City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 8/15/2018 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/15/2018 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/15/2018 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [3:08:55 PM] >> Mayor Adler: We have a quorum present. What day is today? It is August 15, 2018, and we are in the boards and commission room for our budget work session meeting that we had originally scheduled for this morning and then had reset the time for this afternoon, starting a little delayed because of the special meeting that we had earlier. >> Thank you, mayor, councilmembers. As you know, last Monday I presented the proposed budget for consideration by the council, and since then staff has met with each of you around different topics that you may be interested in and led us to the agenda you see before you today. And so with the time we have remaining this afternoon, we just really want to walk through from the staff level some of the specific topics and I'll turn it over to Ed to walk us through that presentation. >> Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem, members of council, Ed van eeenoo, deputy chief financial officer. >> Houston: Excuse me. It's afternoon. >> What did I say? >> Houston: Good morning. >> Good afternoon, mayor, mayor pro tem, members of the council. I thought we were still talking about soccer so I was stuck in the morning. [Laughter] You should all have a packet of information. What this packet entails is essentially background information for ten topics that you all have identified since the city manager presented his proposed budget on August 6, staff has been meeting with the various councilmembers to start understanding what are some of the budget topics that you want to discuss more. And so this certainly isn't intended to be a final list, but it's a list of topics we know one or more councilmembers are interested in talking about. And then you have your backup materials. Just really quickly, the topics we have before us are a review of the budget time line and so I'd like to give you a quick review of that time line and we'll safe discussion about what the process might look until the end of the meeting to make sure we have time to get into some of these other matters. [3:11:07 PM] We wanted to provide you with an overview and discussion of the funding we currently have in our budget for homelessness. That will be topic number 2. Closely related to topic 2 is a discussion top topic about adding a second host team. It would still just have the one team. Topic number 4 is a discussion about funding for the pay for success program. Number 5 is going to be getting into discussion from our development services department, not about their overall budget, but just about our residential and small business ombuds persons. We would like to come back on the 29th with more of a discussion on development services. Even when we had four hours on the agenda, we didn't think that would be enough time to get into all these things so we would push that to the 29th. Number 6 is about the 'em emcot discussion. You approved a resolution related to that but there's materials in your backup related to that. The topic about additional funding for parks and recreation. Funding for the artist space crisis. Have a little backup information about the senior exemption and then we'll close out just talking about our general fund reserves. So that's before us. We're going to try not to get into a lot of details, we want to daylight some of these topics, get you background information and get your initial reaction and comments. With that, I would like to bring up the budget time line and ask you to go to the third page of your handouts, and you should see this time line. As you know, you got the proposed budget on August 6th. Today is the 15th and it's our first of what we think may ultimately be three budget work sessions. August 22nd we will have our first of two public hearings. That one will start at 1:00 P.M. [3:13:09 PM] On August 29th we will have our second budget work session. That is scheduled for the full day. It's already on your calendar. August 30th at your regular council meeting we will have a public hearing course, it may not actually start at 4:00 P.M., but that's when it's been noticed. I talked with the city manager and I think he may be talked with some of you about adding a third session on September September or or. On September 11 we are set for budget adoption. That's the dates we have before us. That's the Tim line. We would like to hold off on discussion about process details until the end of today, but I suppose before we bring the health department up and start talking about homelessness, if there is any questions about those dates, we could talk about those now. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. I would probably like to start with the process we're going to use rather than starting -- I think that's as important as having Austin health come and talk about the host teams and all of those things. Because the process is what's important. >> Okay. >> Houston: Because this is the first time we've been through that. If we could figure out what that's going to be like. >> Mayor Adler: As we're doing logistics, just to touch base, I think it was all our intent to try to stop this at 5:00 as a hard stop today. So let's keep working and see if we can do that. I guess, Ms. Houston, some kind of context for the conversation about homelessness. >> Could we bring that slide back up? So just real quick, my thoughts on the process then would be today we've only got about an hour and a half, but the goal of today is to just daylight some preliminary issues that council has identified, have a discussion about those issues. [3:15:13 PM] We would then come back on the 29th and potentially on the 5th with a continued discussion about -- about these different budget topics. There may well be additional poppic that are identified between now and the 29th, but we would also, staff would be working to formulate some options for addressing the policy issues that you identify in this budget. When you look at this list and we see -- seems like there's at least interest from some councilmembers, about adding a second host team, interest from council per the resolution you passed to try to find funding for the 'em cot program. We're trying to get some feedback about issues and start those conversations today. I anticipate this will evolve and there may be other issues and topics and we would work on those and potentially come back on the 6th with more work we've done to try to come up with some options. Just trying to move us towards a September 11th budget adoption where your topics have come out, been brought forward and we've had a chance to give you some alternatives. >> Houston: I guess one of my concerns is that we get to the 5th or 6th and the 11th and we start doing the but concept menu things. How will we manage those kinds of activities? >> Mayor? Mayor, councilmembers, I think even the idea behind a September 5th or 6th work session would be to -- whether it's through the message board or in an actual work session air amendments that would be put forward so that would give the opportunity for in a very public way if there are changes to the proposed budget that they would be out in the open for both the public to view, for your colleagues to consider, but that would kind of be amendments -- amendment-based work session, if you will. [3:17:28 PM] >> Houston: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Yes. >> Troxclair: So the September 11th -- is September 11th budget adoption or 10th, 11th, 12th? >> There are three dates on your calendar. But the September 11th -- >> Troxclair: Is that the final day? >> That's the first day. >> Troxclair: 11th, 12th, and 13th. Got it. >> Feeling optimistic. [Laughter] >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Garza: But just for clarification, that means we could approve it on the 11th and not need the 12th and 13th. >> That's correct. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: If you are asking about dates for September 5th and 6th, I'm not sure I'm available for 2:00 on the 5th. >> Mayor Adler: Say that again, I'm sorry. >> Alter: I'm not available before 2:00 on the 5th. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Okay. Anything else before we move on? All right. >> Garza: I'm sorry, I have one more thing. Councilmember Houston's question, which I had a similar question in our one on one meetings with budget, is it my understanding what the process is to date we're basically going to be giving direction with the focus on these items on page 1 and then staff will go and at our next budget presentation we'll have recommendations on how or if we use the additional 5.2 million. And I guess I -- I understand that process. I'm just in a -- I'm uncomfortable in that we haven't even had our hearings yet and we're already going to be in a position at the next meeting to be -- if at that point we're capped, assuming we decide to go to 6%, we're capped to at that point be saying then I wanted to add this to the budget and take away this from homelessness issues. [3:19:40 PM] So I just wanted to point out that that's how -- and I understand and I think it's -- I guess depends on one hand I think it's good to start moving it, on the other I'm just concerned that we haven't heard from the public at all on the budget aside from our town halls, which I appreciate the city manager joining us. But I feel like the public is going to think we've already laid out where the money is and they haven't had a chance to come to the hearings yet. >> I appreciate that comment and I think that's a fair point. I'm just saying both this work session and the 29th are address some of the concerns and questions we heard from councilmembers. Knowing that there are those two public hearings, I don't anticipate seeing any potential amendments, per se, until after those public hearings, but I would encourage council to consider thinking through, you know, if we have this additional work session on the 5th or 6th to say maybe we try to have a deadline on Friday, the 7th, gets get all amendments out there. So by the time you've heard from the public, we've answered questions through work sessions that maybe on the 11th all those amendments could be considered as part of the adoption process. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ed? >> Good afternoonment I'm Stephanie Hayden, director Austin public health. I am going to just move through the overall homelessness services strategies. The alignment with the strategic priorities, as you can see, is economic opportunity and affordability, list the indicator as well as we capture the performance measures that are associated with the -- the overall strategy in the slide, duplicating clients as well as the numbers that are case managed, and then the ones that are at risk of homelessness and maintain housing. [3:21:55 PM] From an overall perspective, the homeless services portfolio falls in the categories of outreach and navigation, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, as well as homelessness prevention and community planning. And as you can see, we have provided the various agencies that are providing services under that category. I'm going to go ahead and just move to the fy 18, 28 homelessness investment. As you can see here, it provides the breakdown of those categories that I stated in the previous slides and gives you the overall with Austin public health investment of 18 million- dollar investment. The next slide goes over the fy 28 investments from other departments, but it also includes the 1.2 million for pace for success and it picks up community court, neighborhood housing, and the I-team grant as well. This slide provides an overview of what is in the proposed fy 19 budget with $3.1 million in new funding for homelessness programs. $600,000 would be to alternatives to panhandling and expand community-based programs, so that would be 500k for homeless services which will be put out in a solicitation. The three positions would have a -- a full-time individual that will be dedicated to homeless services citywide and be able to coordinate internally to the city and work with all of the partners, the business owners and any community residents that have an interest in working in -- working on homelessness with our team. [3:24:09 PM] And then the contracts, as you can see from the previous slide, shows the investment of social service contracts, so we would have two folks that will be dedicated to manage the homelessness contracts. There will be two positions for wrap-around services at Austin public libraries and providing services there, and then this would enhance the homeless outreach street team called the host, and then there would be a million dollars for citywide homeless camp cleanup contract through watershed department. And so I am going to pause here and turn it over to Ernie Rodriguez, and he is going to talk about host. >> Thank you. Ernie Rodriguez, chief of emergency medical services. I want to talk a little about detail of the $1 million item in the fy 19 proposal. So that's one