food establishments. And then because we now had nine different risk-size categories, we needed to review the cost of service factors for each of those. And we did that. So just as a refresher, again, the current process is to program all food establishments for two food safety inspections per year, and the obvious drawback is they do not all pose the same level of risk. And knowing that, about 12 years ago the U.S. Food and drug administration did launch this new best practice called inspection frequency standard for food [2:23:28 PM] inspections. And that process there divides all food establishments in the higher risk, medium risk and lower risk, and those distinctions are based on the complexity, relative complexity of that food establish meant's food preparation processes. It also reflects the use by a given establishment of control measures to reduce the risk of foodborne illness being transmitted. You'll recall that those three risk levels were tiers 3, 2 and 1, starting with higher risk, medium risk and lower risk. And examples, again, of tier 3 establishments, higher risk, would be full service restaurants with full menus. Examples of the medium risk would be pizza parlors and fast food restaurants. And examples of the lower risk would include drug stores and convenience stores that are selling prepackaged foods that are prepared at an approved preparation facility that is permitted and inspected in the manner suitable for food preparation facilities. Looking at how this would actually work, we are proposing an incentive-based approach to risk-based inspections such that the default inspection frequency for higher risk establishments would be three times a year. However, if a given higher risk or tier 3 establishment had consistently high scoring average inspection scores over a two-year period, then -- and that would be defined by scores that average 90 points or more on a scale of 100 over a two-year period. Then that consistently high scoring establishment would be shifted down to the [2:25:30 PM] medium risk category, and it would only be inspected twice a year and it would pay fees accordingly. For medium risk establishments, they would by default be inspected twice a year. Again, though, if they are consistently high scoring, average 24 months inspection score of 90 or above, then they would be shifted down to the lower risk category and they would only be inspected once a year and pay fees accordingly. However, if we had a medium risk establishment that was consistently low scoring, meaning their 24 months average inspection score is 80 or below, then they would be shifted upward into the higher risk category and they would be inspected three times a year and pay fees accordingly. And then lastly, the lower risk establishments, tier 1, they by default would be inspected one time a year. However, if they were consistently low scoring, 24 months with an average inspection score below 80, they would be shifted upward to the medium risk category, be inspected twice a year, pay fees accordingly. Moving to our current fee schedule, again, our current food establishments are inspected twice a year and you'll recall that the ranges that we now use, there are five of them, and they're based on these employee number size thresholds, 1 to 9, progressing up to the over 100 category. The next column you can see the number of establishments in each of the size groupings and obviously the large majority of establishments are in the one to 25 ranges. And then next column you can see the annual permit fee we currently charge, so the smallest of establishments, [2:27:30 PM] even if it had only two employees or Austin employee, would be paying 475 a year currently. And you will see that changes significantly when we reach the proposed fee schedule. I think it's important to note that those annual permit fees you see on this slide, those are based on 90% cost recovery, so that's based on 90% cost of service service. That was a fee setting policy that was put forth a couple of years ago and those numbers are two years old. So when we go to look at the current proposed fees, I think it's in order to adjust, if you will, these current fees upward to 100% and then to adjust a bit for inflation. And I'll try to walk you through that here in just a moment. You can see that with the proposed inspection frequency standard fee schedule, now we have nine categories instead of five. We have the three risk categories, tiers 3, 2 and 1, that I've described, and then each of those risk categories has three size categories. And those three size categories are the revised categories that I mentioned a few moments ago where group a is all establishments over 50 employees, and the middle group, B, 26 to 50 employees, and then the smaller group C, 1 to 25 employees. You can see on this slide, this is the fee schedule that was presented on may 16 using the old employee size groupings that we have since revised based on committee input, and using the old [2:29:31 PM] cost of service factors. The main slide really to review at this time then would be the new proposed fee schedule. I'm going to walk you through -- this is a complex chart so if you don't mind, let me walk you through the structure of it. The drop three rows are all the the tier 3 groupings. Those are your higher risk establishments. And you can see they're ordered by the largest size, which would be 3-a. Again, that's 3-a would be a high risk food establishment with more than 50 employees. And then you have 3- b, 26 to 50 employees. And then you have 3-c, one to 25 employees. The next three rows are all the medium risk establishments and they follow the same pattern and then the bottom three rows, the lower risk establishments. Going to the next column to the right that indicates the number of establishments that fall now within each of those nine risk size categories based on the new thresholds that we're using, 1 to 25, 26-50, over 50. And those number of establishment figures have changed significantly since the may 16 proposal. And you can see that in the next two columns, those unbolded columns are the may 16 numbers presented their for your convenience. The next column where it says new fees, those are the fees that are proposed in this presentation. And they reflect the new cost of service factors that we developed once the categories were changed for size. The arrows next to the new [2:31:32 PM] fee column indicates whether or not the new fee is an increase or a decrease from the current fee. Current fee is the far right column, that is the fee that we're charging now by ordinance. I'll make the point again that those current fees -- by the way, and there are ranges of fees in some cases because the size groupings overlap now between the old size categories and the new. >> Kitchen: Can I ask a quick question? Is there a significance of two arrows versus three arrows? >> Yes, thanks for asking that. We were trying to indicate order of magnitude. And so each arrow represents a 20% of change. So two arrows represent at least 40%. And three arrows would represent more than 40%. And now, one thing I would encourage you to keep in mind is those current fees, remember those are -- were set a couple of years ago at 90% cost of service and they are a couple of years old now. The new fees are all set at 100% per the cmo budget as I'll detail in a moment, except for the fee for establishment 3-c, and that's 601- dollar fee reflects 90% cost of service in order to provide as much of a softening of impact on faller full service restaurants because they -- otherwise the faller full service restaurants in risk size category 3-c were actually witnessing a pretty steep fee increase. [2:33:32 PM] So we knew from the may 16 committee input that the impact on smaller often call owned restaurants needs to be attended to carefully. So that reflects a 90% cost of service. So if one were to take the current fees and adjust those up to 100% since that's the current cost recovery of policy in the vast majority of cases, and also adjust for a couple of years of inflation, then the changes between the new fees and the current fees are considerably smaller. We can revisit that in a moment if that's the wish of the committee, but allow me to proceed to flesh out the rest of this proposal. So you can see of course on Monday the city manager presented his budget to the city council. Those fees as they relate to food and most other fees were set at 100% cost of service. The food related fees in the city manager's budget were also based on the inspection frequency standard methodology that was presented to the committee on may 16. So it uses the old size categories, et cetera, because the budget process obviously had to move forward in the middle of may about the same time the committee met. So to adapt if it is the will of this committee to recommend the ifc fee schedule that's on slide 10, the previous side, which is the new fees, then it would be -- that would present the 90% cost of service factor for category 3-c, then it would be appropriate for the committee to direct staff to prepare a budget addendum in support of that fee schedule [2:35:32 PM] for consideration by the full city council during the budget adoption process. A couple of other programmatic points, we do recommend that if this new afs methodology is supported by the committee that the addendum provide for a January 1 start date as opposed to October 1. The reason being recently Travis county posed certain legal questions that our legal staff is working with them on, and we want that to be sufficiently addressed and also at the same time that we are fleshing out this new methodology, our division is working to adopt its first ever web-based realtime inspection reporting system with online pay and online application. And that's a huge change for us. And if irrifs is to be adopted, we need to graft the IFS program on to this new digital software, which by the way is called digital health department. I also want to pointed out that the city manager's budget presented on Monday it does propose the funding for nine new vehicles for our division, which is important, in order to phase out the use of ongoing use of unofficial, undecalled personal vehicles, some of which are still being used by our field inspectors. Those nine vehicles once purchased would provide all the city fleet vehicles that we would need and it would phase out the use of personal vehicles. Very important initial for our division. >> Houston: Excuse me, Mr. Hasting. Are any of those going to be [2:37:34 PM] electrified? >> Yes, chair, very likely. We just incorporated five new fully electric Chevrolet volts into our fleet, which is first ever for our fleet. And we would expect these to be the same. And then due to the larger size of that tier 3 grouping grouping, -- by the way, tier 3 represents 41% of all