City Council Work Session Transcript – 03/26/2019 Title: City of Austin Description: 24/7 Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 3/26/2019 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 3/26/2019 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:21:10 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think we have a quorum here. Today is March 26, 2019. We are here for our work session. We're in the boards and commissions room here at city hall. It is 9:20. We're going to start with the two briefings that we have. First the police monitor briefing and then the land development code. Councilmember kitchen is expected to arrive about 9:30. And councilmember harper-madison won't be joining us until afternoon. Before we get to this, so we can let the chief go, I had pulled item number 15, which concerned the brush square master plan. I just wanted to let my colleagues know that I was going to bring an amendment to this item to ask that the city manager consider developing a plan determining a location and identifying funding to relocate fire station number 1 as part of the brush square master plan. That was called for in the plan that we're taking a look at. Obviously moving that fire station, no one knows where we can move to. That's going tomorrow packet the ability to be able to implement that plan, so it's just taking that item and suggesting that we get really serious about trying to find an alternative location so we could actually do something. It's not going to be easy to do, but that location right now is going to get ever more increasingly challenged with respect to traffic and safety and ability to get in and out. So I had pulled that one just to give notice of that effort. Okay. Anybody have any other questions on this item? [9:23:11 AM] If not, I'm going to let the chief go. Gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us this morning. Let's then move to your briefing. >> Good morning, city manager, mayor, councilmembers. My name is [inaudible - no mic] I'm the director of the office of police 80. Oversight. I'm here to give you a brief update on where we are with the office. Today we'll talk about the framework for civilian police oversight. The opo transition advisory committee, our new mission, branding and efforts at community engagement and our online complaint form and website. The new framework for our office consists of four parts, accessibility. And when we talk about accessibility I'm talking about particularly with access to our office and access to the process and improving that. Community engagement, we're really making a strong effort to engage the community through partnerships with community organizations, neighborhood associations, faith-based communities, really to introduce our office to the community as well as . Building partnerships. And of course, a key component of what we do is accountability of the Austin police department. And improving transparency. So after the ordinance and the contract was passed in November I thought it was important to bring another group of people together as we're building this new office. And this advisory committee, it consists of about 10 individuals across the community and they've committed to meet with me and my staff once a month for two hours really as a sounding board to talk about different aspects of the office. And so we've had two meetings so far, three meetings actually, so far, initially we talked about kind of the goal of the community and that was facilitated by Carey [9:25:12 AM] o'connor. And then we talked about our mission statement and they helped us revamp our mission statement. And our last meeting is we went through our complaint form and they provided us some feedback on the complaint form. So I found this committee really helpful to us because we don't want to really build this office in a vacuum. We need that community feedback. We need the perspectives so that we can implement and execute what the community has been asking for. And I'm really honored to have this group of people. They have been 100% committed and their feedback has been phenomenal to us. So our new mission statement. The estimate consists of four part. Looks at conduct, policies to enhance accountability. Increase transparency and also to build sustainable partnerships throughout the community. One of the things that we learned last year is that we really needed to improve our community engagement. And have been able to bring on two community engagement specialists and two interns who have really hit the ground running. They have their -- they've created the motto partnering with our community to create positive change, which is really important because that is a goal of what we're trying to do in this office. And so they've participated in community resource fairs, various events throughout the community, for example, black business week, the Chinese new year, but bun thing that we've implemented that is different is the community office hours. And we go to a library in the community and they're coordinated by month and district. So for example, in the month of March we're in district 3. Next month in district 4 and we're there from 3:00 to 7:00. And it's a chance for us to introduce ourselves to the community, but if a community member wants to file a complaint they can do that. Our office is staffed with a community engagement specialist and a complaints specialist so we are able to make those connections. [9:27:12 AM] Tomorrow we are -- it's kind of our official launch. We will be at the Ruiz library from 3:00 to 7:00 and we will have demos on the new complaint form and again it will still be an opportunity for the community to come and meet us and submit a thank you or a complaint with us on the spot in the library. And we plan on scheduling these, we have our next quarter Ed scheduled, but this is something that has been successful for us so we will continue to do that. Right now our intern, we have two interns, actually three interns. Our intern from UT is working on a know your rights info session and she's done a phenomenal job and so we're looking forward to partnering with community organizations to hold presentations on know your rights and we'll also be doing info sessions on the new complaint form. So those are a few things that we have on the horizon. And I want to introduce you to our new website ww.atx delete policeoversight.org. On one side is the mobile version it helps to really streamline our process, improve the technologies was new website. So you will see right at the top someone with click on, file a complaint or send a thank you. And then the bottom half of the page just talks about the office in a very straightforward way, but we know that when people come to us they want to do one of those two things, so it was important for us to put that right at the front so that people can see that right away. And then you will