slide back, if we could -- there it is. The content of that is really to provide sustainability for our existing host team. And it includes two administrative support positions for -- for the whole host operation. And it also includes three case managers, rehab services, vehicle to mobilize case managers, and the fuel and maintenance to operate. The -- what we expect to get from that expense, that investment, is an increase in the capability to coordinate our host efforts and services. We also think that we would see greater efficiency of our existing resources because the administrative staff could help with documentation, paperwork, phone calls and all of the back-end work that needs to happen to keep our teams working. Also increased resources would be more available for rehabilitation. It's okay to have a lot of people coming into the pipeline, but if we can't serve them, that becomes a problem. [3:26:14 PM] Currently we're developing a backlog at the community court level case management area because we don't have enough resources. Another issue that this would help us solve is adding mobility to the case management services. We could actually go out and meet individuals and work with them. It also would increase our capability to support and expand the host team overall. We can go to the next slide, please. >> Excuse me, before you go to the next slide, so you're talking about the one million and the five position to enhance the host. Could you -- you ran through it quickly. Just say the five positions and how it relates -- because you said it was for the existing so I wanted to make sure I'm clear what is supporting existing services and what is new. >> Yeah, so these positions are going to be added to the host team in order to support the existing work of the team that we have today. This does not add more police officers, it does not add more paramedics. What it adds is administrative support positions to do some of the paperwork and back-end documentation that we have to do to keep the program moving. For example, paramedics right now have to stop their work and come into the office to do paperwork in order to keep up with the volume. So by providing some backup support, they may not have to do that and they can do more work in the field. It also adds three case managers to the downtown Austin community court. We currently are developing a backlog in that area where we can't service all of the individuals that we are referring to them. Those referrals result in case management which is supported by rehabilitatio services, so we need to buy more rehabilitation service capability. >> Alter: So the one million is the rehabilitation services as well as the cost of those positions and the vehicles? >> Yes. So that includes, for example, the three case managers is 267,000. [3:28:18 PM] The rehabilitation services is 573,000. It also adds the vehicle fuel and maintenance which is about 44,000 in total. >> Alter: Thank you. >> [Inaudible]. >> I've only got the one more slide and then we can do that. So one of the questions that we received was what would it take to expand the host team, and it's posted on the slide as a second host team, but I would like to ask to you think about the host team as one big team instead of subteams because we can do more that way. The total of expanding our host team is $1.6 million. It would add two police officers, vehicles, equipment, fuel and fleet maintenance to the tune of about $313,000. That would increase in the field capability. The downtown Austin community court would also gain three case managers, additional rehabilitative services, another vehicle, fuel and maintenance for about $800,000. So that's the addition for the community court. Emergency medical services would need two medics, two vehicles, equipment, fuel and fleet maintenance to go with that at about $387,000. So what we would gain by that kind of an expansion of our host team is increased capability to reach more people. The other thing is that it would do is it would increase our geographic reach of the host team. I think previously we showed you a map that actually plotted out the locations of homeless individuals throughout the community, and it basically covers the center corridor of Austin from north to south. [3:30:21 PM] It's a big swath of the city that is included that has homeless people in it. To date our host efforts have been in the downtown community. So we have a huge unmet need throughout the city of the city of Austin and Travis county even. This would give us opportunity to increase so not only would we reach more people, we would have a broader geographic reach and we could do it more per day. Those would be advantages that we would gain. Other things that we would gain is we would gain an increased support for our pop-up clinics that we do. That is when we set up and bring actually a pop-up location. We use the little pop-up tents and we bring all the services to that location and we invite homeless people to come in and register for services. We're always trying to hunt enough people down to come and help us support those things. Adding more host team members would be very helpful to support the pop-up center events that we hold. It would also increase further rehabilitation capability. So if we're going to add more people, we need more services that we can deliver. It would continue to increase case management capability by three more case managers, and enhance mobilization of those case managers to do outreach. So we looked at some of our performance numbers to try to see what difference would it make to have this expansion in terms of productivity and performance. So we looked at unique contacts. This is new people that we bring in to the homeless management process. Presently in '17 we saw 784 people. Now, we think that's a smaller number than what was actual. We had a ramp- up period that we went through and it took us 30 to 45 days to get fully operational. So we think we could have done a little better than that in '17. [3:32:26 PM] Year to date in 2018, we've seen 575 new individuals in the homeless process. And we're seeing about 200 a quarter. So if we add that together, we're going to hit about the same level in '18 as we did in '17. If you look forward and look at these additional services that we provide, which essentially is about doubling the size of our team, we think we can double our number. So we're anticipating that with the addition of these resources, that we could see up to 1500 homeless individuals who are new individuals to the system. We think that we are looking at 2017 again for interventions. This is the number of times that we actually did something to change the course of someone's life as they are going through homeless journey. We saw 921 instances of interventions that we did in 2017, and in 2018 we're anticipating seeing 1200 interventions as it is. And we believe that we can hit about 2,000 interventions with this additional resource. For number of actual contacts, one of the things that happens with the individuals that we're serving is we see them multiple times as we move them through the system. In 2017 we saw saw 1,369 contacts with homeless victims. Year to date in in 20, we've already seen 1,666 and we are anticipating there will be 500 more contacts before '18 is over, so about 2100 contacts by the end of 2018. We anticipate that we could reach nearly 4,000 of those multiple contacts with these additional resources at the end of 2019. [3:34:29 PM] >> Mayor? Are you reading those stats from something? >> Yes. >> Flannigan: I don't think -- >> It didn't make the information you have. >> Flannigan: It's difficult to take in a lot of numbers right in a row. It's much better if I can see them on a chart. >> I will. I'll send the table out. I literally hand drew these out as I was preparing. That's pretty much all of the information I've got. If you have questions, I'm happy to try to answer them. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Thank you. Thanks very much and I'm glad to see the additional funding for host in this year's budget as we've had an opportunity to talk about as a council, this is really an important program and I look forward to continuing it. I want to clarify, you talked about it as being in the downtown area, but it was a specific provision that it actually extend up through west campus to 29th street, and we want to be sure since you said downtown it still does include the boundaries on -- through west campus to 29th. >> That's correct, yes. >> Tovo: Okay. So I do think that I need to better understand the additional administrative support and the rationale for adding -- adding -- adding that. I'm not exactly sure the questions that would help me come to peace with adding that level of administrative support when the direct contact seems to very needed. The caseworkers is a little bit different -- that I understand. The level of administrative support that's harder for me. But I think as -- at a minimum you were offering additional detail about break down for those costs and I would ask you consider that a budget question that we see those positions broken down. You've done it for the 1.6 that would be necessary for an additional host team, but if we could see that -- if we could see that for the bullets on -- on the page before. >> Very good. [3:36:30 PM] We can provide thaw information. >> Tovo: Thanks. And I want to shift from the homelessness outreach street team to talk about homeless camp cleanup contract. And get some more information about that. I shared with budget team some of the questions I might have about that. I'm not -- I'm not sure what it consists of or if it's been described to us, but I want to be sure that we're not -- I want to be sure that we're approaching this in a way that is consistent with the approach that txdot is developing in terms of making sure, you know, when they go out on -- to address issues underneath -- underneath the highway, it's my understanding they are now working in concert with housing providers and social service provider to make sure they have caseworkers there, they are communicating with people in advance. You know, it can tremendously set somebody back if we're sending teams out who are then scooping you belongings and throwing them out. People can lose their ids, other of their material posessions that are really critical. If you could help us understand what that consists of and whether there's a description of it, a detailed description somewhere in our materials. >> Sure, Mike, interim director watershed department. Kind of start with the punch line, yes, we're developing approach with very much in mind and consistent with what you've described with txdot. It's going to take some time to do that. I'd like to back up just a moment and talk if I could about how watershed protection touches homeless populations and encampments. It's almost a daily occurrence, of course. These sites often occur, you know, in public properties near or adjacent to or even in creeks and other natural drainage features. [3:38:31 PM] In some cases we need to respond very quickly because there's a public safety consideration with respect to, for example, a mattress blocking a culvert that would impede flow in a creek and potentially cause a problem. And, of course, we have another overriding concern is we have people that place themselves in harm's way. We have had fatalities in the past from people that were occupying space within a floodway. So we've been dealing with this question and for about a year we've been developing an approach that would rely in part on a multi-year indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity contract, on call contractor capacity that in part would take some of this burden off our staff, but also provide some specialized service, for example, making sure that the contractor has hazardous waste or hazardous material handling capabilities, medical waste and so forth. All of this consistent with protecting public safety in terms of flood conveyance and flood risk for individuals in those locations and water quality protection and very then consistent with utility funds for this type of activity. What we intended to going forward getting that contract in place is to develop partnerships with both public and nonprofit organizations that can provide the kind of service support, particularly when we encounter the larger sites that require a little bit of advanced preparation and planning to address. So so the current thinking. I've got a cross-functional interdepartmental team that I've sponsored and they are drafting a work plan for me pretty much as we speak that will lay out our priorities in sequence, one of which is an internal sop for how we as a department approach these sites and make sure we are doing it in a safe and responsible manner. [3:40:42 PM] Second priority is to launch the procurement of the idiq contract and the scope for that is in process already. And then I'd say concurrent with that is continuing conversations that we've been having as part of the larger internal city discussion about how do we link up these other resources in a more comprehensive approach, particularly again when we're looking at a large site that needs