City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 8/29/2018 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 8/29/2018 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/29/2018 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:16:11 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All righty, then. We have a quorum present. It is 9:15. Budget work session on Wednesday, August 29, 2018. We're in the boards and commission room in Austin. We have an agenda. I'll turn this over to the manager and then to Ed. At 9:30, 9:30, Delia and Jimmy and I are going to leave for a moment. We should be back within 30 minutes, but we would suggest everybody continue on with the discussion and if there's stuff that you need us to comment on, just make note of those and bring it back and as soon as we walk in we'll give you feedback from us on those questions. >> [Inaudible] >> Tovo: I didn't realize how many were going. >> Mayor Adler: Three of us, HEB is having -- >> Tovo: I didn't realize -- [inaudible] >> Mayor Adler: Do we want to take a 30-minute recess? >> What is the event? >> Mayor Adler: HEB is having their 80th birthday party, going from one store and they have a gathering at the long center with a large contingent of their workforce. So my intent is to read a proclamation that congratulations them and the employees for their birthday and everything they are doing for the community and >> [Inaudible] >> Mayor Adler: We'll make that the call of the remaining group. You guys get to decide that. Are we ready to start? Did you want to say something, Leslie? >> Renteria: Mayor, do you have room in your van for another person? >> Mayor Adler: I do. Ms. Houston. >> Houston: And mayor, HEB is such a wonderful partner in our community that my suggestion is that not just a few of us go, that if [9:18:11 AM] those that want to go go because I have two in my area that do wonderful things in our community and if we're going to break, then let's all go because they are great partners. >> Mayor Adler: I think that would be great and certainly they would love to have the more the merrier. I get the opportunity to do this almost daily at one place or another in our community, and when I go, I always speak for and on behalf of the entire council. But certainly we could do that too. >> Tovo: I think we may as well. We may get to the point where you lose multiple members it's more productive. >> Mayor Adler: At 9:30, tee us up, tell us what we're going to be facing and we'll take a short recess and come back. >> Mayor, mayor, council, I just appreciate the opportunity to continue the deliberation of the manager's budget that was proposed earlier this month. I have worked with our finance staff and budget staff to do another round of one on one discussions since we last met and that has informed the agenda that you're seeing before us today. And I'm going to pass it over to Ed van eenoo. >> Good morning, mayor, mayor pro tem, members of council, Ed van eenoo, chief financial officer. In the ten minutes we have before you head over is to go over our agenda for the day just to lay that out. I will say I don't anticipate that we are going to take the whole day anyhow, so I still think we'll be able to fit this whole agenda into the shorter time frame. You should have a 99-page packet of information in front of you. The first page is the agenda for today. Broadly we're post to do talk about the fiscal year 2019 budget and these are topics within that broad posting language. So the first item on the agenda, I'm going to do a brief presentation just to recap some of the proposed [9:20:13 AM] budget highlights. This will be similar to the beginning of the August 22 public hearing but also tracks along the lines of the short budget and brief that we gave you, that four-page document that you all received on August 6th just to continue to highlight the fact while at the end of the budget process a lot of time we end up talking about, you know, incremental changes we want to make to the budget to get it to the finish line, that overall this is a $4.1 billion budget that I think we can all be very proud of and that very closely alliance to your priorities. We have Rodney Gonzalez and staff in the development services department who are going to come and give an overview of the dsd budget and the staffing plan for that department and also the concept of establishing them this year as an enterprise operation. The next briefing will be about our multitude deferred maintenance needs throughout the city, just to tee up that topic of deferred maintenance. We have staff from building services who will take the lead on that presentation. And I should stop real quick, most of these topics are topics we have heard from councilmembers as we've been doing 101 briefings saying these are things one or more of you would like more detail on. And certainly the next item is one of those. It was a question of the funding that is in the budget for our three cultural centers, for the mac, the carver and Asian resource center. The operating budget and capital budget and up copping 2018 bond proposal, what is in those budgets for our three cultural centers. We also wanted to talk about a prospective new fee in the parks department that would off set some of the costs they incurred during development review. If council approved that fee, it would off set about $380,000 of cost which is money that could be redirected to other parks priorities so we have parks staff here to talk to you about that. And then before we get to [9:22:13 AM] the rest of the agenda, I just have one slide to kind of tee up a framework for three different budget scenarios that we think kind of capture what we've heard from different councilmembers. There's not a lot of exemption there, but three different scenarios that will create a framework as you move into item 2, which the is just review and discussion of potential council budget amendments. This is a continuation of the conversation that we started with you on August 15th and we've been having in our one on one briefings. While see that we specifically highlighted six topics. These are the topics where we've in our individual briefings and going back to the 15th work session where we felt there was the broadest council support so we wanted to explicitly tee those up. And, of course, we've heard there's other potential amendments that various councilmembers might wish to bring forward. So the final topic there at the bottom is just what are those other potential amendments. We would like to have council bring those forward, get them on the table and start talking about them and then that would set the stage for potentially a final work session on September 6th, if at the end of this work session we deem that's going to be necessary. All leading up to a September 11th budget adoption. So that's the plan for the day. If there's any questions or comments, if you all think that's a good plan or would like to alter it some before you leave. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Kitchen: I think you said this, but just wanted to clarify. That includes sort of a discussion about how we'll proceed with these budget changes -- or proposed budget changes? >> The first slide is going to talk about budget time line. We need to talk about what's the rest of this time line look like. >> Kitchen: We've talked about not using concept menu this year but what are we going to do instead. >> Mayor Adler: If I'm [9:24:15 AM] understanding correctly, council office has identified certain priorities and there's some have been identified by multiple offices. And you're asking really for us to kind of check unanimous give a temperature feel for whether we think those were important or prioritize those. That doesn't happen without excluding ability to offer anything by themselves, but I mention add couple things that don't appear on the cubing la active list, which is fine, but we need to make sure today we at least talk about the things that have been mentioned to get a feel for that. To daylight things if someone is going to be bringing something else up, at the end of today -- and if we can we can talk through those and see whether there's consensus or interest on those. At the end of today, we can make an assessment as to how close we think we are, how many unresolved issues there are, and then to decide whether or not we want to meet on September 6th, which would be a week from now, next week. There's not a meeting that's called at this point so the question is do we call a meeting for next week. The hope is when we actually then come together on September 11th to see how close we are to actually being able to get to a final product on the -- on the 11th. I think those are kind of the decision points in addition to the information you are giving us today. >> If I could just say, on item number 2 there is no disrespect intended if some things were called out, we're trying to help herd you where there seems to be the broadest coon census and this is and this is my subjective kind of synopsis where there seems to be the broadest consensus so far. This is really a starting point for the conversation and certainly other things could be added and still discussed. >> Mayor Adler: Right. And I think that was the task we have given you. Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: I would be all for us calling more future meetings and I have some [9:26:16 AM] concerns around how we've -- around -- I'm fine with us talking about budget amendments that we are thinking about right now, but given that we still have a public hearing tomorrow and it's our first one in the evening, I know there were so many people who wanted to come to our first budget hearing and we were just out of character open and shut between 1:00 P.M. And 3:45 P.M. Or whatever. So I think there are a lot of people that are planning on coming at 4:00 or 5:00 to the last one who I think just based on their expectations of us weren't able to talk to us at the first one and now will be able to talk to us at our second one. And I include in that group people that I haven't spoken with or heard from that may even be advocating on things that I don't know about or even support. But just starting to figure out how the budget gets amended and how it gets all fixed before -- or even coming with scenarios before we have our evening public hearing I have concerns about so I would feel more comfortable -- not necessarily starting to figure out, well, how does this all fit in the budget given that we still haven't even had our evening public hearing. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Kathy. >> Tovo: Mayor, I think too and I'm just looking because I may have this information somewhere here, in terms of -- I agree. I think we do need to schedule -- and I would go and just support the notion of having an extra meeting. I do think we need that time. I am -- so somewhere in this information I may have this, but there are some ifcs that had a lot of support from council that are not funded in the proposed budget, and so those we're still sort of figuring out what those are and I haven't mentioned yet. One I would note as critical and I think has a lot of support and is extremely in line with our goals is putting funding toward tenant eviction. To the extent we have an [9:28:17 AM] opportunity to do that today, I would like to understand why certain ifcs are in the budget and certain aren't, but several of the ifcs I brought forward that enjoyed lots of support and I think are really critical are not current in the budget. >> Mayor Adler: What was the one you mentioned? >> Tovo: Tenant eviction council boulevard. >> Mayor Adler: Soon you are you could daylight those sub areas the better for me to kind of prioritize. >> Tovo: I understand. We're all ajudging to a budget that looks very different and trying to figure out where things are and where that information is is just a different process. We may have submitted a question asking which ifcs to report back on, which ifcs were and were not funded, and if we haven't, we will. I know we did submit and received a response asking which items have been fund understand the past with one-time funds that are not included in the budget and we now how that information to work off of. >> I'm prepared to speak to the resolutions in and not in and why we have a budget question. While you are at the HEB event we'll get copies. >> Mayor Adler: It looks like it's page 9 of the materials that you've handed out. >> Page 9 is where I'll speak to it, but we have a budget question with more details that will get distributed. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. 9:30, let's take a recess. There is no noticed public meeting now other than this one that we're recessing. So council -- I urge councilmembers not to gather collectively anywhere during this recess that we have. And with that said, we are going to at 9:30 here recess. If, hopefully we'll be back about 10:00. [9:31:31 AM] [Recess] [9:55:10 AM] [R ecess] Paragraph.[ [9:57:13 AM] . [ [10:23:26 AM] recess] [Recess] >> [10:28:07 AM] Mayor Adler: All right. I think we're back again. It is 10:28. Council member kitchen was correct about the 10:00 estimate. [Laughter] But we have a quorum present. We are now back. Ed, you can start taking us through the presentation. >> Welcome back, mayor, mayor pro tem, members of the council. I'm going to start us off on page 3. Your packet our discussion item, 3. A brief presentation to go over highlights of fiscal year 2019 proposed budget. But then to start off with -- topic 1a? It's not 1? I want to just talk about that timeline as we discussed before we discussed before you took your presses. This is a timeline going back to August 6 when the city manager presented the city's proposed budget. We're here on August 30 at our second -- I'm sorry, we're here at August 29 at our second budget work session. Our second budget and tax rate session will be held tomorrow at 4:00 or sometime after 4:00 P.M. We'll have that second hearing. We have talked about. It sounds like there is support for having a final work session. We have been polling council members and it looks like September 6 from 9:00 to 11:00 would work for everybody, or at least work for -- I think council member pool can't be here, but other than that it sounds like everybody else could be here September 6 from 9:00 to 11:00, and so unless we hear differently I think that's what we would plan on putting on to the council calendar. And then September 11 is when we're slated to adopt the budget. Just in regards to our overall budget that was presented, it's a $4.1 billion budget that funds our two utilities, our general fund operations, the airport, drainage utility, transportation functions, et cetera. [10:30:08 AM] It's about a 4% increase over the prior year, and you can see for the first time we're presenting the budget around your six outcomes with just shy of a billion dollars of that funding going to safety. Our next largest outcome in terms of where the dollars are employing are to government that works, followed by health and the environment, economic opportunity and affordability. Mobility is at 237 million, and I would just pause and highlight that this is the operating budget slide on the very next slide you'll see the capital budget allocation, and that is largely to mobility. So mobility really is, when you think about it, a capital intensive operation. And then culture and life-long learning rounds it out at $78 million. Just moving on to the next slide, you can see in addition to that $4 billion operating budget, we have a $1 billion capital spend planning for fiscal year 2019, and we really think it makes the most sense to look at the capital program over a longer term perspective, so this shows you our planned spending over a five-year period, which is $5.6 billion, so just a little bit over a billion dollars a year is what we anticipate we will be spending on capital improvements throughout the city. Again, the blue piece, that large part of the chart in the middle, is mobility, being driven by the $720 million 2016 mobility bond, and of course all the work you're seeing going on out at the airport. >> [Inaudible] >> Sorry for that. And so that's -- that's the capital spending plan. Of course there's a lot more details and highlights about capital projects included in the proposed budget, but this is just an overview of where the dollars are flowing. >> Does that include -- excuse me, does that include the proposed bond for November? >> No, the proposed bond [10:32:09 AM] would just increase all of those strata on that charge. Prospective 2018 bond that will be on the ballot, none of those dollars are in here. This next slide then takes a look at our typical residential ratepayer. We've highlighted in the past that the only enterprise operation that's proposing a base rate increase is our transportation user fee, which will be going up $1.27 per month, or $15.24 per year. You can see zeros for Austin resource recovery, clean community fee, the drainage utility fee. There's no base rate change for Austin water, but as a result of the base rate reduction the council approved earlier this year, we are projecting that the typical water user will actually see a reduction in their bills next year. And then in Austin energy this is still a preliminary number, $2.76 increase really is a result of their past- through. Nothing to do with the base rate increase, but we are hearing from Austin energy. We anticipate that the final tariff they bring back for you for adoption on September 1 will actually see a reduction in that number, that $2.76 number we're showing now we believe will come down when the tariff is finalized. And then finally on that slight you can see that the property tax bill of $61.48 is what we're projecting as the increase. That's an annual increase in the property tax bill. You can see that it's based upon the owner of a median valued homestead, non-senior owner of a homestead, and it does reflect the increase that you approved in the general homestead exemption from 8% to 10%, and just finally I would highlight that the tax increase that we're projecting in this budget is 4.9% above the effective o&m rate, which is we've been saying the second lowest tax increase in this city we've seen since fiscal year 2011. I do just want to highlight on that, you probably have all seen the headline on the [10:34:09 AM] newspaper that, you know, just to give a comparison stake, that Austin independent school district is projecting a $400 increase in their tax bills. Somewhat to put it in context of the real issue with rising tax burden has to do with the school district tax bills and with the school financing system that we always have been talking about that and not wanting to lose sight of the fact that the tax burden being experienced by austinites is really being driven by our school financing model and the issues that are inherent in that. >> Mayor Adler: What is the 6148 number, if we went to the 6%? >> That goes up about $10, it goes to $71. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> So this is a budget that was absolutely driven by the priorities that you laid out on April 4 at your priority setting workshop. These priorities were around your six outcomes and the 35 indicators that are underneath each of those outcomes. What you see on this slide are your top ten indicators that you identified, and I won't read them all to you, but certainly some of the themes we've heard not only from you over the work sessions we've had through our one- on-one briefings, but also through the resolutions you've passed is just a little of emphasis on housing, homelessness, quality health care services, accessibility and quality of parks, and I would just remind you all that we've had 11 town hall meetings. We spent a lot of time in the community talking about these very issues, and I'd say the community agrees with you that housing and homelessness and accessibility to quality health care and parks really are the priorities of the city, and I think they're priorities that you'll see throughout this budget. Over on the right you can see some other directions that you gave us saying that you would like to see a property tax increase in the range of 6%. Again, we're coming in at 4.9% so quite a bit below that 6% threshold guide guidepost [10:36:10 AM] that you set for us. You indicated modest increase in fees by departments to offset those fees and help the tax implication. You'll see some of those fee increases. We've talked about the aquatics funding and that that would be somewhat offset by parks, increases in pool fees. And later today you'll see a new fee presentation from the parks department that will help to offset the costs they incur related to development review. And then finally there was a conversation about the large percentage of the budget, the general fund budget that goes to public safety services, and if we could continue to see a downward trend in that, and this is a budget that delivers on that, that the portion of the general fund budget going to those important services, while it's growing, while the dollar amount is growing, as a percentage it's coming down about 2 percentage points. Another big source of information for us in crafting this budget recommendation is all the resolutions that you passed, and that was one of the conversations we were having before you headed over to the H.E.B. Event. This just lays out a lot of the resolutions that you have passed related to funding priorities, police staffing plan, new fire stations, additional funding for health and social service contracts, and the funding that was included in the budget to comply with those various resolutions. On the bottom there I list a number of resolutions that were also -- we're also tracking that aren't in the proposed budget. The budget question that you all were just handed provides a little bit more details on this slide, and I'd just point you to the second page of that budget response, lays out the resolution numbers and the resolutions that weren't included in the budget, and really my comment on that would be that all of these resolutions that are laid out there had report-backdates, the resolutions called for staff to report back with information on these different topics of August 31, September 1, [10:38:13 AM] September 15, November 5. So with the exception of the recycling ordinance, ask staff to report back by August 15, or actually the task force. They did report back on August 15 but that was after the budget was delivered to you. So those recommendations couldn't have been included in our -- in our budget proposal to you, and the em cot resolution, second from the bottom, did not have a report-backdate but again it came up after the proposed budget had already been delivered to council. I did want to highlight that the eviction counseling services was actually included in the budget. You may have seen an earlier rendition of this response where it had it listed as not being in the budget. That was a confusion on the part of the budget office. I've consulted with the director of housing, and that -- the eviction counseling services of $75,000 was intended to be paid for as part of fully funding the housing trust fund, so the housing trust fund is getting a significant increase to a $5.3 million and their intention was to pay for the eviction counseling services out of that fund. And so we've updated that response and have resubmitted that, or reposted that. >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> I just wanted to tag on to something that Mr. Van eenoo was saying. The expanding recycling and city parks fees, our staff has worked with legal staff and the recycling task force to bring a proposal that I can pass out, but we're looking at a very small -- well, it depends. There's two different ways we could go about it. One is funding it directly over a three- year period, and the other is raising the money for the -- the resources that we need through the clean community fee, by 8 cents a month, which would be less than a dollar a year. So I have -- do you want me to pass this out now or do [10:40:13 AM] you want to -- >> Mayor Adler: You can pass it out now. But let's not have an extended conversation about it. >> Pool: Nos at all. >> Mayor Adler: You're just bookmarking it. >> Pool: I wanted to mention we've worked up the dollar figures that Mr. Van eenoo wasn't able to present prior to this. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: I want to just be sure I'm understanding a couple pieces of information that we just received. So the -- thank you for the information about the tenant -- tenant eviction counseling. I think I'm going to have to think a little bit about -- I mean, I think it's critical and I think we need to fund it, but I -- we need to continue to talk about what programs may be listed as funded but may be listed as now funded out of a source of -- a source that's on the list as well, like, for example, I'm now wondering whether the homeowner educational campaign at $100,000 is also proposed to be funded out of the affordable housing trust fund. I think to the extent that we're seeing line items of things, we need to know if the originating source is something else on that list. So -- and I -- you know, my first response is that the affordable housing trust fund is certainly an appropriate source of funding for that, but it's also an appropriate source of funding for building housing. And so I really wanted to see the tenant eviction as an additional, not coming from that source of funding. So -- so those are some clarifications I just need to see, whether some of the things on this list, particularly the homeowner educational campaign, is also proposed to be funded from another line item on that or if it is in addition to. And just to be clear, the list -- the list of things that are on budget question no. 60, I see some things - - I see some ifcs I brought forward that aren't captured here. Mr. Van eenoo, were you saying that these are just [10:42:14 AM] items since 2019? I mean, some of them clearly are before 2019. >> These are not just from 2019. These -- this list is largely the list we presented to you as council continuing conversations back on April 4, so it's the resolutions we've been tracking that we understood to have potential financial implications. For the most part the list at the end, the shorter list of things that aren't funded, are resolutions that came up after the April 4 work session, so they weren't initially talked about and they had staff report-back dates after the proposed budget came out. >> Got it. Thank you. So that was the distinction after August 6. Just a few -- I do think we need -- and we'll supply this to your office. I think the list of ifcs that have budgetary implications is not complete in this budget answer. I'll name a few. The tenant education campaign for students. That was a resolution related to -- relating to residential Visas, guarantors and tenant rights. That was the one that asked our staff to worked with the development community and the apartment community to have financial aid for students recognized as a source of income but as another piece of it it was also -- there was also a tenant education piece that was estimated at 25,000, and again, I can give you the resolution numbers. Another relate -- I know they're related to districts within the -- perhaps are available through hotel occupancy sources. The rest dwengs cooperative purchase policies. Now, this was asking for a report back with some recommendations by August 15. I don't believe we've gotten that, but if there were financial mechanisms recommended, that would have a budgetary implication. So that one is in a little bit different category. And then the -- so those are just some of the ones that I have sponsored in the last year or two that have budgetary implications. Mayor, when you sponsored that I co-sponsored that I don't see reflected in this budget answer is the [10:44:16 AM] lighting inventory study on west campus and any possible recommendations that might come out of that. Again, that's in a little bit different category because it wasn't -- it wasn't like tenant eviction where we had a clear sense of what -- what the cost might be on that. So I think what I'll do is follow up with this information but also just perhaps another -- >> Mayor Adler: Yep. >> Tovo: Just as a follow-up to -- >> I would appreciate a lot -- the ones that we almost always catch are the ones where the be it resolved talks about funding, so those we always catch, but some of the other ones where it's a little bit more nuanced we might not catch there could be a fiscal consequence. I appreciate you sending us that list. >> Tovo: Thank you very much. >> I did want to speak too -- >> Mayor Adler: If you could also post what the resolution numbers on these? >> Tovo: Sure. >> Mayor Adler: That would be helpful. >> Tovo: Yeah, I can also just make -- if it's legal I may be able to make a photocopy of this and distribute. >> Mayor Adler: You could do that here. >> I was writing them down as you said them. We'll find them. [Laughter] We don't want to do anything illegal. >> Tovo: What's the best way to follow up on that. >> Mayor Adler: If >> Mayor Adler: You can hand things out at this forum. >> Tovo: What's the best way to follow up which things might -- I guess to follow 'and ask for the source of funding. >> We can update this slide with that source of funding. I was going to talk about it later, since it's coming up now, in regard to the housing trust fund, not only do we more than double the amount to fully fund the transfer, but we used to fund staff, reimburse staff out of the housing cost. It was justist source of money we had for some of those things we really needed to get done. In this year's budget not only are we increasing, we're adding a general fund and put a half million dollars in their budget for some of the studies they need to do. And this eviction services is one we just missed that the housing department is [10:46:17 AM] saying that is something, though, they would see as appropriate to use the housing trust fund for. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Kitchen: I have a question. On slide 9, and you can get me this information if you don't have it right now, on the music and creative echo system, the 1.6 million, I would just like to understand what program in the budget that tracks back to. I understand the 400,000, I -- I'm pretty sure what we're talking about is the rental assistance program. So I just -- I guess I just want confirmation of that, but I think that's what that is, but I'm not sure what the 1.6 tracks back to in terms of where I would see it in the budget. >> Yeah, we'll give you a budget question detailing what the 1.6 million is in support of. >> Kitchen: Okay. And then lastly, the pir request, the 362,000, that's more than I anticipated in -- I'm sure I supported that resolution, but that's actually a lot more than I anticipated. So I would just like to understand what that's for and so maybe that's a budget question too that you can help me with a breakdown of that. >> Mayor Adler: Which one? >> Kitchen: The 362,000 for pir. >> And I believe that's a computerized system that would handle all the pairs and redaction and stuff. I don't have a lot of details on that so we can get that for you. >> Kitchen: That would be helpful to understand. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Leslie, was your light on? Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: Yeah, that was -- I'm glad you raised that. That was a resolution I had brought. I'm very eager to hear more information. So if there's an opportunity to hear any more information about that today and what that might consist of, I think that would be really helpful. My hope is that there's some kind of strategy too for consolidation of that work so that we're not each [10:48:17 AM] individually doing it. Just to name one example that happened in the last few weeks, we have a pir that may have gone to the mayor as well, that resulted in 11,000 pages of redacted emails. There's got to be a better way and more cost efficient way to do this work that in many cases multiple of our offices are doing. That's a real significant time and money burden. So, you know, hopefully we can get more information and see whether it's a cost savings to the city. >> Kitchen: And I agree with that. I don't want to redo the conversation when we passed the resolution. From my perspective, it doesn't replace the work I need to do in my office because in my office I need to review those so there's still work in my office. 362 may be fine. It just struck me as a little higher than I had expected so I'm just wanting to understand what it is. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's keep going. >> So the rest of this slide deck is run through some of the highlights. I chose to organize these highlights by top priority indicators you all laid out house, homelessness, et cetera. So in regards to housing, you can see that our total budget -- again, we're trying to change our conversation. We're guilty sometimes of just talking about the changes, but we don't want to lose sight of the fact this is a $4.1 billion budge he it and embedded in that is $40 million of expenditures related to housing. That's both local funds that support our operating budget, it's also grant funds, cdby and cip, but $40 billion on housing programs and that includes fully funding the housing trust fund at $5.3 million that I've mentioned. And then it includes a number of other things, the $500,000 for the implementation of the strategic housing blueprint [10:50:19 AM] and technical assistance. Some of these things are things we would have funded out of that housing trust fund but now we're moving on to the general fund which will leave more money in the housing trust fund for projects. We have more money in the budget for an affordable housing data base. Funding for a third-party monitoring resources. And then finally 148,000 for a facilitated review and capacity building for affordable housing. So this is essentially be a person that will help move smart housing, affordable housing projects through the development process. >> Mayor Adler: Do I understand correctly all four of those bottom points are handled outside of the fund? >> I'm sorry, those are all not being funded out of the housing trust fund. I can see where it may be looks like -- the housing trust fund 5.3 million for projects. These are new dollars we're putting into the budget, things that might have otherwise been funded out of the housing trust fund. Moving on to homeless priority, taking a look at the big picture, there's been briefings made by the health department about the fy-20 17-18 funding of $26.3 million for homelessness. We are building on that with $3.1 million of new funding in the budget before you. We talked about some of these things at our August 15th work session, but additional funneled to go enhance the host program, funding for homeless camp cleanup, alternatives to panhandling. We think it's important we have some positions to improve coordination of all these different buckets of funds that we have going on related to homelessness. And then the library is proposing to add two positions to provide wrap-around service for the homeless community that are at our libraries. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. Mr. Van eenoo, are these wrap-around services at all libraries or is it at the [10:52:20 AM] central library? >> I don't have the answer to that but I know we have library staff here. >> Houston: If this is not the place to ask that question, I'll wait. >> I think we can get a quick response to that and maybe Mr. Weeks is coming up here I can just continue on. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: I just wanted to clarify the one million for the homeless camp cleanup is actually over four years? >> That's correct. That is anticipated to be a four-year contract for homeless camp cleanups by our watershed department. >> Mayor Adler: Can you identify, I'm going to assume all these are in next year's budget. If they are not, if you could mark or highlight those or indicate those, that would be helpful. >> These are all in next year, in the fiscal year 19 budget. New things. >> Mayor Adler: But paid out over four years. I'm trying to understand the question. It's in this year's budget, but they are paid out over four years? >> Yeah, so we're anticipating that the contract we enter into would be a multi-year contract totaling a million dollars. So we want to pay all that money out -- wouldn't pay all that out in the first year. It would be paid out as service are needed. >> Mayor Adler: Is there $750,000 for this in years 2 through 4 budget? Or are we taking the million dollars out of this year's budget? >> 250,000 in this year's, another 250 in future year budgets to pay for this contract. >> Mayor Adler: If you could highlight those kinds of things. >> This is the obviously one I'm aware is -- only one I'm aware is an oddity. But if I see any others as I go through, I will. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Kitchen: Just a question on - - I want to point out the homeless camp cleanup is only for the areas that watershed can address, so it won't -- if I'm understanding correctly, those dollars cannot be used for cleanup over overpasses. >> That's correct. >> Kitchen: So in other parts of our neighborhoods [10:54:20 AM] or urban areas that wouldn't be watershed areas. So you might clarify. >> Yeah, homeless camp clean up in watershed areas. >> This may be inherent and you may need to follow up, but this goes back to resolutions we passed before. There was a resolution putting in place or piloting a program that involved homeless individuals work program for them. And I don't know what the status of that program is and if we need dollars to implement it, so that's really -- it's a combination of a question for you and Sara Hensley, probably. >> That's not the panhandling? >> Kitchen: No. Panhandling -- >> Mayor Adler: Panhandling is councilmember troxclair's. >> Kitchen: This was councilmember troxclair's resolution related to a work program that like other cities have used. >> Pool: It was called pay for success. >> Kitchen: You know what I'm talking about, Sara, right? I'm sorry to call you up. >> That's okay. >> Kitchen: Questioning whether we need funding. >> Sara Hensley, we have two council rests that were what we're working on addressing. One was from councilmember troxclair which was the addressing issues related to finding work for those individuals alternative to panhandling. Another one that is working to set up mechanisms for individuals in the city or people visiting the city to donate into a system that will help us address other issues related to homelessness. Both of those are actively underway. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> I think I sent you the [10:56:22 AM] list on sites we're looking at to put parking meters that would be painted a different color for people to donate at the airport and other services help our people experiencing homelessness. The other one is a joint effort between parks and recreation and the health department and others to look at ways to -- animal services, to look at how we can hire individuals experiencing homelessness and put them to work doing things such as picking up trash, walking dogs at the animal services center and all other sorts of work. They are actively working on that because they are trying to get a contract set up so we can do that and work with individuals. And so we should have an update planned in the next couple of weeks on that as well. Those are all fine. And I don't think we put any money in, I don't think we need any at this time. >> Kitchen: I just wanted to make sure we didn't need to be concerned about that in the budget. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Greg and Leslie. >> Casar: The $600,000 on alternatives to panhandling, what does that money do? >> That money, and I'll let Stephanie come up, look at contract y'all services we may have to work with. It might be easier to contract with a nonprofit who can work with our individuals experiencing homelessness and help us place them in different opportunities for work. And so that would be part of that money. So that's why we didn't need additional funding to do that. This was some carryover work from our last effort where we were trying to spend 50 to $80,000 in our budget in the health department. That money is helping us from a contractual services. I'll let Stephanie answer a little more detail. >> Casar: It's okay, I just want to know generally this is for work opportunities for folks experiencing homelessness. That's what this money is. >> Or am I wrong? I'm incorrect so let's correct this. >> Casar: That's. [10:58:23 AM] >> Mayor Adler: This is new funding. >> This is new funding, yes. >> Good morning, Stephanie Hayden, Austin public health. So the 500 with the 600 I know is all put together, but it's not all for panhandling. $100,000 of it is for panhandling, and $500,000 of it is for additional homeless services such as rapid rehousing, navigation services, preventive services to homelessness. So I'm sorry that this is in one line, but those are the homeless services that it would cover. >> Casar: That would be helpful to have broken out to some extent because some folks have asked where the additional funding is for some of the things you have listed. >> Yes. >> Casar: I've heard that's in the budget, but I don't see in the slides. To provide clarity. On 100,000 being for panhandling. 100,000 is for -- not for panhandling but for job opportunities for people experiencing homelessness? >> Absolutely. >> Casar: Okay. So 100,000 of it is job opportunities for folks, 500,000 is services and you guys can email something breaking that down for us. >> Yes, we can break that down for you. Yes. Absolutely. >> Kitchen: But then where's the funding for the program that you mentioned, Sara, or maybe there's not funding needed in terms of the meters and the collection points and that sort of thing? >> So we are using funds -- we want to pilot it first. >> Kitchen: Right. >> So we're using funds from this fiscal year. >> Kitchen: Okay, so you don't need funds for that. >> So we don't need any funds for that. But the other pilot for the employment piece that we will be able to get going relatively soon, this additional $100,000 for panhandling would allow us to expand that program because we're going to pilot [11:00:23 AM] it initiallien a then do some quality improvement to look it over, see if things are going well, and then we would amend and do that $100,000 for -- to make that pilot official. Because we're using one-time funding for the employment opportunities. >> Kitchen: Got which. I understand. >> Mayor Adler: On the homelessness slide, there's $600,000 for alternatives to panhandling. We know $100,000 of that is for job services. That leaves 500,000 for supportive services. If I look at accessibility to health care services, there's 500,000 there, that's homelessness dedicated social service contracts. Is that the same $500,000? >> That is the same $500,000. >> Mayor Adler: So we've double counted that 500,000 on those two slides. >> Houston: Mayor, would you tell us what slide you are on? >> Mayor Adler: So on page 11 there's $600,000 for alternatives to panhandling, what that probably should say is $100,000 for job assistance for homeless community. And then on page 13 there's $500,000 for homelessness dedicated social service contracts. That's the other $500,000. Probably be listed one or other places, but not both. >> The 100,000 also will be, as I mentioned, it's looking at a contract with a nonprofit to do that. >> Mayor Adler: And I say it should be listed one place or the other, that goes to what the slide is. So if we're showing on the slide some things might be double listed because they are in double categories, I'm fine with that, just with the understanding every slide might not be unique of itself. If someone wants to know what other services we're providing, should be listed in both places because if someone is looking at homelessness they should be able to see that. If someone is looking for accessibility to hill country services, they should -- health care services they should find it there. [11:02:23 AM] Leslie. >> Pool: Do we have -- I don't think we yet have a cost for assistance for families with children experiencing homeless or housing insecurity, but that's an item that my staff is working on trying to cost that up. And I'll have a proposal. But this will be for the phase with the housing and urban development that targets children and families experiencing housing insecurity. I'm pretty shower that's not in here -- sure that's not in here already. Is that right? Okay. And the reason for tracking back to that and pursuing that is those are matching funds that we would get, draw down from hud. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Yes. >> I will mention if this is through life works, I actually have a call with the executive director from life works today, and what we're asking is is their current contract -- could they leverage their current city of Austin contract fund for that match as opposed to adding additional funding. So I gist wanted to alert you that we are working on that to get a final answer on that. >> Pool: That would be great. Keep us posted. That would be great. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Ed, do you want to continue? Ms. Houston is your light just on? >> Houston: I'm just waiting for Mr. Weeks to answer the question. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Austin public library terazzos, Ruiz, little walnut, is zapada and central lie library. >> Houston: How do you arrive? >> They appeared to be the places where the social worker will be needed. >> Houston: And this is [11:04:24 AM] eight hours a day, five days a week, seven days a week? >> They will rotate between the locations based on the services that will be offered. We'll be working with integral care, health department, the host teams and helping us provide those wrap-around services. >> Houston: So if some of the other libraries that are not in this list begin to experience this same kind of concern, they should let who know? >> They should let the social worker know or they should let the branch manager know at that location. >> Houston: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Let's keep going. We're on page 11 of a 94-page document. Mayor pro tem, did you have something quick? >> Tovo: Questions for director weeks about that same item. Mr. Weeks, one of the questions that's been raised is whether that -- whether the social workers would be connected to the coordinate entry system so they are doing coordinated assessments on the individuals with whom they are coming into contact so those individuals are in the queue for housing. Is that part of the intent? >> That is. They are primarily working with finding resources for those customers. We will not be doing any indepth medical-type work with those customers, but primarily identifying those resources for them. >> Tovo: But will the social workers be completing coordinated assessments with those individuals? >> Yes. Yes. >> Tovo: On site at the library. >> The initial assessment, that's correct. >> Tovo: And then the initial assessment being that coordinated assessment. >> That's correct. >> Tovo: Can you help us understand how these -- I mean there clearly is a need. I just want to see how they are going to be working with the social worker students that I know we have at some of our -- I believe there at the central library and maybe terazzos. >> They were interns from Texas state. They are no longer with us and so we want to bring these two social workers on to take on a full- time [11:06:25 AM] responsibility in that role. >> Tovo: Is there any opportunity to have those interns, to have the next group of interns do the same -- >> We bring them back every year to add some added support. >> Tovo: Do we know if they are coming back this year? >> Well, the first one was a grant in using those, but we're looking to have some relationship with Texas state and U.T. To see if they can provide those persons to us for free. As part of their end of year program. And so we are looking to work with them on that. >> Tovo: Yeah, because it was my understanding that was a multi-year program and had been going on -- >> The money ran out on that grant. It was a ilms grant that ran out last year. >> Tovo: Okay. I think that would be -- I regard that as a high priority. I think it's very good. I think it fits into the training that our social work students at area colleges and universities are seeking and I think it's a great benefit, of course, for our community to have those services provided and I'm delighted to see the two social work positions here, but I think the need is greater than those two will be able to meet. >> Integrity. >> Mayor pro tem, I think this is a perfect opportunity to, as Roosevelt said, they will continue their efforts with the schools, all the colleges, for internships just like we do in parks and recreation and the health department. But having the full-time positions there for more of a set period to deal with a lot of them and to be able to move them around will just give a little bit more help to those individuals experiencing homelessness that tend to lean towards libraries and in some cases community centers and need services and not have to call someone to have someone there. >> Tovo: Again, I completely degree. I want to make sure we're expanding and not replacing one resource with another. So perhaps we can touch base on how that -- how that work with getting those schools reengaged in the case of Texas state and engaged in [11:08:26 AM] the case of some of our other universities as progressing because I think -- I think that's a natural match. >> We will continue to do that. >> Mayor Adler: If there's anything I can do to help put my shoulder to that stone in getting those leaders to -- of those universities to also help, let me know. >> Certainly, and I would also say that I'm -- what I'm going to try to do is pull the internship coordinator from parks and recreation and allow that person to work with the libraries to do more a holistic approach to internships because they come from all over, not just the state of Texas, but we get interns from all over the country, and start trying to do that as well with our libraries and even the health department so we kind of coordinate that. And sometimes it may be that they rotate from different departments because, as you know, people aren't any more hired in one single area, they work different areas. I'll ask that Robert contact director weeks. >> Mayor Adler: The coordination would be great. Let's keep moving through. If,. >> So the last item on there was just to mention the -- the completion of the $7 million expansion and improvements at the Austin womens and children's shelter are coming to an end. That's a great project. Moving on to the skills and capability of our community, workforce, there is $2.7 million in this budget for workforce development contracts. I do want to highlight to council that one of the things you funded last year on a one-time basis was $319,000 of an enhancement to our workforce development contract. So that was one-time funding. That is not continued, but the recurrent fund ING is continuing forward. $1.2 million to implement a new chapter 380 policy. And a total of $3.2 million in Austin public health related to skills and workforce funding, and here's some of the new programs that we're adding [11:10:26 AM] to the fiscal year-19 budget. $124,000 for youth service coordinator to work with our east side memorial high school and $117,000 in funds for a training specialist that's going to implement a workforce development program. >> Houston: Excuse me, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: The university of Texas was doing a labor -- the Marshall center, looking at how we're spending our workforce development contract budget, to come back with a recommendation on what's working relative to the workforce development goals we have adopted as a council. I understand that that report has been delayed and isn't going to come out until February. I think that's an important report for us to have. So I just mention that. We asked for that and ultimately we need that to have guidance on how to spend dollars. And to spend them in a coordinated way with the other partners that are now all marching to the same beat drum with respect to that adopted workforce development plan and workforce solutions in Travis county and the other partners. I'm anxious for us to look at that holisticly so that we can look at what the combined budgets are and how they are all being spent. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Pio, did you turn your light on? >> Renteria: Yes, I don't know if that's going to get to that -- the 124,000 for our new youth service coordinator program at east side memorial. I would like to get some more information exactly how it's going to work. >> Mayor Adler: Some of these questions as we go through this, we could probably answer in a budget question so that we could get through the other 80-some-odd pages we still have to go. Some of these you kind of judge on which are the ones [11:12:26 AM] we should spend 10 or 15 minutes on and which are susceptible of a budget question. >> Renteria: And they could just send me the information. Since I work with that school. >> Mayor Adler: We'll get thaw information in a budget question. Ms. Houston. >> Houston: I would like it too because I don't know whether this is -- are they working for the city, this position or is it a school district position, and so if you all just clarify what this new youth services coordinator is going to do and who they will be working for. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds great. We do it as a budget question. Alison. >> Alter: Mr. Van eenoo, can you clarify what is new money here and what is ongoing? Because we seem to be switching across slides over what's new money and what's, you know, in there for that. And I know we need to know both, but it's a little confusing. What I heard was that we're actually reducing our budget for workforce development by the 319,000 that went for work for development that ultimately went to capital idea for their contract. >> That's correct. For that first bullet, it's the total funding in the budget is 2.7 milker but that's not -- million but that's not including the 217,000 from last year. >> Alter: That is a reduction over last year, not an additional 2.7 million. >> Yes. >> Alter: And then the 380 policy, is that additional money or money that was already -- >> That's new money. That's not in the '18 budget. That would be new funding. >> Alter: Okay. I just want to signal that I'm concerned about reducing the amount going into workforce development, try to keep it the bucket, but it was the bucket that ultimately went for what we know to be a productive set of programs that was through capital idea. Obviously we would put tonight a bucket and not to a particular vendor, but I wanted to highlight that, 319 is less than we provided last year. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Continue on. [11:14:27 AM] >> Okay, so the next category was accessibility to health care. Total proposed budget for Austin public health, that's general fund and grants, $113.6 million. Which is a 6.3% increase over the current year. That increase funds our standard cost drivers, but it also funds $4.5 million of new public health programs and social service contracts. You can see some highlights where the new funding is being allocated to. And I will mention a lot of these things are in alignment with the recommendations we heard from our quality of life commissions. 1.1 million disease prevention, public health and translation services. 585,000 for health equity and quality of life direct services. We talked about the homelessness dedicated service of $500,000. A half a million dollars for improved mental health and health care outreach, which was a priority of the African-American quality of life commission. We did put $175,000 out of our budget stabilization reserve fund towards a new mini grant process which was a priority of council's last year. It was one of your budget riders, so that process has now been finalized and we're in the process of seeking applications from local vendors for the mini grants and this would be an enhancement to that money. In the fy-18 budgees council set aside money for mini grants, we're proposing 175,000 next year, and finally $150,000 for immigrant legal services. >> Mayor Adler: What is the $500,000 for enhanced mental health and health care outreach? Is that like the mcot services? >> It's not mcot. >> Mayor Adler: If we could have someone identify what -- >> As a budget question. >> Mayor Adler: Please. >> Casar: Mayor? [11:16:28 AM] Ed, I know that the header says new public health programs. The immigrant legal services, is it new because we are moving one time into recurring or in addition to what we will last year? >> That's a fair question. >> Casar: I've gotten accused. >> Anything that was one time this year, it's gone and when we started fy-19 of the $4.5 million of new funding. That one was made as on going from one-time source. >> Casar: For the entire header, if something actually isn't new but has gone from one time to ongoing, it's listed here as new, which I understand that definition of new. So then in particular with regard to the immigrant legal services, is -- I don't recall whether in last budget this was funded partly by one time and partly by general fund and maybe you all could give the breakdown of how much of that is new because it's one time being transferred to general fund or how much is new because it's new money. >> Mayor Adler: And in that regard, does this represent a $50,000 decrease of the one-time funding similar to the question that got asked a second ago. While it's moved to recurring, it probably represents I think a $50,000 reduction, if memory serves me correctly. If we could address that too. >> Okay. So the next category we wanted to look at was our accessibility to parks, trails and recreation opportunities. The parks department has a total budget of $91.9 million. I've mentioned this previously. It's nearly a 10% increase in their budget from fiscal year 2018. Included in that is nearly a 20% increase in our aquatics budget, so a total aquatics [11:18:34 AM] and what we have currently. That is being partially off set, that cost increase being partially off set by proposed increase to admission fees at some of the pools. $611,000 in funding plus additional five positions for parks, grounds, facilities and playground maintenance a total of 2.9, this is in development services department, $2.9 million for urban forestry program. A 10% increase of $307,000 there, and finally we have 387,000 in new funding related to the city's cultural centers. And we do have a budget question already out in regards to the cultural centers and it's a topic of discussion later today as well so we'll get into more details on that. Finally I round it out with two slides of priorities from the other top ten indicators you laid out. $5.4 million of planned spending on our two fire stations at Morris crossing and Travis country. I won't read all of these, but just highlight some of them. $82,000 in racial equity training for APD command staff. We think the living wage increasing to $15 per hour, which is a year ahead of the goals that you established is a good story, and $6.5 million to fully comply with financial policy for facility maintenance. A significant increase from the previous annual commitments of about $1.5 million per year. $11.2 million transfer of our hotel occupancy taxes to historic press fund. That's the full 15% allowable under state law and was a direction council gave us in last year's budget adoption. We are finally moving forward with the much needed replacement of our human capital management system with $8 million in this budget set aside for what [11:20:34 AM] will be a multi-year project. And then finally just wanted to mention that we did have a lot of engagement with our quality of life commissions in total and other commissions in total this budget has $6.8 million of funding for recommendations that came from our various boards and commissions. Many of those items we've already talked about such as increasing the funding for the housing trust fund was one of the priorities. Funding for mental health care was one of the priorities. This is just to highlight a few of the other things. Not all of them but just a few of the other things we were funding in the budget that came from recommendations from our commissions. Again, that was just intended to give you an overview of the fact that this is a $4 billion budget, really crafted with your priorities in mind, and so we just wanted to make that available to you all. Unless there's more questions, we're going to move on to topic 1b, the next briefing, from the development services department on their budget for fiscal year 19. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you for this work. The $8 million for the new human capital management system, does that include police and fire or just civilian? >> That would include police and fire. The system will cover all of our city departments and staff. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: I wanted to clarify, I'm pleased to see us meeting our financial policy for facility maintenance. Is that a bucket of money that's devoted to that or is that divided up across departments already allocated within the budget? >> So we have a -- one of our briefings is going to be specifically on facility maintenance and Eric Stockton will be here. In general that $6.5 million is for nonenterprise facility needs. >> Alter: But is it already in the department's budgets or is it a separate pot of money? [11:22:34 AM] >> It's a building services department capital improvement program where they administer those projects across the nonenterprise departments. >> Alter: Look forward the the later briefing. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Rodney, do you want to take us -- >> Good morning, mayor and council. Rodney Gonzalez, director for development services department. This morning I will be presenting a overview of the fiscal year 218-19 proposed budget. 