the food establishments in the city, but because of its larger relative size, the number of total inspections that our division will be responsible for will increase by 7.5% or 771 inspections. And short of any addition to staff, we will process those inspections using existing staff resources through efficiency measures. Now, regarding net revenue change, using the current approach that is now adopted by ordinance based on twice a year inspections, this system would generate $2,746,730 in revenue over a one-year period. The proposed IFS approach that we just walked through utilizing a January 1 start date would generate $2,822,169 for a net partial year increase of $75,439. The full year net increase by adopting the IFS as proposed today would be $1,585. Those compare to the projected revenue in the city manager's budget of $255,345. The biggest portion of that difference owing to the 90% [2:39:34 PM] cost of service proposed in response to committee's may 16 comments, which is attributable to about $100,000 of that delta. We knew in embarking on this change in methodology that our restaurant and food establishment industry would be very interested as it affects them in different ways. So we reached out to our primary stakeholder, the greater Austin restaurant association, at the beginning, and we've been working with them throughout this process, and we really do appreciate all of their rolling up of the sleeves and working with us elbow to elbow on it. The incentive, disincentive feature, which might well be unique in the country. We haven't identified anyone else who uses that approach. Resulted from discussions with Gara. And on April 11, in particular, we met with Gara representatives, including current and past presidents of Gara to discuss this proposal. We incorporated their key recommendations and with us today is past president of Gara, skeeter Miller, and his colleague Carter Hobbs. And I believe those are the two Gara representatives today. So in sum, madam chair and mayor pro tem and committee members, if it is the will of council, this committee, to support this inspection initiative, then committee support of a city manager office budget addendum would be in order. And with that, I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have. [2:41:35 PM] >> Houston: Members, are there any questions? Mayor pro tem tovo? >> Tovo: Just a quick one. Does it result in the same level of revenue as the city manager's proposed budget? I mean, because it has to cover its cost. So I know we don't generate revenue through our fees. I guess my question would be more appropriately phrased as does it create any budget gap? >> A budget gap. >> Tovo: Would a budget amendment along the lines of what you've outlined create a gap in the proposed city manager's budget? >> A gap? Yes. The city manager's budget, the inspection fee schedule that's in the current city manager office proposed budget would generate $255,000 in revenue. And as proposed, the -- this inspection methodology with the 90% cost of service for the group 3c, it would generate $100,000 roughly for a full year. So there would be a gap there. $100,000 of that gap is attributable to the 90% cost of service factor for the smaller full service risk size group. >> Tovo: I wasn't sure. I was thinking it might be a little closer because you also said that though the cost of service wasn't at a full 100%, there were also -- there was also some tiering. But that's a pretty significant gap. Okay, thank you very much. You know, generally, thank you for your approach on this. I think this is a really sound plan. >> Thank you. >> Houston: Councilmember kitchen? >> Kitchen: I'm trying to make sure that I'm understanding the big picture impact of the difference between the may and the revised and the [2:43:39 PM] difference with the impact. Let me see if I can summarize. So the difference is just categorizing the establishments by different buckets in terms of their size, right? >> Yeah. >> Kitchen: So that's what you did and then you ran the numbers on that, is that correct? >> Correct. Councilmember, as one example, in the may 16 proposal, the smaller group, the C group, accounted for 30% of all fixed food establishments. Now that smaller group accounts for 81% because you're comparing establishments with one to 10 and now one to 25. Because the fees are set to be lower for the smaller establishments, that impacts revenue. >> Kitchen: Maybe I'm not reading this right because it looks to me like the fees went up. >> They did. Because the -- yeah, because of the individual cost of service factors were revised. We did a deeper dive to determine in today's dollars based on IFS knowing that for instance in tier 1 we're only going to be once in all likelihood, and therefore we need to spend more time and then how much -- what is the cost of that time. So all the cost of service factors were revised and updated. >> Kitchen: Okay. So the fee -- are these fees annual fees or are they fees per inspection? >> They are all annual fees, yes. >> Kitchen: All right. So -- I'm going to have to look at this and really understand. That was not my -- that was not my expectation or thinking when I thought about bucketing them in a [2:45:40 PM] different way because I was -- I guess I was just making the assumption that smaller businesses are not going to be able to afford higher fees. So I can see that their fees are still going down from current fee. I guess that's the point. But by revising them and changing the buckets, their fee actually goes up. Am I looking at that right? >> That is true. They go council from the adopted fees though. All the tier 1 establishments are seeing significant fee decreases from the current adopted, and then perhaps half -- perhaps half of the tier 2 establishments are also seeing a fee decrease. And if you adjust for fact that we're kind of comparing apples and Oranges with the current fees being set at 90%, being two years old, if you adjust any at all for that, then all of the tier 2 2 fees are going down from that's currently adopted to the proposed fee. >> Kitchen: Okay. I want to make sure I'm reading it right. For example, a lower risk smaller size establishment, a 1-c, that's basically the smallest and the lowest risk that you can get, so that almost doubled in terms of the number of establishments from may. But the fee went up over $100 from may for those establishments. Even though it still went down from the current fee. Am I reading that right? >> Yes, you are. >> Kitchen: Okay. I guess I'm not understanding why. >> Well, the cost of factor for may for the 1-c, that was looking at the cost of inspecting an establishment that has one to 10 employees. Now we're looking at the cost of inspecting an establishment with one to 25. And -- >> Kitchen: Okay. So when you determine that cost, so if you're looking at the cost of determining a [2:47:40 PM] bucket of one to 25 versus a bucket of one to 10, so are you averaging the cost or are you taking it at the highest cost for that bucket? >> It's averaging the cost, but that average cost goes up. And we also have to look at other factors too. As they say, we did a deeper dive on the cost of service to make sure that we are in fact looking at total potential cost to the city for conducting that inspection. We weren't relying on historical numbers. >> Kitchen: Okay. So between may and -- we can go offline so I can understand it better. This will be my last question. >> I'll be glad to. >> Kitchen: Between now and August the cost of service formula or pieces of the cost of service formula changed. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: So they went up, if I'm understanding correctly. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: And is there anything else -- and they went up because you're explaining that you had to look at the cost for an average of a zero to 25 employee versus an average of a zero to 10, is that right? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: All right. Is there anything else about the formula that changed? >> Yeah. We looked more closely at -- again, did a deeper dive at what the new cost of service would be above and beyond the historical number we've been using. The may number wasn't as thought out and as detailed and deep dive as this number is. >> Kitchen: Okay. Perhaps you can share that with me. I'd like to understand what else changed because my thinking was the only thing that changed in terms of what the concern was when we expressed was the budget, but it sounds like the -- was the buckets, but it sounds like the formula actually changed to reflect more than that. So I would just like to understand what the other [2:49:41 PM] factors were just because I wasn't expecting that change in the buckets would actually end up raising the fee for the smaller sizes than what was proposed in may. That doesn't make logical sense to me. That's why I need to understand. >> Yeah. I'd be more than glad to sit down with you and walk you through those. >> Kitchen: I'd like to understand what a deeper dive means in terms of the cost of service. >> Houston: I guess my question is if you looked -- and I appreciate what you did for the small small businesses because that's always an issue in the community is the more fees we put on them the less they're able to make the bottom line. And so then all of a sudden they're gone. But is there -- I guess I'm asking from one to 25 instead of one to 10, which is what we used last time, is there something in between that? How did you decide that one to 25 is the number for the lower risk? >> Chair, it just seemed to fit because it had been mentioned at the previous may 16 meeting that 50 seemed to be a break point between smaller medium size establishments and then the larger establishments. We needed a middle break point for that group of one to 50 and the midpoint one to 25 seemed to work. There's nothing specific about the number 25 that's better than, let's say 24 or 26. It's also a fairly common break used in other kinds of fee schedules that look at commercial establishments, looking at the one to 25. One to 10 based on committee input from may was too [2:51:42 PM] small. That was just -- and then the middle category of 10 to 100 was far too big based on input. So one to 25 and 25 to 50 were logical break points. >> Houston: So for some of the lower risk, smaller establishments, was there any feedback about the increase in fees to the 90% level? So like low risk, 1-a, for example, is 116 instead of the 300. And one that was proposed in may? >> Right. >> Houston: Have any of those seen this and have any comments about the increase? >> Not that I'm aware of. I believe that -- perhaps Garrett could speak to that more specifically, but the 416-dollar proposed fee is considerably lower than the current 670 to 734. So that's more than a 40% decrease. >> Houston: So we assume they would be happy with the decrease from what they're paying now, but not from what we proposed in may? >> Yes, chair, I believe that's correct. >> Houston: Okay. Any other questions? Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: One last question and you had mentioned this before, but I'm not remembering. The funding of the nine new vehicles, are those factored into the cost of service? >> No, they are not. >> Okay. All right. >> Houston: Any other questions? I want to thank you so much. And I know that you're asking for us to make a decision now. And discuss some possible action. We'll have that conversation here to decide what it is that we can recommend. [2:53:46 PM] So committee, I think it's on slide 11. I'm not sure that I know enough about the financial piece to be able to make a recommendation different from what the city manager proposed, but what they're asking us to do is direct the staff to come back with a budget amendment to support this new fee increase. The August 8th fee increase. Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I'm not ready either. And the reason for me is that I had made an assumption when we talked previously that the change in the buckets would actually -- I wasn't thinking in terms of raising the fees for small businesses, the smaller size. Even though I understand it's still less than the current fee, which I appreciate. So I like the basic approach. I think the basic approach of tiering and the incentive that's built in that costs -- it costs less if you're -- yeah. I think I'm reading this right. If you -- if you're lower risk you're not paying as high a fee. I think that all makes sense. I'm just still trying to understand the difference between what was proposed in may, which I assume is what's in the city manager's budget, versus what's proposed now. And it doesn't have the result that I had thought it might when we had the conversation previously, and so that's what I would need to think about because to -- the whole point from my perspective of changing the [2:55:47 PM] buckets was to better reflect the cost to a smaller business, but this actually ends up costing more. So that's what has me wondering. And I realize that it's because of the change in the cost of service analysis and what goes into that because of the -- the additional dive or deeper dive as you put it. So I'm assuming what we're looking at is the difference between the may proposed fees and the August proposed fees that you wouldn't be going back and revising the may proposed fees based on this different analysis. So I guess I'm not ready. Sorry, that was a long way to say that. >> Houston: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I think I need -- I really do appreciate the approach and I think it is a sensible approach. I think I'm going to have to look a little bit more at the numbers, but it seems like it would be worthwhile. Councilmember kitchen, you have asked some worthwhile questions about the numbers. It seems as if some categories as least the small businesses would be paying fees that are less than what are currently proposed, are currently assessed, and that would be in the manager's budget, so they would realize a savings over what they will otherwise. >> Kitchen: Well, yes. That's good. That's a good -- that's a good point to this. For not all categories, but for the lower risk category lower risk categories, fees are less than they are now. They're not when you get into medium or higher. So -- so yeah. And the risk factor is supposed to relate to you what you're doing with [2:57:48 PM] regard to compliance in your business. So yes, my question is just particularly since the formula was changed. So I would want to make sure that the formula -- that what we're seeing in terms of the may fees is not going to be changed with the newer formula. >> Tovo: I guess the challenge here is that the may fees aren't what's moving forward in the budget process unless we make a change. The may fees, as I understood the conversation -- >> Kitchen: Maybe I misunderstood. >> Tovo: That we will be looking at, and maybe we should invite staff up to clarify. In the city manager's proposed budget, we're looking at current fees, that last column. So in the -- is that incorrect? >> In the city manager's current budget as presented on Monday, the fees in that budget are in fact the may 16 fees, however -- however, it's very important to note, at full 100% cost of service. So you'll recall that the may 16 fee schedule that was presented to y'all using the old scheme had two categories, 3-b and 3-c, at 80% and 90% cost of service, which had a big impact on those high risk, smaller establishments. And so what is in the current city manager budget are 100% cost of service. So those fees for 3-c and 3-b are significantly higher in the current budget. >> Tovo: Chair, thank you for clarifying. I was confused. In the city manager's budget current fee is -- in the city manager's budget, is it, for example, the higher risk large establish. 3a, is it 896? Would it be 896? When you say the may 16 fee is it the 100% fee or the -- [2:59:51 PM] >> It would be the 100%. So -- >> Tovo: I'm sorry to interrupt -- >> Houston: Looking at slide 10. >> Tovo: Is it 90% or 100%? >> We're pulling up the city manager's budget summary. >> Tovo: I wonder if you could just pull up -- this is the slide around which I have concerns. I'm not sure in a category that says may 16th fee, I don't know whether you are capturing 90%, the 90% fee or if this is the 100% fee which would be in the city manager's proposed budget. >> Houston: Slide 10. >> Uh-huh. Slide 10, I've got it. Mayor pro tem, could you please restate your question to me? >> Tovo: Of course. In that column noted as may 16 fee, is that 1100%, which is the number that would be reflected in the city manager's budget? Or are the figures that you have in that column the 90%? >> Just one moment. Okay. The figures under may 16 in which case, for instance, 3c it says $601 under the new fee column. The number to the left, that 567, that -- that figure was [3:01:51 PM] at the reduced level of service cost. So that is not the fee that is in the current city manager's budget. Because the city manager's budget uses 100% cost of service, and I can tell you, for instance, in the city manager's budget, 3c is $708 versus what was presented on may 16 of 567. >> Tovo: Thank you. That's very helpful. So those -- okay. Thanks so much. >> That's a significant difference. >> Tovo: Very. >> Houston: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: So the question in my mind is whether we should be going with the may 16 approach of bucketing or the August approach of bucketing? That's really the question in my mind. I understand what you are saying now, what we see if front of us is may 16 is at 90%, so I have another question, I'm sorry. So -- so I'm assuming what we have on slide 10 both is the may 16 and the new fee which is August, both are reflected at 90%, and what's in the city manager's budget is 100%. >> Well, one was 80% and one was 90% on may 16. >> Kitchen: Okay, I'm just asking about slide 10. >> Yes. Are you looking at the may 16 column? >> Kitchen: I'm looking at the may 16 column on slide 10. >> Yeah, that represents the fees that were actually presented to you guys and so 3b and 3c are at 80% and 90% cost of service both. So those are discounted, 3b and 3c as you see them on the slide because when we presented those to the committee on may 16 they were discounted, that 80 and 90%. In the city manager's [3:03:51 PM] budget, those are 100. >> Kitchen: Right. But the new fee column on slide 10, that's also discounted, right? >> Only for 3c. The $601 figure is at 90% cost of service. And that's specified in slide 11. Slide 11 makes the emphasis that all the fees under the new fees column are 100% except for the 90% figure for category 3c. And the reason why is because 3c is your small establishments that are often locally owned, those are your full-service restaurants that would have otherwise experienced a significant fee hike. And so based on input from the committee in may, we kept that at 90%. Other than that, all the new fees are at 100% under that new fee column. >> Kitchen: Okay, so I'm just going to repeat to make sure I get it right. >> Sure. >> Kitchen: The 3c is 9% under the new fee column. >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Right? And the rest of them are all at 100%. >> That is correct. >> Kitchen: In the may column, which is what's reflected in the city manager's budget, they are at 100% except for -- did you say -- >> 3b and 3c. >> Kitchen: And 3b and 3c in the city manager's budget -- >> Are at 100%. >> Kitchen: But in there they are reflected -- >> Under the may 16 column, that's what was presented to you. And that was before it became promulgated that all fees are going to be set at 100%. >> Kitchen: That's fine. I'm just trying to repeat back and understand what I'm looking at. So in the 3c would be 80% [3:05:53 PM] and 3b, 90%. >> 3b should be 740 and 3c should be 90%, the 567. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> And just for convenience, 3b in the city manager's budget is $822. That's what will apply unless there is an addendum passed. And 3c is $708. In the current city manager budget. And that's on one of your backup entitled fees reflecting '19 budget. >> Houston: Any other questions? And I'm sorry now, where is the backup that you said will -- is that the -- >> Yes, ma'am. >> Houston: Is this the city manager's budget up in the front? Is this -- is this what you're talking about? Okay. Is this what you're talking about? >> Does it say fees [inaudible] >> Houston: Yes. >> Yes, ma'am, that's it. So you can see if you look across from 3b and 3c below that under proposed fees in the right columns, you can see that 3b is $822 and 3c is $708. That's what's in the budget as we speak now. Those are considerably higher than what is in our proposal here, which we were trying to reflect the committee's concerns from may. >> Houston: Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: This may be -- let's see here. [3:07:59 PM] If -- if the approach is to recommend a lower fee, and right now the city manager has in his budget the higher fee, is slide -- is slide 12 addressing what that gap is? >> Let's see. Slide 12. Can you switch to the power point? Councilmember Garza, slide 12 I'm not -- that's the one and the -- the vehicles. >> Garza: My slides are misnumbered or something. I guess it's 13 on theirs, 12 on mine. >> The total revenue figures. >>>> Garza: I'm just wondering if we can have -- it sound like we're not going to be taking any action, so I'm wondering -- my assumption is at our budget work sessions we will get another presentation similar to this in front of the whole council that explains here are your options. Is that