quite a bit of attention with a fairly large population of individuals. >> Tovo: Thank you. So I think you've answered a couple of the initial questions I had. One is that it's not funded, this initiative would not be funded through the general fund, it would be funded through drainage utility fees. >> That is correct, and in our fy 19 budget we're requesting requesting 250. What we're anticipating is a four-year term at 250,000 a year. We may change that. I may opt for having additional authorization -- this is much like an engineering rotation contract where you don't have to have the funding but you want the multi-year authorization and the flexibility. So right now current thinking and what the statement, the million dollars reflects would be $250,000 of drainage utility funds over a four-year contract term. And I would -- I think go further to say that unless somehow this problem is resolved in four years, that this would become part of our ongoing programs. >> Tovo: Those are funds that need to be used for particular uses including public safety related to flood and things of that sort. >> Flood risk reduction, public safety, maintenance of our drainage infrastructure, whether that's natural or engineered systems, and water quality protection. One thing we can't do is use drainage utility funds to actually fund and provide social support services. That's where we have to look at a partnership approach to make this all fit something. [3:42:44 PM] >> Tovo: And so I missed -- the transcript captured as indefinite. >> It's called idif. Indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity. You establish a broad scope of services that can be provided essentially on call. >> Tovo: Okay. >> So you would have a site, for example, contractor would be called in, there would be some initial assessment evaluation and then deployment under that contract. >> Tovo: I think in this in light of the time we don't need to get too much further on, but I think what I will want to know is sort of what the plan is. Sounds like you are working on a work plan. What is the plan for making sure that outside contractor is going to approach this with an eye toward that comprehensive approach? >> That would need to be written as specifications into the contract. For example, the initial sop we're working on internally is initial assessment of the conditions, and part of that is safety and any kind of haz-mat materials that we have current contract that we could bring somebody in, for example, to handle gasoline or propane bottles or needles or whatever. But to build those kind of capacities into the scope of that contract and speak to a requirement, you know, to coordinate with other partnering entities to be defined essentially. That's going to have to be done with our direct oversight and management. >> Tovo: Okay. >> To make sure that integration occurs on any given specific location. >> Tovo: All right. Thank you. We can have more conversations around that point, but not today. Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Just to daylight the issues but not to resolve the issues. Ann. >> Kitchen: I have about four questions, but I'll just ask one and pass it along and maybe you could come back to me. So I have a question, I want to talk about the fte -- and again, we're just daylighting questions today. [3:44:51 PM] So on page 12 the 315,000 and three positions for the ftes, I just want to flag that maybe for further discussion at some time. I think that that's really important. I want to -- I want to be sure that -- that we've got sufficient resources for the level of commitment that we need -- what I'm trying to say is that I think that this is a huge issue for our city, and I think it's one that is becoming more and more urgent throughout the city. And so I'm wanting to make -- I'm wanting to talk some more at some point about, you know, the executive level leadership that we have and wanting to understand how the -- how the structure will be set up to -- with regarding to coordinating these services citywide. And I guess the bigger picture of what I'm trying to say is I don't want -- want us -- I don't want what are doing to be a drop in the bucket or a finger in the dike kind of thing. So -- and I'm not suggesting that this is, I'm just suggesting that or asking that one thing that is really critical to handle what I consider to be a health -- public health emergency is how are we really wrapping our arms around it as a city. So we can have a conversation about that at another time and I'm glad to see these ftes, I just want to have a conversation at some point to -- to understand how we are addressing what I consider to be a growing public health emergency. So I'll -- I'll hand this off to someone else if I could come back in a few minutes. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. [3:46:53 PM] Chief Rodriguez, when you respond with data that Mr. Flannigan asked for, it would be really helpful if you could include with that how much we're currently spending on host to get us current results, how much you think with the -- the funding that's on page 12 would get us, and what you think page 13 would get us. And then I'd also like to clarify for the police officers on page 13, those would be two additional police officers beyond the 27 currently in the budget for APD and then there's obviously the aviation officers as well. >> That's correct. >> Alter: Is that correct? And when you said that -- so the one million, that would be providing -- all of that is providing additional support to our existing host team that you think is necessary for operational logistical reasons to allow them to do their job at a higher level? >> That's correct. That's just being able to maintain the level of service we have now with the exception of the additional resources we're asking for for the downtown community court. They would receive three additional staff persons and $500,000 in rehabilitative services they can distribute and vehicles so they can become [inaudible] >> Alter: And this is I think a question for the city manager. I appreciate not all of our funds come from the general fund and some came from drainage utility fee, it is really helpful if we can know the source of the funding, you know, when you say that so we know where it's coming from. I don't know within this format exactly how we do that, but you know the answer to that and it would just be extremely helpful to have that as a guide post as we're thinking about this so that we know, for instance, the drainage utility fee and it can only be used for X, Y and Z. [3:48:57 PM] Also to know that when you say it's a million dollars of new money, that that's over four years, I understand that we have to budget things and we don't want to only be saying something is one year, but it looks like we're spending another million dollars from that this fiscal year and being able to have some clarity on how we got these great numbers of investments, I think, would be extremely helpful. >> We can do that and I think that was one of your questions you had for us is for all the positions that we're adding in this budget, what's the funding source and we'll be working on that response for you. >> Alter: But the drainage is not just for positions, so it seems to be -- it seems to be a concern that I have across the budget and I don't know what the -- >> Yeah, I mean it's a different approach. It's easier to have just the funding decisions, if we just had watershed talking about their budget or they were talking about this homeless camp cleanup, everybody would know it's watershed money. When you start talking about things across departments more on an outcome basis, it gets clumped together and the funding discussion becomes more challenging. >> Alter: I totally appreciate we are it rating and trying to do this and I want it in this format, it's helpful because if I'm trying to think how we can allocate money, I need to know where that money is coming from because often it can't be allocated to something else, and so that's helpful. If I think we should be making large investments in homelessness and it looks like 3 million but I want us to be doing 3 million of real money in this budget, then I have other work that needs to be done in order to achieve the outcomes within a time frame. So I can't understand when I can achieve those outcomes without having some of that information, and I don't know what the perfect format is, but I think part of what today is for us to understand what more we need to be able to digest this new format. [3:51:02 PM] And I know there's not a perfect solution, but I would appreciate those kinds of details if we could have them. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else before we move on? Ann. >> Kitchen: Okay, then, just a couple of quick questions. With regard to the -- the -- the cleanup contract, just -- can those -- is it anticipated that these dollars includes cleanups that occur under overpasses? >> Right now our thinking is watershed would use this contract to support cleanups both on properties that we manage as well as allow access and funding to the parks and recreation department for city parkland. >> Kitchen: Does that address property under the overpasses? >> Right now the thinking would be no, and it's my understanding that txdot, at least one entity that addresses some of that problem. What we want to focus on are those sites that are clearly in proximity to drainage infrastructure, again, natural or engineered systems. >> Kitchen: Okay, I appreciate that, so I'll just mark just a note, we also need dollars to address cleanups under the overpasses. Txdot does not currently handle all the need, and we have found ourselves having to scramble to -- to fill in on that. I'm not suggesting that -- I know there's limitations to the dove, I know you can't use the dove funding, but I wouldn't want to move forward without some mechanism or understanding what mechanism is available to us to address the cleanups that are needed in neighborhoods. [3:53:03 PM] And that are not in the kinds of areas that you are talking about. >> I, in fact, just got an out look meeting invite from Richard Mendoza for conversation a Friday. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> They are in discussions, he is in discussion, public works, with txdot. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> About these kind of issues. What I could offer as we go forward with this procurement is to be thinking about larger amounts of capacity in the contract and multiple funding sources for it. >> Kitchen: Okay, that's fine. I would like to make a note that -- I would like to see dollars in the budget to -- to address whatever comes out of that conversation between public works and txdot. I don't want to, you know, be in a situation where we end up in an agreement where there's some level of responsibility for the city and we don't have it funded. So, okay, so -- >> Mayor? Could I raise something? There's been some conversation because your particular location and one of mine are not under txdot's jurisdictions. So they are supposed to be coming up with revising the agreement that has not been revised in years because the two that we're talking about were built after the city's agreement with txdot. And so they should be having that conversation, I guess that's the invite that you had with txdot. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Houston: So they are in the process of doing that, but every other location gets cleaned by txdot in their contract once a month and they do try to clean ours, but not as frequently as we would like. I would like to publicly thank you and Mr. Mendoza for going out and -- on 183 and Cameron road, it was horrible. >> I suspect there are times when we are also removing debris or other materials from txdot drainage systems because they are integrated with hours. [3:55:07 PM] >> Houston: Yes. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Houston: I just want you to know they are all working on that agreement. >> Kitchen: Thank you, councilmember Houston. I had forgotten that. Just want to make sure that to the extent we end up needing additional resources, we have that in the budget. So the budget. I have one other question, I think. Let's see. And that is -- oh, one other question. Related to the host team. And I just want to clarify something that -- make sure I heard you right. So the idea behind the second host team, one of the things it would do, I know I said a range of things, but one of the things it would do is help us increase the geographic area that could be served. >> That's correct. >> Kitchen: Okay. Because right now there's limitations. I understand that the existing host team does cover the areas that mayor pro tem was talking about, but there are existing areas, and it's -- first off, let me just say I really appreciate the coverage -- the team has really been doing a lot to try to reach out as far as possible. So but right now, without a second host team, it's very difficult to cover the many parts of the city that need some assistance. Okay. >> Correct. And would you like to receive another copy of the map? >> Kitchen: Yes, that would be helpful, along with the data that you're sending. That would be helpful. Then finally, this is just a data question to come to us later, and on page -- well, I guess it's more of a question of -- to think about I'll just surface it now. You know, we talked -- on 10 and 11, we've identified the investments across the city, which is really very helpful and the various kinds of investments that we are making. But I'm wondering if there's an avenue, either through the budget process or perhaps a different process, to understand how that relates to what we're identifying as the need. [3:57:17 PM] So, for example, we've got information about -- well, the homeless -- some of the data about the housing-related things I imagine we can go back to our blueprint to see that. But some of these others we -- I'd like to better understand how we can -- how we can measure what we're doing in relationship to the need. I know we have metrics, but I'm not sure that I see a way to gauge what we're doing in relationship to the needs that we're seeing. So we can explore that, but that's a question I wanted to raise. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So we've taken an hour of our time. It looks like we've hit 1 and 2. So just to go back through, the goal is to daylight these issues and not resolve these issues, so let's try to do that and see if we can get through this so we can daylight the issues to help us in the conversation. So thank you very much for this. Let's go on to the next point, hit it quickly, and daylight issues. >> So topic 4 had to do with the pay for success program. Staff doesn't have any backup materials for that, but that was a discussion topic. That councilmember tovo, I believe, brought forward. >> Tovo: You know, I -- so I think we've -- as I understand it, we -- there's not many in -- money in the city manager's proposed budget -- there's not additional money allocated for the pay for success initiative. However, because we didn't spend the $1.2 million that we allocated last year, that money is available for our first year's commitment. >> That's correct. >> Tovo: So at the moment, I think that will probably -- as I look at Ann Howard, I think that's probably fine. [3:59:17 PM] What I would like to -- as we move forward in this conversation just be very clear that it's our intention. It's very important to signal to our partners who are currently making decisions about funding, pay for success, and we're all so very eager to get it going, I think it's really critical we send that signal we're committed to funding it the next year and four years after it, for a total of five years, so that we can get that buy-in from private investors as well as our other entities who have to participate. >> Mayor Adler: To that I think we need to run those traps. I know the fact that the city put up that first million. Two had the intended effect of getting lots of other partners to agree to do that and they've allocated money in their budgets to do that. We keep it in a reserve, and it's kind of like reserved funding. I don't want to do anything to stop the momentum of having our partners put up the additional money, and these are probably better times to put money aside in reserve, as I'm sure we'll have a conversation later on about the budget generally. But I would like to think through whether or not we should reserve more as we do that because I'd like to encourage the partners to also reserve more. Being really cognitive of the fact that we have to -- this is not an investment that is having investors participate as a financing tool. So it's not that. But it's actually having people that are assuming risks that we might not take ourselves in terms of goals to hit. And I know that they're still working through that and we haven't seen that yet. So I just don't know yet with respect to where I will come down on this issue. Yes, Alison? >> Alter: I wasn't familiar with that background so I want to make sure I understand where we're at. Last year we put the million-2 aside from reserves, it's in a reserve pot for the time when we need it. We've now got commitments from others but we don't need a second year yet so we're not required to put a second year away but we have an option of deciding we have money now so it might be a good time to start putting that money away. [4:01:26 PM] Is that correct? So the basic is still being held over, but we have an option before us to potentially begin putting money away for the additional installments? Is that correct? Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: There will be pros and cons to that. >> Houston: Can you remind me what other partners have put their million two aside? >> Mayor Adler: Other partners that put money aside, I don't know the exact totals but I know Travis county has put money aside. >> Travis county has put 600k aside. >> Houston: Say again, I'm sorry, Travis county? >> Travis county has put aside 600k. >> Houston: Okay. >> And central health has 600k as well. >> Houston: Okay. >> But they are also working with another group of health care providers to bring it up to the -- a little over a million. So those discussions are ongoing. But it is in their base. Budget. >> Houston: The 600,000? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Houston: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> And the department will be coming forward with a memo based upon kind of just laying all of the final steps out for the strategy. That will be coming to mayor and council relatively quickly. And we will also include the information that has been provided from us through the law enforcement. So just FYI, we will be getting that to mayor and council relatively soon, mayor pro tem. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. >> Houston: One more thing for Austin health, I can see you packing up. I'm sure you've sent this to us before, but can you tell us how much money in federal waivers we have as -- because there's some -- 1115 waivers are going to away. I hear people wanting to know where they can get that money. How much do we have in 1115 waivers that will be going away we might have to fund through the general fund? >> Well, as far as is your question directed about as far as what the department will be? [4:03:28 PM] >> Houston: Yes, the city of Austin. >> That will be going away? >> Houston: Mm-hmm. >> There are some workforce solutions dollars that are -- which was actually a mutual decision that will go away. But, however, Austin community college has picked up the rn program, which is doing the same thing that is going to do so that will not be a deficit for our community. >> Houston: Okay. >> Then the other area is there's going to be a reduction to Travis county's program. We fund their parenting program, and so there's going to be a reduction to that program starting next fiscal year. Our programs, bottom line, will be funded as we move into phase -- through 2024. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So consider that daylighted. Let's go to the next one. >> So topic 5 on the agenda is a discussion topic about the development services department and the prospect of adding staff to provide an ombuds person services. Rodney Gonzalez will joins. He's going to give us a quick overview of the need for these positions and what they might work on. I would remind everybody we'd like to limit this conversation just to this topic. I know there might be a lot of questions for Rodney about the enterprise status and fees and et cetera. Our expectation at this point in time would be to have him come back for a broader conversation on the 29th. >> Thank you, Ed. Mayor and council, Rodney Gonzalez, director for development services. Within the fiscal year budget proposal we do have two positions categorized as residential homeowner ombudsman person positions. Those positions total $221,000. Those position came as a result of our response to the council-initiated family homestead initiative and that was our response as to how to help our local homeowners with getting through the permitting and inspections process. [4:05:41 PM] Those individuals would serve as liaisons to central homeowners, they would help us to map out the processes in a way that is informative to our residential homeowners. We would have them perform outreach to our homeowners, to inform them of the processes, and as well because it's a learning opportunity for us, they would help us to develop proposals that would help to streamline the permitting process and inspection process. So as I mentioned those 2ombuds person positions are in the fiscal year 19 proposed budget. The way we are paying for those two positions is there's a slide increase in fees associated with those types of permits. Those fee increases range from anywhere from 21 cents to 3.29 cents, so small increase in associated permits for those types of applications. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you for daylightinging that. Anything on that? Okay. Please go to the next one. I'm sorry, Alison. >> Alter: Rodney, we had been speaking about a small business ombudsman. Do you want to speak to that. Then I also understood that in nhcd there's been a request for a position that would help our affordable housing developers to navigate the system, but that's not paid via permits and it's being funded through nhcd, so if you could speak to both of those, please. >> I certainly can. As background for council, last year in the concept menu councilmember alter did professor two positions for a local business ombudsman program. That concept menu item was not voted on, I believe. Consequently those positions were not added to the budget. If council were to consider that proposal again this year, the cost for that would be the same, which would be 221,847 for two positions. The fee increases relative to those positions, which would be spread across a different form of applications, would be anywhere from 14 cents to $25.76. [4:07:47 PM] They would have basically the same responsibilities only they would work with our local small business community in order to help serve as a liaison for permitting and inspections work. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Jimmy? >> Flannigan: That's a pretty big range. >> Yes. >> Flannigan: Can you give a little input why it's 14 cents to $25? >> The fees within that category of commercial business applications range differently than our residential applications. And because it is a percentage that is applied to the permit, some of our permits in that area are larger, and that's why you get the $25. >> Flannigan: I see. Thank you. >> Garza: And you said that additional 2.21 would -- is not in the base budget right now? >> It is not in the base budget. >> Garza: Okay. I know you and I spoke yesterday during that meeting. And since then I was thinking about -- I know that it would -- it's good to have those positions at development services so they can -- I'm just curious if daylighting an idea -- you know, we looked at our economic development policy again, and part of that was creating these buckets to help our small business. So I'm just curious if there's a way to fund those positions through the economic development policy. But anyway, I'm supportive of adding both the ombudsman -- ombuds persons, thank you, for residential and small business. And if you -- I know the two that -- residential are in the base budget, but I would like you to stay in contact if you see the need for more that we could possibly add to the general fund. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Garza: Be funded by the general fund? >> Mayor Adler: Let's go ahead and move on to the next one. >> Sure. The follow-up question for councilmember alter, neighborhood housing and community investment did include a position that is funded through their department that would be a development facilitator position, specifically for affordable housing projects. [4:09:55 PM] That position would be located with our staff, and for those affordable housing projects would help to facilitate those projects through the process. We fully support that position. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Next item. >> So we're going to move on to the health and the environment outcome, and the first item there, item number 6, has to do with funding for the expanded mobile crisis outreach team, which is an 1115 medicaid waiver funded program by the austin/travis county integral care. That program no longer qualifies for funding under the 1115 waiver. Council, you just passed a resolution last week directing staff to come back on the 29th with some funding alternatives for this. I think it talked about 60% of the necessary $1.8 million coming from the city. So just a little over a million dollars. I'm joined here by two staff who are very familiar with this program and how it benefits the police department and ems in the event there was any questions from you about it, also in your backup material starting on page 15 is further information, your resolution, further information about the program. >> Mayor Adler: So there's -- the program is a great program. Do we also have the information at this point about -- if we pick up this important program, reason there other important programs that are going to be coming in that we anticipate to be defunded? >> Hopefully we'll have an answer for you by the 29th. Right now we do not know. >> Mayor Adler: Today is just to talk about the program? I understand. >> I do know we have a total of $15 million of medicaid waiver programs. This is the only one I'm aware of know that's going to lose its funding because they've changed the program rules and requirements. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> But we will follow up with them. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Houston: Mayor, would you also follow up with Austin independent school district because I heard they were losing their 1115 waiver program as well. [4:11:58 PM] >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Houston: And central health may be losing some of theirs. We can't cover them all, but at least we need to know what the universe is of those things that people will be asking us for. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any questions about the program itself? I mean, I think this is a wonderful program. Does anybody have any questions while we have the folks here to talk about it? Okay. Thank you very much for coming. I'm sorry -- >> Tovo: I would just invite them if they would like to make -- if you would like to say something about the need. >> Sure. I could do that. >> Tovo: And success of the program. >> Assistant chief Justin Newsome. More in how it benefits A.P.D. And ems is how it benefits the citizens of Austin. Prior to us having this program, which started in 2014, we really had two options. When the police were dispatched to a person in a mental health crisis did that did did not meet the criteria for involuntary commitment and those two options were nothing or jail. By emcot be able to send their licensed clinician mental health professionals to the scene it gives us an intervention that we wouldn't have without that team showing up. And the benefits to that -- it's to the citizens of Austin who experience mental health crisis, cannot be overstated. >> Flannigan: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Flannigan: The program sounds great. You know, I have my ongoing jurisdictional concerns, especially as we look at other waiver situations and yada, yada, yada, but as we go through these ideas, I think it would be available for staff to help provide some input on how this lays in with our strategic outcomes. And if we're going to add -- and I assume that work happened on the base budget. [4:14:00 PM] So if we're going to add more in, is the thing we're adding in, like, out of 50 items, it's the 51st most important thing -- or actually the fifth most important thing, we might want to drop the 50th one. There maybe ways to reprioritize. If the council is saying these are really high priorities, going back to the departments and saying council really pointed out a couple of things, what is the but-for on these ideas? And just really not straying too far away from our strategic outcomes analysis even right here at the end. As we know, right here at the end is where we'll have wasted our efforts over the last year if we don't hold ourselves really accountable to that process here at the end. >> Mayor Adler: Do we engage these teams when there's a call and someone says, we have someone here who is emotionally overwrought and they have a gun or weapon and public safety goes out? Is the emcot team brought to those as a matter of protocol, should they? >> I don't know they're brought to all those just because there's a mention of a gun in the case. If the call is involving a person in crisis, no matter what they may have, it's in our policy that officers will call for emcot if they don't meet the criteria for emergency detention. Sometimes even if they do and emcot being the professionals, can walk us through that scenario and maybe even give an alternative to voluntarily committing someone. But it is a good question as to whether or not we should look at making it a matter of practice when there is a gun involved. >> Mayor Adler: Yeah. I'm talking more profill aclickly, not waiting until you get there accessing the situation and saying this would be a good place to have the emcot but if it has the indicia of that or there's a weapon or suggestion there might be or someone to profill aclickly and proactively call this team in and say, hey, we're rushing out there, you should rush out there too we could look into that. [4:16:18 PM] We haven't established that right now, but we could definitely explore that. >> Mayor Adler: Ann and then Ora. >> Kitchen: I'd like to second that question. , I'd like to understand what it would take to change a protocol like that. >> These are -- obviously the system questions it, we could work with -- >> Kitchen: Yeah, it could be a resource issue, other issues. I would just like to understand that better because ideally, if there's a call calls in that indicates that someone is in crisis, then that's the group that we need to be going out. So. . . >> Casar: Mayor? Just on this point, but if -- >> Mayor Adler: Okay. On this point? >> Casar: On this point, on the criminal justice coordinating committee with people at the county and with the police chief, and this has been discussed recently and maybe it's good for y'all to loop back with that group because I think the meadows foundation has been in conversation with the county and potentially interested in conversation with us to develop that protocol so that we don't just fund something that the protocol hasn't been fully developed for and I think they've worked with other cities to try to address this specific issue. >> Mayor Adler: Is that to develop the protocol or actual help to fund the teams? >> Casar: I think that it could unlock the other pots of money to fund the teams, but I think one of the first steps is just to figure out how it is that the response actually works and what is successful or not. I think they've tried some of these issues out in Dallas but I don't know if that was with meadows or other people. >> Mayor Adler: Be interesting to know. >> Casar: I think some of these conversations are already happening and we should plug into those. >> Mayor Adler: That might affect the funding. >> The Dallas pilot is through the meadows foundation. We've had discussions with them about that. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Page 18 and 19 at the bottom it indicates that this funding was taken up in fiscal year 2018 by integral care at a 1.4 million rate and the need is for 1.8 million total, but they were able to do it on 1.4. [4:18:32 PM] For the other year. My question is, have we explored ways at this point to share the costs of that with Travis county, with integral care, and whatnot? I understand that they requested need is for 1.8 million but perhaps there's an opportunity to cost share across some of these discount I hate to speak for integral care but I know they went before the commissioners court last week to do just that. >> Alter: It would be really helpful. I'm not sure who the appropriate staff would be for that but to really have a good understanding and seeing, you know, maybe we can leverage our dollars along with others and not do the full 1.8 million and see on that. I don't know the -- I don't know the financing of integral care at all. It just looks like this covers all of Travis county and not just Austin, and that there may be some opportunity for other units of government to participate as well. >> Tovo: Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Tovo: I left my agenda materials from last week upstairs but it's my understanding that the request to us is for 60% of the cost and 40% of the cost to Travis county. And you're correct that it has been operating at a $1.4 million cost, but to the -- and we'll have to get more details about why they feel that really to have it at capacity would be 1.8, what that differential is, but the request to us is 60% of the full cost. >> Alter: Thank you. Because I've just been seeing that 1.8 and appreciate the clarification. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? >> Houston: Just one more thing. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: I want to thank you all both for the uniformed officers that have mental health certification and the plain clothes officers. They were up here most of yesterday and they did a great job. >> Thank you. >> Houston: I just wanted to let you know that. >> I appreciate that. [4:20:32 PM] Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Chief, thank you. >> Renteria: I also support this program. It's very important. And so I hope that we could, you know -- if we can't find someone else to go partner with us, I still believe that we need to fund this project. >> Mayor Adler: I'd also like a good explanation for why this fell out of the waiver requirements, what changed that this dropped out of, and why the -- its home, where it is right now, decided not to prioritize it for spending. >> Kitchen: I'm sorry. I didn't understand what you said. >> Mayor Adler: It was coming out of integral care right now. >> Kitchen: Right. >> Mayor Adler: They lost the funding for this. So at one point they had to make a decision about whether to fund it or fund something else. >> Kitchen: Well, I just would -- I know you didn't mean to say it this way, but I wouldn't imply that they didn't prioritize it. I mean, there's a lot of issues around -- and need for integral care and integral care has limitations on their funding. A lot of their funding comes to them as federal funds. In any case, I know you didn't intend it that way but I want to be real clear for the public that I wouldn't suggest that they don't consider it a priority or didn't try to fund it. >> Mayor Adler: No, no. I would assume they did but at some point they had to make a choice. Just for us in terms of having information as we're assessing this, knowing why it fell out from med care, what changed on that, and then their view is they were having to decide and force choices can be they might not have had any flexibility at all. >> Kitchen: They may not have had a choice. That's all I'm saying. >> Mayor Adler: I'm just asking for the reason why. >> Mayor, there's information in the background packet, 17 or 18, and, you know, they were funded through the 1115 med medicare waiver transformation program and the new version does not support crisis service. [4:22:44 PM] That's the reason they lost their funding, at least my understanding. >> The funding went from focusing on transformational projects, in fact our department had one, I know the Apa had several, and it went to outcomes for those particular projects. Now the funding has gone towards systematic outcomes and those systematic comes from a menu CMS puts in place and involves certain things that are not crisis related, so those are things like A1C levels, blood pressure issues, stuff like that, but not crisis level, or crisis-type services. >> Kitchen: So they changed -- I'm sorry. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Kitchen: They changed the metrics they were measuring. 1115 waiver is an outcomes-based program, only pay for reaching certain results according certain metrics and it's changed over the years. It sounds like they have changed the metrics and this can not qualify under the that's correct. >> That's accurate. >> The other programs under the 1115 waiver funding many did qualify because they do connect to some sort of physical health outcome. >> Mayor Adler: Do they fund any crisis intervention things outside of the waiver program? >> I know that there's the classic emcot, the other emcot that responds to requests from the public and other entities and also fund the guy Herman treatment center. >> They also provide the training for our cadets and our crisis intervention team officers, you know, that progress. Integral care has been a big part of being the experts and really leading that -- developing the curriculum and leading that training for us. So they provide a lot of service to the city. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. >> Same with us. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy. >> Flannigan: Am I understanding what you said, that the amount of money that integral care received didn't change, just the requirements that came with the money, or did their overall funding reduce. [4:24:45 PM] >> I can't speak to the overall funding. I just know the way CMS set up the 1115 waiver, instead of measuring outcomes per project it looks dynamic it's now looking at things like outcomes for system. >> Kitchen: I can speak to that. The funding would have been reduced because what they -- the 1115 waiver set up, it's a payment aft fact. It's kind of, like, a pay for performance kind of thing. So, yeah, the funding would have gone down. >> Flannigan: I think just generally, if they're now being -- if they're now receiving waiver dollars for things that we're doing elsewhere in the public health department, then, you know, the ability for us to maximize taxpayer dollars across our strategic outcomes is not limited to just our budget. So if they're being told that they have to shift their work in a certain direction and it's starting to overlap with us more than it used to, then maybe we shift in conjunction to make sure the community is well-served. >> Kitchen: Yeah, I appreciate that. It might be helpful sometime when we have time to have integral health come in and brief us, you know, they only do mental health services. So you're not going to see the same kind of overlap with our public health. >> Flannigan: I thought it said blood pressure. >> Kitchen: That's not a mental health service. >> Those are measures that CMS -- the outcomes that are being measured now that your projects and those types of things have to perform to are based on medical -- primarily medical needs. >> Kitchen: Which means that integral care -- integral care is an agency that provides mental health services. The 1115 waiver goes to a bunch of different agencies, including the physical health ones. So this is a shift of the 1115 waiver dollars away from mental health services? >> Flannigan: I see. Do we know if those dollars went elsewhere in the community? >> Kitchen: They probably cut them but I don't know. >> Flannigan: I'm not going to make everybody to go through a briefing on that. I'm not asking for a formal briefing on that but maybe it would be good to have some information. [4:26:49 PM] >> Kitchen: They can send you some information. >> Flannigan: Yeah, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: And I think we had several briefings about the 1115 process at public health so there's probably some existing -- I thought about it more or less like a grant line and it's project-specific. So unless there's a project they're shifting is the money to, it would -- as councilmember kitchen said, sort of go somewhere else. But I had a different question. Or different issue I'd like to daylight. And that is the continued request for officers to be back at the arch. I wondered if you could just very briefly address what you're hearing from others. I know that was a key component in some of the success of the pilot last summer. It helped clients of the arch and clients of the other social services in the areas feel safer. And so could you just address that? >> Sure. >> Tovo: Ongoing need please. >> We're constantly asked for that by Ann and by others, I'll call you out since you're here, to have officers at the arch 24/7, you know. When we had them there last year it made a better environment at the arch for sure. Now, it did increase the number of complaints related to homelessness by citizens at the library and other places because just by our very presence there is a displacement of people that moved along to other locations. And so, you know, we would like, you know, for the sake of the arch, we would like to be able to do that but there's really no location anywhere in the city where officers are dedicated standing in one spot, you know, and not patrolling around, which is how we are designed and what we're designed to do. To do so, we would have to take from existing staffing, to do so in a regular time, direct officers there from existing staffing, which is challenging already, especially downtown. So the only way we can really do it and still provide adequate service to residents all over the downtown area command, which includes, you know, east of 35, is to have officers there on an overtime basis and having officers there on an overtime basis 24/7 we'd have to have at least two. [4:29:08 PM] The cost of that is fairly high. >> Tovo: How high? >> For a year it would be about a million dollars. >> Tovo: As opposed to having two officers? >> That would be -- that would be two officers on overtime. It would be about a million dollars a year. >> Tovo: Sorry. If we had just two regular officers -- the salary costs for two officers assigned to the arch if that were a model that worked within A.P.D. Would be far less than that one point -- >> It would be less, yes. But it would have to be two officers on rotating shifts so it would really be six, so. . . >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Next item. >> The next item is a discussion about funding for the parks and recreation department. We have a very short presentation, just three slides to give you an overview of the funding that is in the fy19 proposed budget how that's changing from the fy18 budget >> Kimberly Mcneeley, acting director for parks and recreation. The very first slide here gives you an idea of all the different things that parks and requisition does. It's a simple slide that illustrates the depth and breadth of our work. With regards to the budget, please know that I'll call it new money or money that is being put into the budget through the general fund is 9.4 million of that are just the cost drivers, are just regular base cost drivers like insurance, living wage increases. In some cases it's an additional utility cost or things of that nature because we have a capital improvement project that has been finished. There's also an additional amount of $382,000, which helps us with Ada accessibility and also compliance with our programs for inclusion and adaptive programming. And that is part of an Ada transition plan that was completed over a year ago and up to this point was not able to significantly accomplish the things that are in that Ada plan. [4:31:21 PM] Also there is a mandate that says if we're going to allow individuals to participate in our programs that we have to have some adaptive opportunities so that all individuals can be included in all programming. We have $411,000 for grounds and facility maintenance to help us with trailheads and some additionally added parks. That also helps with us the replacement of some staff members that were part of a graffiti team that we put together this year in order to address the graffiti situation that is happening throughout the entire city, but this team specifically focuses on parks. And so while we're getting five new positions, we had moved a number of positions to the graffiti team so this will help backfill some of those jobs. Lower onion creek projects, as you are probably well aware, there is -- there was a flood situation. That flood situation allowed us to buy outhouses, and now that space is being -- going to be used as parks and open space. We have an agreement with the army corps of engineers, and arm corps of engineers says that there's certain amenities that need to be in that space so we need some funding to be able to take care of that and to be in compliance with the agreement that we have with army corps of engineers. Playground maintenance, we have approximately 147 playgrounds and of those 147 playgrounds there's a large number that are in -- either in failing or poor condition. And usually -- or the most -- the reason why they're in that condition is because of the safety surface. And so this $200,000 is money that would be a contract that would allow us to replace that safety surface on a regular basis. Obviously starting with the highest priorities. And we don't need any additional ftes. All we need to do is be able to manage that contract and this money would be directly for the replacement of the safety surfaces. [4:33:22 PM] Waller creek improvements, you all are aware of the tif that was passed so this will help us manage all of the improvements approved by city council with regards to waller creek. The other opportunity that we had this year, which is being able to offset different costs using other funding sources within pard are located on this page, and that is the aquatics maintenance. You'll notice that in aquatics maintenance we're able to infuse $1.8 million into aquatics maintenance and that has to do with being able to utilize the revenue we take in for admission fees instead of it going to the general fund with a small fee increase being able to go directly to the maintenance of the aquatics facilities. Also, if you will be so kind as to go down to the very last line of this slide, where it says o'henry, Elizabeth ney and suzana dick onson, we're able to utilize historic funds to be able to support those three museums and take the general fund money and move that to the aquatics maintenance. So we were just being creative and saying there's one funding source so we can take the general fund to help support the aquatics maintenance. Park planning, we're using parkland dedication fees within the guidance of the ordinance. So we're in compliance with the ordinance, and we're able to hire three positions that will help us with all of the increased workload of being able to make sure that we are managing the funds that we're receiving through parkland dedication. And then finally new staff for the historic sites, the museums, the cultural centers, events, exhibits, this vast -- the second to last line is a summary of all the quality of life initiatives that were approved or that were infused into the budget that help us at the asian-american resource center with regards to individuals that will be able to help us with transportation, exhibits. [4:35:33 PM] It also talks about a community engagement individual to help us with our -- improve our engagement, specifically in the rundberg area, and there is something in there for senior transportation to help us supplement the grant that we have. So that's just the basic overview, and I'm prepared to answer questions. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Any questions? Now that this has been daylighted? Yes, Alison? >> Alter: Thank you. And I may want to meet with you to go over some of the funding pots but we don't have doing that now. Can you tell us what, if any, additions are built into the budget to expand our recycling in our parks, which helps us also achieve our zero waste goals? >> There are -- there is nothing built into our budget at this particular time. There was a resolution that asked us to put together a task force. That task force report is probably in your -- has been distributed while we are sitting here today, and so we have the results of that task force. The task force has multiple options by which -- by which we can support recycling. But I can tell you that it's going to be needed -- in my opinion it needs to be done in a phased approach because it's well over a million dollars in order for us to implement recycling throughout the entire parks system, just to give you a perfect -- or a simple example, we have 2,000 garbage cans for regular waste, and in order for us to pair each of those cans with a recycling bin, those recycling bins are about $500 so 500 times a thousand is $1 million right off the bat, right? We have a better program than that. I'm giving you a simple example. We do need to analyze and make sure we need all those garbage cans so that task force report will probably be to you when you get back to your office if you care to read it tonight. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston -- I'm sorry, go ahead. >> Alter: So one of the things that I understand is that there is a current needs assessment for pard for maintenance of backlog of something like $700 million. [4:37:40 PM] I understand we have allocated money to defer building maintenance and to achieve our financial policy, can be I really appreciate. I just want to daylight that I'll be looking at which of our pard buildings would be eligible for that funding. And trying to understand if we can use that resource to help us, particularly if we were to follow Mr. Flannigan's recommendation to invest more of the money in that, how we might be able to address some of the needs that also fall under that policy. That are in pard. And I wanted to also mention that we are looking at seeing whether we can use development fees, particularly on P.U.D.S, to help with some of the funding for the staff that's doing the planning and review. That would allow those parkland dedication funds to be used for park purchases. Your staff spends a huge amount of time, particularly on the P.U.D.S. We're not sure yet if we can divide it out for the parkland dedication but maybe you already have the numbers that we need and justify it for cost of service that we can be adding those to the fees so that developers can pay for their way with respect to those fees and free up those folks to be able to help us to plan our parks and these various projects and now that we have the historic preservation funding there's going to be needs for those people across elsewhere. So I wanted to bring that to folks' attention. And then beyond aquatics, then, in terms of the maintenance, in the parks maintenance backlog, can you help me understand what's in there? There's the -- some funding for the park surfaces. There's some funding for pool maintenance. >> Are you speaking about the bond, councilmember? >> Alter: No. I'm talking about in here because we have the general maintenance kind of stuff, and you can follow up with that. [4:39:42 PM] But I'd like to really understand what's in the budget to cover some of this maintenance backlog already. >> I would appreciate the opportunity to write that out because it will be a significant detail that I think will get lost without a backup. >> Alter: I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry if I asked it as a question that you had to answer right now. I just wanted -- I'm particularly interested