2018-19. The proposed budget is $63.6 million, which is approximately $10 million above the current year budget. The primary cost driver is a request for needed staffing resources to meet workload demand which includes 50 new positions and increases in funding for temporary positions, overtime and utilization of third-party contracts totaling approximately $7 million. In alignment with the city's strategic plan, the dsd budget has been presented in a manner that conforms with the city council strategic initiatives. Dsd falls within the economic opportunity and affordability initiative however there are other works that we do including government at works, mobility, health and environment, and safety. With regard to the 50 positions we've broken those out in strategic outcomes. During fiscal year 2015-16 council budget discussion there was a council desire to set fees at cost of service and since that time we've conducted and implemented several cost of service studies. We've also implemented a dynamic fee model. This year in response to council request we are presenting several comparisons of different project times for residential and commercials. In front of you have have one which is a residential district of 1,000 square feet which includes an accessory dwelling unit. Other comparisons are provided further in this presentation. The direct customers that we [11:24:35 AM] serve desire expedient and on-time services and our ability to meet that desire is based on the staffing resources we have at any given time. Currently we do not have baseline resources to meet that in on time that are set as goals which is 890% on-time review and inspection. In this regard we are requesting positions so that way we can meet performance goals. Because the work we do is connected to the overall health of the Austin economy, we must must be mindful there are downturns and we present resources including temporary positions, overtime and utilization of third-party contracts. When we do experience a downturn in the economy, we can dial down those resources. Sticking with the theme of the economy, dsd has proposed to transition to an enterprise fund this year. There are several reasons why that is important. First, a fund balance can be created. That fund balance would mitigate against future downturns in the economy. Dsd has a long-term goal of six months reserve. As well as transitioning to enterprise funds supports council's desire for 100% cost recovery approach. Revenues from development fees pay for the associated costs. And for those costs that cannot be recouped through fees, the transfers from other sources are identified. As well enterprise funds operate our business like and operate with an efficiency mind set. In that regard our resource requests are always going to be tempered against economic forecast. Finally, the transition to enterprise fund implements two of the key financial recommendations from 2015. With regard to the Austin economy, we continue to see year over year of growth. And although that rate of growth is slower than the 2011 to 2014 time period it is growth nonetheless. This slide gives an indication of some of the [11:26:36 AM] workload volume we experience in dsd. In particular we have seen significant increase in inspection activity and that correlates to the commercial projects that we see recently which are larger and more complex. Which leads to more inspections per project. As well coinciding with Austin's population increase, we continue to see increase in residential application. And although there isn't a decrease in commercial building applications, the complexity of those applications has increased. As I mentioned previously, our direct customers desire expedient and on-time services and our ability to meet that desire is predicated on amount of staffing. We have over the last thee years instituted a blend of staffing resources including more utilization of temporary employees, overtime as well as third-party contracts. On the positive side, those resources can be dogged down in event of an economic downturn, however, there are risks associated with those staffing resources. First temporaries turn over more than permanent positions so there is risk offing onal knowledge and training time invested in those individuals. Second, we do stand the risk of overutilizing overtime and burning out permanent employees and then they leave employment as well. The resulting impact is that the quality and timeliness of reviews could be impacted, and because our performance is measured against customer service ratings, we could see decreases in customer services ratings. I've already mentioned how our work is directly connected to Austin's overall economy. You've seen it, we've seen it, there are continued increases in Austin's population and job growth. Austin's population growth for the last seven years has ranged from anywhere from 2% to 3%. Austin's population is continued to -- is forecasted to continue to grow. In recent years 2.5%, in the next several years, then [11:28:38 AM] 1.25% in outer years. When regard to job growth in the 12 months ending June 2018, the Austin metro grew by 37,000 jobs and according to recent economic forecasts, the metro job forecast is continued to grow. In terms of population increase, there's direct correlation with regard to the amount of apartment construction occurring in Austin. Although the occupancy rate did dip in 2017 slightly, it is forecasted to increase to 95% in 2022. According to national survey, the Austin metro within the next 12 years will need 114,000 new apartments. Compare that to city of San Antonio to the south, they are forecasted to need 54,000 apartments within that same time period. Aside from the projects associated with population job increase, there are capital projects as well run through dsd. In particular aid, the voters approved a $1 billion bond program last year. Aisd has desire for those projects to be processed through us expediently n2016 there was mobility bond program approved by Austin voters. Those projects run through us and there's astir to get those done quickly as well. In November of this year voters will be considering a $925 million bond program to the extent those are approved, those will be running through dsd as well. And we see all the major development projects. A lot of them are similar in size to small cities. Such as south central waterfront, domain, project catalyst. In particular in downtown there are 20 highrises planned in the near future and those will run through dsd as well. The positions that we are requesting are funded through fee increases. And we wanted to provide a high-level overview of the computation of fee increases. To begin, dsd is a regulatory agency. The work that we perform is [11:30:39 AM] regulatory in nature. If there is a regulation we will do the work; however, if there is no regulation, there is no work to be performed and no fee to be assessed. We do have to staff accordingly so we can enforce the regulations that have been adopted. The factors that go into fee calculations are, of course, the overall proposed budget. The projected volume by year as well as the estimated time required to perform those services. We do calculate fees individually. We have over 700 fee types. However, in no case do our overall fee collections exceed the proposed budget. This slide represents comparisons of typical residential applications that we receive. You will see there are several instances in next year where fees are anticipated to decrease. There are a couple instances they are expected to increase. On this next slide it represents comparisons of typical commercial projects that we receive. It is anticipated for smaller projects there will be fee increases, however, for our larger scale projects there will be larger fee increases. Wrapping up our budget presentation, we have worked over the last year with a variety of industry stakeholders include real estate council of Austin, the in fill builders group, Austin board of realtors and Austin contractors and engineers association. We have discussed with them the need for additional resources and the resulting fee increases. In particular we've had very good success with further -- with identifying further efficiency improvements. We've developed 64 win-win improvements that will increase efficient, quality of work and timeliness. We have discussed our budget proposal with these industry stakeholders and we plan to also discuss our budget proposal with the environmental commission. And finally, we recently provided to mayor and council a compilations of departmentwide improvements that we've implemented over [11:32:40 AM] the last three years as well as comparative analysis of the last two years customer satisfaction ratings. We're pleased see those ratings have increased. In the given year given in ability to meet on-time performance that our ratings would be impacted. That being said, we are pleased to have delivered the improvements in accordance with our action plan and look forward to implementing further improvements. Mayor and council, that's our presentation and we are certainly open to questions. >> Mayor Adler: Three things real quickly in terms of the numbers that stand out to me. The first is the dramatic increase in number of inspections. 20% increase in inspections. That seems to be one element of our development process that takes the most amount of time because it requires scheduling and appointments, and when that gets thrown off, that seems to have one of the most significant contributors to delay and uncertainty that ends up costing money that other people pay. It's cheaper sometimes to get it done quickly than to have to wait for a long thing. That is a number that stands out. Part of that, I don't know if -- I don't know if there's anything we can be doing about that. I don't know if the increase in number of -- it doesn't seem to be related to increase in number of permits because they seem to be relatively constant. I don't know if it's the determine requirements that we're putting on development services or regulations that we're adopting, but for something that where the permitting and applications remain fairly constant, that number is going up. Touch base on that real quick. The second one is the apartment occupancy number. You know, if we're anticipating the apartment occupancy level to reach 95% in 2022, that's going to have a horrific impact on rents that are being charged. And if we know that's happening -- but the number [11:34:41 AM] that's missing here is -- is with 114,000 ants needed in 2030, how are we doing in terms of anticipated buildings or starts to actually meet that anticipated need. That's the second thing. And then the third thing I'll just say you don't need to respond to is I really hope that we move to the place where Rodney, you get put in charge of being able to control the timing for Austin energy permits, water, wastewater, fire, those things so we have one person who actually has management responsibility and accountability on all that's involved in the permitting process. Could you address those quickly? >> Mayor, with regard to inspections, we are seeing increase this the size of projects as well as complexity, which needs to more inspections per projects. That's why you see the number of inspections increasing differently than in terms of applications. It's correlated to the size of the projects as well as the complexity. With regard to the apartment figure, yes, it is concerning, of course, that we're going to see an occupancy rate of 95% so that's why it's really important for us when we get applications to be expedient and on time with regard to the applications. We can't control the starts. That's a factor of the market coming forward with regard to the applications. But what we can control is when we do receive the application, how timely are we in processing those. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Further comments on the dais? Jimmy. >> Flannigan: I want to reiterate what the mayor said about the staff that exist in other departments that impacts your metrics. And the 50 positions, are those just the ones in dsd or does that include additional permit reviews in other departments? >> Just in dsd. >> Flannigan: Maybe this is a question for manager. [11:36:41 AM] Are there -- or maybe Ed -- in other departments related to review? >> We are adding some positions to fire department being funded through fees related to development review. And I think I mentioned that one position we're adding -- really being funded by neighborhood housing that's going to help expedite the affordable housing projects. >> Flannigan: Especially the ftes in other departments being funded by fees that are attributed to Rodney's department, but then Rodney's department doesn't have management or oversight over that section, it seems like a disconnect. And I know it's something I've heard is created bottlenecks at times or challenges to move projects through the system. >> Mayor, council, I'll also note that the entire purpose behind the alignment of the city manager's office around our strategic outcomes is to achieve results like you are describing. And so to have more consistency across departments when we're providing better services for our residents. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston and then Alison. >> Houston: Mr. Gonzalez, I'm curious on slide 22 about the difference in demand for apartments between Austin and San Antonio. Both are destination cities. Both have universities. What's the difference in that? >> A lot of it as you all have seen is Austin has been a place where people are attracted to, both for developing jobs as well as population growth in Austin. We certainly have grown faster, at a faster rate than San Antonio, both in terms of jobs and population. And housing is correlated to the population increase. So when we have a higher rate of population, you are going to have higher number of -- you are going to have higher demand for housing. >> Houston: So what I hear you say is that San Antonio is growing slower than Austin. >> Yes. >> Houston: But it's still growing. >> It's still growing. [11:38:42 AM] >> Houston: Still growing more so than some of the other cities, or maybe we should compare to -- is Houston growing as fast as Austin or Dallas? >> Austin has one of the fastest growth rates in the country as compared to other metro areas. Some of these other cities are larger in population so even a one percent growth in terms of number may be larger than Austin. But when you look at the growth rate itself, we're one of the fastest if not the fastest growing metro in the United States. >> Houston: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. I was just wondering for slide 24 some of the costs are going up and some of them are going down. Is that just a function of what the cost of service was and adding in the number of people so some permits will cost less just by virtue of that, or was there a choice to make those costs -- >> Last year, and I'll hand this to Meredith, our financial manager. Last year when we implemented the dynamic fee model, we introduced different variables. This year we're making adjustments for those variables. We do feel, of course, the fee model is accurate, and what you see is reflection of some of those variable changes. >> Meredith quick, financial manager. I would he can -- echo what Rodney said. One of the -- we update budget, time estimates and volume estimates. As we add those things sometimes it causes fees to go up, but sometimes it causes fees to go down. Our goal is always for cost of service. When we find a fee needs to come down, we decrease that fee. So the numbers that you see on page 24 are going to be resulting from residential inspections, so because [11:40:42 AM] those fees are going down, it causes the whole project which consists of both plan review and inspections to come down just a little bit. >> Alter: Thank you. I'm glad some of the fees are coming down too. I just wanted to understand how that was happening. So there are a couple additions that I'm very interested. First I want to say I'm very glad that we're moving the direction of having someone to facilitate the affordable housing. That was a thing we talked about in the housing committee last year and I'm glad to see that coming to fruition. We're going to talk later about the small business ombudsman, which has also created spaces and also getting parks planning staff covered by fees related to parks. So I'm interested in talking about those, but we'll talk about those later at the appropriate time. I wanted to make sure that I'm understanding how increasing so many staff helps us prepare for a potential downturn. So as I agree that we need more staff, time is money and we need to increase, I want to make sure on the back side as we're thinking over time that we're adequately preparing for those vent a little. I heard you say that we have the reserves which by being an enterprise fund you are going to increase those to higher level which provides some buffering. You currently operate with temporary and consultant staff, is that where the wiggle room is? I just want to make sure that we have adequately planned for what may come as a downturn and if there are other pieces to that planning. >> Thank you, and I do believe we have adequately planned and I do believe that the Dowling or the knobs to die back are are the temporary positions. Where we're at we don't have the baseline of resources that we need to process the work that we have. And without that baseline, we can't be on time and we can't meet our performance [11:42:43 AM] goals. By transitioning to an enterprise fund, that is the other portion of the plan such that we can create that reserve balance to take us through that economic downturn. We were fortunate in the last downturn that Austin was the last to go into the economic recession, but the first to come out of it. It didn't really hit Austin as significantly. Unfortunately though, not geared towards an enterprise fund, the department couldn't bounce back with the resources that were needed in order to match the economic recovery. So there was a significant slowdown in permitting at that point. For us it's important to have knows knobs to dial back on, temporaries and overtime and third party as well as transition to enterprise fund. >> Alter: Great. Thank you. Just wanted to add clarity. >> Mayor? >> Houston: And one - - >> Casar: And back to the affordable housing support person that has come up in housing committee and budget committee, I think we asked this question when you weren't here, which was if it's necessary for this person to be an addition to the expedited permitting teams and that's useful, I'm in full support of that. I just wanted to better understand if the two expedited teams we had approved a budget or two ago were indeed taking applications from residential affordable housing developers and expediting those and having fees waived under smart house housing or not. >> When we approved the program, we were clear the fees could not be waived because they had to be self-supporting and we talked to nonprofits in town and they understood that. Those fees are not waived because a program has to be self-supporting. We have successfully run a number of affordable housing projects through this expedited team and they enjoy that project because they can get projects [11:44:44 AM] approved quickly. However, we have two function. That's the building plan review, but the first is site plan review. And this is going to help us in the site plan review process. >> Casar: Understood. So the self-supporting higher fee nature of this has not kept affordable housing builders from doing the building permit. >> It is not. They found the value is in the time savings, and so it more than offsets the fee. >> Casar: I have one more question and maybe law can get back to me and I think we have the right lawyer next to us. I thought that so many of our fees and programs have to be self-supporting, but we still waive fees and in the end the folks whose fees around waived have to pick it up and I want to understand whether or not that could be the case in the expedited permitting realm or not. You all can let me know here or at some other juncture. >> Councilmember, Lila fireside from the law department. I'm not sure I understand exactly. If a a fee is in an enterprise department, then there's no general fund to pick up whatever that difference is. >> Casar: Oh, and there would have to be a general fund subsidy set aside in our budget. >> Yes. >> Casar: Understood. When we do other fee waivers in enterprise department, we just have to budget for this. >> Correct. >> Casar: Understood. I think since folks touched base about the growth rate and occupancy issues that you listed, I do appreciate that your answer to the mayor that in your case you can only -- for dsd you can only try to service those requests as quickly as you can, but I would add that you are the person who would know, to the mayor's point, how well we're doing on being actually able to meet that demand and I would also appreciate updates as we approach what seems like a [11:46:44 AM] scary moment at 95% occupancy about whether things are getting better or worse. You would be the person who knows how it is and at dsd you only have small amount of influence about how many people are submitting permits across all other city departments. We couldn't dictate it, but we would have significant influence with regulatory authority about how many of those development permits come inside city limits and not. And I would really like to do anything we can to avoid 95% occupancy while maintaining thriving jobs marketing and a place people feel comfortable and welcome living. You would be the canary in the coal mine to let us know so we can decisions accordingly. Do you know based on this, based on these estimates, if we produce the 111,000 -- 114,000 apartments, is that -- would that get us at 95% occupancy, and if we do less than that would it be worse or would the 114,000 help us blunt that occupancy? >> I don't have the information but we could work with the locally economists to try to respond. I have a slide that might respond to the number of housing units that are built and we can put that up. To show you just a comparison year over year of the number of housing units constructed in Austin, and that might help understand the ability to process the number of -- >> Casar: I understand. For me it's separate. For me it has to do with I think in our strategic direction we listed occupancy rates as one of our metrics that we want to see measured. And it comes to me that you may be the person that should be delivering that information to us regularly, especially if we're forecasting things getting tighter. >> Okay. >> Casar: So that way we're able to respond. >> Okay. Sounds good. [11:48:47 AM] >> Tovo: You touched on the expedited permit processing a little bit, but I'm just trying to -- I'm trying to understand a couple things here. In the budget document it talks about some of the positions -- let's see. That development services dsd will accelerate permitting of single-family and multi-family homes by adding 28 new positions. I'm assuming when you use the word accelerate you are not talking expedited. They are not participating, those 28 are helping make the process more efficient for those going through the regular process. >> Yes. >> Tovo: And when -- when you do have the expedited, there were a couple references to -- so for example, you know, I think I'll submit these as questions. I want to be sure that we are doing exactly what was specified in the resolution including making sure that the resulting developments are not discriminating based on source of income. That was a component in that initial resolution and I want to be sure that's continuing to be captured. >> Yes, council set some thresholds so we make sure those projects that exceed the thresholds, that they meet those requirements. So far we haven't had anyone take advantage of those requirements. We have had plenty of conversations with projects, we're hopeful at some point in time some projects will take advantage of that, but we haven't had any at this time. >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Houston: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Which program are people not taking advantage of? >> The workers defense project certification in relationship to the expedited building plan review. Although we've had projects ask us questions about that and we've directed them to the workers defense project. [11:50:49 AM] We haven't had a project that avails themselves of that program yet. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Pio. >> Renteria: I just want -- we have had the conversation about the home repair inspections, basically how Austin energy is affecting in delaying sometimes because they don't have the personnel. It seems like there's a requirement that they have to have a master electrician to do some of those inspections, and I'm wondering are we addressing this issue in this budget? Are we hiring enough employees so that we can make up for the -- you know, we've gotten so far behind on the inspection. >> I know with regard to development services, our electrical inspections part of our 50 positions requested are for seven electrical inspectors because we are indeed behind on electrical inspectors. For inspections. >> Renteria: That's great. Thank you. >> Garza: I have a follow-up question. There was a media story about this and it said that because we hire master electricians and other cities don't, they hire -- like the master electrician certification is not something that I believe is required by our code. And so -- this is a media story. It says because of that higher requirement that's why it's hard to keep those people on staff because they have higher certifications and have a higher pay. Just to extend on that as a follow-up, is that a way for us to reduce fees? Does the code require us to have master electricians for those inspections? >> You are absolutely right and this is our conversation with the electrical board that occurred at the same time of that story. It was a requirement that the electrical board had in [11:52:49 AM] place and it was part of our regulations. In conversing with them, they agreed to back off of that hiring requirement and we are now able to hire folks with a journeyman license. And so that's going to help us from the hiring perspective. What we've had an issue with in the hiring the electrical inspectors is that specific requirement where they can actually make more in the private sector than they can make in the public sector. It's not a function of the fee as much as hiring and getting those employees to perform the electrical inspections. So we feel with that lowered requirement we're going to be able to hire our inspectors on a timely basis so that way we can perform those inspections timely. >> Garza: I guess I thought if you have a higher certification, you are paid more as well. I'm wondering if that helps with the fee. >>> It depends. Every person that is hired in the city is classified, according to their experience. So yes, if they do have more experience, it's more pay. Presumably if they don't have as much experience, it would be a lower pay amount. >> Garza: Has that helped with the backlog? The journeymen being able to -- >> It will. We are processing that rule change and it will take a couple months for that to take effect. >> Garza: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: To Pio's question, even though it wasn't there, one thing we need to take a look at is whether Austin energy and fire also need additional inspectors or people processing permits. Ms. Houston. >> Houston: I've been having conversations with the university of Texas about the fact that we have so many students that come into town and they, of course, are in competition with folk just coming into town about housing. As many of you have heard me say, U.T. Hasn't created any housing for students since 2009. I wonder if in San Antonio, U.T. San Antonio, Trinity, do they have any housing that may mean the difference [11:54:50 AM] between us being at 95% occupancy because we are -- again, we've got 60,000 students coming in and we've got people coming in and they are all competing for that same unit. Just a thought. >> Thank you. And I don't really know the response to that question. Not being family, of course, with the universities in San Antonio. >> Houston: Okay. Okay. >> Mayor Adler: I wanted to piggyback on Ms. Houston's comments. Not really a comment for you, Rodney, but it is a problem for our community and our ability to solve our affordable housing but UT is not building student housing. We need to work with UT to recollect if I that so we can address our affordable housing. If we don't, we will have a hard time reaching our targets. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? Council, do we want to hear the presentation on deferred maintenance facility before we break for lunch? >> How long is it? >> Mayor Adler: See if you can run us through -- take us through the development -- the deferred maintenance? Rad -- Rodney, thank you. >> Trying to locate that department manager right now. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, check and see. If the director is not here, we'll break for lunch. >> Here he comes. >> Mayor Adler: Making his way over. That's fine. [11:57:01 AM] >> Mayor Adler: You're on now. >> Thank you, good morning, mayor, coup sill. Harris Stockton, building services officer, here today to talk about deferred maintenance, to update you on the proposed funding for 2019. So first, I'll just kind of set the background and give me an update on this issue. So, the slide you see before you shows a quick visual of the scope and scale of the facilities that we're talking about. These are general government facilities. There's about 250 of them. They cover 330 square miles and 3.5 million square feet. What's not include in the portfolio are facilities like aviation, convention center, utilities. These are public safety, health, cultural, facilities, logistics and service center type of facilities. So today we're focused on the deferred maintenance. There are several different types of capital spending that occurs on facilities. There's life cycle replacement. Preventive maintenance. Renovations, additions, upgrades. Specifically, deferred maintenance is defined as maintenance that is due and is postponed. Building systems, repairs, beyond the life cycle are not performing as they should. Which are past due for replacement. These are the type of components you see in the chart on the left. These are the types of things we're talking about with respect to facilities irks hvac equipment, paint, flooring, elevators, site works plumbing, all of the things that are necessary to keep the facility in proper condition. To the right, you can see a quick summary of fairly [11:59:01 AM] intuitively obvious the consequences of allowing deferred maintenance to pile up. You have higher long term costs. It accelerates the deterioration of the facility. It can lead to service disruptions and have various negative impacts on the operations and the occupants and the facility, sometimes safety issues, and also could make the facility environmentally deficient in a number of different ways. A few examples. We walk through them. Routine example. Parking lot, site issues at two different city facilities. This is the example of a fire station public safety deferred maintenance issue. Parts and rec has quite a few examples, which I'm sure they'll be happy to share with you in a moment. And then just a quick overview of the parks. Circumstances or context is they generally spend or have about $500,000 a year to spend on deferred maintenance. Current issues total $5.8 million. That's not including deferred maintenance that might be indirectly addressed in whole building renovation or some sort of major upgrade. Those are just issues that exist and are fairly urgent right now. They do have a strategy moving forward where they're trying to increase the proactive maintenance and facility maintenance program and are working to implement the asset and management program. A few more visuals from parks. We also have the cultural learning facilities. The examples of library. [12:01:06 PM] And this slide shows you a model which we presented to council in 2016 a couple of years ago, it gives you a history and gives you a sense of how deferred maintenance impacts over time and how sensitive it is to funding levels. The strip of the chart across the top shows you the general fund transfer for maintenance facilities for the last three years. About three years ago, physical policy was established for the capital rehabilitation fund and the proposed funding amount of $6.5 million this year is the first year that that fiscal policy would be fully funded. If you look on the chart, a quick visual. This is a model that shows you the redline basically indicates that if we spend what we historically spend on this issue, the continued deterioration will escalate and we'll never get ahead of it. The blue line and the gold line show you what different spending levels, what level of impact they might have on this backlog of deferred maintenance issues for this portfolio. And quickly, we'll talk a little bit about what it looks like when we are working on these issues. Prioritization, we have building services we've been piling in the facility condition index which is an industry standard that standardized a way that you assess facilities so you can prioritize needs across a large portfolio. That metric has been adopted and included in the government that works to reach the outcome as part of the metrics for that outcome. We also work with departments and get feedback regarding priorities operationally and those types of things. [12:03:07 PM] And some examples of work that's been recently completed in the last couple of years or is under way in the chart below, fire station repairs, hvac repairs, site works, roof replacements, elevator upgrades, Ada upgrades. This is all work that is related to all of these issues. The next slide shows you quickly at a glance the pie chart kind of breaks down. The square footage of facilities, parks and library are about 17% and 16% of the portfolio that we're talking about. The rest of the portfolio includes all of the other general government departments, the administrative facilities, public safety, logistics centers, health department, those types of functions. And at the bottom of the slide, you can see examples of if we were to spend the $6.5 million in fy-19, these are the type of projects that would be lined up and ready to go. And then last. We have just some pictures of what projects we've been working on. This is fire station 28, a before and after picture. Fire station 26, the waste line replacement. This is the Texas center a couple of years ago. We showed you that. It's now replaced with a very efficient chiller system, greatly reducing the risks of the loss of use failure at that fay till -- facility. And we have a few examples of some parks facilities that have been recently restored. Their efforts, the roofing. And that is a very quick overview, deferred maintenance, and open to questions and any [12:05:11 PM] additional information you might like. >> A good presentation. I haven't seen the graph that has the lines. That's compelling and provides something for us that we have to accept when we have extreme financial hardship. >> Good afternoon. I'm really