going to happen? Or if no action happens here, it will just go forward as the manager's proposed fees? >> Well, if nothing happens at this committee meeting, then if an addendum is not supported, the default position is that the fees in the city manager's budget now would move forward. Whether or not that could be addressed in a workshop, I suppose that could be. Staff would appreciate the opportunity even with different views on what the fees should be, we do feel strongly that the current fee structure should continue, the one that's adopted now, until -- until [3:10:06 PM] January 1 because if the new would be a change in fees that is taking place when there are still unresolved legal questions that are being addressed now and it would also be untimely from our software development point of view. So at minimum we would hope that an addendum could be supported that would continue our existing fee structure until such time that it's change, and then that would become effective on January 1. >> Garza: Maybe the action we can take is that -- councilmember kitchen, would you feel comfortable with that. >> Kitchen: Which recommendation? >> Garza: To keep the current fees until at least January 1. >> Yeah, until we come back to a future either budget workshop or a committee meeting to discuss this further and to finalize whether or not the committee wants to endorse or council wants to adopt inspection frequency standard. Until that time, it would be advisable to have an addendum that would keep the current fees in place as they are adopted now until at least -- until January 1. Because companies without intervention -- otherwise without intervention the new fee structure will become effective on October 1, and we still have legal questions that we're addressing and there are still concerns on methodology and equity here at the committee. >> Houston: So I would be comfortable if we kept the current fees, it's what [3:12:07 PM] people are accustomed to paying, unless we can resolve the legal issues, the software issues, and then what is the revenue difference that -- between what the city manager's proposing and what the current fees would propose. If that makes any sense. >> Yeah, it does. The city manager's budget would have us generating about -- roughly $65,000 a quarter. The current process has us generating about -- see, 2.7 million, that would be about what? Five -- the difference is not going to be really big. It might be in the ballpark of, you know, $20,000 for that quarter. Because using the current process, we're generating $2.7 million a year in fees. And -- and that would generate a budget revenue net increase of about 111,000, and the city manager's budget has a net revenue increase of 255,000. So if that helps you with an order of magnitude. I mean, there would be -- there would be revenue foregone in that first quarter, but then that first quarter also those higher revenues are predicated on 100% cost of service and the higher fee impact of that fee schedule at 100%. >> Houston: So I'm not sure about my colleagues, [3:14:08 PM] but I -- I'll need time to look at that and think about that. So if anybody else has a motion, then I would be willing to entertain that, but ... >> Garza: I guess the problem is, chair, that we -- it would require some kind of process by -- before council. Ours would just be we're recommending that we institute the current fees until January 1st, and then we would have that discussion at budget. I'm just not familiar how we do that coming from a committee. >> Kitchen: Well, here's where I'm at at the moment. I -- I'm not comfortable with just waiting till January at the moment because of the impact on the businesses. I understand it's a short period of time, but it puts in place the lowered fees at a later date in terms of the businesses so that's what I'm trying to understand. >> Garza: I think it puts in place the higher fees. It would keep the current -- >> Kitchen: Keeps the higher fees right now until January. >> Garza: But the city manager's proposed fees are higher so he's saying keep them current now. The city manager's proposed fees are higher than what is currently so he's saying keep what's currently there, don't increase them to the city manager's budget until possibly January. >> Kitchen: Oh, okay. But they are not -- they are not universally higher, so -- >> The fees in the city manager's budget would generate a revenue increase of $255,000 a year more revenue than the current adopted fee schedule. >> Kitchen: Yeah, but what I'm looking at is the impact on the individual business, [3:16:08 PM] the size of that business and the businesses that are operating in a way that -- that lowers the risk. So if I'm understanding correctly, the fee schedule that's being proposed takes -- takes into account the way the business is operating. So in other words, if a smaller sized business is operating in a way that ends up with reduced need for inspections, then their cost is going down then what the current fee is now and -- is that not right? >> Well, I can't determine if that's right, councilmember kitchen, right here and now, but one thing is for sure is that the city manager's budget has a higher fee burden on the food establishments because it's based on 100% cost recovery. >> Kitchen: I understand that part. >> So the revenue differential is $255,000 more, so you have that amount of additional money being generated from the fees. So the fees -- the fees are basically higher. The current fee system would be lower, and if that were continued for three months until it was decided from a policy point of view whether or not to adopt inspection frequency standard and if so at what fee level, that would provide the time necessary I think for that policy review. >> Houston: So this is the first time that we've gone through this process and so I'm not sure that everybody is ready to sign off on this. We understand what the issues are. Councilmember Garza has suggested maybe we can adopt a motion that you bring -- have staff -- direct staff to bring this to our budget work session to see how that could fit into the city manager's plan -- otherwise I don't think we're going to get very far today on this. >> Okay. Yeah. [3:18:08 PM] >> Houston: Is that acceptable? >> Kitchen: That's fine. And I just want to say I really appreciate -- you've worked really hard and this is great. And I also appreciate you going back and making revisions based on the conversation we had last time, which is useful. I'm just not prepared right now to -- to say the may version or the August version makes more sense to me. That's all. >> Okay. Understood. >> Kitchen: I mean the whole scheme makes sense to me. >> Houston: So if I could have a motion to have staff -- to direct staff to bring this conversation back to our budget hearing, then we can move that forward. >> Garza: I'll make the motion that we ask staff to have this be a topic of one of our budget work sessions. >> Houston: Do I have a second? Seconded by councilmember kitchen. All in favor aye? It's unanimous on the dais. Thank you. You all have done a great job with a very complex subject and we asked you to do some things for the small business owners and you tried so we appreciate that. The next agenda item is food climate, amendments to the Austin community climate plan. Who's coming up? Let me see. That would be Adriana hashke and farm director projects manager Zach bomber? Is that correct? Office of sustainability. So if you could walk us through your presentation. >> Fantastic. All right. Chair, mayor pro tem, councilmembers, thank you so much for hearing this presentation on the proposed food and climate addendum to the Austin community climate [3:20:11 PM] plan. I am a registered dietician and I serve currently as the chair of the austin-travis county food policy board and member of the joint sustainability committee. >> I'm Zach bomber. >> To begin, so in October of 2016 I had been a member of the joint sustainability committee for about seven months and I was serving as the austin-travis county food policy board representative on that committee. I noticed that there didn't seem to be a lot of mention of food and food's role in greenhouse gas emissions so I convened a -- I spoke with my food policy board members and we convened a food and climate working group in December 2016 that carried us through 2017. We also at that time solicited the subject matter expertise of the city of Austin office of sustainability to help us understand Austin's food-related carbon footprint as well as to help us review existing food and climate community plans around the nation. So all the members of the working group are listed by name above and representing a variety of academia and public interest. And then we researched and met and wrote for a full year, and can culmination of that is our food and climate report, which I actually have a copy of. I don't know if you all would like to have that in hand. >> Houston: We have it. >> You have it. Great. And then we presented that proposed addendum to both the food policy board and the joint sustainability fund committee in February both of which unanimously [3:22:11 PM] passed this report and requested to have it placed on committee agenda. This is an incredibley complex issue, we recognize that and that is why it has taken us a very long time and input from multiple boards and commissions to come to where we are. So we understand that climate change and greenhouse gas emissions and energy and natural systems is a very complex global economy that we all participate in every day. As well as food and the food system, the food supply chain. That is a large global economy that we all participate in every day. So in the course of researching different food and climate action plans as well as food and climate literature, it rose to the top that by far the knows impactful way to reduce Austin's food-related carbon footprint is encourage climate friendly food choices which benefit both human health and natural ecosystems. It was amazing to watch the synergy of those two come together over the course of our research. I'll begin with environmental impacts because that is where the seed is planted and this all begins. The environmental impacts associated with food are reverberating and they go beyond greenhouse gas emissions. And it is largely from the industrial food sector, industrial agriculture. So we see large animal feeding operations and industrial agriculture has greenhouse gas emissions both associated with large transition of land use as well as animal emissions and the inputs, the feed that goes into feeding those animals. In addition, we see large mono cultured agriculture operations. We see high fertilizer and pesticide loads, and that can also increase emissions as well as -- as well as [3:24:14 PM] intensive tillage which breaks up the