see the complaint form again on one side the desktop version and the next the mobile version. And what's important about this is that from the feedback that we receive from the community we change the order in terms of the question that we ask. So what we really need to know, what's most important is time, date, location. So we put that upfront. And then the information in terms of, you know, if someone wants to provide their name or any additional information, that's optional. So really when you click on the form, you'll see that [9:29:14 AM] what happened first. You can click on the map to point where it happened. And then at that point you could really click submit. The names again, just because we can accept anonymous complaints, is optional. Some people have chosen to do that, some people have not. But really what the big change about this is is before you would have to put your name and information at the top. Now we've changed that and put that at the bottom and it's completely optional. The same thing for the thank you form. You'll see again desktop and mobile version and it's the same process. If someone wants to tell us actually what happened first, why they want to thank the officer, what the officer did, and if they want to submit their name in the information, that part is optional as well. So very similar forms. The complaint form comes to us directly at police oversight at austintexas.gov. It comes to our office and internal affairs and the internal affairs is responsible for sending it to the officer and the chain of command. And that is a quick update on the office of police oversight. We have our social media up and it's been very well received. And I'm really excited about the next steps for the office. Happy to answer any questions. >> Mayor Adler: Any questions? Mayor pro tem? >> Garza: If the district 3 are starting this month -- >> We did have community office hours in January and February. >> Garza: Okay. I thought you said you were kicking off this month. Okay, thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Any other questions? Yes, councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. It's very exciting and I've seen you everywhere in terms of social media so I think it's a really important step in the direction of establishing this complaint process as open and accessible for folks around the community. I wanted to get a sense if [9:31:14 AM] you had seen changes in the types of complaints or if it's -- if you have any initial data on how folks are interacting with that process in terms of the kind of complaints that we're seeing or the information that we're receiving through the thank yous or other things. >> So so far the form has been live for a couple of weeks and we've received 10 online complaint forms and about three thank yous. And so I think what's most important, we're not really seeing any trends yet, but I'm glad to see that people are using it. Because what I've been saying publicly is that we really just need the information, and so it's been helpful getting our -- the word out about our office through social media and with this new form, which is very simple. We've really received a lot of feedback on it. But I think it's going to take some time before we start really seeing some trends in the complaints, but I'm just really glad to see that people are really starting to use it. >> Alter: Is it part of your purview to provide reports to council on those trends as they emerge? >> Absolutely. So I believe the ordinance states that I -- we are to give a briefing annually to council on our office. >> Alter: Great, thank you. >> I did forget to mention that we're launching the website in English and Spanish and then in phase 2 we will have it translated into other languages that are most spoken in Austin. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? Doing a great job job. Thank you. Leslie? Councilmember pool. >> Pool: I wanted to thank you for all of the work you've done to put this together and I really like that the number of the month corresponds with what district you will be in because I think that little pneumonic makes it easy to remember. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Thank you very much. Manager, do you want to lay out the land development [9:33:17 AM] code? >> Mayor, council, I put this on the work session agenda today to simply provide an overview of the memo that was distributed on March 15th. I know that since the last work session where I Teed this up of saying that this is my recommendation for the initial first step of doing the land development code rewrite, after the August August 2018 resolution, I know that spring break has been -- we've had spring break since then and south by southwest and so the purpose of today's briefing is simply to provide an overview for everyone to be on the same page about what is in this memo and what's not in the memo, but for those that may have been paying attention or for those that are just seeing this for the first time, it's really important to get everyone on the same page. So I've asked Rodney Gonzalez, assistant city manager, and Brent Lloyd, to walk us through that memo, but I just wanted to thank everyone for their patience as we gathered information P I want to thank the community for input on really thinking about what has worked well and maybe what could be improved since the last process, and it continues to be my recommendation to the council that this is the first step that we need to take in the land development code rewrite. So with that I'm going to pass it over to assistant city manager Rodney Gonzalez. >> Thank you, CI manager. Rodney Gonzalez, assistant city manager for economic opportunity and affordability. Before I get started I just wanted to say thanks to the staff that was involved in the policy guidance development. Brent Lloyd to my right-hand side who recently transitioned to development services department, Jessica king, Erica Lopez, Greg Dutton, lacy Patterson, Laura debting and Mindy Garwood. As the city manager mentioned, the policy guidance is the most prominent questions we've seen and heard and they surround issues and concerns that were discussed among the staff, community, boards and commissions and council yourselves. The list of questions within the policy guide focus on [9:35:18 AM] housing capacity, missing middle housing, compatibility standards and parking, which are all strad essential to the land development code. We are here to provide an overview of the policy guidance document and at this time I will turn it over to Brent Lloyd. >> Thanks. Good morning, mayor and council. Brent Lloyd here today in my role as development officer for dsd and member of the staff team that Rodney just introduced. On behalf of the team I'm going to provide an overview of the manager's memo, which is titled matter of factually, land development code policy guidance. I'm going