excited that we're funding this policy this year. I think it's really important, especially given how much we're spending on fixing things up when they go too far without being fixed or spending on leases and other things when we have these facile theties -- facilities. So I support doing this. I wanted to ask for clarification. I understand that building services does not mpg B the libraries or the parks in terms of the facilities and the management, but in terms of the facilities condition index and the $6 million, help me understand where the libraries and parks are can respect to that? >> That is to be determined, actually. There are a number of things on the bond election. We have an idea -- we have a long list that will go well beyond $6.5 million in terms of facilities as does libraries and parks. So we're working together. This is our first opportunity to fully fund this policy and then be able to sit down and apply this prioritization across the entire portfolio. We've been working with the facility index and building services and trying to pilot it and develop it so we can ultimately apply that standard across the entire city portfolio. So it helps to askedize how repairs are prioritized. Could very well be because the building services takes care of 67% or 70% of that portfolio, it [12:07:13 PM] could be there's -- that doesn't mean the deferred maintenance in the different departments is relative to that square footage. It could be that it's a little higher than 17% per park because some have issues that are worse than others. We have to sit down and work through all that. Once we see what facilities may be indirectly affected through the bond election and it's renovation and takes the deferred maintenance off of the books for that facility, then we can look at what other facilities we may prioritize. >> What counts as a facility. So there's pictures here and at some point I was told it's just the buildings. Is it -- how does it spread out to the grounds? Another. >> So what we're talking about today are the buildings, the parking lots and grounds that support are part of the buildings. Let the parks and budget office talk about the other infrastructure and deferred maintenance needs in that regard. Right now, we're talking about buildings themselves. >> Because there were pictures of other facilities. >> Yeah, division manager for the parks and recreation department. We submitted an array of photos representative across our maintenance needs across all classifications realizing this presentation is focused on buildings specifically. We tophiced about deferred maintenance, we're focused on building services to look at all of our rec centers, senior activity centers, so on, through that program. We're looking to defer the other needs through other avenues. The parks department has been a department leaning heavily on bond fund to support the reinvestment that's necessary to maintain all of these facilities, so, essentially, we're using long-term debt to be able to fund simple capital repair, capital replacement types of items that might [12:09:15 PM] otherwise be covered through the maintenance program. That's just historical precedent. We haven't had the funding in the general fund or one-time transfer that's not long-term debt. On the building side of our department, we've only had about $500,000 annually to be addressing the over 40 facilities that we have. Buildings right now, $500,000 to serve those buildings every year. So, as you probably understand, the deferred maintenance backlog increases when you only have that amount of money to work with on an annual basis. >> Thank you. I'm going to be working with all three of you to think about this and really interested in us addressing the deferred maintenance issues generally, but particularly with libraries. I wonder if you can speak to the library backlog and the magnitude of that? >> I'm John Dylan, the library process facilities manager. Most of our deferred maintenance, we don't think of it that way, it's really the life cycle of building elements and systems. They have a life expectancy like everything else and have to be replaced on a regular schedule. Most of ours have been rolled into the 2016 bond program. The funding we're discussing here is important to us because when things pop up that we didn't quite anticipate, the capital funds from building services has allowed us to -- to keep moving and take care of things. We're right here progressing without maintenance and thanks to the funds that building services have shared with us, we were able to complete the foundation repairs at the [12:11:16 PM] southeast Austin community branch library. Which we just completed and got open in July. So we work closely with building services. We get there and try to figure out what the priorities are and which one of the projects are in the direst need. That's how we take care of things. This is incredibly valuable to us and our efforts to be good stewards of the city. >> Thank you, for the city manager, I want to appreciate what's in there and I hope this is something that we do in an ongoing basis. I hope that will continue the conversations we started with the facilities review also for thinking about purchasing city properties so we're not also waisting money on leases and doing maintenance things on that we're leasing because over the long term, it's going to be a more financially responsible approach for the city and as we are looking at city-owned properties, I hope we are also looking at what our needs are for buildings. Before that we move forward. >> I'm very excited about this part of the budget. I posted on the message board my preference to -- to expand the dollars in this program. A couple of questions on the presentation, when the parks number, deferred needs $5.8 million, is that every year? We did the $5.8 million, then I don't assume that $500,000 a year is also sufficient regardless. So it sounds like there's a piece of it now. And what is the amount per year that pard things would be sufficient and the adjunct to bsd, the chart doesn't include park, right? The chart you showed with the [12:13:16 PM] lines, is that just the bsd or is that -- >> That's from the 2012 assessment of all of the facile the is including libraries and parks. >> Including parks. So the chart includes -- but back in 2012. >> The chart is a model that shows if you assume a 4% growth rate, 2% for inflation, 2% for continued deterioration, and then you apply historical funding levels in this regard of $1.14 million every year, the red line continues to escalate. >> Yeah. >> If you decrease that funding, depending on how much you decrease it, you take longer or shorter period of time to bring that backlog down. What we're talking about in that chart is the backlog of deferred maintenance. The ideal world is you don't have a backlog, you have a well managed capital renewal plan that rolls forward and you update it and you know how many roofs you're going to replace ten years from now and you plan for that capital investment. Then you update that annually, because the roof may fail earlier or last longer based on the mystery. That is a little different. It's related. And that's why I would argue and recommend this fiscal policy be fully funded even after the deferred maintenance backlog was reduced so we could continue to maintain that level of planning and proactive approach to managing the facilities so we never end up in that situation where we're jumping through hoops to fix something that fails and historically, it's been a fix on failure type of problem. >> I completely agree. I want to see us as a city get away from asking the voters to do things that are absolutely necessary. And do the things that are absolutely necessary in the general fund, these critical maintenance, deferred maintenance things, not to be something that relies upon a ballot measure. We should -- when we build a thing, we know we're going to [12:15:16 PM] have to repair the thing and we should be planning for it in the budget. The analysis from 2012 assumed adding no additional facilities, I assume. Which we are. So an update of this chart might be proal interesting six years later. Considering fire stations and other facilities and considering what facile theties may come out of this bond election, that chart is going to be more pointed than it is here. So I don't know that 6.5 is fully funding if you take into context facilities added since 2012 or the facilities we know we're going to add in the next couple of years. Ed, maybe you can answer this question. Of the $900 million and change in the bond, do you know how much of that is addressing deferred maintenance? >> I don't have the exact amount. You can answer that question. A significant amount. >> So part of what I would like to see us consider in the usage of these funds is also considering how we can maximize the value of the bond dollars. So the folks who support the museum were in my office. And they said a lot of this chunk of money is about deferred maintenance. When I talked to the Asian community leaders, they don't have deferred maintenance issues at their facilities. So the bond dollars, even though the number is similar, it's going to result in a very different outcome. In one facility, it's going to be basically maintenance, the other it's going to be expansion. I think we should be comparing equity to the outcome, and not to the dollar figure. So I would be interested in seeing -- you know, as I posted and said publicly, increasing this -- this beyond the $6.5 in part because we have critical stuff that we should just knock out. But also in a way that we can make the bond dollars even more valuable and create outcomes [12:17:17 PM] with more equity and not just the dollars. >> I wanted to answer your question on the building side of the parks department. You're right. It's near term needs for the department, it's not reflective of the entire system. Within the past year, the department has started the pursuit of a more comprehensive asset management system. So we acquired a software and we're starting to collect data around all of the facilities, grounds, buildings, so on. So we started this process of conducting facility indices. We started a conversation. We got a lot of data collection needs that we can pursue to get a total picture of what the needs are going to be citywide. I don't want to provide a number in a would be accurate. We're focused on the near-term needs of $5.8 million. As far as funding annually, that's a difficult question without knowing the total yet. That's something we're going to provide in the short term as we get the asset management off of the ground. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Ms. Houston? >> Houston: I know this is going to sound very strange to you all, but I support increasing this bucket as well. I'm sure it's amazing for three councilmembers to say, you know, it's long overdue. I had to step out. I'm going to ask the question. Out here, parks, recreation, and libraries. What about fleet and water and Austin energy and the buildings that public works are in and some of the substations that we have out and about and just languishing out there in the real world. Is that part of the equation? Or are you just focusing on the three entities that you -- the two entities. >> It's part of the equation so the total mix of facilities in this portfolio we were talking about, we refer to them as general government facilities and include recreational and cultural facilities like [12:19:17 PM] libraries and parks. Public safety, logistics, the service centers, the health department, all of the other buildings that don't fall in that category. What it does not include are things like aviation 00 convention center, and the utilities, because they're pretty well funded and they don't have as much of a challenge as general government facilities do. >> When we talk about general government facilities, we need to be broader than parks and libraries and cultural center. Because the general government facilities that are as bad if not worse than some of the ones we're discussing today. People only hear parks and cultural centers and there are a lot more facilities that our staff are working in that look like some of the pictures that you have here. >> Yes and some of the pictures are from those facile theties. >> Houston: But you didn't say -- I didn't hear you identify them. >> For example, Rutherford lane, the rbj building, and some of the service centers are some of the most challenging locations in terms of conditions. Because they haven't changed in, frankly, a few decades in terms of space and availability. So there is a lot to do. And there is a lot that we've been working on. That's why we've been really striving to shift on that fix on failure approach to a planned proactive approach. We have a long way to go. But we're moving in the right direction. >> Houston: Right, I appreciate that. Then on slide 32, I'm giving like councilmember Flanagan. I'm not sure what the colored dots are. So if you tell me what this is over what the colored dots mean, I'll be happy. You don't have to tell me -- >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Alison, something else? >> Councilmember Houston, I think they have library and [12:21:19 PM] parks here. I asked this discussion and I was interested in the library and parks and if we needed facility needs outside of those. But I think they were here because I had asked for them to be here to answer questions. I had the last question on page 43. When I'm looking at the budget, am I going to find a pot that is, you know, a fully funded amount for building services for this? Or is this distributed across departments in some fashion? Which is implied by this chart? >> Yeah, this chart explains where the funding would go. But if you're looking at the budget, you'll just see the $6.4 million for facile they maintenance. -- Sofa silty maintenance. >> So the fire house is not already in the pot. >> These dollars stay in the building services cip and they spend it on all of the general government facilities that are showing on that slide near the front of the presentation. >> Thank you for the clarification. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? >> Councilman, are you talking about the list on slide 42? >> The list on 43. >> Okay, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Ready to move on? All right, thank you very much. We have three presentations that are left -- cultural centers, parks & rec, and budget scenarios. You want to break for lunch? Break for lunch now. See if we can come back. Think we can come back here at 1:00? So let's be here at 1:00 and we'll pick it up. It's 12:22. And we're going to recess. [1:17:39 PM] >> Mayor Adler: We have a quorum. Let's go ahead and pick this back up. So I think now we're talking about cultural centers. >> Good afternoon, Kimberly Mcnealy, acting director for parks and recreation. I'm here to provide you some information about our cultural centers. We'll be highlighting three separate cultural centers in this presentation T asian-american resource center, the carver museum and cultural center, the George Washington carver museum and cultural center and the Barrientos mexican- american cultural center. Each of these pages will outline for you the budgets, the full-time employees and so you'll be able to see each one of them has this exact same lineup or setup so if you would like to flip back and forth. So the asian-american resource center -- the information in the same center. The asian-american resource, their budget was a 1.1 million. The number of employees 7.4. It was constructed in 2014 and about 16,000 square feet. On an annual basis it has approximately 52,776 visitors, and those -- and participants. These include individuals coming to participate in programming might be there for a rental or special event. Might use pop in to receive some sort of services that are provided by our nonprofit partner. The number of rentals at this particular site is 856. [1:19:43 PM] There has been an 8.7 million capital investment to date and that included the actual construction of the building and then it also included an expansion of the commercial kitchen. Originally when we put the particular kitchen in the space, there was some value engineering and we had to come back and actually make it into a commercial kitchen to meet the needs of that particular community. >> Mayor Adler: What year did we do that? >> The commercial kitchen was ultimately finished in 2017, but it started in 2015. I'm a little bit embarrassed to say. >> Mayor Adler: I think that was one of the first things the 10-1 council weighed in on. >> Yes. >> Tovo: Actually that was a decision that the at-large council -- I actually brought that forward as part of the at-large council because we had passed during the budget a provision to do it and this was something I had brought forward to do during the budget cycle, create a senior meals program at the asian-american resource center and at dove springs. When they try to to implement that, they discovered they were having trouble getting a vendor because they were lacking a commercial kitchen. It was actually the at-large kitchen that provided feedback, but I think you identified funding through the cip funds, as I recall, for the project. But that discussion happened prior to the at-large. >> Mayor Adler: I remember us discussing the commercial kitchen issue our first year, so I'm trying to remember what it was that we did our first year. If it had already been decided on -- before we came in. >> Tovo: I think it was the contract probably, would be my guess. >> I would be happy to provide you a time line just so -- >> Mayor Adler: That would be great. >> So you all can -- >> Mayor Adler: That would be great. >> Houston: Like $800,000 to do the commercial kitchen. >> Mayor Adler: That was my recollection. Provide the time line, that would be helpful. >> Tovo: We had the [1:21:43 PM] discussion during the midyear budget adjustment session in either late 2013 or early 2014, I believe. >> Mayor Adler: If you can lay that out, a time line, that will be helpful. >> Will do. >> Renteria: Mayor, I would like to ask a quick question. You know, it seemed like the asian-american cultural center has a parking problem where they have to park -- normally they use the parking lot there at our other facility. I know there's a separation. Is that a separation -- is that like a creek there or runoff or have you all looked into that? >> We absolutely have. I don't know how to characterize it. I think that is a drainage -- I'm calling it a drainage ditch, but that's not -- I don't believe that's the technical term. >> Mayor Adler: Arroyo would be nice, a dry bed. >> But to answer your question, we have received -- we have received a request to provide a pedestrian pathway and there have been multiple reasons why that has not happened to date, but we're hoping with the new proposed bond that we can help make that happen. >> Renteria: That sounds great. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Please continue. >> Sure. Art in public places which is a percentage of the capital investment was $96,000, and that was based upon the initial capital investment. In the 2017 -- I'm sorry, the 2018 bond, it's proposed to have $7 million which would include parking, pedestrian connectivity, which is what we just talked about, outdoor amenities and funding for the phase 1 priorities when the master plan is complete. The master plan is currently underway. And you might remember this council appropriated 200,000 in one-time funding last year for us to make that happen. [1:23:54 PM] The mexican-american center, they have 12 full-time employees. This site was constructed in 2007. It is almost or approximately double the asian-american resource center with 34,000 square feet. They have approximately 58,529 visitors. And the same is -- holds true for the mexican-american cultural center in that those visitors are programming renters, theater folks that might come in and participate in a black box theater production. They have approximately 464 rentals. One of the things that I would like to note about the asian-american resource -- beg your pardon, about the mexican-american cultural center that is different than the other two centers is that it also has a Latino artist in residency program, which was the catalyst for us to consider the artist access program that will be coming -- that had come to you earlier this year and will be lunched in October. So it's the only center that has a residency program at this time, but it will be hopefully expanded to the other centers in the coming months. It was a 23,000 -- I'm sorry, million dollar investment. Art in public places is 82,000. There was some upgrades done for approximately $553,000 for signage, parking, shading and then a waterline that was put through at one point, $4 million. In 2018 the proposed bond program is at 27 million, and that's to help fund the second phase of the master plan. So you will remember earlier this year that this council approved the master plan for the mexican-american cultural center. It was an up grade to the original master plan. And it is estimated that phase 2 will cost approximately $27 million to complete. >> Garza: Can I request a question? I notice at the end you have [1:25:55 PM] a comparison side by side chart. And I notice that the mac has significantly lower rentals. And I ask that because, you know, when we're out in the community we hear and it's one thing I failed to follow up so I have to ask this. I've heard that it's -- people feel like they don't get the -- a response from renting there? And so I'm just curious, has that come to your attention? Just because it's like basically half of the rentals that other centers have. >> So one of the ways that we can account for that is the artist in residency program. So with the artist in residency program is using the spaces either for their practice or their production, that takes away a particular -- a certain number of spaces for people to be able to rent. But to your other question about the customer service, it's something that we are working on. I don't think that -- I have heard that some folks do not receive as they receive as good a customer service as they could, so I think that's a completely separate issue, but I would account the rentals to being that it simply may not be available at the time that people want to rent due to the artist in residency program being there, the Latino artist in residency program being there. >> Renteria: Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Yes. >> Renteria: We have been discussing the canopy and we waited for the master plan. Can you tell me good news on -- >> I can tell you pretty good news, but I want to cobble together -- we absolutely have the $150,000 for the canopy. What I was concerned about when I was answering that question last time is that I don't believe that that's going to be enough to meet what the master plan is actually asking for. We have some mitigation fees that were coming in that are specific -- can specifically be used for the mac at [1:27:55 PM] 185,000. And then there's also $106,000 in and when we do a bond sweep, so we're looking at -- I didn't add it all up, you don't have to add it, councilmember Renteria, I'll send an email with the figures because I'm not a mathematician without doing it on my calculator. We're looking at a little over $400,000, which should be able to help us do something that is appropriate, that will meet the master plan needs and provide the shade. >> Renteria: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Leslie. >> Pool: Remember when we had that development for the highrise that was right next door to the area that was supposed to be the park for the mac? And we agreed that Mr. Sackwill. In could use that land for staging and also the alleyway behind that property. I don't remember us agreeing that they could use any portion of the mac parking lot, but when we were there a couple weeks ago, I think for the budget presentation, in fact, for the budget rollout, that the city manager did, I noticed it was difficult for cars coming in and dropping people off to get around all of the different construction vehicles that were using the mac parking lot. And so I had -- I noted that and I mentioned it to assistant city manager Hensley at the time just to ask her to check into that, and I don't know if you guys had had an opportunity to check on that. I realize it doesn't have anything to do with the budget per se, but it is an element of fees that if they are using the parking lot of the mac, we should be collecting some fees for the ability for them to use that. >> Mayor Adler: If you could respond to that later, that would be good. Let's stay with our moving through the budget stuff that we have here. >> Pool: Thanks for letting me highlight that. That was kind of transient, but I wanted to make sure we weren't be taken advantage of and the mac wasn't being taken advantage of. >> Mayor Adler: Proceed. >> The next slide is the [1:29:58 PM] George Washington carver museum and cultural center, a budget of approximately 1 million-dollar. There's ten full-time employees. It was constructed in 1980 but expand understand 2005. It's approximately 36,000 square feet so very comparable to -- actually more than Ms Barrientos, but double than at the asian-american resource center. They have approximately 48,000 visitors and their number of rentals is 776. You might know that the carver has one of our only -- it has a very nice theater with sound and lights and it's something that ends up being used for productions more often than the other sites. The only other site that has a real theater is the Daugherty arts center, which has its own set of things that make it less desirable than the carver for those sorts of rentals. There has been $11.7 million of investment to date and that includes the 2005 expansion. I do not have the original investment in that building because it was a building that existed and then it was expanded. I don't have the 1980s figure. The geneology center, which is adjacent to that, we had an investment of a little over a half million dollars. The juneteenth monument which is right to the back of the museum, which is a beautiful monument if you haven't had an opportunity to visit that. There was an investment of $300,000. We did some minor theater renovations and some -- and provided some museum storage. In 2018 the bond proposal has $7.5 million for this space, and part of that is to pay for a master plan. And actually the carver does not have what we would call a traditional master plan. It had a feasibility study, and from that feasibility study the expansion was -- [1:32:00 PM] was constructed. We think it's important as a department to actually put together a real master plan that would be associated with that site and takes into account the grounds and the actual programming that could happen there. And so that bond program will provide for the master plan and then seed funding for the master plan priorities, whatever comes out out of the phase 1 priorities and also will take care of some of those deferred maintenance things that you heard my colleagues talk about earlier. Some basic building renovations, roof and hvac. So the last slide here is some highlights of what is in the 2018-2019 proposed budget. You'll see that there are a number -- the first four items that are listed here are items that came from out of the asian-american quality of life commission, and they are -- they would be four positions. The very first slide showed thaw we have 7.5 positions at the asian-american resource center. With the addition of these four positions, that would bring us to 11.5 which would make it -- bring it up to par with regards to full-time positions. There's a community engagement specialist that will help with all of our cultural centers. It would not be housed in any one given cultural center, but it would be able to help us with all of them. It wouldn't be providing services to any one cultural center, but it would be helping with all the cultural centers. That's a total of $386,708 in the proposed budget. And finally, there are two backup documents that are part of this presentation just so that if you wanted to see things in a different format they are available to you. I'm here for questions. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy. >> Flannigan: On the -- [1:34:01 PM] when I look through the three budgets, they seem to come fairly similar, even though the Asian resource center had less ftes and now they have more ftes. What am I missing in terms of the aarc's budget being higher even though there's less ftes compared to the other two. Am I being clear? >> I would have to go through -- I don't have the details of the budget, but here's what I would absolutely believe that the reason why their budget is higher is they probably have more money in temporary staff dollars. That's usually where the disparity comes in for all the cultural centers is the staff dollars allow for the -- usually pump the budget up a little higher. It's likely not in utilities, it's likely not in contractuals and commodities, although the other centers might have a little more money in those kinds of line items because the centers are a little bit bigger, so it's obviously, like logically you would need more stuff to take care of it. But I would tell you it is highly likely and I would be 99% showers it's in the temp dollars. They have more temp dollars. >> Flannigan: The rentals are paid for, is that right? >> I would say some rentals are paid for, but in other cases there are community -- we have a particular policy that talks about if you have something that you want to have at a site and we are open and it's for community and all the community is allowed to participate, then you don't -- you don't have to pay for the rental, but we still put it in as a rental because we have to set up for rentals. It's more reservations and we don't distinguish the difference in this presentation. >> Flannigan: If you were to add a line in here that talked about the revenues that these centers -- would it be an insignificant number or something worth considering? I'm just curious. >> I don't know. I would have to go back and look. I would say that the Barrientos -- I will go back and get that information to [1:36:02 PM] you as a budget question. >> Flannigan: It would be good to have that as context. I find myself asking the same question on ems department and other departments where there's revenue sources involved. And not to advocate to increase or require it more honor anything, but just to have that for context. My last question as we contemplate the expansion, are we also considering public-private partnership for expanding? >> Specifically for the asian-american resource center we had a community engagement where we specifically took a look at public-private partnerships. But whenever we're about to do any kind of construction project, that's always something that's on top of mind. I can't tell you that anyone has come forward for the carver, but we haven't sought any of that out. The asian-american resource center because we're in the midst of the master plan, we've been having those kinds of conversations. >> Flannigan: I'm interested in exploring those opportunities to provide these facilities and not have to keep going back to bonds and voters. There's ways to maximize the value and get stuff done. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this presentation? Yes, Ms. Houston. >> Houston: I've got a couple of questions about the carver. I noticed it's not in the budget at all that the deferred maintenance is totally in the bond package. That concerns me because if the bond package fails, the deferred maintenance that has been a high priority for the folks at the carver for a long time go unmet. And so I don't know how you prioritize or decided what got put in the budget or how the city manager decided that, but could you talk to me about why those deferred maintenances were not identified as something that was fairly critical? [1:38:03 PM] Because this has been an ongoing need. >> I'm going to allow Terry Youngman who you met previously to provide that answer. >> As far as deferred maintenance, the department carries 500,000 annually to be dealing with maintenance needs throughout the system of assets, not specific to cultural centers or rec centers, but to take care of the entire system. The current state of funding within the department is that all of our assets are maintained essentially through a capital program through these bond programs to maintain them long term. That's the funding situation that we find ourselves in. So it doesn't prefer a certain cultural center or over. What I can say is that we would continue to take care of deferred maintenance needs both at the carver and other facilities throughout the system given the $500,000 allocation. We're looking at near-term needs at the carver. Looking at some of their critical deferred maintenance needs in the next few months to address those with current capital funding so they are not having issues with, you know, maintaining their facility in the next couple years before we get to the next bond program. >> Houston: When was the last time the carver was in a bond program? >> The 2006 bond program did invest in the carver. The geneology center expansion was partially funded through the 2006 bond program. >> Houston: Those are two separate buildings like the geneology center is the first Negro library, so I see that as an historic property that's very different than the carver museum. >> The 2006 bond also invested into the theater so we did a renovation of the seats and carpet in the theater at the carver under the 2006 bond program as well. It wasn't called out as a specific stand-alone projects within the 2006 bonds but we did invest in needs there. >> Houston: That's the 59,000? >> I believe so. >> Houston: And that was in 2000 and what? >> 2012. >> Sounds right. >> Houston: And the seats [1:40:03 PM] got that bad that quickly? Because we just -- >> The funding that your office helped provide supplemented what we needed to be able to do that. 1,059,000 came out of the capital, -- so 59,000 came out of -- >> Houston: That didn't help until 2015, 2016? >> Yes, ma'am. But it came out of the 2012. >> Houston: Okay. That's just a concern for me because we are betting on -- and the bond may pass. But if it doesn't, there's some really critical issues that have been there in the cultural museum, not the geneology center, but the museum, and some people have complaining they don't want to use the space because of the issues. >> I would say the department shares that concern. We know there's risk inherent to carrying the investment of deferred maintenance needs to you bond programs. If the bond doesn't pass you are left with not much to invest at that point. >> Houston: And it seems to be a lot of -- what's the difference in, like, with the mexican-american cultural center? Their investment seems to be higher than anybody else's. So what would you contribute that to? >> The reason for that is the 2006 bond program had some very specific appropriations that went towards the mexican-american cultural center. It was part of the phase 1a investment. And so once that phase was done, there was a balance of funds left from that phase 1a project that were invested into what they called landscape enhancements, essentially the expansion of the parking lot at the mexican-american cultural center. That's primarily driven by stand-alone funding in the 2006 bond program is where these investments came from. >> Houston: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: To that end, we have the mexican-american cultural [1:42:04 PM] center that's able to get a larger presence on the bond because there's a master plan and costs and a specified program. We are not in the same position with respect to the carver, and you indicated that there needed to be a planning process for that. And I think last year we funded the planning process for the asian-american resource center that's in the process of happening now. So the asian-american resource center should be poised to do that the next time we're coming up with capital funds to be able to do a an expansion. Is the money that's in the bond going to provide for the master planning for the carver or do we need to separately put that into this budget to ensure that the carver is in a competitive position to be able to seek that work? >> It's our intention to use the funding that's part of the bond to provide the master plan for the carver. >> Mayor Adler: Than about $200,000 of the 7.5 million, more or less? >> I would say it would be closer to 350,000. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Houston: And the concern, mayor, from the community is that, again, we all hope the bonds will pass, but if not, they are delayed yet another whatever amount of time it takes, but the master plan is something that we should be be able to put in the budget and then allow the deferred maintenance to try to go through on the bond. But if we don't get the master plan in the budget and the bond fails, then the carver is yet again going to be left out of the equation. >> Mayor Adler: So I would join councilmember Houston on that. I don't know -- I mean if the bond does not pass, I think it's imperative that we leave the carver in position where it can do its master plan. So I don't know what contingency that has to be. I don't know if it goes in the budget now and then comes out if the bond passes [1:44:04 PM] or if it goes in if the bond does not pass, but one way or another the money has to be there, I believe, I would join councilmember Houston in saying one way or the other the money has to be there for that master planning to happen. Jimmy and then mayor pro tem. >> Flannigan: To add briefly, we funded the asian-american resource in one-time funds last year. One of the few spending items I supported in that budget, and I didn't really understand until this moment that the master plan for the carver is there is being put on the ballot as opposed to the Asian resource center. If the bond fails, you can count on my support to put that in the budget as soon as possible. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Are the cultural centers tracking out of town visitors? For their programming? >> Yes, I don't have those -- I do not have that information available today, but I could get that to you and the answer is question. >> Tovo: That's great because I think what we may see is that some of the programs at some of the cultural center, maybe at all of them, are attracting out-of-town visitors and that would make them eligible possibly, subject to our attorneys' review, for hotel occupancy tax funding. >> I can tell you specifically the George Washington carver has a relationship with sxsw so we know for sure at least in that time frame when they are offering that that those individuals are likely -- I'm sure there's some austinites, but they are likely from out of town. >> Tovo: Great. The community -- there was a community engagement -- the community engagement staff member who will assist all of the cultural centers, there was a commodity part of that. Was that a vehicle? >> I would assume -- I don't know -- I don't have the detail in front of me, but that individual definitely [1:46:05 PM] will need a computer and office space. They will definitely need a desk, some equipment, supplies. >> Tovo: Okay. I thought I saw something in one of our documents about transportation being a component of the city manager's budget, and I think it might have been for the asian-american resource center. >> On the slide number 5, there's a shuttle driver for the asian-american resource center that will be able to provide the same services that our congregate meal program has, based on the grant. It be mirroring the grant by providing the short-term services here. >> Tovo: Super. Thank you. I just wanted to confirm that. Let me just say I'm glad we had that conversation about the pedestrian bridge. I think that's really going to enhance the experience of so many people who go to the arc who walk through the drainage ditch and try to hop over the fence. The other thing I hope we can keep on the radar as an opportunity if the funding ever permits, there have been a series of budget questions over the last couple years what it would cost to bring the asian-american resource center's library into the library system so people can checkbooks out of that facility and I can't remember exactly how much the cost was, but I still think that's -- that would be a good thing to do. They have a nice collection there and I think people would enjoy checking the books out. >> I'll look into that. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Yes. Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. You mentioned the $500,000 annual for for maintenance. Can you get me a sense of the magnitude of the facilities that are supposed to be addressed with this 500,000? >> Yes, the system of assets we maintain is immense and very diverse. So the range of things that we're maintain maintaining is not [1:48:05 PM] enough to keep pace with rate of deterioration of our facilities. Just talking in terms of numbers of how much these things can cost, hvac anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 per unit. These things have a useful life around 20 years. Many of our facilities are aging well beyond that at this point. The way that we look to spend that money is it's really just focused on things failing. It's a completely reactive system now. There's very little scheduled for preventive maintenance going into these facilities. Total number of facilities, we're talking somewhere around 50 buildings that we're maintaining across the entire system. I wanted to take another look at that square footage comparison between us and building services because I don't know how that percentage is. I want to take another look because I don't know how we compare to the rest of the city in total square footage aggregate count. You can imagine if we have a couple of hvacs go down in a summer and a couple of roofs that have leaks, that 500,000 gets absorbed quickly. >> Alter: I think, you know, you are just talking about the building. We have all the other maintenance in our parks, playscapes, pools. Just real severe maintenance backlog in parks let alone what we would want to do to improve services and bring our parks system and our park amenities into the 21st century. You know, $500,000 doesn't go very far for the kinds of things that you have to invest in. And so I just want to keep us investing in that deferred maintenance across the board. I think it's really important. I think it also impacts not only the services that we're delivering to our residents, it affects the ability of people to focus on their jobs and to just deliver the services generally when they are trying to figure out, well, how do I cover this 10,000 here or this 10,000 [1:50:05 PM] there. That magically appears and we have to adjust on the fly. So I'd like to see us get on the the point where we are doing some of that preventive, but to get to that point we have to make these investments along the way. I have no doubt lots of our facilities have this problem, but it's something I've heard for many years with respect to pard, I hear it from libraries as well, but it's not just the buildings, it's throughout our system. And we know that parks and all of its iterations are one of the services that people in our city value the most and that impact everyone all across the city and are open to everyone. >> Yeah, and I would just add that the conversation today has been very focused on buildings. I think because of the building services presentations, happily be part of that conversation, you're absolutely right. The system is incredibly diverse and the maintenance needs are significant. A quick data point, we did research on the trend of scheduled versus demand work within our work order system. And we've held flat for the last four years at 24%. So we're only doing about 24% of the total work that we do on an annual basis is going into a preventive or planned schedule for maintenance. The rest of it is all sort of failure and demand driven. >> Mayor Adler: Are we ready to move on? Please do that. Thank you. >> Houston: While we're getting ready for the next one, mayor, I'd like to say visit Austin and six square have done a really good job of making sure visitors to our town know about the carver because it's so close to downtown, but we would like for it to be presentable and so people would feel comfortable in coming into the space. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> It's me again. [1:52:11 PM] So this presentations is regarding a proposed fee for development review that would be specific to the parks and recreation department. So just a little bit of background. The parks and recreation department reviews site plans and sub distinction plans and puds and M.U.D., and in those reviews the things they are looking for, reviewing plans for are urban trail connectivity. These are examples, not all inclusive. Urban trail connectivity opportunities or issues, design practices, waterfront overlay criteria and whether there's compliance. Adjacency to parkland or opportunities that might exist in environmental sorts of things and green infrastructure. And then, of course, we also have the parkland dedication ordinance of which when we're reviewing plans we're taking that into consideration. The fee that we're proposing will allow the department to recover the costs associated with our planners in the parks and recreation department reviewing those plans. So basically what happens is dsd receives a proposal, development services department, receives a proposal and they need the help of other expertise within the city to be able to take a look at that plan. So transportation will look at it. The parks and recreation department will look at it. Right now we are absorbing that into the general fund, our planners are doing that without a particular fee that goes to that -- those particular reviews. And so who would be paying the fee? Those would be the developers that are filing site plans or subdivision plans. Just a little side note, you'll see a little bit later that we estimate that -- we estimate that 74% of the cases will see a total fee increase and we're going to outline that in just a bit. So there is a particular -- a fee calculation, and there [1:54:12 PM] are six different positions that were identified and a personal of time that they -- percentage of time they usually spend on looking at these site plans. And so you can see that outline there. And then there's an overhead rate usually between 35 and 40%, that's a standard overhead rate. We went with the 35%. There's a number of unique cases, unique site plan cases that are reviewed. And so if you take the percentage of all of the folks that are looking at that, the overhead rate and divide it by the number of cases, we come up with a fee of approximately $1,118 per case. It's not -- it's only approximate because other numbers are based upon what we're looking at over the trends over the years. So of course we would want to know who this impacts. The median total fees charged per case at this particular point in time is $6,903. So the new fee that would be added would approximately -- would represent a 16% increase to the median total fees paid by developers. And if this fee had been applied in 2017, 226 of the developers or 74% would have experienced a total fee increase of 25% or less. So only 26 folks would have had to pay more than 25% in addition to what they were already paying in development fees. If this proposal were to be accepted and we had an opportunity to allocate this money into our general fund, here's how we would want to use it in the parks and recommendation department. We know that in looking at our end of year budgets, our givens rec center does not have the same number of [1:56:12 PM] temporary staff that others do and they are serving approximately the same percentage of the population as our other division -- our other district centers, and so they would require more temporary staff at 50,000. The carver museum, we just went through that presentation and you noticed that the budget for the carver was less than the budgets of the other two centers. Last year this council was generous enough to provide $40,000 to increase the carver's budget. This year we would propose another 60,000 from these fees and so we're incrementally inching our way up to making all of those budgets more comparable. We would be asking for the preventive maintenance of being able to have a contract to allow us to do ac filters. What happens at our recreation center is that we either can pay for programs or maintenance. And so we're finding that our ac filters are costing a bit more than we had expected and it then takes away from our ability to program, so this is an important preventive maintenance feet that would hopefully extend the life of our ac units and so we're -- we would be allocating 50,000 there. The finance division just needs to shore up some of the work that they are helping us with all the purchasing and those sorts of things and they could utilize that $10,000 to be able to supplement some of the things that were falling a little behind on with regards to processing finance documents and the administrative process. Community engagement and public engagements, I have spent some time with the equity action team and the thing the public is telling me they don't even know that we exist. So we have a -- I think a total of $500 right now in our marketing and communications budget. We thought if we had a little bit more than that we might be able to let people know about the services we provide. Specifically, swimming is something that the community has told me that they didn't [1:58:14 PM] know much about, and also our after-school and summer camp programs. The community is saying they didn't have adequate information to know that we offered a variety that we do offer. Our cemetery staff could use some assistance, just general maintenance. We've talked about deferred maintenance of buildings but we also have grounds maintenance, and then our planning unit. With the increased amount of money through the parkland dedication, and the opportunity to perhaps have the bond pass, it would be very helpful to have someone as an engineering tech to help plan for the projects we could actually take over in house. I want to make a distinction this is an addition to I believe what dsd proposed -- proposed earlier, but it would be specific to the parks and recreation department, and then the savings that we would have would then benefit the parks and recreation department -- I'm sorry, the money we would generate from the fee would allow us to benefit the parks and recreation department. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Do you know what the circumstances are where this fee would represent more than half the fee charged? Looks like there are 35 cases where it would represent more than 50%. Do you know what situations those are? >> You mean the exact cases? I would have to go back and look, but I absolutely can provide that information. Jimmy. >> Flannigan: So I have somewhat of a similar question that maybe you can get back on an answer. I would imagine -- Ronnie presented this morning the projects are getting more complicated and that's resulting in additional inspections even those their fewer or flat permit requests. [2:00:14 PM] Is that a similar thing to the planners -- plan reviewers that you have that some projects are quick to review and some are much more complicated? If that's the case, are we contemplating the fee matching the level of effort? >> I would say to you that yes, they are -- they are in some cases, some are quick, some more complicated. Puds tend to be a little more complicated for us. I would -- I would -- and pids. Pids unipods. All things P. -- Puds. Could you repeat the second part? >> Flannigan: I'll jump to the end. So what I want to avoid is dramatically, you know, adding this new fee to triplexes and quad-applications and things that are small and aren't going to have a park component necessarily, and I would imagine that's a lot of projects where this represents a substantial inies to the total fee. I'm guessing. Then the projects like puds and other large scale ones, they should be paying the larger portion and not evenly distributed based on the review, like every review pays the same fee, it should track to the effort required based on the project. And I bet that would adjust -- >> What I'm hearing you say equity instead of equality. Don't just spread it out over everybody, have the individuals requiring more of the review to have more of the burden of the fee. >> Flannigan: Yeah, and I think Rodney laid it out and called it dynamic fee structure, something to that effect that dsd is doing. I think that would be much better because, I mean, many of us would like to see more streamlined process around the small scale developments and the large-scale developments have the capital and operations and teams and fund to go take on [2:02:16 PM] a little bit more fee and makes more sense. >> Would you like for us to come back with an alternative calculation that would demonstrate what you use asked that was more in line with the dynamic fee structure? >> And I think Rodney should be sitting up there with you for this conversation because this is something his department is going to have to make a developer do. And so I'd really be interested in dsd's involvement in this conversation, and then it -- it, of course, speaks to the thing we talked about earlier, city manager, about parts of the development review process living in a different management structure. And it's even more important that if the developers are going to be paying for the staff time, that we're measuring the work of the staff and the way dsd measures the work of its staff in terms of plan review times and other metrics. We want to make sure that all of our regulations and rules are being fully implemented and that there's no reason why it has to take a really long time as long as we're meeting all the requirements that we've set out. And I think you covered this at the end, miss Mcnealy, the slide where you referenced new revenue, see a fee, think that's going to pay for stuff on the slide, this is general fund is paying for now. >> Yes, sir. >> Flannigan: I don't want people to be confused the fee is going to pay for things on that slide. The fee is replacing something general fund is paying for. >> I would say the fee doesn't exist at this particular time. >> Flannigan: That's what we're contemplating. Something the general fund is currently paying for. And if the fee pays for that, the planners, then that revenue can be allocated to the stuff on slide 64 or my page 64. I just don't want people to think the parks fee is going to pay for the givens rec center staffer because that wouldn't line up. Maybe I made it more confusing. >> I understand. >> Mayor Adler: I'm happy [2:04:16 PM] you took my question because that's where it was going. I really like the addition Rodney already has somebody already doing this and this could be added to what they are doing at less time and expense than creating a separate development review department. But that's the kind of thing that only happens if Rodney is able to look at the whole picture. Alison and then Leslie. >> Alter: Thank you. This has been something we've been talking about since last budget, really came together over the last couple weeks. And I didn't see the fee structure until now. I would be totally comfortable with a more dynamic setup. This review needs to be done by pard because they are the ones who know what the parks requirements are. It's not something dsd can do for them. We might have smaller scale ones dsd has ability to move quicker on, but when you are talking about a pud, you need to know the parks lingo and the parks approach. One thing that you didn't present is whether there would need to be any ftes added as part of this. Because one of the impetuss for my asking about this is my own experience prior to being on council where staff doing the planning can't help the community when they want to plan things because they are doing all this other stuff for development services because it's the same staff that does the landscape architects. This is what caused apf to have to hire a landscape architect. Do you need more ftes as part of this so that we have that more -- more of the planning capacity toker the other things like the bond and other things? I just couldn't tell whether that was built into the option. >> So to council member Flannigan's point, if we are re allocating general fund, it doesn't provide forget to more ftes unless we decided to ask for another position and more individuals that would then be paid for by this fee. [2:06:18 PM] Does that make sense? The way that this was set up was that a fee was now going to be charged. That fee could now be used and recould reallocate general fund. But it would be a different proposal or thing brought forward if we were now proposing additional staff members and then associated salaries to take that -- to be in addition to the folks that are already doing the job. >> Alter: So right now as proposed, this is taking your existing staff and providing fees to cover what they are already doing. It's not adding any additional staff. >> Correct. >> Alter: And the money you save because that is now covered by the fees is going to be allowed to be reallocated because you don't have to spend it -- >> Distributed in the way I proposed. >> Alter: Do you need more staff to do the planning things particularly if the bond goes through or will that come out of the bond? >> We have put together a proposal that allows us to have -- that is already embedded into the proposed budget that allows us to use parkland dedication fees for staff, which is providing us with additional staff members so that we can distribute the work differently. So I would say that, of course, we always need staff, but I'm not able to tell you right now what that number would be because we haven't had the opportunity now to have a new reorganization and a redistribution of work based upon what we're doing with the pld. But we've already covered some of our needs by asking for that embedded in the original proposal. >> Alter: Great. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else before we move on? Leslie. >> Pool: I know with the planned unit developments it is pretty tricky and complicated and a lot of steps. The work that the pard staff do a puds is based on the expertise you have both with the rules and the expectations and the mission of the parks region rec department. Is that right? >> I would say that's true. That is why dsd also reaches [2:08:19 PM] out to other departments. It's not unique to us. That's why they reach out to other entities that has expertise that allow input into the site plans. >> Pool: And you work in collaboration with Rodney's staff. I just wanted to make that point. Mayor, to the point that you were making, the expertise that pard has is -- is in part, it's not in development services, but the staff work together and so they draw -- dsd reaches out and works with the various departments, as you notice you are aware of, but I didn't want to leave the impression we were thinking about take the fees here if we decide to make this happen and then give that -- give those resources to dsd. They are specifically being requested to pay for the work that pard staff do relative to a development. Because they are just as involved in those, especially the complicated cases, the puds and the pids. As our development services are. >> Mayor Adler: And I recognize that. It's a good point. Then my point really was just to lobby on the other issue that I continue to lobby on, which is if there's one person in charge of anything, if there's economies in scale by having one person order the plans as opposed to multiple people, I don't even know if that happens, I was just making -- I wasn't suggesting anybody necessarily do anything different, but more just -- over over all development stuff. >> Pool: Like a spinning he will point of contact. >> Mayor Adler: But it wasn't intending to remove the expertise. I recognize pard has that or move around funding, any of that. I was just lobbying to get on the other broader point. >> Pool: And I do think it gives staff the opportunity to work with various [2:10:19 PM] different departments and different people in different departments which may or may not happen under normal circumstances. >> I think there's pros and cons to both, obviously to both proposals the way that you could set it up. You could organize ourself. >> Mayor Adler: Let's move on to the next one. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, mayor. The last thing we really have planned for today's agenda is to get back into the discussion of some of the different potential budget amendments that you all have been talking about. We just thought as maybe a way of framing that conversation we put together kind of just three broad scenarios. And there certainly could be other scenarios, but, again, this is just kind of maybe to help frame the conversation that you are about to have in regards to some of the specific amendments you would like to see made to this budget still. Scenario 1 would be the easiest, just adopt the budget the way the city manager proposed. The smallest tack tax increase and make significant investments across the inditers stated by council as being top priorities. Scenario 2 would be a scenario in which we basically increased the tax rate, but dedicated those additional revenues to one-time needs or reserves which is something that the mayor has mentioned in the past, the idea of bolstering our reserves to buy us time to see what's going to happen at the state legislature. That would put us in the best position if we were to be subject to a lower cap by the state legislature, having that money in reserves, but at the same time having a higher tax levy that our future revenue growth would be built off of. That funding in reserves would also be available in the future to address pending council resolutions. We talked earlier in the day about a number of resolutions where the staff reports back -- staff report back to council are still pending. [2:12:20 PM] So putting it in the reserves would reserve it to help address that. There's also some audit recommendations. I know that are coming out in regards to APD and how they handle mental health care. How we implement that might be something to consider. Then having the one-time funding commitment maintains more flexibility in future years in the sense that if we are capped, it's easier to scale back on dollars that have been put to one-time needs as opposed to. We looked at -- there are a couple items you've been talking about that need to have action now if you are going to -- the senior exemption, you talked about increasing the senior exemption by some amount. If that's something you want to do, you need to do it in September when adopting the budget. That can't really wait. Of course the funding request from austin-travis county integral care. We do know now that Travis county has funded 40% of that request. And they do need that money to continue the program at its current level and they would need that money to be approved in September to continue that program. Those two are maybe just a little different than the other things you've been talking about in the sense if you are going to do them, you need to take action in September it feels like. Again, those are just three scenarios maybe to frame the conversations. There's certainly other scenarios that could be discussed, but within any of those other than the first one, the question comes down to what are the types of amendments that you would really like to see being made. Whether they are for deferred maintenance or whether they are for new programs. Again, on the first slide that we started the day with, the agenda for the day, we lay out things like the senior exemption and deferred maintenance, not even deferred, playscapes [2:14:23 PM] and pools. The mcot, Austin parks foundation. The second host team and the small business ambuds person. These are things we've heard support from mouth councilmembers. Again, there could be other amendments you all want to talk about and other support for other things that maybe would start to gain more traction. Thosees are the ones with most support. The rest of the packet is backup tell for various items. You can flip through that. But the senior exemption, the same information we provided August 15th starts on page 69 and that's really the rest of the packet is backup materials. Some of which you've seen before, some of which you perhaps haven't. I think you've seen all this information before, but it's there in your backup packets if that helps facilitate the conversation. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. I think staff is >> Mayor Adler: The staff is looking for indications of where people are. I'm inclined at this point, although I want to hear the public discussion tomorrow, maybe the public could speak to some of the things I would talk about, that I would like to hear people talk about, is going to the 6% that we said we would, just because I think that's a prudent thing for us to do in the face of a legislature that -- that might cap us, and if we're going to get capped at 2 and a half percent increase, that would put is in a position where we're being able to manage that best. I would support probably an increase in the senior exemption. I'd be inclined to support the mcot money. But I would like us to, since we would be the main funder of that, to build into that something that talked about how that would [2:16:24 PM] interact with public safety because I think we have a city concern of making sure that those teams are part of the process to clear things that are happening rather than being brought in post clearing. So those two things. And then past that, I would say that there's part of me that would say -- I'd hold that money and earmark that money, waiting to see whether or not -- what the legislature did with the ability to move it into reserves or move it into some of the other programs that I think are real valuable, too. Maybe some of those I'd want to fund that, I'd really have to think through this. I'd want to hear what the public says, but at a high level, I think those are my most immediate thoughts. Greg? >> Casar: Yeah, just for [indiscernible] Sake I'll put out things I'm thinking now knowing that there are probably things we'll hear tomorrow that could sway me or change my mind, but I also agree that going to the 6% like we said makes sense for a variety of reasons laid out by the mayor. I have asked the departments to put together how much it would cost to us to start moving forward on the health clinic and space for seniors at the Gus Garcia, like the testimony we get recently, and that's about a $300,000 spend, but there may be variations on that that we could look at. I know the public safety commission, and I'm not sure if the women's commission has recommended or voted on this yet or not, but they have recommended to us that we look at domestic violation prevention programs because much of the violent crime increase that is often reported as the mayor has said in the past is related to relationship violence, and I don't see much that is in our budget right now that's directly targeting that issue because that really is a prevention on the front end thing rather than a 911 response if we [2:18:27 PM] want to prevent that, and interrupt that, and there have been various things that have been presented to interrupt that like funds so somebody can change out their locks or get a bus ticket or be relocated if they're in a dangerous situation where somebody could be at risk of relationship violence. Also, this goes to presentations. I've seen that in the budget, for example, on the sexual assaults, counselors, presentations we're getting to, but you actually go into the budget, it actually is only a capacity increase of one because one temporary person is becoming a permanent person. Again, as the dais knows, we've really failed, you know, hundreds of people in the way we have, in the past, failed on testing sexual assault evidence. Now we're having to catch up with that. Now all of the kits will be cleared this year, there's just an influx of people we have to handle and take care of well. So that increase of just one, even though it says too two on the slides, and I think the community might see two, if you look in the budget, the capacity increase is really only one person's capacity. So I'm not sure how much or what we have to change there, but I just want to flag that for people. Same thing, although the slide says $150,000 for legal services, I still don't know whether that's a decrease or an increase based on our existing capacity. So it would be hard for me to know whether I think it should be the same or less or more until I track down that answer. And I do think that on our housing front, global housing trust fund is incredibly important. I appreciate that being fully funded for the first time this year. I do think things like legal services and be that around conviction or unsafe convictions are another critical part of this that we should be continuing to work on and look at because even some of the existing affordable housing that we have, if people aren't able to stay in it or if it's not safe or decent, I think there's small investments we can do to true that up. [2:20:29 PM] So those are the sort of things that pop into my mind. Just to recap, the Gus Garcia rec center, which is -- dove springs are the two places we needed more help, according to our staff. The sexual assault counselor work and that tenant support issue. I also concur with the mayor on the -- you know, I think we need to keep mcot going in this community. In our last audit plan, we included auditing how our mental health response goes and my understanding is we're scheduled potentially mid budget stream or immediately after budget to be receiving that audit. And so I think that for our September 6 meeting, whatever information the auditor is allowed to share with us about that I think could be helpful so if we're making a significant investment and taking mcot on ourselves, then we can understand what the results of that audit are as we set direction for the use of those funds. >> Mayor Adler: Would you read that list one more time? Gus Garcia, what was the second one you had? >> Gus Garcia, the relationship violence stuff that has been brought up by the public safety commission and the commission for women. The sexual assault counselors which was really an item from last time. Again, immigrant legal services, again it's not necessarily that I'm asking to add money, it's just unclear to me where it stands. And on the tenant support question, again, to me it's a question of how much -- how much it is we're doing. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Ann. >> Kitchen: Okay. If y'all could pass -- Greg, I think I passed something around or sent around. Yeah. >> Casar: You caught me in mid soliloquy. >> Kitchen: Yeah. This is just a rough idea, and so the numbers may be too much or they may not be the appropriate amount so I just wanted to give you a rough idea. [2:22:30 PM] I've spoken about most of these items, but there's one or two that are new that I wanted to highlight that I'm still exploring and may really not stay on this list. But basically, the rbj design, I don't know if that's the appropriate amount, but I would like to see some dollars in here. This is for the day activity center for seniors in the city -- city property that's right next to the rbj redevelopment. So that number is a very rough estimate; it's just to help them get started. And so I will continue to work on that. Second item is rapid rehousing. We have some dollars for rapid rehousing for homeless individuals in our budget. I would like to see that raised. So, again, this is a rough estimate and we can have some more conversation about that. I think the host second team expansion on host is critical, whether or not it needs to be a complete team or just beginning of a second team, that's something that's worth talking about. So, again, the dollar amount may be more than we need. I support the mcot expansion. So the creative art spaces, what this dollar amount represents is -- most of this is one-time things, I might add. The creative art space, when I put that here, I'm calling about some immediate, immediate funding that is one-time funding to help get these -- get this going to preserve the spaces that are artists or musicians are losing right now as a stopgap until we get our economic development programs up and running, which will be at least a year from my understanding. So the next -- the next one is something I put here just to [2:24:30 PM] bring it to you guys' attention. I just learned that the program that our community has which covers -- it's a subsidized program for low-wage workers at small businesses that the state is proposing to cut in that program. If they do end up cutting that program, they will be having to throw people -- some of our low-wage workers off the program. Right now, there's 700-plus low-wage workers that are on this program. So I need to do more investigation, but I just wanted to bring it to y'all's attention right now. Maybe we can do something with the state where they won't cut it. But that's what's been proposed right now. The meadows care study, again, we can talk about the dollar amount, but this program that has been shared with us for how mental health response is handled in Dallas is different than mcot. It's not the same program. Now, it may work in conjunction, and mcot may support it in some ways, but it is not designed to be the same kind of program. It's specific to how our officers -- how our police department responds. And it's designed to actually get a clinician, a mental health clinicianer on site immediately, as opposed to talking to a police officer who then has to bring in -- so anyway, what I'm suggesting here, we should explore this concept, and I think we need funds to explore the concept and see if we can -- if that program can be designed for Austin. I think it represents a huge step forward in terms of how we work with our -- with folks in mental health crisis and also has the potential to free up officers' [2:26:31 PM] time to focus on what they do best as police officers. And then finally the senior tax exemption, we talked about that. And I'm suggesting that we raise it from 85-five to 90,000. Those are the key things. There's a number of other things other folks have mentioned that I support, and I didn't include these because other councilmembers have been talking about taking the lead on them. So I'm not -- I'm not suggesting that these are even necessarily a higher priority than what others are bringing forward. I just wanted to get them on the table so that, as I explore them, that you wouldn't hear about it for the first time at a later date, so... >> Mayor Adler: So I think the 90,000 on that last one is really $90,500 -- >> Kitchen: Well, the 98,895 we clayed at 09,000. I don't know what the dollar amount is. >> Mayor Adler: If you're going to approve it, propose something and let us know how it differs from mcot -- >> Kitchen: It's very different, it is not mcot and doesn't replace mcot. So I'll be happy to do that. >> Mayor Adler: Thanks. Leslie. >> Pool: Earlier I passed out the parks recycling funding options, and I just draw your attention back to that really quick. This is the same -- these are recommendations that came from the task force that we put together? June, and it tracks pretty much the recommendations that came from that parks recycling and task force, except that we put on it a three-year implementation schedule with two different options for funding to make the impact in each year a little bit softer. And we got the 14 cents down to 8 cents a month, which comes to about -- less than a dollar a [2:28:32 PM] year to get these, the recycling receptacles installed in the parks, and it would be a -- just so everybody knows, I don't know why I was thinking these were the blue bins on wheels, but they're not. They're actually really solid containers that tend to be bolted down to concrete pads, and so they're meant to be installed and to stay there, which is what we need. The part-time -- or the temporary ftes, theory the ones who would build them and install them, so we'd need two permanent ftes, three temporary ftes, they would handle collection and hauling, placement, receptacles, building them, also public education. So y'all can look at that. We've broken it down to a pretty good level so everybody could see what's involved. And I would propose that we, you know, just kind of talk about how you would like to do the implementation, but if we -- we can use the clean community fee and it would be 8 cents a month, which should have very little impact with a large benefit to the community who really wants to have the recycling. So this is a big one that I'm leading on. Two of them that I'm interested in that others are leading on, but I mentioned already, the assistance for families with children experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity, and I know director Hayden was going to get back to all of us on her conversation with lifeworks to see if that contract can be used for the hud match, but I think that's a really important piece to get in place so we can draw those monies down from the federal government while they are there to be drawn down. I don't remember who is going to talk about the youth programming at more of pods recreation centers, particularly in the eastern crescent, but I'm gathering a lot of information that I'd be happy to share because I think that is a really important asset that we can expand on. [2:30:33 PM] So those three items that I support and be happy to lead on them if somebody else isn't. Others that I'm supporting and I don't know how far we've talked about them yet, and others may bring them up, park rangers, if pard can dovetail rangers with youth programming and have the rangers provide some kind of nature programming for kids during after-school hours or on weekends at the camps that the city provides, that would be a really nice kind of building on assets. Lighting in parks, we've been talking about lighting in parks for the last couple of years and working really hard to get all of those gaps filled, so we're still working on how Austin energy can maybe help support the funding for the -- for those -- for the lighting in the parks. I know we're continuing to work on that. And then the pard maintenance backlog, and I think this is the one that Alison talked about earlier. The parks foundation has the request on this item down to about $300,000 annually for six ftes. It was 500,000 for one-time and a million annually, but they're working to try to scope it to be a little bit easier for us to accommodate. I just wanted to highlight those items. >> Mayor Adler: Your first three were children, homelessness, the park recycling and what was the third one? >> Pool: Programming, more of the recreation centers, I was focusing on the eastern crescent. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Further comments? Jimmy? >> Flannigan: As I've posted on the message board, it's my preference to focus on deferred maintenance as it's one of our top ten priorities, and as we heard today, there are far more needs than what's even in the manager's base budget. I do support councilmember kitchen's senior property tax exemption. I would support doing that. And I think if -- I would support [2:32:34 PM] maybe the mcot thing, we had a good, robust conversation about that we passed a resolution about it, I feel like it's something that we've really discussed. Some of the other things that I'm hearing, I'm concerned about the process here, and I really -- as I posted on the message board, it is my hope that we can really honor the work the staff did on the strategic outcomes as the basis for the manager's budget. I think the manager and staff did a really good job pulling together all of the different needs and concerns in the priorities that we set for them. And so I would be -- I would be hesitant to add additional things, especially where there are areas that did get increased funding in the manager's budget, and it's not entirely clear how a little bit more would make a substantial difference to the underlying metric that we're trying to move. I also think it's important that we show the community some fiscal responsibility in this moment, as the mayor pointed out, you know, we don't -- we don't operate in isolation at the city, and there's a lot of folks who are watching our budget hearings, folks who don't live in the city of Austin, but work in the city of Austin every other year, and I think it's important that we can show that fiscal responsibility can happen, and deferred maintenance, to my mind, is one of the best ways to show that because not only does it address one of our top ten priorities, but it will reduce the need for future debt. And I think that is a responsible step that we need to be taking as a city. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. If it's possible, you gave us last week, as required by law, the taxpayer statements, assuming [2:34:36 PM] the 4.9% increase over effective rate, and you're giving us some materials today that speak to that. If you could also get for us for next week's hearing what those numbers look like, assuming that we did the 6% so that we could see those same things. And if you could also do it with what councilmember kitchen did, bringing us to 90,000, whatever cost to get to the 90,000 exemption and see how that impacts us, too, that would be helpful. >> We have that. We can get that out to you this afternoon. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Anybody else want to talk about some of these policies and direction to the manager? Delia. >> Garza: I'm really torn between, you know, the needs that everybody has expressed, they have made priorities, and what councilmember Flannigan posted on the message board and what he just said because it's -- you know, the whole -- we went through the really long exercise of the strategic plan, and it was to put those priorities and in topics, so right now, I'm somewhere between 2 and 3. And as far as things that have been passed out, I will say that with the recycling, I almost feel like we could get people to do it for less than that. It seems really high. I think it's the commissioner on the parks board who's really been pushing this. We've been talking about how much more expensive is it to put an extra trash can -- but I don't know, I don't know what expenses are. I do support that I just wonder if there's a way to do that without such a high price tag. You know, health and human services has always been something that I think is -- [2:36:37 PM] government should come in for those that are most vulnerable. So, you know, the second host team and the mcot are things that I think are worthy and necessary. I will add a new one, and it is after -- because of the work my office has done with regard to early childhood, but there were also speakers at the -- our last budget hearing, and it was the early childhood program coordinator, you know, I think a lot of the tough things that we face as a city, homelessness, affordability, you know, many of that -- much of that could have -- could have been different for those people had they had access to early childhood, good, early high quality child care, to get them on a path to maybe, you know, have a -- have more opportunity. So that's the one new thing I'll add right now. But I am still listening to folks and listening to y'all and, you know, these discussions are never easy. We have a lot of need. >> Mayor Adler: Pio. >> Renteria: I'm also -- I'm supporting the host second team expansion. I think it's very -- it's needed out there, and I see what's -- you know, what's going on on the streets, and we need to really address that issue. I would also like mcot expansion. And I really support the senior tax-exempt 90,000, but that's my three priorities right now. I don't have any other ones. But as I get more information, I'll let y'all know. But those three things are what I'm really pushing. And whatever else is -- that I know we also need to put some money away for the -- for [2:38:37 PM] maintenance. It's becoming very critical. So I'm leaning toward the rest of that going toward maintenance. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: So in addition to mcot and some of the other needs that I mentioned earlier like tenant eviction, I believe I mentioned at our last session, and it continues to be a priority of mine, to fund -- fully fund as much as we did last year for after-school and parent/teacher support specialists at aid. Those -- as I understand the way the after-school funding has worked, those are students enrolled in programs that will not be able to continue at the same level if we are not able to provide that funding. And I'll try to get more information from our school partners on that just to see what that -- what would be a decrease of 150,000 in after-school programming would do and which programs could be affected, and the same for the 140,000 in the parent/teacher support specialists. Another key priority for me is to make -- see an increase for homelessness. I would say, I've gotten a little correspondence in the last day or two and I know that we'll have speakers here tomorrow to speak to where that funding should be invested, and so at the moment, I want to keep open whether that -- whether the host team would be the highest priority or whether it would be investments in other housing areas. And I think it will take some kind of focused conversations with some of our housing providers who have looked and have some ideas about that, so I would invite the colleagues who mentioned high support for that to maybe join me in a subquorum to sit down with those individuals and make sure that if we are able to secure some additional funding, that we're doing so in a way that supports the action plan and that we're investing across the spectrum of needs. So that being said. I'm sorry. >> Mayor Adler: I was going to volunteer to join that subquorum [2:40:38 PM] of yours. >> Tovo: That would be great. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't mean to interrupt you. >> Tovo: I think that's our subquorum. Thank you. I think that would be really helpful. All that being said, at this point, it's hard for me to see accomplishing that within the current tax rate, and so that -- so at this point, I'm leaning toward that 6%. >> Mayor Adler: Greg, then Alison. >> Casar: Yeah. And thanks to councilmember Flannigan for -- reframing this within our strategic planning. I tried to list things off but didn't sort of give context to why I think -- I did try to write down this list in the context of what the staff did and the work that we did. So, for example, on public safety, one of our key metrics is reduction in violent crime, and when we're -- what we're seeing is increases in what's being called in in relationship violence and not seeing increases in our budget to dress that particular issue. I just think we should think about within our existing public -- even within our existing public safety budget, how it is that we can prevent and interrupt that kind of violent crime, if that's one of the things we're seeing as a plurality as violent crime in our community. So I would be open to it not even being an keys in the budget, just within the public safety money that we have, if we're being strategic, how can we invest it in a way to deal with what it is that we're seeing that is occurring more and more, just to be really clear on that front. And then on the victims counselors issue, I just think that is not even a strategic direction thing, it's just the city has done something, in my view, that is wrong and has failed people, we need to make up for it. I think we need to find ways to address that on the immigrant legal services, again I'm not even suggesting an increase in that area, it's just that we have advertised that there's $150,000 new in it, and -- but I thought we got testimony the other day that we may have actually decreased so I'm just trying to [2:42:39 PM] figure out how we don't decrease something that the council has committed itself to, that I think we're all proud of and that I appreciate that we do. I feel the same way about the aisd money, if there's a way to not decrease services, I think our strategic direction is about the areas that we're going to improve in, but if there are things that are going to get worse, I would want to keep those things going. And then I concur on -- I do want to invest in homelessness and housing, and if we can come out with -- as a council, alongside the community, what the things are that help the most, if it's host or if it's rapid rehousing or if it's the social services, I would just appreciate that work of that subquorum to help best guide us to what it is that we should get invest in. And I do think on the margins, a small -- small investments in tenant services go a really long way to make sure the affordable housing which we produce, which our metrics are to create more affordable housing, are safe, that it's worth it, so I think for every significant investment in housing we make, we always need to be thinking about the small investments we make to make sure people can take advantage of it and be safe in it. And so thank you for reminding me and I think keeping us to making sure that we frame the way we discuss this helps the staff's work and accomplishing all the goals we set up. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. I'd like us to try and be below 6%, if possible, in terms -- I would also be -- excuse me -- for me, my first priority would be the deferred maintenance with a very strong focus on pard and secondarily, libraries. I'm particularly interested in us investing in playground renovation and major repairs. We have something like 43 playscapes around the city that are deemed below, with pleasant [indiscernible] -- We need to [2:44:42 PM] move down that list so people have safe access to playgrounds. That's my first priority, additional funding for pard, playground renovation, and maintenance generally. I do support some senior home -- I'm not sure about the numbers prevented here, if that's where I'm at or not. One of the strategic priorities well represented in the budget is climate resilience. One of the things I hider and trying to figure out what the exact proposal is pard had a request for more arborists and forestry more ftes to maintain tree canopy. Neither of granted. We only granted dsd some money to do some of the development service, but if we're not maintaining the canopy, the way to get to service trio-I'm going to get the number wrong, close to a hundreds years or something for pard, I don't know what it is for the full tree canopy, something like two ftes shared between forestry and pard so we can reduce the backlog and maintain that. We are today at 50th day in a row of 100-degree temperatures. That tree canopy keeps people cool, people who don't have air conditioning need those trees. That's another form of deferred maintenance, it just has to do with our environment. I'm supportive of the recycling in parks. I funded some recycling in d-10 parks last year from my office budget. They are really sturdy cans, like indestructible and it makes a difference in terms of lit he abatement. We made a commitment as a city at zero waste. We've recently required all of these businesses to do that and we need to lead by example. There's a couple items that [2:46:43 PM] don't come out of the general fund that I am championing, the small business ombudsman and transferring the parks coverage for planning for development stuff to fees is another one. I'm interested in fully funding the aid after-school times that mayor pro tem mentioned. I'm interested in some small amounts of money for creative spaces. There's a capacity building program that could use some additional money. And I'd like us to set aside some money for kind of a loan program for gap financing that would then recycle through over time. So those one-time things I'm also supportive of the victim services that councilmember Casar mentioned. And what I mentioned earlier on the workforce. I think we do need to be careful that when we are making ongoing things that they are affecting kind of deferred maintenance. I think one of the only ones I have in there that's really ongoing is the trees, but that's a kind of maintenance thing, it's just for our tree canopy so that we are in a position moving forward with respect to whatever the legislature decides. >> Mayor Adler: Manager, comments people made that I just want to -- just to jump on top of and support. I really like the suggestion, I think the mayor pro tem made, in terms of looking not only expenditures but spend yourself within buckets. Repry toreization of things within a bucket, that makes really good sense to me. To see what would be the tradeoff or if that was the fine tuning of the prioritization. And I really see that as a complimentary role the council could play in the budget process because you're putting buckets toward the priorities and then prioritizing the programs. I think it is a really valuable place for the council to come back in and [2:48:45 PM] say in affecting that work, this is a program we prioritize so what would be the tradeoff in terms of programs. That being the case and with that filter involved, I would also support looking at the Gus Garcia center because I think that's a geographic area needed same as wee dealing with dove springs and the bond. The victim sexual assault counselors I think is -- is an area we need to be doing better in the city. We do see the increase in violent crime being relationship crimes, so if there's anything we could be doing with respect to domestic violence, I think that's clearly an identified need. 70% of the increase we're seeing. I want to understand better the question the mayor pro tem what is effect of loss of 150 and 140 for the after-school and the parent-teacher support specialist programs. I would like to confirm that was the number we decrease and what that effectively means. And I like the conversation about -- I like also putting more money against homeless. That was our number one priority. If host isn't the best way to do that, I'm anxious now to hear what the stakeholders and others come in and say if you are going to put money against that, this is where we think that money should go. I include in that the children and homelessness program that councilmember pool raised in her conversation, and then the rapid rehousing program that councilmember kitchen raised and so -- and I would also support the senior property exemption again. And now that Travis county has decided to come in at 5.99% over the effective rate, I no longer am supportive of 6%. I think we should come in at 5.998% over the effective rate or some point lower than whatever Travis county [2:50:45 PM] just did. [Laughter] Any further conversation? Yes, mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Just a couple of quick things. Number one, I just wanted to say, mayor, number 40 actually has that amount so the staffs have confirmed the aid and just as update, my office did reach out to aid earlier this week to ask them to confirm the costs and see what the impact would be so I'll share that info with you all. And I wanted to also just come back, hours ago now we were talking about partnerships with social work programs and the school, and I wanted to mention something that I failed to mention at the time which is one of my staff members convened a meeting with integral care to talk about that issue and it's my understanding that that moving forward there will be a program wean integral care and the -- between and involve some partnership with the host program so that's exciting and we all look forward to learning more about that. I have a couple questions about, like, how we -- there are certain things we talked about that there may be funding outside the general fund for and one we're asking questions about is whether the asset forfeit you are fund could be used for a gun buy-back program for the gun buy-back program that was a component of councilmember alter's resolution that we passed last year. I also -- construed broadly the asset forfeit youure, so I would ask the question of staff whether it is an appropriate use to put it to safety lighting in west campus or relationship violence prevention. It would seem to me those are ways of increasing public safety so I'll ask more pointed questions about that in the Q and a. With regard to psyching and parks -- recycling and parks, one of the things [2:52:46 PM] I've wondered about is whether some of these costs aren't more appropriately borne by Austin resource recovery since they are in -- they are furthering the aims of that department. And our zero waste plan. So that's something I would urge councilmember pool, since you are leading the initiative here, I would urge you to consider that. We heard some testimony last week about lighting in parks, and a couple years ago, maybe it was our first budget year, we had asked -- we had asked for some consideration from our city manager to look at Austin energy and the relationship between Austin energy providing some of that lighting. And so that's just another -- just another point I wanted to highlight that we'll be spending a little time looking at trying to recapture that discussion. You know, there are -- I think some of the departments -- in any case, you get my gist on this. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie. >> Pool: I think -- and thanks, mayor pro tem, for your comments, but is the clean community fee, that is a program that is Austin resource recovery, yeah. >> So the clean community fee pays for some work by Austin resource recovery, but mostly it funds code compliance. And it doesn't fund on going recycling programs, but it might be a -- it does have some money that it uses for the information that it communicates about complying with the zero waste initiative. So it's not really for ongoing expenses. It's more for the work that the city does to try to reduce incidences of nuisance and then very specific activities relating [2:54:48 PM] to universal recycling and information about that. But most people's recycling is paid for out of the -- out of the generates that one pays for the carts, the cart fee. >> Pool: And so what I'll note on the handout that I handed out, mayor pro tem, under one, the second bullet you can see that the clean community fee would be increased by eight cents a month and allocated to the parks and rec department to handle the remaining budget needs. And we've had conversations with Ms. Fireside about the clean community fee and it's my position that litter abatement and recycling is encompassed by the clean community fee. And we have a gentle disagreement possibly on that, but that is -- that was my intention was to put that to arr. >> Tovo: I appreciate that clarification. Thank you. >> Casar: Wait, sorry, mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Casar: On your option b2, is there an option that's just clean community fee or does your option still require 140,000 of property tax value dollars? >> Pool: We still need to -- we still need general fund expense for two permanent ftes. >> Casar: Okay, yeah. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else before we stop? Ms. Houston. >> Houston: First of all, I want to thank the city manager and the staff at all levels for bringing us a budget that was amazing, based upon the priorities that we set as we did our strategic planning over the last couple of years. I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that you put into it. Deferred maintenance, as I said, is a general government facilities and that's -- specifically for parks, one of my priorities. We cannot continue to build and then not keep up. [2:56:50 PM] Otherwise we get behind, and we're behind now and behind in so many ways that it's unhealthy. Municipal court was just one of those examples, but we've got examples of that all over the city of where it's unhealthy for our staff to even be there. So the deferred maintenance is one of my number one priorities. It's interesting to me that I don't want to go above 6% because I think we have to show the people like myself who are on fixed incomes, social security and a retirement check that we are trying to hear them and we're trying to listen. Everything everybody has talked about is great, and if we had an unlimited amount of general fund dollars or someplace to get that money, I would support all of it, but at some point we've got to make the hard decisions about what it is that we can put on the backs of our property tax payers, especially those who are older. I was about to call you the box man, but the budget in the box man, Mr. Van eenoo said this morning, with aid already kind of telescoping that they are going to put that tax impact is going to look like to us and that's where most of the tax impact comes from, that's going to be -- we need to be even more cautious about how we spend the money that people give us. So what we have, I would like for us to put some in reserve. I'm not sure what January will bring, but I don't think we can be cavalier about just spending everything that we have and we need to be very focused about what it is we can do and if we can do grants or something else because people continue to come to us as though we are a bank. And so I've said this before in our joint subcommittee, I have some questions about [2:58:50 PM] the efficacy of the parent support specialists in aid because they don't -- they report directly to the principal at the school. There's not a governing group of folks that supervise them, so if the school principal says we need somebody to do this, then that's what they do. They don't do the job we think they are supposed to be. We've had this conversation in the joint subcommittee. So there are things that we don't have control over once we give that money over to aid. Parent support specialists is one that we pay for that we don't have a control over the outcomes. There are things we need to do as we develop social service contracts. Even with prime time. Most of my schools are title 1 schools. Some of them met standards, some of them succeeded, but we're putting a lot of money into those after-school programs and unfortunately we're not seeing results of that, at least in the schools I'm responsible for. So I don't know, we keep throwing money at it, but it's not making a significant difference and I think we need to look at how we fund some of the school districts. I've got four. Three of mine got D ratings. One got a B. And so if I'm going to be spending some money, I'm going to be spending money where my kids are even, even less getting less quality education because education is the key to getting out of poverty. And the district is having a difficult time figuring that out. So all of that is to say I'll be making some -- just the one for the carver to have that ability to look for -- to do a master plan is the only thing I'll be adding to the agenda. >> Garza: Sorry that I wasn't present with -- >> Troxclair: Sorry I wasn't present with you this morning. I had a ground breaking for the new Scott and white hospital in my district and [3:00:51 PM] I've been tuning inasmuch as possible throughout the rest of the day. I just wanted to swoop in and comment really quickly to daylight the issue that councilmember kitchen asked about earlier, the panhandling and alternatives to homelessness issue. I had been under the impression that that -- I think it's $500,000 that was kind of budgeted for that item was going to go towards the two programs that we worked on and it sounds like only about $100,000 -- a lot of that is going to existing programs and $100,000 is going to the -- the -- what? >> Kitchen: The job opportunity one. >> Troxclair: Right, like allowing -- having a city contract with a third party and asking people who are panhandling if they would like the opportunity to work for the city for the day and earn cash. We've gone from really being a potential leader in this program and really be an early adopter and innovator so now it's been a couple years and $100,000 is not going to be enough to get this program going. This is something that's seen huge success in other cities and I think it's important we have money to fund it. I just wanted to daylight that I'm going to follow up with manager cronk about it. And then other comments just generally I would, of course, support just the lowering the -- keeping the tax rate as low as possible. I think there was a lot of good things that were included in the original budget as presented to us. If the council is going to make the decision to go up to 6% tax increase, I would prefer that that money be spent on -- or be saved for deferred maintenance of our aging facilities and senior homestead exemption. Thanks. >> Alter: Thank you. I wanted to suggest to [3:02:52 PM] Ms. Pool for the recycling you might be able to do a combination of one and two. Last year we were able to keep the Austin resource recovery fees low by doing the co-s. You could do the cos and you might be able to come up with a way of not taking any general fund money to do that. >> Pool: Good point. >> Alter: I wanted to suggest we might think about it that way. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Hang on a second. So I think we're done. >> Kitchen: I do have a question. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann. >> Kitchen: Well, maybe you were going to speak to it. I'm just wanting to understand what steps we all want to take if we have a thought on a process, maybe the city manager can speak to that. >> Mayor Adler: Manager? >> Mayor, councilmembers, first of all thank you for the robust conversation today. I think it was really helpful in both getting some additional feedback from staff on some of the topics that you have raised over the last week. And then secondly to really daylight some of the other concerns that are being discussed within your offices. I do think it's really important, as councilmember Casar said early on, to hear from the public. So however it was scheduled earlier that this work session happened before the final public hearing, I do think and it seemed to be the will of the dais to ensure that we do have this additionally scheduled work session on September 6th. So without hearing any objection, we will make sure to work with the mayor and the clerk to get that on for 9:00 A.M. On the 6th. I know that the two hours were what we had planned and that's on your schedule so we'll try to keep it to that, but that will allow another opportunity to highlight some of those areas. I know that many of you were taking notes during this session, and I wanted to [3:04:53 PM] thank the individuals that really highlighted the need to stay at that strategic objective level. And so as we think about what we were trying to accomplish through this budget to stay true to the conversations we've had since February, to really ensure that as we cross the finish line to budget adoption, that we maintain the spirit and momentum that we've had all summer in the development of this budget. And so I know that our staff was taking really good notes during this last hour and to the degree you are willing to have another round of conversations with us, we will work with your offices over the next week to look at how we can take the feedback and priorities that you've had during this work session and look at ways in which they align with our strategic objectives. And so we will be scheduling those meetings over the next week. First we want to hear from the public tomorrow. We'll be scheduling those meetings and that will allow us to have an agenda that will be part of the discussion on Thursday. I know there will be other things that might be brought up by each of you, but it is our goal to take the information that we learned today and then come back to you with additional proposals that could be considered by the council. >> Kitchen: Okay. I think that answered my question. So basically what we're - - we're not doing the concept menu process. What is your time line to bring us back additional concepts or proposals, sorry? >> Councilmember, I know Monday is a holiday, so I would say the soonest we can get on your schedule either on Friday or Tuesday so you have enough time before that Thursday meeting. >> Mayor Adler: Anything you can daylight on Wednesday so we have a chance to look at it before we walk in would be really helpful. >> Kitchen: Okay. And then in terms of any amendments that the cocilmembers, you know, if the councilmembers -- any councilmember decides to bring an amendment, how are we handling that? Is that our usual ifc [3:06:54 PM] process or amendment process? >> Mayor Adler: Given where we have and the numbers, if people could daylight those on a message board and if things have a consensus and which don't and staff can work between Thursday and Monday when he can come back to us as we try to take care of the budget. The goal would be for the manager to visit with offices are Friday and on Tuesday to try to daylight on Wednesday for us. That Thursday is when we meet. So the degree which council offices can say we're interested in bringing these things up, we will. On Thursday we'll discuss as many as we can. It doesn't limit anybody from what they can do the following Monday when we're back in, but to the degree we could have those conversations, I think that would be helpful. >> Kitchen: I'm just trying to get to the end of the day. At the end of the day -- and think this process is great, I really do. But at the end of the day if I want to make an amendment, for example, when we're about to adopt the budget, I would do that simply as an amendment as opposed to an ifc. >> Mayor Adler: Correct. No need for ifcs. Yes. >> Alter: I appreciate that we're trying to make this process up on the fly, but that sounds an awful like the concept menu which we're trying to move away from. If we're starting to post amendments to the message board and whatnot. I'm not sure the alternative, but that feels to me to close to the concept menu. I don't know the alternative and we're making this up so it's not meant to be a criticism of you, mayor, I want to move away from that process, but it's too close so I'm wondering if the city manager has anything to add there with that and, again, this is just-just feels too close to that and I'd like us to stay in the strategic planning lanes and whatno. [3:08:55 PM] >> Mayor Adler: In my mind the difference between what I thought people would be identifying buckets or strategic directions or that they prior to said they thought weren't be reflected. And the purpose of next Thursday is discuss at a strategic level whether we thought more money needed to be put on those or whether we need to do reprioritize those things. Just trying to get the conversation to address that at the strategic level on Thursday as best we can to give as much direction as we can. But any suggestions alternative to that I'm obviously wide open to. Was there anything else that you would suggest for us to think about or do other than your admonition to stay at that strategic level? >> Just again having the opportunity to have this additional conversation since today's meeting with you later this week, early next week, and then you know, hopefully there is a package or series of alternative packages you can consider at that time that would address many of the issues that were raised today. >> Mayor Adler: By the way, I think I said Monday we meet. We don't. Monday is rashana. >> Flannigan: I would encourage staff that you remind us how many additional moneys were in the base budget. Sometimes I think it sounds to the community like the base budget is just what we did last year and there are a lot of new allocation so it it will be good to see that. Especially if we can hold ourselves to a bucket conversation to know all buckets went up in some level and to see that in context will be helpful. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ellen. >> Troxclair: We had submitted several budget questions awhile ago and they are still pending. So I just wanted to put a plug in for -- I know you [3:10:55 PM] are all overwhelmed, but I want answers to some of these things before we get too much further into this conversation. So thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else before we stop? >> Garza: To Jimmy's question, isn't that essentially what the first couple slides of the presentation were? Were you asking for that again? >> Flannigan: I'm just saying as we discuss changes, I think it's important to remember that there was a lot of stuff added in the budget and we just don't want to forget. That we don't want the community to forget that. >> Mayor Adler: In terms of the conversations you've heard things, one of the things you are going to give us we've added X number of dollars to this. If this is a priority program, maybe we don't spend money on these four things, instead we spend it here. I heard you also saying in that context it would be germane. Greg. >> Houston: I just wanted to thank the financial staff on the third floor of the they've been working under some hardship conditions. They have no air conditioning up there. And so I -- they've done a wonderful job over those adverse conditions. Thank you. >> Appreciate that. Building services did do a good job getting a half dozen or so portable air conditioning units. Except for my office. My office really is terrible. The hallways are nice if you are walking around in the hallways. >> Mayor Adler: Now we know why the maintenance budget has been pushed up. It's been going up $500,000 a day up there is what's going on. Greg. >> Casar: Either at that meeting itself or in some quick sub quorum beforehand, I want to remind folks because I said it quickly, the audit on the mental health things, the question councilmember kitchen raised about changing models, just not have to sort that out entirely -- try to see if we [3:12:57 PM] can get that done with a plan of action. >> Mayor Adler: I've been contacted by staff saying [inaudible] We should be on top of whatever Travis county does to show that we're joined together in this cause. Ms. Houston, anybody have anything else? All right, it is 3:14 and this meeting is adjourned. [6:00:43 PM] >> Welcome, welcome, to the city council district 3 candidate forum. Wow. It's almost election time. Welcome, again. This forum is sponsored by the city of Austin ethic review commission and moderated by the league of women voters of the Austin area. I'm Carol with the Austin area league of women voters. The Texas league was founded in 1919 and consists of both men and women members. We are a nonpartisan organization. The league does not support or oppose candidates or parties. We are an all- volunteer organization. I want to thank those volunteers that you see around. Thank you very much for volunteering your time today. Thank you. (Applause) >> We are pleased to have a Spanish translator for you this evening. We also, on the back table, there are 3 X 5 cards and ladies standing around that have cards and pens if you would like to submit a question, we'll try our best to get it in. We have been taking questions from the public. I do want to let you know that the forum is being televisedlive and is being recorded. And you can go to the austintexas.gov/atxn and see this recorded for later. Now, this is -- I'm going to address the candidates. You are seated in ballot order starting at my left. The format will be as follows. You will have a one-minute opening and a two-minute closing statement. You will have one minute for each question. Our timekeepers will hold up the cards. Keep your eyes, please, on the timekeeper. You'll see a minute and then you'll get a 30-second warning to wrap up your thought and conclude in the second half of the minute. The red card is stop. According to the guidelines, this is for the audience. [6:02:44 PM] According to the guidelines of the league of women voters there must be no applause or demonstration of support or opposition from the visitors in this room during the forum. Candidates are asked to refrain from any personal attacks. I will intervene if there are personal attacks and help you get back on track, and you may you'lllose your time for that question. Mr. Jacobson, we will begin with your opening statement. >> First off, I have to say, thank you. This is the best 28th birthday present I could ask for. Thanks for this forum on my birthday. I'm running this race from a place of love, a deep connection to the city. In the '50s my grandfather was a founding member. He left a mark on the legacy of the city. I'm proud of my father's almost 40 years as a plumber building the buildings we know here. What troubles many is I have not seen a place for me here anymore, and I see something disappearing. It's linked to the lack of leadership we have to not move on the important issues of the day when it comes to development, affordability, equity, and transportation. One is missing in action and we need to move forward with open hearts. We need to listen to our neighbors and empower the voices all over the spectrum, from the east side to south Austin where my mother and grandfather grew up. Everyone needs an equitable voice at the table. >> Ms. Alamanza. >> Hello. I'm running to confont the status quo that held the city back for decades. I want to promote an accountable people's government to take on the housing crisis. I want to make sure that our public land is used for public, [6:04:46 PM] not for private profit interests. I want to make sure that the community is listened to and that they have a say in the codenext rewrite development plan. They were shut out. We also know that the incumbent voted against the ballot petition that was signed by over 31,000 voters. Of course we have to go to court and sue. It is now on the ballot. Also, we do not promote high density because high density will displace thousands of people and continue to keep Austin unaffordable. And to me, let's work together to reclaim, remain, and rebuild the city for all people. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mr. Renteria. >> My name is Sabino "Pio" Renteria. I'm honored as the first city councilmember for district 3. I want to thank the ethics review commission and the league of women's voters for hosting this forum, providing a wonderful opportunity for our community to get involved. For supporting me over the years as we fight for change at city hall. Our accomplishment has only been possible because of the overwhelming support from neighborhood leaders, small business owners and organizations who have worked with my office on initiatives to improve the quality of life of all austinites. For those who are new to our city and our district, welcome to Austin. I look forward to working with you, too. A little bit about me. I'm a native austinite, a product of Austin public school. I served on ptas, city boards, and commissions most of my life. >> Thank you. [6:06:47 PM] Mr. Motwani. >> Thank you. I'd like to start by thanking the league of women voters for executing their mission to engage our citizens in our democratic process, born from a movement that's now more important than we might have imagined in our current day and age. I currently work at United Way as the chief information officer, where our mission is to fight poverty in Austin. And that is exactly where I would like to bring the conversation back. We often find the conversation around Austin focused around economic growth, but really the challenge is economic mobility, and particularly in our district. I intend to help solve for that problem set and bring the conversation back to sustainability, affordability, and relief for individuals, children, and families and seniors who are struggling and suffering. And I humbly request your vote. Thank you. >> Thank you. Ms. Cohen. >> Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. I'd like to quickly thank the league of women voters. Your diligence in ensuring the community is educated and informed and making sure they're registered to vote is very, very important. Thank you for what you do. Again, my name is Jessica Cohen. I'm the transgender candidate running for district 3. This is a big deal. When you vote for a transgender candidate you're ensuring a Progressive vote. I'm a normal, everyday person who got sick and tired of the hour drive to get to work. I'm sick and tired of our budget being majorly compromised of our infrastructure and not being changed. I'm tired of seeing things that should be happening that aren't. So I decided I would go out and make the changes myself. [6:08:47 PM] I'd appreciate it if you'd listen to what I have to say. >> Thank you. Mr. Valadez. >> I would like to thank the league of women voters for hosting this forum, as well as you for taking time out of your day to be here. My name is James Valadez, I'm running for Austin city council to bring neighborhood values back to district 3. I'm a native austinite, a graduate of our public school system, a former division one athlete and a proud university of Texas alumni. In the past I've tackled affordable housing issues on the city's community development commission. I've been a Travis county democratic party precinct chair. I've also been appointed to the aid task force focused on making our skills more nimble to better compete with charter schools, who we are losing kids to. Currently I sit on the city's board of adjustment where we hear and decide variance requests from the land development code, as well as interpretation cases brought forward by stakeholders. I also have the pleasure of serving on Travis central appraisal district's board of directors, where I am an appointee by the Travis county. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. We'll start the questions first with Ms. Almanza. The question is, do you see any relationship between our city's efforts to attract businesses that provide jobs and the rising property taxes for those of us that live here? And if so, what can the city council do to lessen the impact of rising property taxes? If you do not see any connections, please explain. >> There's definitely a connection between what kind of businesses we are recruiting to Austin. If we are recruiting large businesses that only employ people with certain degrees and not looking at people who have [6:10:48 PM] just finished school, or who are dropouts, then of course we're not looking at an equity distribution of a job market. And we know that when we bring high-class paying workers that we're also seeing an increase of property taxes. But more or less we're seeing an increase in rentals of housing, an increase of housing for ownership. And so we have seen the impact not just on that, but the impact on transportation, the impact on our cultural assets, the impact on the bus system. Because we are now seeing that the routes have been eliminated and that people are having to walk further just to get to where they need to go. >> Thank you. Mr. Renteria. >> Yes. Thank you for that question inch .you know, we're a city that's been the most desirable place to live. We have created so many jobs that our unemployment is 3%, around that. And our biggest problem is that our reluctance to go out and build more housing, more density. You know, we're facing, in the year 2030, we're going to have to build over a hundred thousand apartments here in this city to keep up with our growth. You know, over the years, we have said that if we don't build it they won't come. And we learned over these years that it just doesn't work that way. We need to be more creative. We need to build more affordable units. And we need to work to make sure that our children are able to stay here and live here. >> Thank you. Mr. Motwani. >> Yes. I absolutely see that relationship. And typically when referring to the businesses that come in to Austin, we're typically referring to the large tech companies that are bringing high-paying jobs. So there's absolutely a relation there, because folks in [6:12:50 PM] high-paying jobs increases demand in the housing market, which is going to increase the costs in certain areas, and increase the tax rates. Excuse me, the tax burdens. Now, what I think needs to happen is that part of the incentive packages associated with bringing these types of businesses, specifically extremely large businesses that are bringing high-paying jobs, is a link directly to training for middle skills jobs. The problem here is that despite that we are at a 3% unemployment rate, we have 40,000 people underemployed because they don't have the skills to bridge from low wage to high wage jobs. That's what I would be working to do in our district. >> Thank you. Ms. Cohen. >> Absolutely agree. The type of businesses, these large corporations are wonderful for the city economy, but do not help maintain that flavor of Austin that the small businesses provide. While increase the housing cost, they're inadvertently causing all the people that make Austin Austin have to move out of Austin, the people who live here can't afford to live here long. We need some sort of incentive package from the city to help not just the small businesses, but to either subsidize or incentivize low-cost housing, not just affordable housing, more housing, low-cost housing so the people who work here can live here. >> Thank you. Mr. Valadez. >> Yes. I absolutely see a correlation between the two, and specifically I want to draw everyone's attention to the Oracle development over off of lakeshore where Oracle was brought in and incentivized, but also acquired adjacent apartment complexes, which were working-class apartments. And I think there will probably be a strong correlation to the under-enrollment or lack of enrollment moving forward going [6:14:50 PM] into elementary and middle schools in the area as a result of the displacement of workforce housing and the moving in of six-figure salary employment. We need jobs that our working class can secure. We need better training to ensure that we can get them there. I also want to harp on the 80% mfi, the standard throughout the city when we're building new housing. We're calling that affordable, but the median income in our district is fall below that standard. It's not affordable to the folks that are here. Thank you. >> Mr. Jacobson. >> Speaking from the perspective of a restaurant manager, not a land developer or real estate agent, all I hear right now, false choices. Is there a correlation, yes. But do we have the opportunity through the council to control this growth and engage with it? Yes. Because I can tell you the restaurant that I work at, for three years there were people with all kinds of mixed immigration status, backgrounds, economic class. They been fit because we have tech workers patronizing our restaurant. We need to lean into the change. We need to recognize we have the power to do it and quit advocating that we're not going to do anything. We can tout figures all we want, but if we don't go head-on into the issues, control this as best we can, then we're going to end up with the predicament we're in. Growth does not have to equal displacement. That is a false choice. We have an opportunity and if we don't seize it we're going to suffer the consequences. Let's give voice to the folks that are facing these issues. >> Thank you. The next question will be for Mr. Renteria. What aging infrastructure, from bridges to storm drains that control flooding, do you see that should be addressed while you are in office? How will you address the issue given that these same issues may [6:16:52 PM] exist in other districts in the city? >> Could you repeat? I'm sorry. >> Yeah. What aging infrastructure, like bridges to storm drains and flooding, do you see that should be addressed while you're in office, and how will you address the issue given that the issue may be in other districts also? >> Yeah. We're addressing our transportation problem. We just passed the largest mobility bond election, $720 million. We have built miles of sidewalks. We have done major improvement in intersections to make them safe. I know we have borrowed $30 million in bailouts for the onion creek flooding victims that were there. You know. We have made a huge commitment on investing -- on securing our residents from flooding. You know. We have embraced the zero traffic death. That's one of the biggest concerns. I have lost three people that worked or helped -- had friends that got killed on Riverside. So I invested my quarter cent money on the Riverside corridor. >> Thank you. Mr. Motwani. >> Well, I'm not going to get into the traffic or the bridge in the park that's been collapsed for a while. What I will talk about when it comes to aging infrastructure that we don't typically think about as infrastructure is really the support safety net that we have in the city, our social service system. It has not kept up with the growth, the economic growth that our city has experienced. In our district, 70% of the children under six years old are living in poverty -- 70%. We need to make sure that we have early childhood education [6:18:53 PM] systems that are well-linked with our public schools, that offer high-quality early childhood education. That's the best possible investment that we can make for the best outcomes, both economically and healthwise. Not only that, we need to have a coordinated social service delivery intake and referral across the city if we really want to see good outcomes. And those kinds of elements need to be linked up with our workforce system as well. >> Thank you. Ms. Cohen. >> Since you touched on sewers and storm runoff, I wanted to bring up onion creek because it's fresh in everybody's mind, the buyouts and what the city was trying to do to help the residents of that area who had lost their homes, displaced in an area that was supposedly non-floodable. We just wasted an enormous amount of money on the construction of the waller creek bridge, another area that I think is probably pretty important. Due to the fact that so much of our storm runoff gets to town lake through that tributary, we need to start focusing on smaller runoffs, larger storm drains, bigger