in seeing if we can address some of these maintenance and safety issues. You mentioned the play surfaces. There's also the playground equipment, which makes a real big difference which you can change out that playground equipment, it refreshes the whole park and it's safer. We've had parks where folks are falling down and having equipment break on them and it's just really not safe. And it can, when fixed, also create a better experience for people around the city. So I'll be looking at some of those things to -- as we approach the budget. >> Mayor Adler: Yes? Pio. >> Renteria: Yes. My question is -- has the master plan been done there at the mexican-american cultural center? You know we had asked for those canopies out there, there was some funding set aside for it. Do we still have plans to use those funds to complete this project? >> So the master plan -- yes, the master plan has been completed. I frankly forget the date that it came before council, but you absolutely had an opportunity to approve that. And I will -- the answer to your question is, yes, simply is yes. I have to -- I believe that money was set aside via some funding that we received from the Austin parks foundation, but allow me to go into our records and figure out exactly where we have that in -- what account we have that in so that I can -- as I recall, councilmember, it was $150,000. >> Renteria: I appreciate that because, you know, another summer has gone by and we're having a hard time using that outside area because of the heat. [4:41:55 PM] So I'm hoping that we can get this done and take that -- complete that project. >> Yes, sir. >> Mayor Adler: Ora and then Jimmy. >> Houston: Thank you. I'm sure you have a list and if you can just send it to me of the parks that have had no improvements. I'm thinking about baum park down off 183. It's nothing. It's just land. So it seems like we acquire land but we never have the money to do the infrastructure to improve the land and maintain it. So I'd like to know how many of those kind of parcels do we have in the city. >> So may I -- may I just clarify, are we talking about undeveloped parks? >> Houston: Yes. >> Okay. >> Houston: They're identified as a park but we've never done anything to them and I'm sure there are several of them, not just that one that I mentioned. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Jimmy. >> Flannigan: Just because councilmember alter brought it up, I did post on the message board, I'm sure everybody has read it, that we would dedicate any additional funds that we collect above the manager's budget to deferred maintenance. It's not an easy thing to contemplate when there are a lot of good things to do, and, you know, likely any request I make surely wouldn't get all 100% of the agreement to it. But it's a really opportunity to start investing in preventative maintenance and some of these items that we keep having to put on bond elections that then, you know, we saw it even as we were negotiating on this bond, we took a little money out of this deferred maintenance bond item and put it over here. I think this is just the way forward, and in my mind it's not restricted to any department. It's -- kind of falls under this number 10 about the reserve fund but it could apply to pools, could apply to city facilities, could apply to public facilities, but is an opportunity to get ahead of these needs that we have that the community relies on. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? [4:43:57 PM] Yes. Greg. >> Casar: And to councilmember Flannigan's point, and I don't in any way mean to pick on the parks department on this at all, but I think director Mcneeley you mentioned how there are certain graffiti abatement positions that have been backfilled and now we have some maintenance positions in the budget, and I understand that we are funding either one or the other. But what -- my expectation and hope would be that whatever we are funding is the thing that is seen as less essential. That being that I would want to fund positions to maintain the trailheads and maintain the parks if what was presented in the budget was five positions to deal with graffiti. Whether that would be as high priority to me as, say, the emcot issue. Maybe it would be three positions or two positions. It up to the department what is the critical function that is -- that they have, but because of course we would always vote for things that we see as the most critical functions. But if there's something that's more -- that is important but is seen as more per functionary, I think that's where the budget decision. Does that make incidence that's not to say you should day or I think these five positions are more important than the graffiti positions. I use it as an example for all of our budgeting moving forward that we should be making decisions on the margin more than on the core because of course -- anyway, I think I made my point. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Houston, your slight on. Did you want to get recognized again? >> Houston: No. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Let's go to the next item. >> Real quick before we leave pard I wanted to mention following our conversation about the P.U.D.S fees my staff has been working with Kimberly's staff on that issue and I'm hopeful we will be able to bring back a fee protocol, maybe talk about it at the August 29 work session. I didn't want it to get lost in all the numbers that were thrown out, but I think it's a great story. This year the parks department budget is receiving an $8.2 million increase, which comes out to just shive a 10% increase. [4:46:04 PM] So long overdue and much needed increase in our parks maintenance and aquatics programs. So that's all I wanted to say before we left parks. We're going to move on to topic 8, which has to to do with artist space. We have staff from economic development to give you, again, a very short presentation, which starts on page 30 of your packets. >> Mayor Adler: Council, we have 15 minutes left and we're down to the last three items. >> Hello, council, Rebecca giello, interim director of the economic development department. In my brief stint as interim I have just really wanted to say what an excellent pleasure it's been working with the subject matter expertise of the team. As you know, economic development crosses nine different funds, and very specific, highly specialized areas of expertise. I'm joined here by Megan wells, who oversees the cultural arts division, and sylnovia holt-rabb who oversees, well, everything else. [ Laughter ] We're here to talk to you about specifically your interest in the affordability issues that's impacting not just small businesses but specifically the creative industry. And wanted to run through what the city manager's proposed budget offers for the specific population referenced. So the art space assistance program known as asap, this program actually a pilot this year and was very successful. Y'all received an update in April 2018, so this year, of the recipients of those funds. Those funds will be expended and the division manager, Megan, had recommended through the request for budget proposal, the team recommended that that program continue. And the proposed budget is funding that at 400,000. So the pilot program itself offers rent subsidy and a one to one match for code compliance improvement. [4:48:10 PM] This has been very successful and the funds are anticipated to be spent down this year. So the proposal around that is deeply appreciated. The new chapter 380 agreements policy offers $1.2 million for affordable gap financing program for commercial space that will be targeted to small business as well as creative venues. This makes a lot of sense. So just putting on my affordable housing hat for a moment, you all recognize that through the Austin housing finance corporation, the city offers gap financing for ownership opportunity, as well as rental housing opportunity. But this will be a program that is specifically offering gap financing for commercial space. Something that the city currently does not have, and many of you have recognized the need around that. And then lastly on this particular slide, $2.7 million is in the spending plan for the renovation of the Austin film society campus. This is 20 acres at Mueller for creative media hub and it's anticipated that the construction, as well as the C.I.P. Dollars, will be completed in fiscal year 2019. Finally, what is being proposed in November 2018 as part of the bond election, this is a broader package for the $128 million, which is the four programs that you all just contemplated last week. And 12 million of that will be very specific toward the acquisition of property for creative space. What has been circulated and discussed among the creative community is a proposed scope that was drafted and led by staff last year around the creative space project for adapted reuse. [4:50:14 PM] And we can certainly wake -- walk you through that if you have additional questions or desire for more detail. You know, really a final comment, obviously, the department works across a number of different departments to assist with this. Whether it's parks or other departments. But this specifically is what is in the proposed budget for economic development for the issue that you had referenced. We're available for questions. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Kitchen >> Kitchen: Just quick ones, I want to flag for my colleagues. So the location-based incentive program -- first off, thank you very much. You're being very responsive to the needs that we're seeing. My question about the location-based incentive program, actually, it's not a question. I'll just make a statement to be fast. So that's -- I'm really looking forward to that. That's something we really need to help creative spaces, because they need permanencesy and this will help them with that. My only question or comment might be the time frame because I know there's some lead time to putting that into place. And so because of the nestled time to put the program in place, I will be looking for some immediate -- more immediate stopgap, which might be something that we could use the asap for if we can expand the scope of the asap. So I'm happy to discuss this further off-line. I just want to let my colleagues know that the difficulty with the asap is it covers tenant improvements and rent stipend when what people need is they need dollars to help them acquire permanent space. Well, that's what the location-based incentive program is going to help them with. But if that program doesn't kick in for a year, then we need some kind of solution in the short-term. So I'm just flagging that issue for my colleagues to let you all know that will be something that I'll be working on. [4:52:14 PM] >> Mayor Adler: I look forward to us approving the 380 agreement so we can actually implement that program. >> Kitchen: I know. But it's still going to take -- >> Mayor Adler: No, no. I'm just saying -- that was a commercial message. [ Laughter ] >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Something else just to put on the radar screen with respect to this, the city of Austin competed and won the neighborly bond challenge. I know with respect to music. And that was a way to try to leverage private and philanthropic dollars to be able to pull aside some of the iconic music locations or art dislocations in town, the iconic places. It allows like there's philanthropic support. They maybe looking for the city to put in some small pleasure in order to help open that so we're trying to chase that down as well. It would be a many-fold leveraging. So I just -- nothing to talk about on that yet other than -- >> Tovo: What's the name? >> Mayor Adler: It was neighborly bond. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Was the group out of California. It's intended to be a category disrupter in the bond industry. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay? Next item. Eight minutes to go. >> Casar: Mayor -- >> Mayor Adler: I'm sorry, go ahead. >> Casar: I'll just raise now that I think I'm supportive of the asap program. Want to raise for folks now we may give -- think about budget direction or guardrails because I think some previous program participants wound up with more costs from -- receiving the city grants than benefit, I can they got some money and then the city going in and saying we're going to help with you something solved other problems and ended up layering more bills on instead of helping people so we just need to think through how to provide those guardrails. But really supportive otherwise. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Good point. All right. Thank you very much. Two things left. >> Two things left. Just one more rapid fire powerpoint presentation starting on your handout slide 34. Just a couple slides to talk about the exemptions that the city offers. [4:54:20 PM] And this is in relation to prospective increase to the senior exemption. The top part of this slide shows what you the existing general homestead exemptions and senior exemptions are for various taxing entities in Austin. It's not all of them, but it's the larger ones that affect most people living in Austin. The numbers in red are changes for fiscal year '19 so you can see 10%, the increase from 8% to 10% that the city of Austin did. Travis county and central health have already approved increases in their senior exemptions to match what we did last year, which they have done the last couple years, kind of following the city of Austin's lead on this issue? Is the numbers on the bottom two pieces really depend upon what tax rate council ultimately authorizes for the budgeted. These numbers are driven by a prospective 6% increase in the tax rate, which would be 44.20 cents per hundred dollars of taxable value. That's not what the budget was proposed out but I wanted to give you the high end which would be the 6% cap you set. At a 6% tax increase you'd see the non-seniors would realize a $71.95 increase in their tax bill, a typical median homeowner and senior disabled homeowners would experience a $77.85 increase in their homes. And there's reasons for that. We don't use the same typical home, the median senior home is a different value than the median non-senior home, and so we try to really dial in when we talk about a median senior homeowner we're looking at just that subset of the properties as opposed to the non-seniors. That's a different subset. Just different valued homes is a big part of of what drives that. Over on the right it says what would we have to do, what kind of increase would we need in the senior exemption to offset that $77.85 increase in the median senior tax bill. The answer is it would be a $17,500 increase, which would result in $3 million less revenue. So if you think about a budget that goes to a 6% tax increase, generates $5.2 million more revenue, well, if you -- you know, increase in the senior exemption by 17,500 would result in $3 million less revenue so you'd have a net revenue change of $2.2 million if you elected to do both of those. [4:56:36 PM] Then the final slide just shows you in $2,500 increments different scenarios for potential increases to the senior exemption. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about this. >> Alter: So the -- >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Sorry. It's been a long day. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Alter: It's been a long day. Go ahead. [ Laughter ] >> Mayor Adler: It's okay. >> Alter: On page 2020 then, we could do -- on page 35, we could do then exemption increase by $5,000. That gets up to 90,500, and that would have an impact of almost a million dollars. >> Yep. >> Alter: And then they would be facing an increase at 56? >> That's correct, exactly right. >> Alter: Okay. Wanted to make sure I understood. So we have some permutations here that we could think about if we wanted to consider this. >> That's correct. And, again, all these numbers, at least the numbers on the far -- both the far two right columns, those depend upon the tax rate that you ultimately assume. So these are all being driven at an assumed 6% increase? >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: This is something I support at some level. Councilmember kitchen. Kitch just to give you guys an indication, this is something that I support also at some level. >> Mayor Adler: Further discussion on this? Yes, Jimmy? >> Flannigan: I'm also willing to consider senior exemption, but it was something that I was hoping to be able to do more of in lieu of the general exemption, but because we increased the general exception it's making -- exemption, it's making this one harder. I think it's worthwhile to do something here. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else on this? Okay. Last item. >> So a discussion topic 10 just has to do with the general fund reserves. It was an idea that if we were to go to the six percent we could just put that into our reserves and better position the city in case our revenues are capped in the future at a lower level than an eight percent increase. [4:58:39 PM] So just listed there on the agenda is that at a 5-point two-million-dollar increase that would take our reserves to 12 and a half%. To just take you above your policy level and again leave money in the reserves that could be part of a rainy day fund should we need it down the road. >> Mayor Adler: Ann? >> Kitchen: Just so I understand, so remind me what our level is at right now? Is it 12%? >> 12% reserves is our policy and that's what the budget was proposed at. >> Kitchen: All right. So what you're saying is to move that up would cost us 5.2 million? >> Yeah. I backed into it the other way. If you went to a six percent tax increase and took all of that 5.2 million of extra revenue and just put it in the reserves, that would then take your reserve levels to 12 and a half percent. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: When I met with Rodney the other day, and I think maybe it was with you as well, we had a conversation about part of moving dsd to an enterprise. I'll throw out the question. Part of moving the enterprise -- dsd to an enterprise fund moves them to higher levels of reserve. So if we were to do that with the enterprise fund, but move over some reserves to add reserves to dsd would that lower fees? For permitting? And you can provide me an answer after the fact. I'm just wondering if that would be one mechanism to reduce the fees and we would still have more -- it would still be reserves. >> Yeah. You could take some of the general fund reserves and put them into the new development services fund to bolster their reserves and rise them above 12%, but you wouldn't really want to use that to lower the fees. Lowering the fees, you would want to look at kind of a permanent increase in the transfer from the general fund to the development services fund. [5:00:42 PM] It needs to be like -- if you're going to lower the fees it would result in a million dollars less revenue for dsd than they need in annual transfer. Every year they need a million dollars from the general fund unless you're looking to have a one year reduction in the fees and then have them go back up. >> Alter: My understanding is they were listening to build up that reserve over time. >> They are. >> Alter: So the fees are calibrated to raise that amount over time. So if we transferred the amount and backed it out into the fees, couldn't you lower the fees, but you would still have the same result, but then over time you still have to continue to raise them? But it would allow us to slow the rate of the growth. >> So the fees are calibrated to their cost of service. So the revenues they need to generate is calibrated to the expenses that they have. The way that their reserves will or will not grow over time would have to do is if -- in years where development activity is coming in stronger than what they had anticipated, then they would of course have more revenues in that year and the excess revenues they would now hold in their own dedicated reserves, but they don't actually set their fees with the anticipation or expectation to bring in revenues beyond what their costs are. >> Alter: Okay, thank you. Sorry. >> Mayor Adler: So one of the issues associated with this as an option is that if there's a cap that's put in by the legislature, from a short-term perspective, we'll wish we were at a higher rate in order to avoid the impact of that. So that's the benefit is not only in terms of the money that's saved to be able to transition if we need to, which we would need to if we ended up with a two and a half percent cap, but also having the higher rate which will be somewhere now between the 49 and the 6, also is something that operates to mitigate that impact. [5:02:45 PM] All right. Anything else? Greg and then the mayor pro tem. >> Casar: I did mention it during our health and environment discussion, but I do just want to raise for my colleagues and we can talk about it more when we have discussion time, but I wanted to raise now that as we were going through the proposal for this November's bond, our health department said there were two top places where health clinics were needed. One was in dove springs and one was potentially off east rundberg in my district. We put the dove springs one in. The east rundberg one hadn't been fully planned enough for it to go in the bond, so I want to see whether in this budget if we can -- as we try to bring equity on all of our metrics and strategic outcomes, equity and health is such a huge issue and figuring out ways that we address that health clinic in this budget would be important to me. And I know folks have also raised the rbj clinic in that context as well. So I just wanted to raise that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: Just a quick question and then a comment. Mr. Van eenoo, when we met yesterday we talked about getting a list together about funds that were one time funds, getting a list to council. Do you have that -- >> I think we're going do that as a budget question. You will get that quickly. That's an easy one. >> Tovo: Super. And as a head's up, there are a couple of items that we funded through one time funds, including a piece of the after school programs and a piece of the parent-teacher support specialist was funded through one-time funding in addition to recurring funding. So that would create a gap in those programs were we not to address it. The other thing is just as a head's up to my colleagues, my staff has compiled a list of resolutions that we have brought forward in recent months and I'll be submitting budget questions to determine whether some of these items -- it's not immediately apparent to me whether some of the funding responsive to these resolutions might be in the city manager's proposal. [5:04:48 PM] One, for example, is eviction counseling services services. Another is improvements related to the red river cultural district. That was passed quite awhile ago. That was almost a year ago now. So there are a couple of items like that. And especially when we get to eviction counseling, mortgage assistance, those are really very much -- very in line with our strategic priorities. So I'll try to draft those up as questions so that we can get clarity on whether or not they're in the proposal. >> Garza: I just wanted to daylight an issue. This council has done a lot of great things around food access in previous budgets and one of those things was to fund an fte to leverage private and public partnership to see how we could get a grocery store in some of our food deserts. I have not heard of any progress in that work. We submitted a budget question asking could we understand what this position has been doing? We got a response back that that wasn't a budget question because it doesn't have fiscal impact. I guess I would argue that if we have funded a position as a council and it's not in line with what we had proposed it be doing, it is a fiscal impact in that a priority of this council's was to try to -- it was essentially supposed to be a grocery store ambassador of sorts to understand how we can get grant funding, how we can see what other cities have done to get grocery stores. So we'll reword that question to ask if maybe that is the cost to supplement that fte that we already funded to do the work to leverage that public and private money to see how we can get grocery stores. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Anything else? Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I just want to comment on that. That response back concerns me because it is at this time of year that we submit questions that may not be directly about how much does something cost, but it is absolutely essential to our we're going to fund. [5:06:50 PM] So I appreciate that you're going to rephrase your question, but it concerns me a bit that your question wasn't responded to. So I don't know where to go with that. I guess I would just say to the city manager, I hope it was sort of an isolated incident. >> I'll talk to staff about that. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Yes, mayor. And manager cronk, I just want to spotlight one thing. In the cultural arts, the carver museum and cultural center is the oldest one in the city and yet they're only getting money in the budget for deferred maintenance because they've never had the money in the parks department. And so I will be asking for some additional money in order to do more things there that they need. No programming money, nothing else is in the budget. And yet it's the oldest so it has the most needs. But getting almost the smallest amount of funding. >> Mayor Adler: Both in the carver and also in the asian-american resource center they weren't able to provide a stronger or a larger bond ask because they didn't have the planning process to be able to do that. So I concur with what Ms. Houston is saying that that one thing to look at is to position both those facilities for -- so that they're able to compete for bond money at some point in the future. >> Houston: And they're not in the bond -- well, the asian-american is in the bond money, but not -- carver is in there for about seven million. >> Mayor Adler: And asian-american is seven and a half. >> 7.5. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else. Then at 5:08 this meeting is adjourned.