to add some context for y'all to consider. The memo represents kind of a new approach to moving forward with the code revision. And we want you to understand the thinking behind the various options that are presented as well as general suggestions for next steps. Staff will be available to answer some questions if you have any, but our goal for today is definitely to keep this briefing at a fairly high level. The item can be posted on future agendas for more focused discussion as well as potential action. The memo that's before you I think is passed out is posted on the internet and it was issued a March 15th. And we have extras available as well for anyone in the audience that would like a copy. Before we dive in, I just want to say a few words about what the memo is intended to do as well as what it's not intended to do. First and foremost, the memo is meant to help you set the direction for the code revision going forward. It does that by breaking down key issues for your consideration and suggesting a range of options for addressing each issue. [9:37:19 AM] Getting your direction on all these topics will help better focus staff's effort at code development and it will increase the chances that the new process results in a code which meets your goals and objectives. The memo is also intended more simply to provide a way for everyone to get started again and that includes council, staff, as well as members of the public. And to really help us reengage in the hard work of revising the city's land development code. It's been six months since the prior effort was brought to its conclusion and the team with the manager's leadership felt that the topics covered in the memo will help refocus our attention to the land development code overall and provide a meaningful transition between the last process and the new one. All that said, the memo is just a memo. It's not intended to limit council's direction now at this initial stage or in the future when an ordinance is eventually presented for your consideration. The options are points for you to consider and can easily be expanded or modified to include additional clarification. So with that context in mind I just want to dive in and provide an overview of the memo. And I think a good place to start for those of you that are referring to document would be the list of questions that are set forth at pages 2 through 3 of the memo. Each of these questions is accompanied by an appendices that provides additional background information, planning, options and data. As the manager notes in the introductions -- the introduction to the memo, the questions selected are drivers for many of the code requirements that are featured prominently in the land development code. For that reason getting some direction on these questions will add significant value to the code drafting process. It will help to focus [9:39:20 AM] staff's efforts, as I mentioned, and ensure that the next iteration of the code better meets council's objectives and goals. It's important to note that the questions are not an exhaustive list. The land development code is about much more than parking, compatibility standards, even housing types. You know, going forward, whichever option council chooses in terms of the overall scope, other policy questions will arise. There will be other issues that need to be discussed. But these issues that are listed at pages 3 through 4 were very prominent aspects of the debate surrounding the prior effort and we felt that they again provide getting direction on these questions would provide strong guidance for the revision process going forward. So the first question is an overall scope question. It's the one question that doesn't relate to a specific regulatory topic. And just to read the question, to what extent should the land development code be revised? And there are different options for that. Option a, adopt a new land development code. And that option can be broken down into really two separate ideas. One would be a new land development code text, you know, the actual two-volume document, as well as a zoning map that would implement the zoning districts that are set out in the text, and the two would take effect concurrently. The second option would be to adopt the text only and defer its effective date until council has time to do a more comprehensive and thorough zoning map analysis. That's an option that some cities have also pursued. I think both options have been used in different municipalities around the country when they're undertaking a huge effort like what we're considering today. Option B is to adopt a more [9:41:22 AM] limited set of amendments to the existing land development code that would target improvements in one or more policy areas. You know, as the memo sets forth, there are definitely pros and cons to each option. The more significantly council wants to change the land development code, the more structural sorts of revisions you all want to make by breaking open zoning districts, creating new zoning districts, establishing new procedures by which applications are considered and reviewed. The more you go in that direction the harder it is to just do limited amendments. The more those changes have ripple effects throughout the code that would necessity so many amendments to individual sections that it becomes very difficult not to simply adopt a new document. But certainly if council wanted to just focus on a particular area, parking, compatibility standards, housing types, certainly that would lend itself to a more focused and narrow effort. For now, at this stage, at this transition stage, the manager has chosen to limit the recommendations to just this question. And the recommendation is that we stay the course with adopting a new code. The new code as touched on in the memo. The idea of adopting a new code is driven by more than just concerns about the individual policy areas. It's driven by concerns that were identified in the 2014 land development code diagnosis report that outlined many ways in which our code has become unwieldy over time. It has a lot of provisions that conflict, provisions that don't necessarily reflect practices as they exist today and provisions that are unclear and that have created, you know, problems for staff as well as the community. [9:43:24 AM] So staff has suggested that we stay the course with adopting a new code, but we want you all to have a chance to revisit that question. It was a question that was brought up throughout the prior process and we wanted to lay out all the options and going forward we'll be able to discuss the nuances of each one in more detail. So the remaining questions, 2 through 5, are really the regulatory policy questions. And I think they are the heart of the memo and I want to thank again the Paz team that director Guernsey made available to work on this memo and all the effort that they put into helping