City Council Work Session Transcript – 10/2/2018 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 10/2/2018 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 10/2/2018 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:10:46 AM] >> Mayor Adler: I think we have a quorum to we'll convene this work session, a little. It's October 2nd, 2018. It's 9:10. We're in the boards and commissions room at city hall. How about if we hear the veterans resource center report here and then we'll move into the pulled items. Is staff here to do that? >> Yes. >> Why don't you come on up. >> Good morning, mayor and council. Karen Heywood, assistant director of human resources department. I also have solva Albert here with us. She will be doing the bulk of the presentation here this morning. So just as a brief overview, -- -- [9:12:59 AM] >> Good morning. >> Good morning. >> We are here to present information to you relative to the veterans resource center, Joya hays, human resources director. As you recall, council provided a request to human resources to do evaluation on the potential of developing a veterans resource center. I had staff do an analysis and I'm really . Proud of the staff because in addition to the analysis that we've done, we've done some additional work. I want to introduce you to staff and talk to you a little bit about the work we've done and why we're providing the update today. Solva Albert and Karen Heywood have been working on this project along with Allen who supports our veterans office, in addition to being a liaison to the veterans commission. As you may recall, the veterans commission is very interested in identifying opportunities to create a veterans resource center. They have presented you two recommendations through the commission relative to that center. So we're going too take you through the background of what we've actually done up to now and provide you with some information relative to our desire to move forward. Silva? >> Excellent. In April of 2017 when we we saw the veterans affairs commission make a recommendation to council regarding the veterans resource center. With that recommendation council did make a resolution on June of 2017 and in December the human resources department responded with a memo. Additionally in June of 2018 this year the veterans affairs commission also made a budget resolution recommendation regarding funding for this veterans resource center. So to talk a little bit more about our response to that resolution, council had asked that we include work steps, costs and funding, make recommendations, do a needs assessment and create a business plan in that resolution. They also asked that we additionally consider items from the commission, which [9:14:59 AM] were to locate an office building of at least 5500 square feet, ensure that there was budget to remodel, furnace and integrate a network into that building. What staff did at that point was reach out to 48 local veteran service providers here in Austin. And what we were doing there was trying to gauge their interest in co-locating at this resource center, which would serve as a clearinghouse. Collaborating and establishing partnerships with other organizations here in Austin. And creating a network of support for our local veterans. All while focusing on the services listed here, which are employment education assistance, military reintegration, veterans small business and veteran entrepreneurship, va benefits and legal assistance, veteran homelessness, nutritional services, behavioral health services and here on to peer support. Of those 48 service providers, 12 of them responded showing some level of interest and those are listed here as well as in your packet. Additionally in that response we included cost estimates. From office of real estate they provided a rent estimate based on the 5500 square feet and sort of a range, sort of high end and low end. So this is a five-year rent option that is quoted here. Communications and technology management provided an estimate. There are two options again. One is to be included in the city's network and then there is a different cost if we had to use an external provider. >> Let me add as we look at these resources. When you see the additional information that we provide you the staff had an opportunity when we needed to relocate our organizational development team into new space, some of this information that you see here is no longer relevant as we are now because we were able to procure space for the veterans resource center in the new facility where our organizational development team is. So it's important that we [9:16:59 AM] kind of point out the details of what we provided you in that memorandum, but I also want to point out that many of these costs we've already incur and we've gone into the new fiscal year. >> And lastly in that memo we included an estimate for furniture and furnishing that space. >> So as we depleted that memorandum, council, -- completed that memorandum, council, a group named combined arms came to the commission to make a preparation about what resources they could provide in creating a veterans resource center. So although we had already responded to council, provided you the details as you requested, we thought it would be important for us to go and tour the combined arms facility in Houston just to get a better idea of the services we saw. So in addition to going beyond the scope of what you requested, I asked staff to not only go with me to tour the combined arms facilities, but also evaluate how other cities within Texas and outside of Texas address the need for veterans resource centers. >> So in visiting those locations as Joya stated we visited combined arms of Houston. We also visited with heroes night out which is a veterans resource center in cedar park. And while 19 of their services -- many of their offenses overlap, they do have varying service, how they provide their service to the community. So at combined arms we saw on-site service providers. What they have is an online survey that veterans who come to their site can take. It measures 13 different sort of aspects of what they need assistance with and then it automatically sends an email to those service providers. They also have community donation, most importantly their building was donated by the city of Houston. At heroes night out in cedar park, they offer monthly veteran community dinners. They do have on-site counseling and service providers. And offer a one on one needs assessment with each veteran that comes in. They also have community donations. Most notably again their building was donated by a [9:19:00 AM] church. >> As we move forward, council, we just wanted to provide you an update. As you know, the human resources department is very committed to veteran services and we're very much in support of the commission's desire to move forward. However, I think for us the question is how best do we do that? As you can see in the recommendations that have already been provided to you by your commission members. The commission really wants to see the city of Austin dedicate funds towards that service. But also as we've looked we've seen counties and non-profits have been the ones traditionally to provide those services where we've seen them. So moving forward we'd like to allocate funds from our budget to do a needs assessment and create some level of recommendation to you as what we've seen as best practice across the board. Utilizing funds, we already have minimized the need for council to spend any additional funds, but it also brings us the opportunity to bring forth to you in third-party analysis as to how best approach the idea of a veterans resource center. We will point out to you that right now we've got 4800 square feet allocated for the city of Austin's veterans program office located at the new facility at 5202 Ben white that will be open in February of 2019. This location could also serve as an opportunity for veterans resource center if the council so chooses. I say that to you because as we evaluated the Houston facility, what we found is that the city of Houston donated space and the third-party came in and completed the other processes and also had an opportunity to do a thorough needs assessment connected to the service providers in the city, brought those providers in and ran the facility. So the space is available, but we really want to do a little bit more analysis as to the best approach by which we can do that. And we believe that a needs assessment and potentially a [9:21:01 AM] business plan by recommend -- recommended by the contractor may be an ideal opportunity to bring that conversation back to council for potential thoughts of how to move forward. The human resources departments will absorb that cost. We evaluated what the other quality of lives spent relative to needs assessment as they went about doing their projects and we found that the cost was anywhere between 10 to $40,000. I can share with you and I think the commission would be fine with me saying, the one thing they would like to see more than anything is movement. So in an effort to do that, while we're making this presentation to you today, we've already developed some scope of work to do a request for qualifications to go out and find a consultant to complete that analysis and bring back recommendations to both the city manager and council for your consideration. That's all we have right now, and we're available to answer any questions you may have. >> Mr. Marks can I speak to this? -- >> Kitchen: Mr. Mayor, can I speak to this? This is my resolution. Thank you very much. I want to thank the council for passing this resolution a little bit over a year ago. So thank you for bringing this. Just -- I want to recognize Jason Denny who is in the audience. He's the chair of the veterans commission. And I want to recognize the veterans commission. This has been -- we talked about this when we did the original resolution, but this has been a long time coming. It's a recommendation that came from the veterans commission before we were on council. So -- before all of us were on council. Anyway, I can't remember the year, but it's been a long time. So a couple of things. I just want to -- when we're talking about a needs assessment we're talking about a business plan. That was asked for in the original resolution and it was not completed, it wasn't timed for it to be completed. Now is the time to complete it. So I don't want there to be [9:23:01 AM] a misunderstanding that needs assessment is a question about if we need it. It is a -- it's a business plan to define how it might be done, which is what was not done in the original resolution. The other thing I want to emphasize is that the space is available, and -- so my understanding is that that is a space that this can be placed in and that we need to understand how and how includes who should do it. Is this a non-profit and which one and what's the process? And so I just want to emphasize that because -- and I know you know that, but I think the way some people may think that that sounded like it was if are we going to do it? It's not if, it's how are you guys going to recommend that we proceed with it and what would the business plan look like? So I just wanted to emphasize that for folks. >> So if I could clarify? When we say needs assessment as you articulated, it's the best approach to do it. As we do that, yes, we are going to ask within the scope of work for a plan of how to execute, but we are looking for options. As I stated previously, when we did our research, we find in most instances as the center was created, counties or non-profits actually conducted that. So in that needs assessment it's about what is the best practice in which to execute it? Fanned the city chooses to move forward with any of those options, what plan would be in place appropriately to do it. So I appreciate that clarification, but we want to be able to provide you and the commission an opportunity to hear from a consultant the best approach moving forward. >> Kitchen: Yeah. >> Mayor Adler: Sorry, I'm confused because I don't remember us authorizing this. We asked for a study, we asked for alternatives to come back to us so that it would be something that we [9:25:01 AM] could take a look at. It's certainly something that I think that I support, but I think that the question of do we do this is something that's still before us. And certainly this information will help us so the kind -- kind of needs assessment to figure out what it is that happens here and where it's happening other places is still an element that I think I'd still need to -- I still need to see. I appreciate that we're pushing this forward and moving it forward. I think that's a really important thing to do. If there's available space that the city has in the veterans affair commission commission -- in the human relations department in the veterans section of that. But seeing how much square footage that is and what that is is still important to me. Jimmy? >> Flannigan: So I want to make sure some of those concerns and we pass a lot of resolutions asking for studies and I would hate for that to be permission for staff to just move forward. There one I doubt there would be a lot of dissent, but I think it's still fair for it to come back for final deliberations. But just as a thing that I'm looking for in the future, I'm curious if the other cities that do this if they have any metrics about what veterans are using that service are showing up by public transit. The Ben white location is not going to be super ideal for that. I know we had the similar location with municipal court, but the vast majority of people going to municipal court have moving violations and so they have a car to drive. I don't know that would be as true for the veterans so that's something I would want to consider. And I'm more in favor of a non-profit model, but to see the analysis come back. There are a lot of veteran-focused organizations, some that are fledgling. I know there's an efforts to [9:27:01 AM] start a veterans chamber of commerce that would be article interesting partner for this type of idea and certainly a lot of fund-raising opportunities that the city itself didn't leverage, but I think non-profits could leverage to great effect and magnify the impact of the resource center. And I've even done work with like the vfw and because we're in the capital, all the state level version of those organizations here and so I think their involvement would be really critical too. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ms. Houston? >> Houston: Excuse me. Thank you for all this work. I'm interested in where Travis county is in the stakeholder process and where is the va hospital in south Austin? I don't see them listed here, and they have both resources and opportunities. So were they interviewed or considered? >> Yes, absolutely. They were included in the service providers that we reached out to. And we did talk to them. I would say most commonly we've had seen that counties and vas are having office hours at these veteran resource centers. I know the one in cedar park has that assistance there and that would be something that we would be looking to partner with them possibly if this moved forward. >> Houston: What I'm concerned about is duplication of services. >> Right. >> Houston: So we have a big va hospital here in town that is supposed to be offering these same services. So then we're going to do a resource center that's going to be offering similar services. How do we stop the duplication? >> I think that's one of the things that we looked at initially, councilmember, as we communicated with the resources. We did meet with Travis county, and while they were very supportive of collaborating with us, they were not able to provide us opportunities for space. I think when I initially went to them it was about how much we could collaborate. We also met with ACC and so one of the reasons why we went ahead and procured [9:29:02 AM] space in our new facility was because of the challenges. I definitely think as we move forward with the analysis as we write that scope of work for the qualifications, we'll ensure that we look at those duplication of services as well so that the recommendation that comes before you takes into consideration where those services are. I will also share with you that in some of the non-profit models and I don't want to focus on one more -- there are several other ones that could potentially be interested in this. Looking at the combined arms facility, they also have very upgraded software to evaluate where those services are. In their model any veteran can come into any of the sites and put into the system what their needs were with assistance or by themselves. And the system would generate exactly who needed to help them, what services in the city could be provided and how to connect them in the one-stop shop. So I definitely think many of the non-profit models that we see on would address the duplication of services and provide opportunity for better collaboration with existing resources within the city. >> Houston: Then the last thing is -- might have to come back on that one. I just lost it. Hold on just a minute. It was about, again, the transportation, many of the homeless people that I interact with on the streets are veterans, and I've had them tell me they won't go as far as the va hospital because it takes zoom transfers to get there. This is on Ben white so on do we know how many transfers it will take to get downtown to transfer the service centers service centers will be? >> We do have it on a bus route. We'll add that to the analysis. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Leslie? >> Pool: Thanks. This is great and thanks to Ann for bringing a resolution to kind of prompt this along. I know my appointee to the [9:31:03 AM] veterans commission is really supported and is working diligently to have this actualized. The homelessness piece for veterans, can we possibly also look at following them and helping them to get into into. -- Once they're not unless anymore if we can get them jobs and help support the full application of housing so it's not just homeless housing, but they might be able to move into some of our subsidized apartments that aren't being set aside for people who are experiencing homelessness? >> Yes, ma'am. I would also share with you we are already on the homelessness initiative. Allen Bergeron from our office has been very supportive with that. We're looking at those under the initiative under Sarah's leadership, but certainly if the city decides to move more formal towards a veterans resource center, we will ensure that we collaborate those initiatives to ensure that we're connecting with the homelessness issues as well. >> Pool: And to the points raised about Travis county. I know we have -- Mike Denton is the judge of a specific bench that looks at veterans and keeping them out of jail and helping them if they have addictions and are homeless and so forth. But they have to meet certain criteria to be brought into the veterans integration program. It would be great if we could have some connection with judge Denton and Travis county and also the officials there, the leadership at the county, I agree that would be helpful because we can amplify our message through their communication systems. Then I'm also thinking that at some point maybe we could work some sort of an agreement with the judge that when he is assigning community service or otherwise helping in cases [9:33:04 AM] where maybe the veteran hasn't undone so well in the -- done so well in the program, they can come down and help with other veterans who may be similarly situated at our new veterans outreach and resource center. I think it would be great to pull in all of those groups and help them support within the community. Does that sound like something that at some point might be able to happen? >> Well, I think first we want to get somebody to come in and provide some analysis and once we get some direction from council relative to how you would move forward, we'll certainly try to pull in the partnerships within Travis county and others on to have that discussion. So council can kind of lead us in what direction and have the county be a part of those discussions about how we can collaborate moving forward. >> Pool: Ann, I'd be happy to work with you on that with the language that's in the resolution. I'm not sure if I'm on it or not or if I can be. >> Kitchen: You were. >> Pool: Good. Because I think putting the two sister governmental entities together like that would have some good synchronicityies. >> Mayor Adler: Ann? >> Kitchen: I wanted to clarify the decision point for the council, of course, would be any funding to actually before we move forward. I just wanted to make it clear that we were including a business plan in this scope of analysis because, you know, as you mentioned, the commission and all of us want to move quickly on this. So I just didn't want it to -- the public to think or for us to think that we were going to get a needs assessment and then we would have to do a business plan after that before we could even decide to move forward. So that's why I was clarifying. >> Mayor Adler: I appreciate that clarification. Anything else? Mayor pro tem. Kathie. >> Tovo: So I apologize that I may be taking through [9:35:04 AM] some ground that you have already covered with regard to the location. I think councilmember Houston asked a question that was on my mind about the va hospital. Were you answering her question about -- I heard the answer. I didn't exactly hear the initial question. I think this is very interesting. What I'm a little bit -- weigh really need to do some more thinking about is whether a standalone facility that doesn't -- that isn't necessarily drawing veterans for her purposes is -- for other purposes is really the right way to go. It seems like locating at the va hospital would be -- was that the question that you asked about whether that was a possibility? >> Houston: I was asking about the duplication in services from the va hospital and from the resource center. >> Tovo: And I think the other -- I think duplication of services is an important concern. I would say that the co-location of the resource center with the va hospital would seem to be the ideal situation because you have veterans in that area already who could benefit from the resources that are offered through the center. And then -- so I guess can you tell us the level of exploration that you've had on that about whether or not there would be enough space? And I guess to answer that question we have to back up. It was the commission that recommended 5500 square feet and I see a lot of your -- a lot of your work has proceeded from that assumption, but it's not clear to me whether that's really -- whether you spent time interrogating whether that's really the right number. >> So in the memorandum that we provided, council, and in addition to the beginning of the presentation, we haven't done that level of analysis in terms of best practice. We responded to this relative to costing of what space could look like, what services within Austin would be interested in co- locating in the facility. And we provided those exact details back to council. I think what happened with us as we went forward with our organizational development team moving, we were already going to move our veterans resource team to that space just so that I [9:37:05 AM] could condense the different spaces that I currently have staff. And in that space there was some opportunity to secure some of that in case we wanted to move forward with the veterans resource center. So we haven't made a decision and we haven't gotten any direction from city manager or council that that is where the location will be, but of course we have earmarked that space in case because, as you look at the memorandum we provided you, a great deal of cost was around real estate and where we could potentially put it and how much it would be. So in an effort to be proactive, we're just simply saying we have secured some space where we already have existing staff and we will leave that space vacant if the city council and our city manager are interested in utilizing it for that. I think what we're looking for, councilmember tovo, is an opportunity to get the additional analysis on what the best practice is and what we would like to do. We went back to the commission to give them an update once we had an opportunity to go visit combined arms. We have the chairman here. Certainly he's welcome to come up and add any information to what I'm hearing, but what we got from the commission was a desire to provide opportunities for multiple options. The commission per their recommendation would like to see the city pay. Our recommendation would be that we look for a third-party to come in and do that. I think with this analysis and subsequent business plan will do will be to answer the Qazi you're asking right now. What's the best option, where would it best be located and who would be the most appropriate people to facilitate and lead that initiative? So that along with a lot of the other questions will hopefully be answered by this consultant that we hired to do the analysis and create the plan. >> Tovo: And I understand and appreciate, thank you, the context for that. I think too as we think about where to locate resources that are public-facing, that are for the community, we should think about where -- we've talked about joint use for [9:39:07 AM] at least a decade now in this community about joint use of school city facilities, about really teaming up with the county. I think it's -- we just need to kind of change our practice a little bit. So I'm glad you're thinking about collaborating with those other entities. As we think about where the best location is, though, I think we should think about what the best location is for the consumers who might use this. And whether it makes sense to team it up with a use instead of with our existing office staff with a use or a facility where people are going on a regular basis. I mean, as you look across the country, there are places, maybe not resource centers for veterans, but municipal outlets that are teamed up with, say, grocery stores or other places where they're on their regular route. And so I would like to explore further the va hospital possibility. I would also like to get some information. We've talked for a long time as we look for rental space really working with our school district partners whether there are school district facilities, underenrolled schools or other school district facilities that might have space in key locations that are able to be utilized. And I think this is very interesting as we -- we certainly have a military presence in this town and it would be great to see them be a partner in this effort too in terms of funding and potentially providing a location. So again, that's my pitch for trying to think about a location that -- where it's not a one stop -- it's not a single purpose facility. It's a purpose that people might be going there for other reasons. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Delia? >> Garza: Along those same lines, didn't we just get the big army headquarters or something here? I'm wondering if there's an opportunity there for land [9:41:07 AM] or working with them for a space like that? I was also just thinking in the conversation, it's my understanding that this is a little bit different than, you know, going to the va hospital for like a doctor's appointment. It's more of like a safety net kind of -- specifically with veterans in mind and their concerns. And we kind of have a similar thing in our community and neighborhood centers so I'm wondering instead of reinventing the wheel, so to speak, and having a whole standalone if there's an opportunity to just add at our current neighborhood centers and hopefully another neighborhood center soon? >> So we had some discussions with the original ciur relative to location and talking and deliberating with some of the resource centers. I think some of the concern is that identifying places where people could go to focus on employment and other services has been the benchmark model. We looked at potentially having a south and a north location. We looked at with the 48 entity that we reached out to about whether or not they would be interested in relocating and where they would recommend the locations be. So we deliberated with all of that. We also reached out to all of the local universities. As you know university of Texas and Austin community college already have facilities available that are focused on veteran services. And so we did reach out to them. We did not reach out to aid, so certainly as the consultant evaluates that, we can add that component. But I think from what we saw, one stop shop locations that allow people to come in and have access to multiple resources have been the standard from what we've seen. But certainly as we go and ask the consultant to look, all of these recommendations in terms of options of collaborations and co-locations are things we can certainly ask them to evaluate and bring back a recommendation to you based on your feedback. [9:43:07 AM] >> Garza: Okay. At the south Austin neighborhood center, for example, they have places where partners, workforce people. So I just thought we already have that there and if -- and there's -- I just think there's an opportunity there to have a specialized -- like a triage where they come into the veterans resource center to triage them and say we have non-profit workforce here and we have this here. We have many of the services. We have a food pantry there. We have -- anyway. >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, Ms. Houston. >> Houston: I'd like to segue. That's a great idea, councilmember Garza, because most communities have community centers and they have nurses there, they have the food pantry, they have computers where can you either learn how to use it or somebody will help you with it. And so blackland neighborhood center is there and so I think that's a good suggestion. I would support trying to use that because they could go in if they're sick, they could get their blood pressure checked or diabetes check and then get referred. >> Mayor Adler: It almost sounds like a distributed model for providing the veterans services. I have no idea whether that works or not, but somebody needs to take a look at it. Ann? >> Kitchen: Yeah. I would just echo what everyone has said. I think looking at all those options, and then coming back with concrete recommendations and a plan, a business plan for moving forward would be great. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: I would say the distributed model is more in line with what we're thinking about with regard to homelessness services and having navigation centers. Really trying to meet people where they are and not necessarily asking them to come in again to kind of a single purpose facility might make better sense. >> Kitchen: Could I speak to in that? I think that's a really good point. The point is simply to help consumers not to have to go to many places. And also have them linked and connected in a way. So perhaps by using [9:45:08 AM] technology that would help with the linkage, but also understanding that the idea behind a center is to have a place that people can go to that's recognized and that is a -- a one-stop-shop, so to speak, for veteran services. So there may be a way to do that, to combine the two concepts. We'll have to see. That's why we need some analysis of where -- what the other models are and what the options might be. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: I wanted to add to the thoughts of the distributed model that I believe that the county has a parallel network of centers. So maybe in your conversations you can also talk to the county as well. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you very much. Excellent presentation. The other thing that we had on briefing was how government works. Who is leading off on that? Is that you? Manager. >> Mayor, city councilmembers, at our last work session on September 18th there was a council discussion item on the government works outcome. And the takeaway from that is really instead of having a subquorum of councilmembers that would work on a series of initiatives that would really be strategically linked to that outcome, we would ask the entire body and even carve out potentially time within these work sessions to focus on some of those areas. And so I sent an email yesterday to spend maybe 20, 30 minutes this morning really teasing out some of the key goals for that discussion, really what are the goals for these work sessions if we were to include them on an ongoing basis for the remainder of the year, what kind of format would work best and would we want to have them during council work sessions in the morning? I think there was even a suggestion we should have it first thing right away at 9:00 A.M. What opportunities do we anticipate through those work sessions? And then what potential next steps we had. I'll ask Elaine and Kim Oliveras from our office to step forward if they have [9:47:09 AM] anything to add. But this is just creating space for the councilmembers to talk among themselves and really give staff feedback on how to make sure that we are crafting these discussion items on the government that works outcome in the way that makes sense to you. I think this is a really exciting opportunity. I think that staff is looking forward to taking a specific strategic outcome, in this case government that works for all, and having more strategic and thoughtful conversations around that. So I'll open the discussion up and hopefully we can get at least a few of the key goals that we would like to take away from these conversations going forward. Before having councilmembers, if there's anything staff would want to add to that. >> We just look forward to having the opportunity to have this open dialogue with the council and get feedback from you about this outcome. This is the one that we're really beginning to work on pretty diligently and many others as well. And so this is the one that affects how we interact staff with the council and staff with the community, council with the community. And it's a very broad measure. One of the outcome desires is to improve our efficiency, be more innovative, and create a better trust amongst staff and the council. So we thought that this would be a form after your last work session conversation, that this would be a forum if you wanted to use this one or if you wanted to have separate retreatlike settings, but we wanted to solicit some input from the council about how you might want to approach work session discussions like this. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy? [9:49:10 AM] >> Flannigan: Thank you, city manager and mayor and my colleagues for exploring this idea. As I said two weeks ago, this was something that I had started working on a couple of ideas and pulled together a subquorum and as we talked as a group realized that the issues were bigger, but they also weren't necessarily the kind that needed a group of five to go hugged and come up with a fully fleshed idea before we could talk about this as a council. And it started to make me think about a way that we could, as I said last time, put the work back in work session. So I'm really excited to be able to do this. Part of my, I think, experience going through the strategic outcomes and seeing the stronger collaboration with staff was a really powerful moment to hear from leadership, staff leadership of the types of things that I didn't know was frustrating them or that they were seeing inside the organization that are just kind of not reaching the second floor all the time. I have a couple of ideas that I brought up last time that I would like to talk about. It doesn't necessarily have to be today because I think we're just talking about talking today. And there is a little bit of irony around talking about talking when you're talking about government that works, but I think we'll get there. [Laughter]. We'll get there eventually, hopefully, and making this a regular pattern. I'd really like to hear from everyone else on what we all think we can get from this process. As a group. >> Mayor Adler: Ann? >> Kitchen: Thank you for teeing this up for us to kind of talk about the process because I think it's not clear exactly how we would do this. And so having some conversation to explore that that, and I also think that we may just have to try some things and see how it works. I would be thinking in terms of talking -- setting some time to talk about a specific topic as a starting point and I would want to see that set up as first a [9:51:11 AM] reminder about what our goals and measures measures are under that topic. But I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time with that because I wouldn't want to eat up all the conversation with that. That would be just more of a reminder. And then to my mind it would be something like okay, under this particular goal and leading up to these particular metrics let's talk about this idea. And then perhaps -- I don't know how to structure our conversation about the idea but it would be useful to -- we're actually providing the opportunity for feedback because a lot of times what will happen is we don't really get to that level of depth when we're having our conversation. You know, so I felt like -- I'm not suggesting that we do exactly what we did in the strategic planning process, but for example, that had some measures -- that had some part of the process that pushed us deeper in terms of thinking. The list of five thing that we did, the stick is and dots that we did. Stickies and dots that we did. I'm not suggesting we do that, but some kind of mechanism that really takes us a little more detailed in terms of our -- what we think should happen. Because -- so, for example, if there's a an idea that's put forth, I would want to come away from that work session understanding better what my colleagues felt about the idea and then understanding what might be some next steps to explore it. Anyway, that's just -- I don't have a set way to think about it, but that's the kind of thing I'd be wanting to accomplish. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy? I'm sorry, hang on a second. Alison? >> Alter: Thank you. So I would very much welcome these conversations. [9:53:12 AM] I've got a lot of ideas of things that we could be doing to improve how we're working as a city and with one another. And the strategic planning was sort of step one, and arranging that in the budget as we did was step two, but there is a lot of other steps that follow that process. And so I think this discussion about government that works is what do we do next? This seemed to work well on refocusing us and helping us to understand what we were targeting and getting a budget that reflects what we as councilmembers wanted. So what is that next step? I think this is a suggestion of one way to do that. Under that, now that we have our strategic plan and our priorities, now we need to stop doing some things and prioritize the things that we put in our strategic plan, and we don't have very good mechanisms for doing that. And so I would like to see us through these discussions figure out how do we have the conversation so that we can stop doing things that may not move the needle on the things that we've identified in our plan and how do we do that in a way that staff feels comfortable bringing those ideas forward where it's not always oh, I'm going to lose my budget if I do it, but that we can create an environment where we can do those pivots. So I would like to see that. I'd also like to see us leverage innovation and open governance principles so that we can amplify our human capital potential here in the city. We have to get to a point if we're going to be a city that reflects, you know, the rest of our population, we've got to be able to prototype and get moving and like if something fails, it fails. And then we move on. [9:55:13 AM] This notion that we have to have a fully fledged program, everything worked out in order to do anything I think really hamstrings us. So I think we need to have those conversations. I'm not exactly sure how we have those conversations, but if we just put the strategic plan on the shelf and it only shows up at budget time, we won't able to do that. The other thing that I think needs some greater clarity and it needs it soon is how the strategic plan interacts with the resolutions and interacts with the budget process. I am very confused at this point as to whether everything requires a resolution. I think that we don't function super well when everything requires a resolution to make sure that something gets done and then we pass resolutions that say go study stuff, things don't come back to us in a time my matter. They don't come back to us for a decision point. I'm very concerned and maybe that's a function of how we straighted the strategic plan while those were still going on, but I think we as a council and with the city manager need to find some clarity and I think that alone will help us to function more efficiently because there's some ambiguity there that is holding us back. >> Mayor Adler: So it seems to me something that would be really helpful, one, I'm excited about the prospect of us devoting time for this kind of conversation. And I think that for it to be helpful it needs to be narrowed in terms of what we talk about. So maybe there's a way to get like a list, a universe of the things that we would then go through and then councilmembers could add to that list or say I don't want to talk about that or say I want to talk about this one first. So to be able to set priorities, but to have that kind of universe list of the things to talk about. With respect to the strategic plan, I think that's working well, but it's kind of nascent in terms of how we use T it's not regular. I like having the conversations about what [9:57:13 AM] happens to that next. I don't know when we're meeting to actually decide metrics or how metrics are coming back, but that needs to be able to happen in order to close that loop. It was good I think in the budget that it was presented that way. I think it was really helpful and then because it's changed how to talk about it and in the broader community. But to give thought to things like, maybe aligning the committee structure with the strategic priorities that we have so that it really gets integrated from top to bottom in that way. But I think a universe of list of things we could talk about and then let's start talking about that. But devoting a specific period of time that has a stop and a start place that we can get in, people know it's not going to just go, but I think it would be helpful. Pio. >> Renteria: Yes, that's a good suggestion because the problem that I'm facing is that, you know, we set aside money in different buckets and especially like the art and music and these kind of contracts. I asked the art commission how this is going to work or economic development. How that money is going to work. And they said this is how we're working this budget, but the equity office has the other bucket. So we just don't know the process of how to tell our non-profits and our art groups and all how to navigate the process, who to go to. If we could get that information in our office so when they call us or email us, we can get that information to direct them to the right department. And that's -- right now it's taking a lot it's taking a lot of our time having to go up through the chain and find out who is handling what of the budget, so that's a problem that we're facing there, right? So we would like to get that information out so that we know who to direct them to, to the right department. [9:59:16 AM] >> Houston: Thank you, mayor. I'd like to see a government that works that is nimble and that can look at the matrix and say we can't fund you anymore because whatever we thought you were supposed to do it's not the outcome that we're getting, it's not addressing the goals that we've set forth. I would also like to have the boards and commissions be started when we come on 52, I think, and now we've got 80 some, for them to start aligning their recommendations because we get a lot of information, resolutions from boards and commissions and they go into some never hand sometimes -- never never land that nobody ever sees but that needs to be aligned also with our struck outcome so we can make sure in fact that fits into the plans that the council has established. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Jimmy. I think something that councilmember alter said and councilmember kitchen both, you know, to me this sounds like also an opportunity to build trust, trust with each other, trust between us and the staff, trust between us and the community, and it doesn't necessarily have to be big. You know, I think some of the bigger ideas may be hard to do in these small chunks but it is also the little stuff. I can't remember, Elaine if it was you or whatever staff that talked about an old travel band and the underlying law that travel band was about got ruled unconstitutional but we still have it in place -- Arizona, yeah, Arizona. So it would be kind of thing to take a second look at, see if it's still something we wanted to do or whatever, whatever those little things are. And it's not -- I want to make sure we're careful not to tread on the job of the manager because we're not here to run the staff, but the types of policy decisions that have been made in the past and maybe even the unintended consequences of ones we've made now, but I'm legit not thinking of any. [10:01:17 AM] I'm just saying -- is an opportunity to revisit even the small little policy decisions that are causing little hiccups in our staff process and it's both small and big. And, councilmember alter, you said some of the things we can stop doing, which I think at times we've all kind of thought surely there must be something to daylight some of those. Really for me it's the staff, and I'd love to see like we did during strategic outcomes, more staff participation. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie and then Alison. >> Pool: So this is -- sounds like sort of a top to bottom program operations analysis review and performance appraisal, some of the things that we talked about in the equity study was put before us and when we were saying we thought this was something that we could do internally at a lot less cost, and it was something that I know I talked about publicly, was using our strategic outcomes that we put together last year. We put our budget through that lens this year, and the budget process went a lot better than before. And we could adopt that same sort of a process with Kim and her office's assistance and bring in different stakeholder groups to kind of help us with this. I know asme is interested in helping. We could review those policies or programs we have that maybe we're not doing anymore and try to refresh everything and update it and streamline where necessary and I so that he as kind of necessary steps to move forward with that kind of deep look at our work here that it sounds like the community is interested in seeing us do. So maybe that really is the larger conversation that we're talking about here. Being careful not to tread on those areas of operations and programming that [10:03:17 AM] radiographic the city manager's purview, always looking at it from the larger budgetary and policy perspective. But I would like to kind of shift that strategic outcomes fabric over into this conversation and maybe the city manager could help us with that. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Alison. >> Alter: I'm glad you brought up the Arizona example because that's something actually we need to do a waiver or something very quickly so that EdD can attend a conference at the university of Arizona where they're trying to bring all the incubators of UT together so that we can coordinate better and we need to explore whether that is something that we're willing to do. So if anyone is interested in thinking about that, it's kind of a time sensitivity to that one. I wanted to invite Mr. [Indiscernible]. You guys have been working on the strategic plan and I know from bits and pieces of conversations that there are next steps to that process, and I'm not sure that we're all aware of what those next steps are. And either today or at a future one of these sessions, because there's a larger way of thinking about a strategic planning approach and I know you guys have been doing that thinking so I just wanted to invite you to share that either today or if you'd feel more comfortable at a future one of these discussions and maybe we can see how that overlaps with some of the ideas we have because you may have already -- you may have already identified a path and we just don't know what that is so we're making something else up. >> Chief performance officer. We do have a number of things going on in terms of full-scale metrics development, dashboard development, and also very early stages of pretty significant alignment exercise for all the different service that's the organization provides. [10:05:18 AM] I think to have a more meaningful conversation I'd like to be able to kind of put that together in a more comprehensive way so I'm not trying to just speak off the cuff, but we do have a number of things underway and to be quite frank the conversation we're having right now for developing the approach in this work session, that's part of it. This is something we absolutely need to help continue driving the implementation and execution of the strategic plan so I want to echo my appreciation for the desire of the body to move forward with these kind of conversations because that is incredibly important, for it to not go on a shelf and start collecting dust. That was our goal to avoid that from the get-go. >> Alter: As we do that, though, since you are doing the other thinking I'd like to make sure that we have that input. There's a lot of times where we come up with something and you guys have been thinking about something expels if we don't ask you the right question we don't know what you're thinking and I would like to have the benefit of your expertise and knowledge and the time that you've been able to focus on that in a way that we haven't. So I would just invite you to figure out, as we're evolving this process, when it's appropriate so that we're not reinventing things you've already invested in or that we can benefit from those thoughts as we're charting a different path. >> Absolutely. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else before the manager closes? Go ahead. >> Again, appreciate the conversation today. We're going to take away from this some clear next steps. I think this idea of at least walking around the council offices before the next work session to look at what that universe of not only goals but specific tasks that we can bring back, I think the list has already been generated, we've already started to hear some of those ideas through this discussion and through the 12 weeks ago -- the one two weeks ago. And staff is thrilled to be able to continue this dialogue because as we know, I think councilmember alter [10:07:18 AM] articulated that very well, the plan can sit on a shelf and the budget is that next step but unless we are actually making real progress and having this integrated into the ongoing operations of our organization, we will not be able to achieve our objectives that we went out -- that we anticipated to move forward with in the strategic plan. So thank you all very much. >> Mayor Adler: Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you, guys. All right. Let's do the pulled items. Item number 28, councilmember alter, you pulled that. >> Alter: Yeah. This will be really very quick. >> Melinda weaver, interim treasurer. >> Alter: Great. Thank you. It is the audit of the actuarial services related to the retirement system and also for the sworn services. It wasn't clear from this if the audit -- so this is the contract for the audit, but I wanted to clarify where that audit goes to once it's conducted? >> So once we receive the finalized audit report we will actually present it to the audit and finance committee and then it will be submitted to the full council at the next -- the following meeting. >> Alter: Okay. That's what I just wanted to clarify, that it would go to extrapolate finance. >> Sure. >> Alter: I just want to flag we have some differences -- so this is a audit of the actuarial services, which may or may not reveal things that we need to worry about with respect to the health of the retirement systems as they are, but I just wanted to point out for my colleagues that there are some variation in the health of these retirement systems across the different services that we need -- may need to over time be looking at and finding ways to address. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you very much. Let's go to item 29. Jimmy, you pulled this one. [10:09:19 AM] >> Flannigan: Yes. This is the collections contract for the municipal court, and we're -- as we try to figure out and revisit all of the contracts that the court uses to do its operations, we've delayed several of them recently and getting data and analytics back on this one, there's kind of a policy decision point for us to make. The state law is fairly restrictive on the types of variables involved in procuring this contract. The fee you can assess is mandated in state law at a certain level and if you're going to collect the additional -- the late focus -- fee, you can't doit in house, you have to do it inside the firm, some of those are mandated in state law. For the legislative session coming up the question for us is do we want to approve this contract, which right now collects I think $1.3 million a year which goes into court operations. We could approve this contract and see if there are any changes in the state law and then we could rebid it. I don't know that there's a lot of value in rebidding the contract because there's so little really to compare the contractors on, and I would love to do it to include all of the golds and metrics that we set out as we did the court review. The other option is that we could bring it in house but you're not allowed, apparently, under state law to collect the late fee if you do it in house. So it would add additional costs and actually not raise additional revenue. So my preference at this point is to approve the contract as it is because it has a fairly significant revenue impact to the court, one I don't feel comfortable making a decision on so quickly, certainly right after we approve the budget. See if there are changes that the legislature is willing to make. In Houston, for example, they're allowed to do more of this in house with the fee, the additional late [10:11:21 AM] fee, they have a bracketed exception to that. But not to cancel it and go without the revenue okay, which I think would be a pretty significant impact to the court operation. So I don't know if any of you all have a different theory on it but my preference would be to approve it and then we can revisit it later. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Greg? >> Casar: That makes sense to me. Then I think we can also -- my understanding under the contract is that we choose which cases to send to collections. There might be some court standards, I understand, about how long cases can go before they're sent to collections but I think that's also of note in this contract, that if in the end we decide that there's some amount of time that we're willing to -- more time to give people before we send them to something that could impact their credit and other things, that's something we still have flexibility to do even once we have this contract. >> Mayor Adler: So [indiscernible] Number 29, authorize negotiation and execution, allow for it to come back to oust if there are legislative changes and the like? >> Flannigan: I think just like any procurement has an annual but for the council's approval clause, that would apply. It's a five-year but- for action we take. Instead of it requiring annual approval we could take separate action later. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thanks. All right. Let's go on to the next item, item number 30, Delia, you pulled that one. >> Garza: We submitted a question. I think it's still pending. I wanted to see how this investment policy aligns with -- we had a resolution, I think you've seen the question about the border wall and making sure we're not having in companies that contribute to or participate in -- or may participate in building that, as well as a recent resolution by councilmember Renteria about the child detainment and whether we -- what our policy is on supporting organizations that are [10:13:22 AM] detaining children. So I just wanted to know how our investment policy aligns with those policies. >> Interim treasurer. So as far as the city, we do not invest in the stock market or companies. We strictly invest in U.S. Government securities. And as far as our investment policy is concerned, it is governed by the state of Texas' public fund investment act. And that does list the authorized investments that as a municipality within the state are allowed to invest in, and that's incorporated in the bases for our investment policy. >> Garza: You said we only invest in what? I'm sorry. >> U.S. Government securities. So U.S. Treasuries, U.S. Agencies, things of that nature. >> Garza: Okay. So we don't invest in, like, privately held companies? >> No. >> Garza: Or anything like that? >> We do not. >> Garza: The only other question -- and it might not be necessary now, but in the investment objectives, you know, it's very technical and I was curious if there's an opportunity to -- when we're talking about the investment objectives to add that we're making sure that we're aligning with, you know, council direction or council's strategic objectives? Because I didn't see anything about that. >> As far as the objective are concerned, those are dictated by the public fund's investment act as well. It's the safety principle, maintenance of adequate liquidity and then the yield portion of it. As far as the council actions, it would be my recommendation that those come through a resolution rather than including them in as part of the policy in and of itself, as it's investment guidelines for the city. It's more of a financial document in that respect. >> Garza: But we're [10:15:22 AM] approving this on Thursday. >> Yes. >> Garza: So are you saying that -- I just don't feel like we have the opportunity to give direction to this policy. I don't know if another resolution would be the way -- technologies seems like a waste of time to do another resolution. Can we just give direction, some kind of generic, general statement about aligning with council's -- >> Leela fireside for the law department. I think what Belinda is saying is this is a very technical document that we're required by state statute to have in this particular format, but the manager and the departments are taking the guidance from the prior resolutions as you have directed and following through to review any contracts that we have and making sure that they align with council's guidance. >> Garza: But do the regulation that's govern this prohibit a statement that says -- >> They prioritize in a particular way, and those are the things that they -- all of the cities and counties and state government and everybody is focused on making sure that we align with those requirements. >> Garza: But does it prohibit the document saying that it will align with our direction? >> We would have to follow up to see whether there are cases or ag opinions that look to that. >> Garza: Okay. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann? >> Kitchen: I just wanted to follow up. So this would be sort of like the way we've done bonds, I would think. Because -- I'm asking a question. Because the bond language has to be a certain way but then we add to that. And so we've done that. We -- 2016 bond, we added language that hadn't been added in the past, that had [10:17:24 AM] some direction in it. And so as well as having the resolution to back it up. So I guess my question would be the same as councilmember Garza's, what language can we add with direction in it to this document? And if it has to be in a separate document, is this time sensitive? Can we wait until we get the separate document or -- >> The investment policy is required to be reviewed and approved annually by city council. >> Kitchen: Okay. But it's not a particular date annually, right? >> This is for fiscal year '19? >> Kitchen: Okay. >> But it does not have a specific date, as far as that's concerned. >> Kitchen: I'm not suggesting we need to delay it. I know you need to get it done. I'm just suggesting that we should explore what our opportunities are. >> Just as a note, we do approve the investment policy and we do bring it before city council annually. So it is something that we can look at for next year's -- >> Kitchen: Yeah, I don't think we want to wait until next year. But anyway, so I'm with councilmember Garza on answering this question. >> Mayor Adler: So I think that the issue is to the -- I think that -- I understand not editing the city of Austin investment policy to give specific recommendations on what to do or not do. But the goal is to make sure that this is carried out in a way that's consistent with the direction that council gift cards. And then so I think the question that people are asking up here is, how do we best do that? And emphasize that? Or indicate to the public that that's the umbrella under which this gets done? >> Right. >> Mayor Adler: And how do we do that in a way that would be visible not only internally but visibly externally? Okay. Any further conversation on this? So that would be helpful to know whether we need to include it in the resolution [10:19:24 AM] or Thursday or if there's an alternate vehicle for that. >> Sure. We'll look into that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. All right. Let's go to the next item here. It's item -- number 33. Jimmy. >> Flannigan: So I handed out some red-lined amendments to item 33, but I think I'm more -- I just want to hear from the mayor pro tem because I think I'm just -- want to make sure I understand the sequence of direction that we've provided in the past and what this is doing. Because my recollection is -- or at least I feel like I'm still waiting to see the list of projects and [10:36:34 AM] that, the recoupative care program operates at a skilled nursing facilities >> Casar: Partly to make some things explicit I don't think are contradictory of the organize resolution but just trying to make things explicit, that I would really like for the solicitation to either -- or do both of maximize our goals in the strategic housing blueprint and/or address our goal to end homelessness and support those experiencing homelessness. And the resolution, as I read it -- and I'd be interested in hearing the sponsor's take on this -- doesn't make it extremely clear whether or not all of these things would have to happen on red river or if this site could be used to get things both at that site and nearby. And I suspect - - well, I don't have the information to know until we have a solicitation what those options are and what they would look like, so if we were to not talk about homelessness for a moment, I don't know whether somebody could come back and say I can do X number of affordable units on this site and then if somebody else could say I can do some affordable housing units on this site but I could also do even more here plus some in holly and some in cherrywood niche -- nearby. So I think I would just be interested in having all those options on the table. Basically my amendment here is trying to say that our proposal should maximize our goals towards housing, addressing homelessness and proposals could come back with on-site options, on-site and off--site options or off--site options [10:38:34 AM] that are nearby. I think this would help address potentially some of the issues councilmember kitchen raised because if we couldn't provide those services on this piece of property because of a deed restriction maybe somebody comes back and says I can't do it on this property because of a deed restriction but if you let me develop X idea on this property I can provide what councilmember kitchen raised, the land to do that and the money to do that or what have you on another site. These are all theoretical but that's the point of a request for proposals, is that we put out the goals that we want to see met and then see what people bring back to us. So I know I've been somewhat vague here but essentially I'm saying I don't know whether we're going to achieve our goals, the best on-site okay, the best off-site nearby or mix of the two and I just want to be explicit that we're open to all of those different options so we can make the best decision at the end of the day. >> Mayor Adler: I have a question for staff. Wasn't staff looking at this and other parcels? Is there someone that can speak? I seem to recall a resolution from council that said we want to actually start moving forward on properties that we own and put them to use and I think it's been pointed out here repeatedly, there's a repeated request that this council and other councils have made, but I want to know so that I can better understand the conversation that we're having here. I would like to know if staff is doing that. Are you looking at a half dozen parcels? Are new the process of that? How close are you coming back with that? Is this kinds of questions that you're already looking at? Is this different than you were looking at? Does this narrow what you're looking at? I'm trying to figure out what's already happening, if anything. >> Yes. Thank you, mayor. Christine Mcguire with the economic development department joined by [indiscernible], who are part of the repositioning of the surplus properties, the [10:40:36 AM] short answer to your question is, yes, city staff as directed by city, council is working with the interdepartmental team to look hole is lickly at this site through a number of lenses that are very broad. So this particular ifc and the amendments that are being discussed here are more narrow. What we've been looking at is its applicability for affordable housing, and a different array of community benefits that we've been looking at the 12 sites that were actually proposed during the March 6 city council work session when Greg canally and lauraine Rizer presented this new portfolio approach. So we're looking more holistically in terms of affordable housing, healthy food, low cost commercial for our creatives and a whole health and human services, for a whole array. So we've done an initial analysis on that and it was not one of those staff recommended as part of the August 3 memo that we've provided to city council because of the -- there wasn't really a clear path forward. It's in a fairly interesting area with many different kinds of competing interests that we wanted to take more -- a more close look at. These ifcs actually provide specific direction from the more holistic approach we were looking at. >> Mayor Adler: How close are you to giving us your analysis so we can take that into account in terms of whether this was the appropriate way to narrow it down? >> I think that we could -- I would actually say that one of the things that -- where we would also kind of open to include -- I guess this is a really good opportunity to kind of test [10:42:36 AM] the pulse here with members on the dais, is one of the things with the portfolio approach is that for some potential property to sell -- and this came from an eps report that was actually issued to council back in 2015 -- was it 2015 or -- sorry, 2017, to use the net proceeds from sale because this was bought at a low basis and that the market value within W an appraisal that came back a little over $30 million, take that delta and actually use to provide community benefits off-site. So that's another option is that staff was also considering, as well as part of the portfolio approach. That is certainly something we can bring back to council in the near future. >> Mayor Adler: What does near future mean? >> We are at a point where all the pesach the working group has met twice and we feel confident we could bring something back to council next month. We need to do more due diligence with a number of team members on the four that we had noted in the memo to provide a succinct report back but by next month we should have met and convened with the working group probably about four times at that point. Wee feel confident we can provide an update. >> Mayor Adler: In March you asked to take a look at multiple properties, and as we got an update this property wasn't mentioned in the August update. Can you come back to us next month with a portfolio or are you coming back with four properties that doesn't include this property? >> We can come back with an overall feedback. We have the feedback tool, which is a data-driven tool both quantitative and qualitative, as well as what the departmental group overall is recommending based on subject matter expertise across about 15 departments. [10:44:37 AM] So it would -- it can provide based on subject-matter expertise the recommendation of a broader group of folks, yes. >> Mayor Adler: To all of the properties. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Not just the four in the August memo? >> That is correct. >> Mayor Adler: Including this property? >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Houston: Mayor, if I could respond to that. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: If you remember correctly, this came up once before when Ms. Reiser was here, and she gave us a packet of information, showing us how far out if we were to do best -- highest and best use of the property, how far out people would have to go. She showed us motels and apartment complexes that were, like, 5 miles outside of the central city. The beauty of this particular piece of property is the urban land institute indicated is that we could do what we talk about all the time. We could be able to have housing, mixed-income housing from market down to 60% and below right in the middle of the most growing area, the innovation zone, creative zone, the hospital district, so that people who we talk about having to live on the edges of the community could actually live downtown, be close to all the amenities, jobs, transit, health care, and where they are working, and that's not gonna be possible based upon the data she gave us the last time she was here anywhere close to that. I think you even asked if we sold this property how many bus transfers would it take for people to get to work downtown if they worked at the hospital? And it was, like, three or four transfers. And so this is -- this will be an opportunity to say to the public we understand that low-income -- and we've got a lot of money in place for homeless people experiencing homelessness. [10:46:37 AM] This is targeting people who are working, low to moderate income, moderate income and market-rate housing close to downtown, where there are no opportunities for those folks to live. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Can you provide that to us? The memo that Ms. Houston just talked about that spoke to proximity, if we weren't going to put it here on the, as well as the analysis that went to the economic stuff. >> Houston: She had pictures. >> Mayor Adler: I remember the memo in the first one. I don't remember that one. So if you could get that memo back out to us, put both of them because they both concern the subject area back, that would be helpful. Because I don't -- I want to -- I don't know how I don't remember that. But I'll look at that. Mayor pro tem. >> Tovo: Mayor, I just want to underscore councilmember Houston's important points. So we did -- you know, to back up to two years ago, I mean, I've probably done a half dozen resolutions at this point, maybe more, asking our staff to look at and evaluate various tracts, multiple tracts, ideas for -- and I appreciate -- I really appreciate all the good work that's going on about looking broadly, looking specifically. I believe we've come to a point where we need to actually break ground on something. And the health south, councilmember Houston sponsored a resolution asking for an analysis of health south, gosh, a year ago, maybe, maybe longer, year and a half ago, and we got a report back, as she mentioned, uli has now done an analysis of this tract. And I'm really looking forward to seeing the rest of the work that's coming forward from staff, but as a council councilmember I'm really ready to uphold that commitment we've made again and again and again to the public of using our publicly owned land for affordable housing. I know from our earlier resolution on this subject [10:48:37 AM] there were differing ideas about that, about whether the best value is to sell the tract, take the money and put it into another site or to have some combination. And I -- councilmember Casar, I want to talk more about your amendment but it seems to open up that possibility. What I'm really interested in doing right now is looking at this tract and seeing what proposals we get for this tract to create some market-rate housing but primarily to create some affordable housing, as councilmember said, for the service industry employees who we know are working in the medical district or elsewhere in downtown. To me I see this as an opportunity to really take action and say we have this amazing, divine opportunity. You know, we bought this property for, what, $6 million, it's valued at a lot more. Yes, we can -- if we move forward with this kind of an amendment, I'm sure that we'll get back information that says if we build this housing somewhere, in some other part of the city, we can get more housing. I want to see what we can get on that tract and what kind of viable proposals come forward because it's critical. We say all the time we need affordable housing with all kinds of people in all parts of town, and we have not very much in downtown other than the foundation community's property and the housing authority lake shore property. And we have a great opportunity as a city to create some housing right in an area where we know we have jobs. So that's my real passionate interest in seeing this move forward on this agenda, to see what kind of viable proposals we can see come back. Then we have an opportunity to take action on them or not. And, you know, I just think it's time to take action. We're not committed. But I think it's time to take action, to see those proposals and then move forward accordingly. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy. >> Flannigan: So thank you, mayor pro tem. I think I mostly agree with what you're laying out. [10:50:41 AM] >> Tovo: I'm not surprised. >> Flannigan: Sometimes it doesn't happen. The challenge I think for me -- and this is more of a staff question, right? The challenge is to how to best understand the choices in front of us when we're talking about land that's empty but we're talking about no matter what happens the thing gets built and the costs and risks associated with that, versus this property which has a thing on it already, so this is I assume a retrofit plus maybe a little building. It just feels like that analysis would be different depending on whether or not we're leveraging an existing thing or -- I think that's where I want to have a better way to know how that decision is the right decision. >> Christine Mcguire again. I think one of the interesting things about the urban land institute affordable housing subcommittee that is chaired by a number of very good tax credit developers, recommended as part of their remittance that the -- their recommendation that the big assumption was existing property would be demolished and that demolition then would make the site ready for new construction. So, again, there is a definite congruence between the report that was sent out in 2017 to city council, which was an analysis of affordable housing done by economic planning -- eps, I can't even understand what their -- economic planning and systems group. Anyway, as well as they actually are synoptic, where the recommendation in both of those recommended that for affordable housing it would require demolition because retrofit, either an adaptive reuse without remodification or an adaptive reuse with modification was just cost probative, 320,000 a door versus the market, can be is around 180,000 a door, so it was upside down from the very beginning. So the demolition of that property to do on-site [10:52:41 AM] housing is actually something that they both agreed with. >> Flannigan: I see. That's good to know. Also curious if this process is going to include conversations I've heard from the transportation department about red river's realignment or possible realignment or if it has impact from that. >> I think one of the things -- I'm so sorry. I haven't heard of that, which -- but I do think a request for interest and a request for information -- and we do need to work with our partners more to get more recognizance on that. This particular part of the city, the innovation district, red river cultural district, the state of Texas capitol complex plan and obviously the university of Texas with the medical district smack in this very dynamic area that I do think we need to work more collectively with our partners to really rethat I. That doesn't mean that that can't happen in tandem with requests for interest. >> Flannigan: Okay. Then my last thing is just the date seems really fast and I want to make sure that staff is -- that there's the resources and time to do this in less than a month, to solicit and get back -- I don't know that seems real fast. So maybe the date should be a little bit [indiscernible]. >> I'm happy to respond to that. Rebecca giello, interim director, economic development department. We had actually done due diligence with councilmember Houston's office and there is an understanding that if we are talking about a solicitation such as a request for information, we feel like we will be at a point where the deployment of that solicitation or instrument would be well underway with the ability to provide an update. We would not have any of the information back. And I believe that there was a consensus that we certainly are okay with [10:54:42 AM] being in a position to report back the status should council approve this to move forward. We would not probably be able to report back the overall results. >> Greg? >> Casar: And I just wanted to respond to mayor pro tem's points, which I do think I feel ready on this site for us to hit the ground running and start finding out what it is that we can do with it. I think we both and probably all of us acknowledge and agree we could probably get more affordable housing off-site than on-site, and that doesn't mean that that's the right thing to do, is to go off-site. I just want us to not preclude ourselves from getting that information. I've written the words nearby also in this because if -- I don't know how many more units I could get in Hancock just north of here than I could get on this site but I would want to have that decision before me, to know if I could do 100 here, or twice as much just north of here or three times as many units. I don't know what the answer to that is and I would want to be able to make that decision as a council with full knowledge of the trade-offs rather than to preclude ourselves specifically from having that information. So I want to know what those options are because if it's -- we could get one more affordable unit a mile north, no, obviously we should do it on-site. If it's twice as many, if it's three times as many, then I think we have harder choices to make and I would rather us have to grapple with the hard choice rather than not have those options before us. So that's what I'm looking for from this amendment, is to actually have as much information as we can have when we make that decision. >> Mayor Adler: So part of my concern here is that I want this -- you know, the priority of this council is identified in the strategic work that we did was affordable housing and [10:56:44 AM] homelessness. So the resolution that mayor pro tem has brought works to our priorities that we have set. I have the same kind of questions that Greg does, too, with trying to make sure that we do that in the best possible way. I'm also -- I think that everybody, myself included, wants to do something and wants this to move forward. So I think part of of what you're seeing is just the frustration with the fact that we haven't and this has been such a clear direction for such a long period of time. I don't know what information you guys have been doing since March with respect to looking at the uses of these properties. And I don't know if there's a way to surface that or help us understand what it is that's in that blind spot. I mean, what -- are you going to be giving us something a month from now that will wish we had in making this decision on this tract today or is there nothing many the information or work you've done for the last six to eight months that would really impact this decision? Because I don't know what that is because I don't know what you've done over the last six months. I don't know if we -- would we change the solicitation? Would we be asking for different things? Would it inform that? Is that information that we need? Because I just don't know what has happened over the last six months with respect to something that was pointing to this very thing. >> Houston: Mayor, if I say. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Houston. >> Houston: -- Interject something, the same question councilmember Casar asked today is the exact same question you asked before, and that information is already out there, about how far it would go, whether you could do something in Hancock or how far out and there was concentric circles she drew us to say how far it would be before we could get to a place where we actually could provide the [10:58:45 AM] kind of mixed-income housing that we're looking for on this site. She just needs to find that document for you. >> Mayor Adler: Was she looking at city-owned land or publicly owned land? >> Houston: She was looking at both because I remember some apartment complexes over off of -- close to mopac, but, again, we'd have to get that document for you. >> Mayor Adler: Does it make sense to have a solicitation, if you're going out and asking people to say that germane to the solicitation would be someone stepping forward who says "I have a piece of land that is one stop away and I could put in that piece of land." It wasn't something that the city considered. They didn't know it was available, but I own a piece of land that's one stop away and I've put together a group to do something like what Greg is talking about. Because as you put out the solicitation to the public, you might find that kind of person or partnership stepping forward. >> Houston: And that's right. We might find that now. But at the point that we started this and Mr. Gail might have that information, they did look at vacant privately owned parcels in the area, within the general area of health south to see if that would be a possibility. And none of those were possibilities because of the costs now to do those kind of public-private partnerships. But some things may have changed but that's why the solicitation is so important, to see what is out there, specifically for mixed-income housing on that site, including where health south is and the parking garage. There are two properties that we're talking about. It's just not the health south building. We also own the parking garage. >> Mayor Adler: Greg, did you want to say something? >> Greg canally, finance. Just to kind of add some context to the work that Christine and Rebecca having [11:00:46 AM] doing, as you know, we did -- [indiscernible] There's lots of resolutions about moving forward on properties and we did present are you framework. I think the update that is coming back very soon, I think within the next plan the plan will come back to unveil that, was really as we talked about in March, each of the redevelopment opportunities, whether it would it be a portfolio approach, each of them are individual actions and it was to lay out kind of a time line and steps to start working on the rfps and rfis and so the idea of an rfi for -- because I think that's what we would recommend in this case for health south, to understand what we could get before we get plugged into a specific answer, is consistent with the work that has been going on. It could be done concurrently and then we could -- as we report out on all the efforts we could update where we are in this rfi, as Rebecca said, if this item passes we'll move forward on getting that out. It will provide information. It might provide updated information about what folks are thinking about on the expedite at the same time allows us to have a conversation with I think the partners in this same neighborhood up there, other governmental, central health as well. So I think that an rfi approach is consistent with laying out and getting moving on all these other parcels. That is what staff is working on. >> Renteria: Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Pio and then Kathy. >> Renteria: I think we definitely should look into, you know -- about finding affordable housing at that location. It's a great opportunity that we have, and I would hate to just say, well, it's a real valuable piece of property, we can get $30 million and we could probably build something further out and provide more affordable housing. But we also need to look at we need the workforce here in inner city and I would hate to put them further out [11:02:47 AM] where -- so it's a great opportunity, and I would just like to know personally know myself if -- how much it would cost and how many units we could get there and that's what I would really -- that's why I would cosponsor, because I want to find out, you know, and get that information. >> Mayor Adler: Kathy and then Ann. >> Tovo: So I think -- you may have somewhat answered my question, Mr. Canally, but I think I'm going to ask it more directly. In your initial portfolio, it sounds as if the staff in its initial consideration may be considering health south in the portfolio for sale. And was I reading incorrectly between the lines of the earlier comment? >> Yes. You're right. There was -- that is part of the consideration. And I do think this conversation that we're hearing right now is very -- fruitful and helpful to staff whether we come back in a month or whatever. It is this conversation that truly is the policy direction of city council because one of the things that that pro is predicated on -- that portfolio approach is predicated on, the city has a few -- I think ten was brought forward on March 3. Of that ten we can have different kind of public goods on all this, but I think council is absolutely right that there is only one piece of city-owned land that is really in the heart of the heart of downtown, in this very important area. That said, you know, with staff in a room, being informed by uli and all these other consultant reports, you know, we're looking at things like deferred maintenance on this, the fact that a lot of the assumption is demolition, which is fine. The information that we've [11:04:48 AM] got on the financial analysis back a year ago says that you could yield about 200 affordable housing units but with net proceeds from sale that could leverage 500 to 1500. But councilmember Houston's point is very well stated. We did not have the benefit of that other report and I'm really happy to hear that lauraine Rizer did have that. That does require even though you might get 30 million, 30 million might not go that far given our highland costs in areas outside the city and downtown. So it is exactly this policy conversation that is very helpful for staff to have about each one of these parcels. The mayor asked what new -- what new information would we have? It is this conversation that you would be able to see part of this recommendation, vis-a-vis these properties but by and large we're having