soil and releases carbon from the carbon that's in the soil naturally. It also needs to erosion of soils so -- and since it's a flood we see runoff of that pesticide and fertilizer residue which then pollutes our waterways all the way down to the gulf of Mexico. And the health impacts are profound. So we have an industrial ag food system that has built a food environment that is making us sick. It favors foods that have empty calories as well as high saturated fat loads, high cholesterol loads and high sodium loads. Lower in those beneficial fiber and unsaturated fats. We at this point in time are in epidemic of preventable diet related chronic diseases. We see 34% of Texans to be obese and that's the most recent statistic from the CDC and obesity comes with a host of increased risks for co-morbidity such as heart disease, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and stroke and many other diseases that can be preventable. Why do we want to address food in our climate plan? The food system contributes 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That is a statistic from the world research institute. Of that 30% a little over 80% comes from the production phase of the food system. Healthy soil and pasture associated with sustainable ag could potential he sequester 100% of annual global emissions. Climate friendly food is representative of and reflects a nutrition naturally balanced diet as recommended for the guidelines for Americans and the food supply is particularly vulnerable to [3:26:15 PM] climate change impacts. We through the course of research discovered that San Francisco, New York, Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle and other leading cities have included recommendations for reducing emissions associated with the food sector in their climate plans. So I'll pass it. >> So the city of Austin's community climate plan. This plan was adopted in 2015 by city council. It has the long-term target of net zero communitywide greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. There's 150 actions in this plans. When we develop a plan like this we first do a greenhouse gas inventory or carbon footprint. When you are seeing is a carbon footprint for Travis county in 2016. Part of the reason why we haven't addressed food in this current community climate plan is because of the methodology used to create greenhouse gas inventories. When we do this inventory we focus on a geographic boundary, direct emissions sources where we're burning fossil fuels in the boundary of Travis county. So you can see the major portions of this inventory are Austin energy and power plants, our transportation sector, so all the vehicles, cars and trucks, industrial process, waste, natural gas. So you see nowhere in this inventory emissions associated with all the things that we purchase and all the things that are created in other places across the country and across the world that end up in our community. The other thing that we also don't include is inventories -- in inventories is biogenic based emissions. Calculating and measuring emissions associated with trees and soil and plants is much more complicated to do and there's much less certainty associated with that than, you know, measuring a car burned a [3:28:15 PM] gallon of gas and we know exactly how many emissions were created. So we created this plan, we followed the global protocol for greenhouse gas emissions accounting which is what most cities follow. But by doing that we sort of have this gap of not addressing all the emissions. So we're missing all the emissions associated with food and all the things that we consume and purchase on a day-to-day basis. So the office of sustainability fund in this effort -- -- my team did research to try to figure out what are the emissions associated with food. How much food are we purchasing and buying in Austin and what are the emissions and how big are they. This last slide of the community, communitywide emissions of all of our activities in the community were about 13.4 million metric tons. We wanted to understand a little tiny portion of this, or S it a huge portion, bigger than the total? We didn't know the answer. This initial slide comes from the world resources institute to global nonprofit. Did lots of research into where impacts occur with different types of food. So it's just displaying that the larger amounts of water and larger amounts of greenhouse gas emissions come from animal based foods and less emissions associated with plant based foods. So then we dug a little further to try to estimate, so based on that paper and then some other academic research papers, we applied a simplified life cycle assessment to try to quantify the impact, greenhouse gas impact of the food we eat in Travis county. We found the estimate that each person eats about 2,074 pounds a year. Over 95% of the food that we consume in Austin, me, you, [3:30:16 PM] all of us, comes from outside of our county, so it's coming from other places across the united States and the world. So we took that 2,174 pounds of food, took sort of a basket of the types of foods that the average person eats. That had estimates of 50 pounds of red meat per year, 600 pounds of dairy products, over 600 pounds of fruits and vegetables, we took the basket of the mix of the food and multiplied that by emissions per food category and ended up with this total carbon footprint of all the food that we eat. Multiply it by 1.2 million people living in Travis county. So we went up with this -- end up with this carbon footprint of the 3.4 metric tons. That can't really be added to our Travis county carbon footprint, just compared, but it's about a quarter. If you incorporate all the food we eat, our carbon footprint gets a quarter larger. The other thing red Matt, animal products, even though they aren't the largest amount of food we eat, they create the largest impact and where they do is in production. There's some emissions with transportation, getting the food moved around to us and some in retail, but by far the largest impact is in production of these foods. >> Thank you. Okay. So when the working group was deciding how we were going to recommend actions, we looked at existing plans, we leaned heavily on imagine Austin to understand priorities and multiple of these recommendations to reflect those imagine Austin priorities, as well as the existing Austin community climate plan. It does talk about food in terms of organic diversion, so we looked at what is already -- what is already moving Austin forward and [3:32:18 PM] existing recommendation from fellow boards and commissions. We came up with four strategic areas to kind of place these recommendations. And that is food production -- these are basically the steps of the food supply chain. Food production, distribution and retail, consumption, food recovery and waste. So within these four strategic areas we have 27 total recommended actions of which we identified the ten priority actions. We used a variety of filters to determine those priority actions and one of those fillers is is this something that is already -- what is the status of this project? Is it already underway? What is the time frame of potential achievement of this action? What is the estimated impact of this action? And the impacts were categorized low, medium, high based on affecting thousands of people, tens of thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of people respectively. And also we used barriers to implementation. We came up with top ten priorities, all the actions are in the report if you all would like the review those as well. In the very first strategic area of reducing emissions supporting sequestration, enhancing resilience in food production that is correct has to do with food production within austin- travis county. We identified three top priority actions. The first of which is creating a staff position to help support our local growers and either implementing or transitioning to regenerative ag practices that restore soil, that reduce emissions, that use sustainability and best practices for planning and permitting. The second action is to work with Austin water to offer rebates and incentives for conservation irrigation. And the third is to develop a comprehensive farmland conservation plan that does [3:34:19 PM] identify areas of priority for farmland conservation. The second of the four strategic areas is reducing emissions and logistics in retail. So again, this is very -- it's very clear it has to do with emissions in our austin-travis county. So the first of the two top priority actions identified here has to do with locating facility and space that can help us aggregate more product from local plowers thereby even you're enhancing their ability to move more product to market and allowing us a distribution point to move more of that product into our local market. The second action is a voluntary phasing out of refrigerants and that would be at retail establishments, distribution and retail establishments. The third step which goes back to the second slide when we said by far the largest impact is encouraging healthy food choices, we have two top priority actions that we've identified here that complement each other very well. And the first is partner organizations and funding opportunities to promote public awareness of a climate-friendly diet through public education campaigns. So we wanted to make sure that this of the an opportunity to work with nonprofit and community partners to help determine what is the voice of a public education campaign for the constituency that you serve. I work at sustainable food center so I imagine it would be a variety of campaigns based on an individual's readiness and ability. And the second is exploring opportunities to make proteins for the hierarchy [3:36:22 PM] of carbon more available and accessible. As we are educating individuals on these healthy -- and encouraging healthy choices, we are also building a food environment that makes those available which means they are in grocery stores. It makes them accessible which means it gives people an opportunity to actually purchase those foods. And we have here visual examples of some of the alternatives when we talk about the hierarchy of carbon intensity. It's moving from that very large industrial animal operation to a pastured holistic grass fed and finished cattle operation, and we have many friends that are in biodynamic and ways that are stewarding the land. They are raising cattle and beef. As well as lean meat options such as pasture poultry and then lean plant based protein options. And that would give you a better protein package as well, one that has more of those beneficial fibers and unsaturated fats and less sodium. The fourth area is reducing emissions from food waste. We identified three priority actions in this area and I'm not