bridges so they have enough room to make it down to town lake. We have to spend more money, which nobody wants to hear. But it's the only way we're going to ensure that these type of situations don't happen again. >> Thank you. Mr. Valadez. >> I want to make sure that we're utilizing our quarter cent fund and parkland dedication fees accordingly. Every time these large-scale multifamily projects are constructed there's a bit of funding in there that can be utilized to create safe paths to schools for our children, sidewalks, and pedestrian beacons. So making sure we're utilizing those fundings we have in place right now is the first call to action as a councilmember. [6:20:53 PM] We need to specifically look towards a wildfire relief plan where our city is a system of parkland and trails and systems. So we need to ensure that we have a plan in place to make sure that if a wildfire were to take place, not just our flooding and our issues such as that, but specifically what we do in case of emergency. So having master plans associated with any -- thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Jacobson. >> I can tell you what we can do first is talk to residents that live off suburban drive that have flooding in their house from the an industrial development down off of Ben white and 35 that's been there for 25 years and they've been asking for help from the city council and nothing's been done. We can start there. But we can come back to the fact that in codenext we've talked about new developments having better, less impervious cover, better water reclamation processes so there's less runoff in the streams. We can make sure that the next time that we come to do land development -- and this didn't seem to be the most contentious issue -- that we can have the leadership that will make sure these smart, green, environmentally conscious decisions are incorporated. So let's start by talking to residents in district 3 and making sure their houses respect aren't flooding. >> Thank you. Ms. Almanza. >> In the people's plan, we recommend one of the recommendation is looking at drainage review and an environmental review policy, because when we look at infrastructure, we can't ignore that east Austin has always been underserved. I mean, people of color were put here in east Austin according to the master plan in 1928. But the infrastructure did not follow. And we can see from the recent floodings that have happened from the 1980s to most [6:22:55 PM] recently the flooding where people actually lost their lives. So we have to look at the whole drainage issue and make sure the infrastructure is completed. We have to make sure that when we're now -- codenext would have been high density and more impervious coverage. What would be the impact on communities around or downstream? When we look at the point apartments that build a detention pond the size of a football field, during the rain we had the water overflowed. So we have to take into consideration climate change and how it's impacting the whole drainage system. Thank you. >> Thank you. The next question will begin with Mr. Motwani. And it is effective community policing may require more officers than in the city police department. And the current council is willing to hire in this year's budget. Will more officers or some other approach help address issues that you see currently existing between members of this district and the police department? Why or why not? >> I don't think it's easy to say binarily that more officers is going to be a solution. The notion of community policing could be something that could assist, especially when it comes to relationships with the residents. I think an initiative like this would require very, very serious outreach to residents across the district, because the district spans many different areas, all of which have distinct relationships with the police. Those of us who have read the mayor's task force report on institutional racism and systemic inequity understand that there are certain regions that are disproportionately affected by discrimination, not just in the policing environment, but also banking and finance, in the ability to just thrive and maintain assets, to own property, where we're allowed to live and work, etc. [6:24:58 PM] So I think that, you know, it's not appropriate for me to give a binary answer that more officers would be correct. Outreach would be necessary. Profound. >> Thank you. Ms. Cohen. >> This is kind of a tough question for me, because I understand our community is growing. And more often than not, I like most of the Austin police officers I deal with, especially downtown. However, from a personal experience, until you've been held on the side of the road and called "It" or "That," there is no way, no way I could bring myself to hiring more officers until we fix the problems with the ones we have. It's an incredibly personal issue for me. They have the money for officers. If they can afford drones for their vehicular homicide unit, they bought two new drones, $10,000, there's got to be money for more officers that we can use towards the ones right now for education. >> Thank you. Mr. Valadez. >> I think specifically we need to be focusing on making sure that the offer count that we have is keeping pace with our population growth. So we need to hire officers as they are needed based on the increased population, make sure we're keeping our streets safe. Specifically I want to make sure that there's programs in place for our youth when they get out of schools, and while their parents still aren't home from work. So between the hours where there is that un-supervision period, we need to have athletic and academic, artistic programs at their disposal that are productive. We need to make sure that APD knows we're going to give them the resources that they need to do their job successfully. But at the same time we need to [6:27:02 PM] foster community goodwill and make a concerted effort to hire officers from the neighborhoods in which they are being tasked with patrolling. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Jacobson. >> I think what my fellow candidates have raised here are all very pertinent points of consideration. But we need to really start by listening to the wants and needs of our desire. We need folks that are going to go out and knock on doors and get a good consensus of where the status is or what the climate is like with the relation with the police department. We need to ensure that our officers, who are working hard, get the resources they need. There's an increased amount of community engagement that we could have here to get a better representative idea of what increased resources we need. I think there's a dialogue that's going on that hasn't happened and we need better engagement with our brothers and sisters throughout the district for sure. >> Thank you. Ms. Almanza. >> Yes. Being a native of east Austin, I understand the long history that the people of color have had to endure with the police department. And I think that community policing has come a long way, but there's a lot more that needs to be done. I believe that all the police officers should take the undoing racism class, because we don't just have individual problems. We have a structured, systemic problem. And as long as the systemic problems continue that you treat people of color and low-income people different than you do a more affluent society, we will continue to have these problems. So I think that yes, we need to work more. We need to make sure that the police department reflects the communities that they serve. We need to make sure that they live in the communities they serve. And I've seen this in different countries. And how the police brutality has gone. And we need to make sure that if there are police that constantly offend, we need to make sure that they are no longer in the police department, because that's not who we want. [6:29:03 PM] Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Renteria. >> Yes, I support community policing. In fact, we were one of the first neighborhoods that implemented community policing here in east Austin. And as people that live here in this community can testify, this is one of the safest neighborhoods in east Austin. And it was because that we were able to reach out and work with some 67 of the toughest kids in this neighborhood through community policing. We were able to work with them, get them through high school. Every one graduated except for one. The problem we're facing right now is more of a budget program. We know that we need to higher more police officers, you know. We just don't have the budget right now to hire that many. But we are going to -- there's 40 are graduating just here this next two weeks, so we are graduating more police officers. And if the budget would allow us, we would increase more and hire more police officers. >> The next question will start with Ms. Cohen. What do you see is the most pressing transportation need in district 3, and how will you address it? >> The Riverside expansion was a good start for district 3, for the southern part of district 3. I think now we need to focus more on more of the east-west routes through the city, especially on Cesar Chavez and 7th street, places where we could really expand the roads over into the east side to allow more traffic without maybe as many lights, and giving maybe a more direct route towards 183 so it would be easier to get to the airport. >> Thank you. [6:31:03 PM] Mr. Valadez. >> As a city, we've had some success with traffic light timing. Specifically we've had this experience on Chavez through the central business district. So I would move to try and expand our pilot programs in the traffic light timing to meet the demand that is on the roads at any given time. As mentioned earlier, I think we need to make sure that we have connectivity with our sidewalks and our park systems so that bicyclists and walkers, and so forth have better connectivity through our trail system. When it comes to our bus lines and our rail systems, I think we need to have clean and prompt, and reliable service and ensure that it's affordable. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Jacobson. >> As someone who spends two hours going from Riverside to north Barnett road to get to work, we're in a dire situation for traffic. First we need to talk to our residents who have been disserviced by the bus routes. We need to make sure the most vulnerable among us can get to work on time. Second, we need to say we deserve a 21st century transportation system. Project connect has good ideas. We need a rail line going from the airport to Riverside down to republic square like ten years ago. We need to think about how do we innovate on final mile solutions and getting the disabled, elderly, young children from their front doors to the bus door. We have the potential to harness the creative power in the city to do that, but where has been the conversation, who's been talking about that? We have an opportunity in two years possibly with the bond election. Do we want the same cohort of folks that failed on project connect to try to sell the bond election? I don't know. We've got a lot of opportunities and district 3 is at the forefront of needing some serious change. >> Thank you. [6:33:04 PM] Ms. Almanza. >> Yes. One of the things we can do is make sure that all the highways have the HOV, higher-occupancy lanes so the traffic can go. We need to look at more synchronizing the lights. But we need somebody on the capital metro board that will stand up for those people that are not choice riders. We need to make sure we eliminate bus fares, that senior citizens are riding free, just like we have bike racks we need to put baby stroller racks. We need to make sure there's cross-town connections, express. And we need to make sure that the bus service is 24 hours. We're way behind the time. People work late at night. They need to be able to go. I've seen the handicapped at city council, they have to leave by a certain time. They can't testify because the bus service doesn't serve them. Doing those different things on the transportation is some way that we can improve. We need to make sure that there's equity in the distribution of sidewalks. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Renteria. >> Yes. I played a key role in getting the council to approve the mobility bond. You know, that's including the major improvements in corridors on Riverside, airport, and pleasant valley. We're investing millions of dollars in sidewalks, safe route to schools. You know, safer and more efficient intersections. You know, we also made major improvements on pleasant valley, elmont, south congress. We also approved a turn lane there in montopolis to the health and wellness center. We also improved crossing at Mary gold terrace. We put traffic in a desolate road. There was a traffic fatality. We funded signals at south Harris and El Paso. Traffic cut-in on west St. Elmo, [6:35:05 PM] and sidewalk near St. Elmo elementary. >> Thank you. Mr. Motwani. >> I like to keep Austin weird, but I think it's really weird that we're talking about traffic lights up here. When it comes to transportation, really, you know, when it comes to light timing and buses and routes, have the engineers sort that out. Make it work. The question is, as Ms. Almanza and Mr. Jacobson said, make it accessible. We need to allow our seniors to be able to access these routes, particularly in our district. What's disproportionately represented are single female households. These are single female households who have children. And imagine riding the bus across town, paying multiple fares, carrying children around, and doing that for hours trying to make it to medical appointments on time, to job interviews on time, trying to find childcare so you can even do these things. We need to just make our transportation accessible, human- centered, promote quality of life and make sure that we have comprehensive social service delivery to surround those elements. >> Thank you. Our next question starts with Mr. Valadez. What is the next step for any comprehensive overhaul of the city's land development code to address issues such as gentrification, affordability, and the uniqueness of our neighborhoods, and how do you plan to address this? >> That's a great question. We need to first figure out what we learned from the first process. We need to sit down and set priorities as a community for what we value as a city. And so we would end up building a pyramid off of those concepts, right. So at the bottom, which would be the priority, if we all decide [6:37:05 PM] as an community it's an environmental concern, we would end up having long discussions about flood mitigation and things of that nature. And then if we move to transportation, we would talk about parking requirements and so forth. But specifically the things that I want to see preserved in a subsequent land development code would be the neighborhood plans, which imagine Austin calls for to be included in any subsequent code write. I'm also concerned with compatibility, specific as it pertains to our corridors, which east Austin and south Austin have many. And it could adversely -- thank you. >> Mr. Jacobson. >> I think the first thing that we need to do is to give voice to the most marginalized communities among us and respect what our neighbors have to say about how we build things and where we build them. That is the most critical indictment of the past process. A lot of us can agree we need high-density corridors. It's insulting to hear folks go around and say we need a more intellectual conversation. That's not what we need. We need to have leadership that has a more heartfelt conversation about people concerned about what their neighborhood is going to look like, what their houses are going to look like that they've lived in for 30 years. There's a lot of smart data and ideas on ads, setbacks, lot sizes and what have you. But at the heart of this issue and why it fell apart is because people didn't get a voice. We didn't involve people on the margins. We're throwing out the system and doing crazy things. We need leadership that listens to people, values their voice, and starts restoring equity to a city that is long overdue for readdressing imbalances. >> Thank you. Ms. Almanza. >> Could you repeat the question? >> Certainly. What is the next step for any comprehensive overall of the city's land development code to address issues such as gentrification, affordability, [6:39:05 PM] and the uniqueness of our neighborhoods, and how do you plan to address this? >> Thank you. I think one of the most important things is that we have got to vote for proposition J, because proposition J gives us a choice that we've never, ever had before on having a voice of comprehension plan. So any new land development comprehension plan we are going to have a voice, and that's never been given to us before. I think the other thing is we have to return back to the district plans. We spent 13 million divided the city into 52 planning districts. Let's return to that, because that is more participation at the neighborhood level. I think that we need to also correct the small neighborhood plans that do have problems right now and make sure they go. And we need to make sure that we get away from the high density in our communities, because high density we know does not equal affordability. We know that studios are running 1500 to 2,000. We know that homes in the most poorest communities are selling for $360,000. >> Thank you. Mr. Renteria. >> Yes. I was the only district in district 3 that created the homestead and passed the homestead preservation district where we reclaimed 10% of the added value and reinvested into affordable housing. We also worked with -- I passed a resolution to help the displaced tenants relocation assistance program, which would help people being displaced from low- income apartments and mobile homes. You know, my whole plan is to provide mixed income, mixed housing like we did at Mueller. Over 25% of those people in Mueller are low-income people. I supported Rebecca Payne, senior housing. We know we need density. We provide 72 feet for the [6:41:08 PM] housing authority -- 60 feet at the housing authority so they can triple their size to help the 30% low- income people there. >> Thank you. Mr. Motwani. >> One thing I like about our mayor is that he can acknowledge a failure. He aptly did so with the codenext process, indicating that it was poisoned. The first important step is outreach and doing it comprehensively and correctly. There are ways to do it. In a minute I can't explain that. Secondarily we need to evaluate really just development, but housing affordability through a people-first paradigm. At the end of the day it's a best practice economically. We all know it. To not spend more than 30% of income on housing. So if we work back from our median income in our district, which is in the 30s, we're looking at a thousand dollars a month. Do you think a family of four is going to be able to spend $12,000 on mortgage or rent and make it? At this point if we're talking about our district, code is not what's going to bring affordability. Policy is going to bring affordability. In addition to that what I'm also seeing and hearing is that for homeowners who are better off but still can't maintain that property tax burden, just the ability to subdivide their homes is expensive. >> Thank you. Ms. Cohen. >> The first thing I wish we could do is get our $8 million back. Since that's not going to happen, we need to look at the way the current land code is written. It's in a euclidian format, which refers to the village of euclid, a court case from 1920, a hundred years old. Why are we still using these same type of zoning laws from a hundred years ago? We're supposed to be at the forefront of Progressive values and technology. Let's start acting like it. Transects, it's a newer style of zoning where you can use dense core areas inside of [6:43:08 PM] neighborhoods that allows the neighborhood to maintain its culture while still expanding small retail shops and affordable, lower-priced housing. I think that's where we should really focus, building up, not out, keeping it affordable. >> Thank you. The next question we'll start with Mr. Jacobson. And this may be the last question. We'll have to see if we have time for another one after that. What is your position on the call for a comprehensive city anti-de-placement program, and how, specifically, do you suggest encouraging city council to work with the community and the grassroots proposals that have come before the current council? >> May I have you repeat that? >> What is your position on the call for a comprehensive city anti-displacement program and how, specifically, do you suggest encouraging city council to work with the community and the grassroots proposals that have come before the current council? >> These are very important and pertinent issues that we need to address. But I'm a bit saddened that we've gotten to a place where we're looking towards outside groups and we're looking to grassroots organizations to tackle issues of displacement. I think there's a big place to wonder where has council been on these issues for four years, why have we had to involve the folks on the fringes to deal with this. We have a big toolkit to deal with these things. I think at the core of it is how we listen to people, hold space with people, listen to their perspectives. And in a vacuum where that's not happening I think we are seeing a mushrooming of these movements and this dissatisfaction with [6:45:10 PM] what's going on at council. I really think there's an opportunity to just go out, knock on doors, talk to people, get engaged and you can get a better pulse on what's going on. >> Thank you. Ms. Almanza. >> First I want to start by saying it was the adoption of the Cesar Chavez plan, which I was -- we fought against -- that opened the floodgates to gentrification. At that time we said if you blanket zone our communities with commercial service mixed use, you're going to make sure that people of color no longer live here in Austin and you're going to see that people will not qualify for housing relocation and federal loans because they are not zoned single family. Those are some of the issues that was brought on by the first adoption of that plan. We're working with the anti-displacement task force. Really it is the people's plan that has the answer. It is talking about establishing a low-income housing trust fund run by grassroots people and administered by them. It's talking about using public land, because that's where the cost is, is land, to do building low-income and moderate housing. It's also about the right to stay and the right to return. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Renteria. >> Yes. I cosponsored the fair housing initiative, which will provide more mixed-income development, comprehensive real estate and market analysis that we need, non-description for voluntary programs like smart housing and density programs. Also, smaller houses in high-opportunity areas. You know, we're doing a public investment in affordable housing with the new housing bond that we just approved. And we're taking it to the voters, $250 million. So I have a track record that already proves what I'm doing. And bringing in -- we have created thousands of affordable housing here since I've been on [6:47:11 PM] the council. >> Thank you. Mr. Motwani? >> Could you erepeat that? >> What is your position on the call for a comprehensive city anti-displacement program and how specifically do you suggest encouraging the council to work with the community and the grassroots proposals that have come before them? >> My position is yes, in as much as working with -- looking specifically at grassroots proposals, I'm not familiar with those proposals. I would then recommend that we very specifically and profoundly engage with those organizations as well as their stakeholders and learn more about the proposals and make those evaluations. To continue the discussion around housing and affordability that we were discussing before, property tax relief is also a pretty commonsense solution. Enabling folks to be able to stay in their homes, giving folks the recourse to be able to, if necessary, what we're hearing is subdividing is the only option. If necessary to subdivide one's home there needs to be relief. It can't be cost prohibitive to do that to stay in your area. Putting affordable housing in certain areas is important and a start. But it's far more important and far more ethically imperative to allow folks to be able to stay in the homes that they were raised and grew up in. >> Thank you. Ms. Cohen. >> I think an anti-displacement program would require having committees comprised of citizens from each district who can help mediate between the city council and those people who are suggesting these grassroots solutions. I've heard some really good ones, everything from, you know, suing the state to lower the Texas education recapture fund, to working with a privately [6:49:12 PM] owned apartment complexes, to provide incentives from the city so that they will lower the overall rent. I think the best solution might be a mix of both where we work both with city council from a grassroots perspective, but also using maybe either like I said, district-appointed citizens or even possibly city employees who are familiar with the district. >> Thank you. Mr. Valadez. >> When I hear this question, I specifically think about the people's plan, which was recently adopted by council, so I'm excited to see how that plays out moving forward. Specifically one of the things it calls for is a call to action to utilize city-owned property for the purposes of preserving and protecting and fostering affordable housing throughout our city and our communities. Recently, a soccer stadium was approved in north Austin on a very high-opportunity area that was on a bus line, on a transit line, west of 35. And I find it incredibly disingenuous that out of this process where we had no rfp and developers from the community offering to purchase this lot for over $20 million, we agreed to subsidize a soccer stadium and get 130 affordable housing units out of the deal and called that square. Thank you. >> Thank you. We will now have to go to the closing statements. They will be one minute. Quit telizing this televising this at 7:00. So we'll start with Ms. Almanza. >> My name is Susana Almanza and I am the founding member and director of poder, environmental social justice organization that's been around for 25 years. [6:51:13 PM] I'm a native of east Austin, a longtime community organizer, educator, mother, and grandmother. I participated in the civil rights movement, taking up issues of police brutality, housing quality, equity within the housing and healthcare as a right and not a privilege. I overcame poverty, prejudice, and segregated school to take on some of the most powerful transnational corporations in the world. I will advocate to preserve and expand the supply of low-income and moderate housing, make sure that we control public land for public uses, preserve and provide funds for small business and cultural assets, and also work on a citywide livable wage of $15, and adopt and implement the people's plan and also the recommendations made by the African-American, Asian, and Latino hispanic quality of life commissions. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Renteria. >> During my time on the council, we have built thousands of affordable housing, created a homestead preservation district, added millions into the housing trust fund. We raised the living wage at the city, invested in job training programs, provided funds for after-school programs, and we also stood up to trump and fought back against the racial profiling and family separation policy. I am proud of my record. But there is still much work to do. And I hope to earn your support so I can keep fighting for our community. Thank you. >> Mr. Motwani. >> My name is amit motwani. And I'm here to humbly request and earn your vote. Our district uniquely -- with respect to affordability? In away that not many other districts in Austin are. And affordability means something different to a whole lot of people in our district, to the majority of people in our [6:53:15 PM] district. It's not about I'm getting to work a few minutes later. It's about my home is food insecure. I need to be able to get my children to school. I don't have the skills I need to be able to obtain a job to keep up with these rising costs of living. I'm on a fixed income and I can't do that. I just want to stay in my home. These are the affordability issues that I am here to work on. And I will bring accessibility, access, representation and voice to our district. And I hope for your vote. People first. >> Thank you. Ms. Cohen. >> They say the hardest part about running for office is fundraising, but it's actually this. It's getting out in front of everyone and putting yourself out there, and trying to talk without sounding like an absolute fool. The change I want to bring may not always flow perfectly from my mouth, but if you'll talk to me, especially on the street or at my office, or call me, I promise you that I actually know what I'm talking about. I've been an emt for 25 years. I have worked from east Althoff to downtown. I have seen every bit of the front lines of city that you can imagine, good to bad. I'm a problem-solver. I fix broken things. If I can save a life, I can help save the problems of this city. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Valadez. >> I want to talk about the three attributes I believe will make me a great councilmember if elected this November. They happen to be tied to specific things I've been given throughout my life and I carry with me every day. The first was given to me by my mother, a silver dollar. It reminds me to look after every dollar and spend it wisely. A skill I would bring forward to the budget process and attempt to bring meaningful relief to residents and business owners. The second from my father, a [6:55:16 PM] slice from the oak he was given at the parks department. It reminds me in every dispute, the answer almost always rests in the middle, which we can apply to the codenext rewrite process. The last thing is my grandfather's dog tags that I wear around my neck from his service in World War II. Every time I feel them, I am reminded that being brave enough to do what you know to be right and standing up for what you believe in is the most important thing that you can do. >> Thank you. Mr. Jacobson. >> Hi. I'm Justin Jacobson. And I want you to know I'm in this race because Austin is interwoven with the fabric of my being. I buried my mother 10 1/2 years ago after two years of being homebound, a prescription drug addiction, cancer. I have a big heart and a lot of love and I know my brothers and sisters need a leader and a voice at council who's going to validate, respect, sit and be witness to their concerns. That's what we need. Right now we're not leaning in fully to the challenges facing our city when it comes to our traffic getting longer. My rent hasn't gone down, my commute isn't shorter. We need to address that. We need heart to do that, to listen to our neighbors, because they're leaving. Their houses are getting demolished while we sit and talk about who knows what. Give an opportunity to bring a fresh perspective. We need a new generation of progress in the city of Austin to go with the young candidate, the person sitting at the confluence of these pressures and perspectives to give you something that will really change your life. >> Let's give a round of applause to all of these candidates. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. [ Applause ] >> And that applause was also for you all for coming out. Thank you so much for coming out. And I just want to tell you that for all of you, there is more information on who you can vote for. There is a website called vote [6:57:20 PM] 411.org. If you will go to that website, it will tell you every elected office that you are eligible to vote for in November. The Austin league of women voters, we publish a voter's guide for this county. We also have it in the libraries. But it's going to be online. It is at lwvaustin.org and you can see our guide there. Early voting begins on Monday, October 22nd. Tuesday November 6th is election day. You may vote at any polling place that has a sign that says vote here, or vote aqui. Texas law requires identification, and the website and our volunteers can give you information regarding what is required. Again, thank you so much for participating in our democracy. Have a good evening. [ Applause ]