the conversation we need to have now, which is fruitful. >> Tovo: To me that really is helpful. I think if the will of this council is to see how we could utilize that parcel for affordable housing then the right move is to pass this before it gets embedded within a portfolio approach that assumes its sale. And I just want to say a couple things about -- one, I think it's probably clear to many on the dais there are interests out there who want to purchase the tract. So if we have language in there saying, hey, give us your best ideas about a tract here, tract there we'll get back all kinds of proposals that aren't necessarily going to help us evaluate what we could create in terms of affordable housing on that tract. I mean, there are all kinds of interests at work with regard to the health south tract. Then just in terms of how that rfi gets written, should this pass on Thursday -- and I sure hope it will -- we -- [11:06:49 AM] councilmember Houston, I think someone may have credited me with the resolution. Councilmember Houston is lead sponsor. And there's some good criteria in there. In looking through it, I don't see that it necessarily calls out family friendly housing but I think that should be a component. There certainly will be people without children but I think we should encourage some of those units to be family friendly as well. And I know we keep getting information about it being cheaper to demolish rather than rehabilitate the existing. And I hope we can -- and if it's appropriate to do so maybe recruit some people who do -- you used the term before and it's now slipped my mind but places like art space other kinds of groups that go into existing buildings and retrofit -- it wasn't exactly retrofit I was looking for, but, you know, look creatively at how they use -- adaptive reuse, how they use existing buildings and work within the structure because it's such a sustainable choice but it needs to be a cost effective one too. I appreciate that we're getting a lot of experts saying it wouldn't be cost effective in this case but I hope we can encourage with this rfi developers who are really skilled at adaptive reuse to consider it because it strikes me that there are opportunities -- I mean, there are lots of patient rooms, maybe having one being kind of micro units with more communal facilities. It is an interesting thing to consider in terms of creating affordable space and that facility is really set up well for maybe doing something a little different. >> Renteria: Mayor pro tem, we can also look at Rebecca bane Johnson, they're doing that, the 16 floor building there. >> Tovo: Great suggestion. I hope we can also encourage people to think about using the existing structure as [11:08:51 AM] well as demolition. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann and then Greg. >> Kitchen: Thank you, mayor pro tem. I think that that is something that also -- that does need to be explored, is existing -- using the existing structure. I wouldn't want to rule it out at this point in time. I think that that would not give us all options. I want to go back to the question I raised earlier, particularly since -- if it does turn out to be a potential for reusing the building that's there, I want to ask some more about this recoupative care concept. Is this -- let me just ask the question. You had mentioned -- councilmember Houston had mentioned a restrictive -- is it a restrictive covenant? Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Is that -- who put that on? Is it on that land? Or is it on that building? Give me a brief history of what that is. >> Alex Gail with the office of real estate. Yes, the restrictive covenant was part of the deal that we made when we purchased the property from health south. And so it's on the actual -- the land and building as well that restricts inpatient physical rehabilitation hospital. >> Kitchen: Yeah. >> I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. >> Kitchen: I'm sorry. I interrupted you. I didn't mean to. >> We've asked legal to see if respite care would fall within that inpatient physical rehabilitation. >> Kitchen: Respite is different from recoupative care. We can talk about it off-line. >> Okay. >> Kitchen: Of course health south did that. They didn't want competition. >> Correct. >> Kitchen: So recoupative care would not be -- I doubt seriously they would consider that to be a [11:10:52 AM] competitive use. So, again, I don't know if that's the best use or not. I just am asking that this is a huge opportunity with this kind of facility. If, for example, it is determined that it's appropriate to adapt it, then it would be appropriate to consider what would be a relatively small piece of it for this kind of activity. And the reason I keep pushing on it is I know some of you are familiar with -- many of you are familiar with it but we have a continuing list for recoupative care, one of the best ris around, internal investments around, in terms of keeping people from going in and out of the health care system and from back on the streets. And it could be a really nice -- you know, particularly since if the majority of of this property is for mixed-income housing, it could be a very nice synergy of, you know, a relatively small number -- relatively small area for these beds and then moving them into the potential for more permanent housing over time. Anyway, I think it would be -- we would be missing the potential opportunity if we didn't examine the possibility. Again, it may turn out for a whole list of reasons that it's not either possible or the best use, but I just want to make sure that we've got that on the table. It sounds to me like it's not -- it's not something that we've actually explored yet because the first thing that we had to ask about was the deed restriction. Is that correct or have y'all already examined the possibility of using at least part of that space for recoupative care? >> I mean, I think it's -- it was something that was brought up but we'd need to look into it further. >> Kitchen: That's what I figured. Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Greg. >> Casar: Did I hear right [11:12:52 AM] that you all had analysis that's shown if we did something off-site we could do 500 to 1500 affordable housing as opposed to 200 or -- >> That is the result of the analysis that eps did that was part of the 2017 report. >> Casar: So that's your back of the napkin necessary, isn't necessarily based on -- >> It's not based on architectural engineering work. So it's based on the financial analysis that a consultant did on behalf of responding to a 2017 resolution that was pretty detailed in looking at the adaptive reuse of -- either the adaptive reuse of the building or the demolition reuse. It was very specific to affordable housing. >> Casar: And so I just want to make really clear that I have no interest in anybody's interests using this particular property. My interest is how we best advance our affordable housing goals given that we are tens of thousands of units short and over the next ten years at least 60,000 units short if we don't want to keep losing people at the rate we're losing people. And so while 200 affordable housing units potentially at this site is really exciting and I am very supportive of that potential idea, I just -- if it came back that we could do -- it sounds like a thousand or 1500, the question continues to be, well, where are those thousand or 1500? Folks have voiced if we put 1500 units out in the etj that's probably not worth it. I'd be interested for staff and my colleagues to think about if there were a boundary that would make people feel comfortable. For me if it was a thousand units in Hancock and Cher where wood compared to 200 on this site, honestly I think downtown is a place we don't have much subsidized housing but, man, those are also some of the best neighborhoods not just in the city but in the country that also don't have very [11:14:53 AM] much subsidized housing. And so I just -- I don't know if it's west of airport and south of 45age and north of [indiscernible] I don't know what it is, but if there is -- I just women-owned want to be able -- I just would want to be able to make that choice because I don't want to exclude the possibility of 800 more units because I never asked. Because I assumed they would build them, you know, east of 130 or something. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just interested in if we're going to -- no matter -- the higher opportunity the area, I understand we're going to get less units. And we've got to build units in high opportune areas. However, given this site is near, is on red river and all these locations, I just don't know if we're missing out on something that is all of our collective goal. So I just want to ask. And in the end if I ask and get nothing back, this might be the best opportunity. I just don't know if we know. Do we know that we can't get hundreds of more units in a high opportunity area? Is that something that we have tested? >> No. I believe that that would be the objective -- well, first let me just say, the direction, should the item pass, to be more broadly in asking for that level of information in a request for interest or a request for information will be helpful. And, no, we have not. I believe that that would be, to your point, one objective of an rfi. >> Casar: And so if the resolution passed as it is, it seems a little unclear to me whether or not other high opportunity areas nearby are on the table or off the table. But my amendment was just to try to clarify. >> I think the amendment would provide clarity in the language that we would put forward in the rfi. And if there is no -- you know, if there's no specific language in a item from [11:16:55 AM] council, we would just want to know that there would not be any objection in offering up the opportunity to go out to the market and draw in that information. >> Casar: And I hear a lot of folks' hesitations and I understand them. So I just would ask that people think between now and Thursday about potentially if there's some way we could craft the direction -- maybe not even with an amendment, but just some direction that we would ask everybody who responds to provide on-site affordable housing options as their number 1 thing and to give people the option to include what their off-site or mixed on-site and off-site option would be within certain boundaries. But require everybody to submit their on-site option. Because I hear that there is a real commitment and desire probably by a majority to really focus on on-site, and I respect that. And if that's where we wind up, it will still, I think, be a good decision. I just don't want to not learn what my -- what the other things are and if there's a way that we can get there it would be helpful for me. >> Houston: If I could just answer that. And I would be fine with that, with that kind of direction, because I remember from the 2017 that there was nothing except so far outside of a boundary that we're doing the same thing we're doing with we're replacing tax credit properties so people would have to ride two or three buses. The mayor said how many is a bus ride away or two transfers away? And by the time we got the information back, they were so far out that nobody thought that that was the best way to go. But, again, we'd have to find that information and share it with the council again. >> Casar: Is it okay if I post it on the message board, some ideas of potential boundaries for what a secondary bit of information -- >> Houston: I think did you a mile, 2 miles and then 5 miles out. I think that's what the original thing was. But uncles remember and I don't either but you asked the question. [ Laughter ] You asked the question. [11:18:57 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Consistent. >> Houston: Consistent. >> Mayor Adler: I appreciate your willingness to let that be at least part of the response. >> Houston: Right. There's -- still, in 2018, it's maybe even further out. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I appreciate your willingness to check on that. Alison. >> Alter: So I want to first of all step back and thank staff for having the foresight to buy this property in the first place so that we can have the conversation and hopefully we will see and sees such opportunities and be in a position funding-wise that we're able to do that. So I just want to recognize that Ms. Reiser and other staff were instrumental in seizing this opportunity for us to have a property that we bought at 6 million that's now worth 30 million. I favor the broader scope so that we do not rule out ways to advance our strategic housing goals. I do remember the presentation from Ms. Reiser, and there is a difference between someone at the city going out and finding properties that might -- we might be able to purchase with money if we sold it and giving a sense of where those could be and actually going to the market and saying do you have a way that we could make this work where we could get housing closer in and have a good use for this property downtown? Those are two very different scenarios, and we don't have the answer to what the market would provide were they given an option to have some kind of arrangement, whether it was on-site or not at health south. So for me to be able to make a decision I need to have that information. For all we know we could discover there's a place next door that would be willing to build it if they had this other building. We don't know that and if we preclude ourselves from getting an answer by the way that we write the rfi then we will not have that opportunity to get to more optimal outcome overall. The other thing that I wanted to just mention as [11:20:57 AM] long as we're talking about guiding the scope of our discussion for city-owned land, week after week after week, in all of our contracts, we keep leasing space for city services. We have got to move away from leasing space. We own city properties. Why do we never have a discussion about could these properties be used for city buildings? We are wasting money on these leases. If we had owned property we would be in a much better financial situation down the line. So I hope that as you're exploring this property that that should be just a underlying basic use for city-owned property that should be explored and that we shouldn't have to go and put a resolution together to say, well, is there a city use for our own buildings that could be used on these properties? I'm not advocating that for health south but as you're having this broader conversation please don't forget the basic of good governance and that we have to pay attention to these longer -- the longer frame of our real estate decisions that we're making for the city as a whole. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy. >> Flannigan: I just want to thank councilmember alter for bringing that up. That's a really good point. I wish I had thought of it. You know, I concur with everything you said, especially about the leases and trying to get off leases and not losing these opportunities. But, again, not necessarily be prescriptive about health south, but just generally. >> Mayor Adler: Kathy. >> Tovo: So I think there are a couple legal questions that we need answered, and are we having an executive session on anything today? >> Excuse me. There's no executive session today, and although I was on vacation happily last week I think my understanding from Debra is we are going to have an executive session on this item when we come back in November and we can do it sooner if we need to but when we get a few answers from the questions that you all have raised. >> Tovo: I guess I'm [11:22:58 AM] thinking that how we structure the rfi may be influenced by the answer to a couple of these questions, including the source of funding that was used to purchase it, which I don't see as an impediment in any way because we have lots of options. We use certificates of obligation to purchased it so there's some limitations with that regard but I don't think those are obstacles so I don't see any obstacle in moving forward with an rfi now in absence of that question. But it seems like the question about medical -- about the restrictive covenant might be useful to know. >> I think we'll have that answer for you before Thursday. We're working on the -- >> Tovo: Oh, okay. Super. Thank you. It sounds like there's some support to broaden it, and I've already spoken to that. I guess I would ask those who are considering making such an amendment, please think about how to craft that amendment, which I don't know if I would support it or not at this point because I really want information about this use on this tract, but, you know, knowing that -- knowing that there are lots of conversations going on, swirling around in the community about this tract, how do we craft that amendment in such a way that it doesn't get us back proposals that are furthering those interests and not our interest in getting real live proposals on this tract? So that's what I would say on that. And I would also just -- well, I think I'll leave at the there. I mean, I'm also being guided to some extent by aisd's process and they asked for pretty general ones. And, you know, that yielded some different kinds of outcomes. And I'd like to be a little more specific. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Ms. Houston, did you have something to close us out? >> Houston: Just one thing. As we talk about the red river realignment that's not impacting this property or these two properties at all. The red river realignment is -- stops before it gets [11:24:58 AM] to health south, so that's not an issue. That's a UT issue. And it goes from the back end of health south all the way up north. So that's not an impediment to this. And I wanted to say to councilmember kitchen that my mother was in health --health south and she was doing the same kind of care you're talking about for the homeless population. It was recoupative so they had levels of care from very hard physical therapy and occupational therapy to just recuperating from surgery until we could find different kinds of places for her to be -- to live at that point. So, yes, they did do both kinds. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Houston: It was just not a rehabilitation. It was also recuperative care. >> Kitchen: All right. >> Mayor Adler: Let's move on then. Thank you, guys. We have two zoning cases, Ms. Houston wants to address another zoning case. Jimmy, you pulled item 48. >> Flannigan: Yes. So I have a question for the mayor pro tem. This is the zoning item 48, zoning case on west avenue. I was just curious, the rezoning, it's an sf-3 and it's proposed to go to L -- lo-mu-co and the co list is pretty substantial so I wanted to know if there was context on this site or case that I need to know. Some of these, like, community gardens being probabilitied, I don't know if there's some reason why some of these are being done. It's surrounded pretty much on all sides by mf and lo, go. There's cs and sf-3 kind of two properties away from it. So I don't know what all the -- if there's a -- some community or neighborhood concern I didn't know about that was leading to these [11:27:00 AM] restrictions. >> Tovo: Sure. And I see Mr. Guernsey has his light on so I'll defer to him too. This was the product of a very extensive negotiation to change the zoning from residential in an area that is really trying to encourage residential. And the maintenance of the retention of residential property at a time where there are lots of pressures on it. So this is, as I understand it, something that came out of those ongoing discussions between judges hill neighborhood association and the property owner who I understand is possibly living on-site in addition to having these uses and was -- an arrangement that made great sense from the prospective of all parties. I would defer to Mr. Guernsey to provide additional information. >> Greg Guernsey, planning and zoning department. Yes, the applicant actually amended their zoning request before they actually got to commission. They came to an agreement. They're at 36 prohibited uses. Also there would be a modification to allow under the new zoning a little slightly greater far, slightly greater height, but tailor that development so I think it would be more compatible to what those folks in judges hill had some concerns about. Staff did recommend it. Because it came to us as an amended application that included the cos upon our consideration. And the commission also recommended the case. I think there were two neighborhood organizations. One of those judges recommendations, one of those judges hill and the other was the west downtown alliance that were in favor of the request. So yes, there's quite a few prohibited uses, but that came out of extensive negotiations between the property owner and judges hill neighborhood association before it got to the commission. >> Flannigan: So when you say that their application was amended, does that mean we can't change it? >> Well, you can certainly [11:29:02 AM] amend the request as it comes before you, but the applicant has already agreed before the commission acted to -- acted to that. Their amended application is already less than what they submitted. >> Flannigan: Maybe I meant that more as a legal question because I find myself in the situation that because of the way the application was submitted or the way the notice went out -- I have kind of a similar question on the other zoning case I pulled. What council is prohibited from doing from the dais, and does this case fall into that category? >> Alicia [indiscernible] With the law department. So I'll take a look at what notice was sent out so I can work with the case manager to see, but I believe what Mr. Guernsey was saying was that what they've amended their application to is actually less intense than what the original request was for. So we may not be able to go beyond that, but I would have to look at the notice to see what exactly was noticed to the public to see what the parameters are for council's action. >> Flannigan: And the notice is the bar over which we can't cross? Not the application, it's the notice, is that right? >> It's based on -- it's hard to answer that question without looking at everything as a whole. >> Flannigan: I keep making you answer this question over and over and over again. >> That's okay. I like to look at the full picture before I give a complete answer there. So I'd like to take a look at both the notice and the application for both of the cases so that I can give you a complete answer for these two cases. >> Flannigan: Thank you. And Mr. Guernsey, when you say that there was a negotiation, was staff involved in that negotiation or was it -- [11:31:03 AM] >> I don't believe so. I think the judges hill neighborhood association met with a representative of the owner and they came to a list of uses where they could agree. >> Flannigan: I always struggle with when negotiations are done with these -- with neighborhood associations or other groups that don't have necessarily the broader perspective of zoning that we're all charged with. I don't know that there's any desire to crack this case open as much as I would like to do it, but if there's a need for housing, the multi-family residential is being prohibited on this site in the cos. I just struggle with the -- I struggle with voting on a thing, having not participated in the negotiation, not been involved in the negotiation, no one from the neighborhood association, the applicant, has come to my office to explain why this set of cos is appropriate or necessary, why they can't have an art gallery on this site. I don't know why I couldn't have a an art gallery on this site. It's within transit services. I could go on and on, but I'll end it now. I probably will vote no on this because of the -- if we're trying to keep more housing then I feel like at the very least we shouldn't be restricting multi-family, but I guess you will get an answer to me on what we're allowed to change on Thursday. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Delia. >> Garza: I share some of councilmember Flannigan's concerns and specifically the item that I'm lead sponsor on this week is the concern for cos and how they prohibit childcare, and this co prohibits childcare. For a city that we claim to be family friendly, to have a specific thing that's -- that flat out says you cannot put a childcare facility here in what I can [11:33:03 AM] tell a location that could -- would be a good convenient location for such a facility at some point, I know that's one of the impediments to childcare facilities opening. They look at the zoning, they see there's a co, they don't have the resources to take that co away. They have to go to the next location. So as I look through what you need to look through, I will be liking making an amendment to at least take the childcare prohibition out of this. And I'd really like to know -- I'd really like to know from the neighborhood why. Why childcare? I mean, I have the same concerns about all the other ones, but that one, I mean, everybody has had to deal with -- not deal. Not everybody. But so many families it's something that we have to struggle with and it just seems like something we shouldn't be trying to prohibit. >> I'll certainly endeavor to get that information to the council before Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds good. Let's move on. Next -- Greg? >> Casar: And I would certainly want to hear why multi-family and childcare this close to downtown in this place would be prohibited. But I'm ready to listen. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Kathie? >> Tovo: And I'm willing to -- I'll certainly go back to our neighborhood representatives and ask them about childcare and solicit their feedbacks on the others, but I want to remind my sledges that this is single-family now. There is no opportunity to do other uses on that tract because it is single-family even though it's downtown. This is the product of lots conversations in this community about crafting a downtown plan that recognized the very limited residential areas we still had downtown. And said these were going to maintain residential. And that's the context underlying this conversation. The property owner is coming and asking to be able to use this property for commercial uses. That's not something we typically do in a single-family area in any of the single-family areas that all of us represent. [11:35:05 AM] So that's the nature of it. Their neighbors said we're willing to contemplate some limited commercial use, but not everything that would otherwise be allowed in a limited office category. >> Renteria: Mayor? I'm real familiar with that area there and I'm just amazed that they were able to get this passed because that's an old historic district of Austin. It's an avenue street and up from the old Austin high campus, which is ACC now. And I know they're pretty protective of their area there. So I was amazed that they were able to get this type of zoning put on there. >> Garza: To mayor pro tem, I appreciate the context, but some of the most affordable childcare in our city are in places that were single-family. My daughter goes to a childcare facility that is a single-family area. I literally live next door to a academic. In a single-family area. Some of our most affordable childcare is in those exact types of zoning categories. >> Tovo: Councilmember, I too have lived around the corner from a childcare and my daughter attend it had in our single-family neighborhood. I committed to going back to the neighborhood and asking about that particular use. I'm a co-sponsor on your resolution. I'm in favor of having those conversations around childcare. I'm trying to provide context for why the neighborhood excluded a fair number of commercial uses because of this pretty significant alteration from one to another. And councilmember Renteria offered a little more context. I mean, that little neighborhood wouldn't exist had there not been people who fought to maintain it as a small neighborhood over the years. So again, I'm trying to provide some context for why they made those choices. But I think it's completely appropriate to have the [11:37:05 AM] conversation around childcare. >> Mayor Adler: Ann, Ora and then Jimmy. Ora. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor and councilmember Garza, I believe that our attorney, seeing the condition she's in, will go and try to figure out what's going on about childcare. You -- >> Not this attorney. [Laughter]. >> Mayor Adler: Congratulations! [Laughter]. >> Alicia's little baby wants to get in on the conversation. >> Garza: I thought you were saying Ann is sick, but now I see what you're saying. >> [Inaudible]. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy. >> Flannigan: I appreciate that context, mayor pro tem. I think that's the thing I struggle with is the balance that I feel we have to strike between neighborhood groups that are always in a default to preservation and keeping things the way they are. It a national instinct. I don't think that's odd or unusual. But in a city that's growing it's a challenging set of priorities I have to B as I struggle with the co balance, I think -- this one frankly has more explanation than I normally get on a list of cos, but I hope we can get to a place where we're thinking about how the city is going incrementally and not allowing ourselves to just take every case as if it was alone because they're all interacting with each other. And nothing about this site is going to be affordable if it stays a single-family home. That's also a challenge for us. I think that it's important that we not conflate areas that are residential with areas that are single-family. One is far more restrictive and residential and I certainly live in a neighborhood and I think most of us live in a neighborhood that are a mix of housing types. I think that's really the [11:39:06 AM] type of city that we are necessarily evolving to. >> Mayor Adler: Let's move to the next one. Thank you, guys. Let's look at item 51. Jimmy, you pulled this one as well? >> Flannigan: I had a similar question because there was something that I saw in the backup around cs. >> Yeah. So the request was originally for cs-co. The applicant amended the application to lr a much more restrictive commercial category. Staff recommended the lr without a co and I believe when it probably went for the notice it probably just had the lr, but as we talked about in the last case we'll confirm that. At the time it got to the zoning and platting condition they added a conditional overlay, a single condition to prohibit drive-in service associated with the proposed financial services use. As far as we know that's not objectionable to the owner because the owner wasn't planning to build that financial service with a drive-through. It was going to be a full service bank with atm, but no drive-through on the property. So we'll check in this one as well with a notice that as it went to the commission and also to council. >> Flannigan: It's a little confusing because of the changes. So you're saying that the only co is about drive-throughs? >> That's correct. And owner doesn't plan to build a drive-through on the property. >> Flannigan: To me that falls more squarely on the other ones we've talked about recently like convenience storage whereas a policy level, under what circumstances do we want to see drive-throughs and have that be implemented at the site level and force odd to whatever properties happen to be coming up for a zoning case and all the other properties get to have drive-throughs because we have cos, more of the high [11:41:06 AM] level where these types of things should be done or not done, then we don't have to worry about it in zoning cases. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's talk -- >> Alter: I'm planning to offer 51 on consent as recommended by zap with lr on the co for the no drive-through. And I appreciate the applicant's willingness to work with staff and the neighborhood to come up with a solution that made sense for everyone. The initial application was not accepted by staff. >> Mayor Adler: Hang on a second while I have you here. Councilmember Houston, on item number 49. >> Houston: On Thursday at the appropriate time I'll be requesting a postponement of item 49. I've not had any contact with the developer until last week and the first time we could get him in is tomorrow and I won't be able to vote on one way or the other on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any reason not to postpone that one? >> That's council's desire, we can certainly work with that. Do you know how long the postponement might be? >> I'll know after we meet with them tomorrow. I just don't know today. >> Mayor Adler: So let us know if there are concerns beyond that. Last item we have is item number 58. Ann, you pulled that? >> Kitchen: Yes, I have some questions for staff. The reason I pulled this was my initial question and concern at this point in time has to do the response rate. So I am considering asking my colleagues to agree to just -- to take some more time with this. As you know, this is manchaca road which is a long road, entirely in [11:43:07 AM] district five that goes all the way from south Lamar down past the city limits in 1626. There are 1,763 property owners. And the response rate, you all may remember that part of the process is to notify owners along the road and have them give their -- share their thoughts. It's an opportunity for input. But the response rate was only 3.6%, which is 63 respondents out of the 1,763. So that just concerns me because regardless of how people may feel about it, I think that the bottom line is I know they'll want to have had the opportunity to provide their input regardless of what the council ends up doing or regardless of what the council thinks might should happen. Just anecdotally, I did have -- received a business owner who has manchaca in his business name and who is reaching out to other business owners along that road to see what they thought. And was encountering people who didn't know that this was happening. Now, of course, I'm certain that this was sent out and I don't know what causes the difference. A lot of this road is small business owners and that may -- it may be that -- because of how busy they are and stuff they may have missed it. But regardless, my question really is for you all is what could we do to actually make sure that people on this road or at least a greater percentage of them have the opportunity to comment. Do y'all have any thoughts on that? This is the first time -- this is a new process that was used this time. And this new process makes sense to me because it's an online process as opposed to people just filling out a [11:45:08 AM] form and sending it back. But there may have been some unintended consequences at least with regard to business owners. I don't know. I just 'Ed to ask y'all's thoughts on that. >> Good morning, council. Thank you for having us here this morning. I am Jim Dale, assistant director for the transportation department. I'm here with Lauren zeta, who manages the street name change process. One thing to clarify, on the change of the process, I think if you remember the Jeff Davis and Robert E Lee street name changes what we did was we would send out a survey, a paper survey and then the people that