sure why that's not clicking. Can you -- thank you. The first is to update the Austin resource recovery organic diversion ordinance to prioritize feeding humans first instead of going into composting collection. The second is to -- is for an end to end food waste technology infrastructure to support recovery for human consumption, and that's an Austin Travis county food policy board recommendation that was passed as well. And the last is to update the universal recycling ordinance to include composting services at multi-family residences. So next steps, I'm here on behalf of our working group [3:38:24 PM] and both the food policy board and joint sustainability committee to ask that this committee entertains a motion to bring this to the full council for consideration as adoption as an an addendum to the Austin community climate plan. From there funding and implementing actions in this plan and tracking metrics and reporting annually on the progress. And that is all. >> Houston: Thank you so much for all of that information. Are there any questions? I have a comment. >> Yes. >> Houston: You've done a lot of wonderful work and it is a complex issue. And I see that you have your partners and participants. I don't see any real people in here because it seems like it's a very clouds group of people who all believe the same kinds of things. So when do you hope to get input from the community, the restaurant association is here, just regular people good what you're proposing. I think you are missing that link. >> Okay. So we -- we did put out at the beginning of the working group's development, we did reach out to distribution partners and we reached out to a wider net of consumers, and we had some participation initially and that did kind of fall off over time and we haven't since gone back and presented these results. So that's a plan that we could definitely put into place for more input. >> Houston: I can't speak for my colleagues, but before I'm willing to go forward with this, there needs to be a wider kind of conversation about what it is you are proposing because that's going to have an impact on the restaurants and I'm sure many of them try to use beef that's [3:40:25 PM] locally sourced and other vegetables that are locally sourced, but I don't think there's been a wide enough conversation about how this will impact the whole community, and it just -- for me. I think you need to do a little bit more community engagement. >> Okay. >> Houston: Councilmember Garza. >> Garza: I had similar concerns, councilmember Houston. I guess the lack of what seemed to me was a lack of diversity on -- in this subcommittee. This seems to -- if we adopt this recommendation to the full council, it seems like we're endorsing possible funding to endorse a plant-based diet. And on one hand I feel that is, frankly, government overreach. On the other, I guess I went back and read the food policy board's mission, I guess, and it says it's an advisory board to improve the availability of safe, nutrition locally and sustainable food at reasonable prices for all residents particularly those in need. I feel like we've veered off of what the goal of that board was. I understand the -- absolutely understand the connection and the desire to include this in our climate plan, but when I've been working on food access issues, and I know that one in four children doesn't have food on the table and we have thousands of calls to 311 of people who don't have food, and I feel like we veered off of priorities about food access when we're talking about telling people what they should -- that they should eat less meat and eat more vegetables. So I can't support this especially when I saw in the plan -- and I appreciate your work and your passion. I totally understand being passionate about certain [3:42:26 PM] subjects. There was a high priority placed on funding a public campaign for what was referred to as climate based which seems to be more plant based, and what was low priority was talking about the food access issues I think our council has placed a very high priority on. So I think there needs to be some more alignment with council's priorities, so I can't -- I couldn't support moving this on to the full council. >> Houston: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I think it would be beneficial to get some more input. I think that's what people are suggesting. You know, the -- what would be really important, I think, would be aligning and collaboration, whatever you want to call it, between the climate concerns and the access concerns. I don't see them as exclusive and I don't think that you all are suggesting that they are. I just think that the food access issues and the cost issues are really critical for a huge part of our community. And so it's hard to suggest a healthier approach when food is not even accessible at a decent price -- I mean at an affordable price. So -- and those don't have to be exclusive, and I actually think that a lot of your recommendations go in that direction, and a lot of these recommendations could actually improve access and cost. But there's not -- but this set of recommendations I don't think have enough of that other side in them -- [3:44:27 PM] you see what I mean? So, for example, reducing emissions associated with the purchase and consumption of food. When you look at the priority actions, public awareness of a climate-friendly diet, there's -- I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But it doesn't -- it's not the first level of need for important segment and a large segment of our community. You do see explore opportunities to make proteins per the hierarchy of carbon intensity more available and accessible in the consumer market, but that really needs a lot more exploration as far as I'm thinking. So because -- because we need access to food -- we just need access to food. So that's -- I would think taking that kind of recommendation and really exploring it in more detail with the community would be useful. So I do see a value to -- I do some plant based as healthy, but not to the exclusion of, you know, a meat-based diet. But I do think that -- but the bigger point to me is the access. If that makes sense. >> Yes. >> Kitchen: So it's almost a matter of emphasis and balance in terms of the set of recommendations from my perspective. >> Okay. >> Houston: And one other thing is that I would be happy -- I see you have someone on the group from huston-tillotson. That's a very academic environment and the people [3:46:28 PM] that I'm concerned about are the people that don't have the privilege to be able to think about what good a plant-based diet would do to them or how eating meat impacts our climate or climate change. They don't have that kind of privilege. They just want access to healthy food close by so they don't have to catch two buses to get there and get it back. So those people's voices are not being heard in this. This is a great idea both for our climate and for our health, but the people who are the ones that are in need of a better health, healthy food, accessible food, their voices are not in here because it might be a little different. So I'm just suggesting if you want us to -- district 1 to help you find other people who are interested in health and who don't look like the rest of the folks on this agenda, then we would be happy to help you do. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. And we did definitely -- since it is so complex and going with the metric of impact based on emissions, that was -- that was kind of the one lens. And so widening this would definitely be valuable. In terms of accessibility, we were hoping to support some actions that do improve accessibility through this food and climate addendum, so industrial agriculture okay of using this addendum as another way to support access activities that are underway or in development. I see your point though of bringing more voices to the table so I could definitely walk further in that direction. >> Houston: Right. Because there's black physicians, there are black nurses, there are people who [3:48:30 PM] have lived experiences in trying to help shape how people eat already, and it's not very successful because we have the highest obesity rate I think in the country. But those are the people that are -- I'm not hearing here. I'm hearing a lot of passion from a select group of people that are exploring this and seeing how this could be rolled out, but I think you need more. If you will just contact my office, I'm sure councilmember Garza has people she can connect you to too that will give you a real-life exposure to what people's real needs on. >> Garza: I can add to your point. In the climate action plan it seemed to have three pillars. It needs to be achievable, practical and effective. And I think we need to keep those things in mind when we're coming back with recommendations because, as councilmember Houston said, and councilmember kitchen, I understand the evidence behind why plant based is healthier, but you also need to think of it through the cultural lens of how certain cultures eat and how practical it is to changing that and how difficult it could be to change that. So keep those three pillars in mind when bringing forth recommendation. >> I will say taking off the climate change hat and putting on my dietician hat and have counseled, they come back because we walk out into a built food environment that doesn't allow decisions to be made. So I'm also trying to come up with a way to help individuals make healthier choices and not all plant based. But eating less of those proteins that are packaged [3:50:33 PM] with risk nutrients like high saturated fat and sodium. So it is trying to kind of walk that balance and understand that so I appreciate that input and we can definitely strengthen that case. >> Houston: Thank you. And some communities, that's all they have. >> Yeah. >> Houston: So they eat what they have to eat and it feels sometimes like we try to do human engineering to get people to do what we want them to do, but some people have a choice. >> [Inaudible] >> Houston: Dollar general is not a good place to shop at. Thank you so much. >> Kitchen: And I would reiterate, sounds to me like you all are -- have a process in mind that can include going back to the community and perhaps broadening the approach. I don't want to -- I don't want to discourage you from doing that and then coming back because I think that -- I think that the approach that you are taking to focus on food and impact with climate change is important. I think that with some more conversations with the community and perhaps some addition to these recommendations I think it would be much stronger and so I'm hoping that you are hearing that from me at least, I think from all of us that it's not that we don't want to move forward, it's just that we're