own the property, abutting the street, would fill out an envelope and put the postage on and send it back to us so we would get the results. In this case what we did is we set up an online survey and we still provided notice that we sent out the ability to phone call and we'll send out a paper survey. So it was a change in the process. But we did realize the digital divide and us needing to address that. Was that a factor in the lower turnout rate? We're not sure about that. >> Kitchen: So they had to request the paper survey? It wasn't sent out. >> That's correct. >> Kitchen: Colleagues, I feel like -- let me ask you this: What could we do about it now? That's really the question. Is there something that we could do that would provide some greater opportunity for input? >> We could definitely provide additional opportunity. We could mail out the applications and see if that reduces some -- again, we're speculating if that was the reason for the low turnout, but we could mail out those paper applications or surveys and allow them to return those to us to to see if we get some additional information or more -- a higher response rate. We could definitely do that. We talked about this earlier [11:47:09 AM] too that may cause a little bit of confusion of already sending out one innovation, but we could clarify that in a cover letter or additional information and materials that we send out. >> Kitchen: Perhaps it could be sent out only to those who respond. I don't know if you have that kind of information or if that is more burdensome than just sending out, again. Colleagues, from my perspective I feel like -- you notice these are -- of course this is a road that belongs to the whole city. This is a road where I'm hearing from my constituents and I feel like just from my perspective I want to make sure that they don't feel like they didn't know about it or didn't have the opportunity to participate. So from my perspective I would like to ask that we provide all the additional time to do what you just suggested, which is to send out the notice again. Again, that's simply because such a low response rate that's really out of line with the response rates we received previously. >> I'd like to make one comment. We can definitely do that with your direction, but just so everybody is clear the forms did go out to all property owners that live along manchaca. So some of those business owners that you might be referring to may not be the property owners. It's hard for us to know whether they were relayed the message or not. >> Kitchen: I'm glad you brought that up. This is a good point. So in thinking about it, there may be a lot of businesses that are renting property along that street and so because they are impacted, I am wondering if there's precedent or how [11:49:09 AM] we've handled that in the past. I would be interested in their input. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy and then Delia and then Leslie. >> Flannigan: Is there a reason we only notify property owners as opposed to utility customers or other tools that we've used like in land use cases? >> It's the way it's laid out in the code, the city code, is to notify the abutting property owners. >> Flannigan: So we might want to expand that to other property owners. >> Garza: I was wondering if that was a low response rate compared. What is the historical response rate for these -- >> The previous samples that we have for Jeff Davis and Robert E Lee, the average was about 20% response rate and this one, as councilmember kitchen mentioned, is down four percent. >> Garza: Where is Jeff Davis? >> That's in the one in north central Austin off of burnet road. >> Renteria: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Hang on a second. Leslie was next. So I know that judge Perkins has been working on this issue for a couple of decades, and he's talked to me about it many times in the past, and I also know that there is some dispute over the history. And we got a good email with some of that highlighted by a gentleman who sent it to all of us, rob amaroso, he sent it after 5:00 in the afternoon. He is a business owner on manchaca but he also talks about the historical context that manchaca, according to him, is a choctaw word, and [11:51:14 AM] that the -- Jose Antonio Menchaca, in the army, he said there is no evidence that he actually camped at the manchaca springs during his travels. So I know this has been lingering in the community for quite some time and I would like to kind of get some better assessment of the history involved. When we made the changes to Jeff Davis and Robert E Lee I sent my staff out to do the research at the history center to find out what we could because there was some question about which Jeff Davis were we talking about? And there was an attempt to say he was the governor of Tennessee or something like that, but we were able to establish certainly to my satisfaction. And which underpinned my discussion with these constituents on the change that the Jeff Davis that was being referred to was actually the confederate general. So having that solid kind of historical basis to make that change made a big difference, certainly in my vote because when we did the search -- I mean, the survey, the people who responded were more likely against it than for it, although the verbal contacts and the email contacts outside of the survey that I got on the Jeff Davis change was different. And was a lot more targeted and a lot more robust. So I think for me the question isn't resolved and because it has penned in our community for going on, I don't know, 25 years maybe this question? And I know that judge Perkins really, really wants to get this nailed down. He's been working on it for a really long time. But what has impeded this change along with the fact that it's an extensive road, it has a huge impact, which [11:53:16 AM] is not like Jeff Davis, a much shorter road, which was shorter -- Jeff Davis is even shorter than Robert E Lee, is the fact that so many people use that road and in local parlance it's manchaca. So we are talking about changing something that's a significant touch point for all of Austin and the people in surrounding communities going through our city. So I think we need to have really solid basis, historical base and some confirmations and verifications because if we are saying we are naming it for the Texas army general-- I want to make sure I get this -- captain, yes. If we are saying that that's why we're -- that it was a mistake and it was supposed to be named after him all along, we need to actually be able to bolster that argument. And the place to find that is in the historical record. So I would ask staff to come back with -- or whomever to really shore up that so that we can speak with authority when we talk to the business owners and the residents and the surroundings communities that use that road, if we do in the end decide to change it then we are standing on really solid ground with regard to the historic record because that's what we're pointing to at this point. And I submit that we are not yet standing a solid ground. >> Renteria: Mayor? The reason I want to change that, the misspelling. And I look at it as a misspelling was Jose Antonio Menchaca. If you look back in history, they had a segregation there too. They had a Negro school, they had a Mexican school and they had the white school there in that -- in manchaca. [11:55:16 AM] And Antonio, Jose Antonio Menchaca was -- after the revolution he fought for the rights of the Mexican soldiers that fought for Texas Independence there. And the school and manchaca is named after man and it's spelled right, men. So that's the wheel thing that we're trying to -- that's the whole thing that we're trying to correct that yes, this is -- I do truly believe that, you know, back in the back days with the Jim crow, everything got changed. We had an hispanic news broadcaster here in Austin that kept on saying Guadalupe instead of guada-loop. And he got fired from his job. So there was a lot of name change going on there in the Jim crow era here in Texas. And we're out to correct this misspelling that they did. So -- it was even more embarrassing that there was a sign put up there on Ben white that said manchac. They didn't even put the a on the end and they said it was that road. And I believe it was put up by Texas highway department. But these are the kind of-- even if they were just named after a spring, which I doubt because it was manchaca spring, but even if -- we should recognize our leaders that have fought for the independent of Texas and it would just do it justice if we just dropped that a and put an E on there. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann, is your light on? >> Pool: I wanted to respond really quick to one [11:57:17 AM] thing that Pio said. I don't know about the txdot sign, but the attribution of manchac without the final a we are being told by this gentleman who has sent us this afternoon that's a choctaw word which is loosely translated to an entrance that described their travel through the Mississippi delta. So I don't know if txdot misspelled it or if they were actually trying to be faithful to a native American representation or word. We don't know. And that's the piece that I really want to get resolved if we possibly can, whether it's named after a native American word or if it is a Texas army captain. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann. >> Kitchen: I wanted to go back to the question about additional opportunity to provide some input. We don't know what resulted in the 3.6% response rate, but it occurs to me that the fact that it could be the fact that it went to owners as opposed to businesses that are operating there. So I am wondering -- this is really my question to you all. If it would be possible to send it to the business owners along -- I guess I would leave it to you all to think about what it might be the best way and how much additional time would we be talking about? Because really my request to councilmember Renteria would just be to allow some additional time to allow for that kind of input. I know that this is something that has been talked about for quite some time so I'm not trying to delay the council addressing it. I'm trying to make sure that people feel like they've had the opportunity to respond. [11:59:18 AM] So how much more time would that take, do y'all think? >> Well, my one comment about that, before I get into the timeline, would be that the reason, per code, that that's done, is kind of the similar thing like we wouldn't send along a residential street or a fully residential street. I don't think we would typically send to renters because they don't have a long-term interest in the address of their house potentially, so that's why we send it to the property owners. And I'm wondering if that would be a similar thing. If we send it to the business owners instead of the property owners who have the long- term investment. >> Kitchen: I'm not asking instead of. I can certainly see that. First of all the code requires to the owners so we wouldn't want to do it instead of. The question really is just in addition at this point, which would make sense to me. I think that businesses are in a different situation, particularly sense the businesses that I'm hearing from are long established businesses. That has some concerns about what would be required of them in terms of the changes that they would need to make, which is a different issue than what I'm talking about right now. So really I'm just thinking that as a city the worst thing for us is to do something where people feel like they didn't have any opportunity to participate. And again, I'm not looking for a long delay or anything like that. I'm just trying to understand what that would take. >> It would probably be about two months thinking about preparing the letter, getting them sent out, having the period of time for people to respond back, tallying everything and then getting back in front of you all. So two months, I would say. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything ee?ls mayor pro tem? [12:01:18 PM] >> Tovo: Just to get back to the historical record and whether there was a mistake or wasn't a mistake. On some level I think we could try to sort that out or just consider the proposal to name it after the Texas army general that -- Texas army captain that councilmember Renteria has suggested. That's how I'm sort of approaching it. So I'm persuaded by the evidence that there was a mistake, likely a mistake. Even if that's not the case, he is by my estimation based on the research worthy of this naming and that's kind of how I'm making my consideration on this item. >> Mayor Adler: Delia and then [indiscernible]. >> Garza: I don't know if this is going to be delayed for two months, which I would strongly oppose. I want to add the additional context of I really appreciate that comment, mayor pro tem. I don't know if we're going to get to a place where this is definitive this is what it was supposed to be and this is what -- I want to add the context of as a Latino our names are often misspelled, mispronounced all the time. Just recently I can't name the number of times I've gotten things addressed to councilmember Garcia, which is really offensive to me. And so I hope whatever decision we go forward we understand that for some of the streets that we all supported changing, there was obviously clear evidence that there was a firm reason to do that because of racist, you know, issues or things like that. But those undertones are in this as well. And if it's a tossup and there's no firm historical evidence, I think we also listen to the people that [12:03:18 PM] have asked for this change, primarily the hispanic community who recognizes that -- and who have been victims of having their names butchered and mispronounced and misspelled. And I think this is -- of course there's going to be members of our community that don't want this. It is a very famous street here in Austin. But I think I want the -- it allows us to right a wrong. >> Casar: For the record I take it as a compliment when people accidentally call me councilmember Garza. >> Pool: What I would say to that is if we decide to do it, that's great. I just don't want us to be giving a reason for it that may not be accurate. So if we decide that we want to recognize captain Menchaca, that's what we should say we are doing, not because somebody years ago misspelled his name unless we can actually prove that happened. I'll just leave it at that. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? Ms. Houston. >> Houston: Thank you. I just want to say, councilmember kitchen, I understand your concern about the low percentage of returns. When we changed 19th street to martin Luther king, junior boulevard, there was uproar, but that being said I'm ready to vote Thursday for Menchaca. >> Kitchen: Could I say one more thing? >> Mayor Adler: You can close this out. >> Kitchen: I would please not want -- all I'm trying to do is make sure that people have an input process. That says zero about what I -- what I am thinking or saying about. This is not my attempt not to make a change. It's not my attempt not to understand or to recognize the problems that there have been in the past that we need to correct. Simply asking for the opportunity to let those [12:05:22 PM] folks along manchaca road know what was going on. Now, if there's a faster way to do it maybe we can pick up the phone and just call, just call them. I mean, this is a problem with our process. And I don't think -- I mean, I agree that two months seems like a long time, but perhaps there's a shorter way to do it. But I don't think it's asking too much to make sure that the businesses along that road have an opportunity to know and. And I just think that's basic representative government and I don't see the problem and I'm not each suggesting that it would change what people choose to do. I'm not even suggesting that. I'm simply saying that I think it's important for them to have that opportunity. And I can't vote for this on Thursday if my constituents are telling me, and I can see that many of them have not heard about this. And it won't be -- if I end up not voting for it on Thursday it won't be because I don't think the name should be changed and it won't be because I don't think that we should recognize someone like this. >> Garza: Mayor, I just have to say -- >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Garza: I understand your concerns, councilmember kitchen, but they have had an opportunity. I don't want this framed as they didn't have an opportunity. If you are hearing from your constituents, that means that they've heard. The fact that they're reaching out to you saying we want more time means that they've heard. So I don't -- I don't want this to be framed as if they have not had an opportunity because they have had the same opportunity, the method was different but people have had the opportunity and I want to make that clear. And everyone believes in representative democracy and transparency here and I think we should take a vote on Thursday. >> Kitchen: Can I say one other thing. [12:07:23 PM] You're right, I wasn't precise enough in what I said. The person that I heard from said that they have been reaching out to other businesses, and those other businesses said oh, I have not heard about it. So I know that there are some that have not heard about it. That's all I was trying to say. I misspoke in saying that everybody hadn't heard about it. That's not true. But there are some that have not. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I think we're done. It is 12:08, and we've concluded our work session here on October 2nd, 2018. We're adjourned.