seeing some things that could significantly improve what we're talking about. Does that make sense? >> Yeah, completely. Thank you. Yeah. >> Houston: Thank you for coming this afternoon. Briefing number 5 has been postponed because director Hayden is ill so we won't have that. So the last briefing is public health community outreach strategies. And let's see. [3:52:35 PM] Would you identify yourself? >> Yes, ma'am. I'm cassie Deleon, with Austin public health. >> Houston: And put your Mike up just a little closer. >> Cassie Deleon with Austin public health and I'll be providing the presentation on the public health community strategies that our department has recently launched. So just to get a sense, director Hayden asked me to present on a strategy that we recently employed. Let me get the power point going here. We were looking for a way to better communicate the work that we do in Austin public health, and just for the background and history that led up to this communication strategy being developed, a couple years ago I believe for fy 2016 council allotted quite a bit of new dollars, general fund dollars to help improve our infrastructure capacity and expand our social service contract needs. As a result of that we got a lot of questions about what is the impact of what we're doing. And at the time our director, Shannon Jones, was wanting to make sure that we could be responsive to those kinds of questions. From that was a result of us developing a communication strategy so we throughout the department would have that capacity to be responsive to those kinds of questions from stakeholders, from community members, and for other individuals who are interested in the work that we do at Austin public health and with the city of Austin. And so we developed a method to standardize our messaging in a way that would resonate with stakeholders and have a tool to engage our stakeholders. We wanted to give meaningful context to public health, program benefits to the community. And we know that government services are often difficult to describe and to quantify in a way that demonstrates the actual value and so we're trying to provide that context for our stakeholders. And then we also wanted to [3:54:36 PM] connect the investments that are being made in our programming to the outcomes that are happening. And so we wanted to make sure that with our communication and messaging that we are able to answer the questions does the public investment make a difference and what is the outcome? We also wanted to provide a mechanism for our programs to assess how we're doing and to demonstrate to the public that we're cognizant of how well we're addressing community needs and that we're making a difference and we're measuring that. And how can we answer. Are we on track? Where are the gaps and why are there gaps so we can explain if we've had a drop in funding demonstrating the funding gap has created a gap in service. And also want to go highlight public health at work. So often we don't have an opportunity because work that we do is so -- it's invincible, we don't see it working all the time. And so we wanted an opportunity to showcase the day to day behind the scenes public health work such as preventing a food-borne illness or planning for emergency response. It's not if it's going to happen but when after there's a lot of work behind the scenes, flooding event or distribute medications to prevent a massive outbreak. And how do we also break the cycle of disease transmission, making sure as we're identifying folks have a communicable disease that we're being responsive and responsive to all of their contacts. We're also hoping adoption of the strategic direction, public health has a large component to support. Looking at healthy environment, economic opportunity and affordability and government that works for all, there's a lot of public health ties to and supports. The specific strategies public health has a role in [3:56:38 PM] supporting. This demonstrates some of the things our communications strategy does help to support. Specifically I wanted to highlight that this actually does help us to implement strategy that was identified in the strategic direction to up days and standardize the way we measure and also gives us a mechanism to enhance communication and collaboration between city council, city staff and communication members to enhance transparency, trust and shared decision making. So what was our answer to this? We decided to develop an issue brief that lets us tell the story. The story of public health and the story of the impact of the work that we're doing. The purpose overall was, again, tell the story of the department and larger the story of city of Austin how we're responding to public health needs. In a clear, concise and cogent manner. The audience we're looking for this to be something as a tool to be able to talk with elected officials, to stakeholders and others who have an interest in our work. The desire outcome. How do we communicate the impact of the health and social service investment in the community, and we know it's significant and important that the community realizes what that investment is -- what the return on that investment is. And then our deliverable. We decided it would be ideal if we can provide a one-page story of a program or issue area. We had specific defined components that any prom that we actually were providing an issue brief on would be able to support these different cone Pentagons and that we provide information on scope, reach, budget, performance measures and stories from the field. Those personal impacts of individuals that have been -- received benefit from the work we've done and also what has been the community overall benefit. So here's so here's the prototype and this gives an example of the different components. We designed a template that [3:58:38 PM] would capture the essential elements and each issue brief again is specific to a topic, but would include all of these different elements. And so the top of the issue brief would have an elevator statement and state what the issue brief is, and a clear brief message that communicates the work of our programs. And the statement would give an exact meaning. So often we get into so much jargon that the meaning of what we do is completely lost so we really worked with staff to try to cut through that and have cross departmental teams to talk about what are we saying in helping translate the message in that it makes more sense to someone who doesn't work in the program or is deep in the weeds of providing that service. Provides a call to action. Which was money even allocated? What is the purpose of the work that's happening. Then currently giving the current state. What is being spent, who is being served and what is the services offered? We know that there is a lot of funding from the state and federal agencies and it also includes general fund and also funding from our county. And it's important that we usually see that at an overall department level as our overall budget, but each one of our programs that is represented has a funding diversity so this gives us an opportunity to get a sense of that diversity as well. Our measure for success, this also shows which outcomes for track, past, current and our next fiscal year and how well, what kind of trends are we seeing. And then community impact. I think this is one of the places that really does make a difference. If we're able to see the individual stories we're seeing and someone who has actually benefited from those services or what the community level has actually experienced. This also provided our programs that we're working through this process an opportunity to reflect and do some basic program evaluation. If one of these components a program could not answer it called the question what are we doing here? Should we be focusing in this effort? Are there some adjustments we need to make. [4:00:38 PM] Because if we're getting this money and we can't define what the purpose of it is or what the benefit is, it's really important to have these deeper dive conversations. So it gives that opportunity to discuss that. And it was a challenge at some point to make sure that if we can't answer those questions any time up and down the organization we really need to revisit the messaging that and. At this point we actually have 10 issue briefs that were prepared. Seven of them are completed. Three of them are still in development and you have copies of the completed versions. I do want to note these are constant works in progress. This isn't a one and done type of situation because the work is constantly evolving, the funding is constantly changing, the out yams are adjusting. This is something that we have to revisit on a constant basis, but we try to give some point in time that we say this is where we're going to present this and publish it, but noting that we have a cycle of review and adjustment. But what's been nice is we've been actually been able to look at kind of some key topic areas that we know we get asked quite a bit about and some areas that are really important, but don't get the opportunity to be highlighted. So that's where these were the ones that are upper management identified as important to be the first ones to be developed. And so you can see what's here is the actual issue brief listed and the existing elevator speech has been tagged along with it. So Austin healthy adolescent behavioral health is one that's in development. Communicable disease, consumer health, homelessness, in development. The immunization program, epidemiology and disease surveillance, public health emergency preparedness, quality of life, workforce development, and that one is in development as well. So these are the ones that we're ready to launch. And the intention is that ifings our chief [4:02:39 PM] administrative officer during the budget hearings has a question that's come up with workforce development, for example, she had an easy go-to sheet so she knows if someone has a question she could give a message that potentially staff could provide. Or if one of us are caught in the elevator with one of you and you had a question of what's going on with the mobile vans, with the quality of life unit, we could give a good response that we know throughout the department we have actually vetted that and we know what that actually means. Next steps, as I said, these are living documents. We have to make sure that there's a cycle of ongoing review and constant update of this information. We plan to expand issue brief development process to include other programs. We think anything that is receiving any kind of level of attention within our department, we want to make sure that that has an issue brief to describe what we're doing. And then we really make sure that these issue groups see the light of day. We want to get them out of the program and get them out in front of key stakeholders and decision makers so that their awareness and knowledge of the work that we're doing is -- has been brought to everyone's attention. And with that we have examples of the seven issue briefs that have been completed and you should have those made available. And you can see each unof our programs have taken their own approach to defining the different areas, but it gives a nice glimpse into the different work that they're doing. And also if you have questions specific to the issue briefs we have subject matter experts for each of those areas here today. And that's all. >> Houston: Any questions? While people are still looking I want to thank you for this information. You're absolutely right. Many people in the stint don't have any clue what Austin health department does. I am got a call the other [4:04:39 PM] day about a demolition and the fact that there were rats in that other house. And send it to code, send it to you all, and an inspector went out and sure enough there was a hoarder in the house so they were able to assist the person with rat traps, not rodent control, and to give them information about how they could make that work. So people don't know that if there's stagnant water you all will go out and put prophylactics in it to kill the mosquito larvae. So there are many things that you all do that people just don't know. So I think this will be helpful. >> I just wanted to say great presentation. Good overview of all the programs. Thanks. >> Houston: Oh, yes, councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: Yes. I think these are real helpful. I think that -- so let me ask a few questions. So I assume this focuses on the health department's programs, right? It would be -- so, for example, when you get to you issues related to homelessness, for example, which cut across many aspects of the city, this issue brief will focus on what the health department is doing, is that the thinking? >> Yes, and that's a really good question. When we went through this process, particularly the social service issue briefs that we were developing, there's so much money that is leveraged beyond just what the health department [4:06:43 PM] provides. And there was a lot of discussion about that. We really tried to narrow the focus to demonstrate this investment that comes in to Austin public health and then goes out into the community. This is where this investment lives and how we can speak to that investment based on what we're actually tracking and working with. Noting that it is a very large issue and there are many other components that support homelessness throughout the city, but those are specific performance measures that are tied to Austin public health that we have the ability to track and report out on. >> Kitchen: Okay. I might suggest that you also include -- maybe it's under your measures of success. Around maybe it's here and I'm not seeing it. The relationship between the program and the city's strategic plan, you know, which category it falls under. Then I would be curious about the measures of success. The metrics that we are in the process of being adopted for the strategic plan are not comprehensive for all metrics that you might have. So I wouldn't expect it to be exactly the same, but where there is a strategic plan metric that relates to the program it should be reflected, I would think. But all of these programs are going to fall under one of the buckets. Does that make sense to include that? >> Yes, ma'am. I think as the strategic plan was being developed and adapted, these were in flux and being developed as well. I think now there's the opportunity to add this in. I think that's a nice add to show how the issue briefs support what components in the strategic plan. And as much as we can drill into the specific strategic, if there's a specific strategy, how we can make those connections. I think that's a nice add. >> Kitchen: It helps show the alignment for the public and helps regional specialist the public. -- And helps educate the public. >> Houston: To last [4:08:44 PM] things. One is I was looking at the Austin healthy adolescent brief and the date is 2015. That's getting fairly old. We're going update the data so that it's more current? >> Yes. I think some of -- those are actually rates on diagnosis and I think that -- the intention is to make sure that we're able to update as currently as the data becomes available. That may be a factor at the point in time that the data was showing where we are. All issues of the issues brief needs to be updated on an ongoing basis. As things come online we want to make sure we address that and update those components. >> Houston: And I'm really glad you talk about trauma informed. Many people don't realize how many teenagers, especially in that adolescent age or experiencing trauma all the time. So I appreciate this. I haven't had a chance to look at the whole thing, but as I looked over it, what I would like for you to do have the people who are here with you to come up to one of these microphones. Since they've been here all afternoon. And introduce yourself and tell us which issue brief that you're responsible for. Don't be shy. Come on up. No waiting. There's another mic over here. >> Good afternoon, councilmembers. My name is curt Becker. I'm the immunization program manager so you will see my issue brief is at the back. >> Houston: Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Good afternoon, councilmembers, my name is sayedazari and I'm over the [indiscernible] Issue brief. >> Good afternoon, I'm over the aha, the Austin hellty adolescent program that you were just mentioning. >> Good afternoon, councilmembers. Vince deleasee with program health. [4:10:44 PM] And the issue brief I worked on was the consumer health issue brief that's one of our programs. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Good afternoon, I'm Janet pachette, chief epidemiologist and the issue briefs in my area are epidemiology and disease surveillance and public health emergency preparedness. >> Good afternoon. Laura fox, senior epidemiologist. I worked on the epidemiology and disease surveillance issue brief. >> Houston: Thanks. >> Good afternoon, Chris [indiscernible], manager of the emergency preparedness program and that's the issue brief I worked on. >> Good afternoon. My name is Heather cook Sinclair and I worked on the epidemiology and disease issue brief. , What is the surveillance, that's the first time I've heard that? >> So anybody -- when the community reports illness into the epidemiology and disease surveillance unit, my staff are the ones that take that incoming information and then assign it out to either a disease investigation specialist or an epidemiologist or nurse. >> Thank you. >> Good afternoon. My name is Jeff Taylor. I'm the manager of the epidemiology and disease surveillance unit and I had a role in the epidemiology briefing and the immunization briefing. >> Houston: Thank you. >> Good afternoon. I'm Bella Carmen. I'm the manager of the social services policy unit, and I -- I've overseen the three in development, homelessness, behavioral health and workforce development. We'll likely have some others with early childhood and seniors and some other areas. >> Kitchen: Could I ask you a question? >> Sure. >> Kitchen: You will have to figure out, you don't have a lot of space here. But I'm wondering if it might be useful to -- it might apply to others also. To have a line about partners, partners in the sense of you certainly can't put all the information on these briefs about the other programs you work with. But it might be useful for the public to see how you're connected to other programs. It's just a thought that you all might consider. [4:12:45 PM] >> Absolutely. >> Kitchen: Does that make sense? >> Definitely. We've worked on this for awhile with some of our partners. And there is not enough space on one page, so a question for you all, do you think one page is important to keep it that brief or would two pages be too much? >> Kitchen: I think a front and back might be okay. A one page front and back. I don't know about my colleagues. That would work for me. >> And we were working from the goal of not wanting to overwhelm someone with information. That this would be the surface level and then draw out, like who are the partners? And then we can jump into who the partners are, da, da, da. And then the staff would then be able to give those responses of how much more depth based on the specific question that would come in. So we definitely want to be poised to respond to any of those types of questions to get that depth into what the issue brief is, but on the surface what are the key elements that are need to know items. And if partners is something we need to add in as a need to know item, we definitely can adjust to that. >> Houston: If you do front and back you could just list the partners on the back. You don't want to crowd the front page too much so that it's too dense and people are turned off and don't want to read it. So you want to leave enough space in there so that it's engaging to people. You know, we work with a lot of partners with the city and we fund a lot of partners. So it may be something to kind of look at. On a two-sided, one sided. >> Okay, thank you. >> Houston: I want to thank you all for being here today. You all were just pillars of strength for sitting here all afternoon as we went through our agenda. So I really appreciate the work you do everyday for the citizens of Austin and I [4:14:45 PM] especially thank you for being here this afternoon. We don't have anything else on the agenda. Are there any future items that we need to discuss? >> Garza: Kind of what we were talking about partners. I just had a meet and greet with the sickle sickle cell association and they said they were part of the health equity contract and I thought if they wanted the opportunity to present the work that they're doing and how the funding the city provides is helping them with that case work, I thought that could be an opportunity. I told them to reach out to your office. >> Houston: Okay. We'll put the sick he sickle cell, Anthony -- I can't remember his name, but the group on there. Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: We also might -- depending on what we end up in the budget on the food inspection fees, if it turns out to be something that gets changed to start the new program in January, if you'd like maybe we discuss it again in the fall fall. >> Houston: Good. I see a thumbs up. We'll do that. So the fee waivers for food inspectors. I want to thank everyone for coming. Make sure to get your ticket validated. Our next meeting will be on December the -- oh, lord. October the 10th. And so without any objection, this meeting is adjourned at 4:16 P.M. Thank you so much.