to frame the issues and provide what we felt was the most relevant background for each one. And before we just kind governor through each question -- kind of go through each question I want to talk about the options. We presented for each of these questions three different options. They are broken down into option a, which is essentially to maintain the level of regulatory protections that are afforded by the current land development code. Option B, which is to generally shoot for the same kind of changes that were implemented through draft 3 of the prior codenext. And corporation C, which is -- option C which is to go further than previously and go in an expanded direction towards the goals that the draft 3 document sought to achieve. Each of the options is amenable additional clarification by council. For example, option a, which is to maintain the level of [9:45:25 AM] protection afforded by current code. That need not be read as an endorsement of the status quo. Option a would easily be accompanied by the city to do additional planning to look at enhancements going forward. Option B, the draft 3 effort, likewise need not be read as necessarily a full endorsement of the codenext document. Ed I think everybody in the memo emphasizes this that draft 3 needs revisions, a lot of revisions even apart from the questions that are before you today. A lot of changes and corrections were identified during the public process. In draft 3 you could certainly include some clarification that highlights the things you like about draft 3 and the things you didn't like. Option C, which we're referring to as the expanded option, lends itself to further direction from you all. The memo on drawing from the different choices that are suggested for option C identifies recommendations that the planning commission made as well as in a few cases ideas that council itself proposed through various resolutions over the years. If you go with option C for a particular policy question, you can certainly choose to identify particular measures that you would like to have considered as well as identify other measures that maybe you're not interested in pursuing at this time. And the report under option C tries to give you some ideas, tries to identify specific measures that have been discussed and debated in the community during the prior effort. So with that we'll just [9:47:26 AM] briefly go through the particular policy questions starting with the regulatory questions that are 2 through 5. In order to achieve the 135,000 additional units recommended by the strategic housing blueprint, and those options, again, making use of the structure that I just described are to option a maintain for the level of housing capacity that's established in the current code, which is approximately 145,000 units. Provide a level of capacity that's comparable to draft 3 or provide greater housing capacity in draft 3 through some of the enhanced measures that are discussed in the memo. Housing capacity is not a science, it's more of an art. And as you all know from the prior discussion and debate around draft 3, setting that number is definitely -- requires a lot of careful thinking. The core idea behind housing capacity that I think staff has tried to set forth in the appendices is that market forces will often prevent properties from redeveloping or adding additional housing. So the more properties that are available that have the entitlements to provide housing, the more likely the stars are to align to actually get development that produces additional housing capacity. But again, that is not a science. There's not a magic number. There's not an algorithm. It takes careful judgment, careful planning as well as consideration of other goals. Housing capacity is affected by a lot of things. The other questions that follow question 2, the missing middle housing [9:49:26 AM] question, the parking question and the compatibility standards question, all those on your decision on how to tackle those questions also have the potential to very directly affect housing capacity. But housing capacity is broader than that in the sense that this question, the options that are provided for this question also include potential map changes. One of the issues that was discussed in the prior process was the extent to which a new zoning map, if you choose to continue with adoption of a new zoning map, the extent to which the map should apply new Zones right out of the gate or whether it should use a place holder zoning category that maintains the status quo temporarily for some areas of the city to then be changed with a rezoning process later on when fuller planning can be considered. And the choices that are made with respect to mapping also will affect housing capacity. The third question -- and I guess just very briefly, the options that are suggested for the the expanded option, which is option C, include some very basic measures that sort of percolated to the top of the discussion during the prior effort. Those include increasing by right entitlements, entitlements that are available administratively without necessarily participation in any sort of discretionary approval process. The second, and these are outlined in page 15, a second would be to further expand the density bonus program. Draft 3 made considerable efforts to proceed with expansions of the density program and you all are considering additional options through the [9:51:27 AM] resolution called affordability unlocked, but certainly pursuing new measures along that line is definitely an option for this question. Changes to non-zoning regulations? During the discussion around the -- around draft 3. Even if your zoning entitlements seem to allow a particular amount of density or housing capacity, there are times when other regulations, drainage regulations, watershed regulations, parkland dedication regulations, may have the impact of preventing people from achieving that level of capacity. And so it was suggested through I think motions that the planning commission voted on as well as other -- at least one other measure that council suggested through a resolution, it was suggested that we really look at how those other non-zoning regulations interplay with zoning regulations. If council chose to -- I think page 16 of the memo kind of goes through some of those options more specifically, but if council chose to endorse this option, staff would have to do some hard work. Staff would have to work with other departments and carefully consider kind of what the impact of relaxing some of those standards would have on other important goals for the city. So should council choose to, you know, direct staff to consider some of the options that are outlined at page 16, staff would not necessarily come back with all of them. Staff would not necessarily come back with a proposal that, you know, substantially reduces all of these regulations. It would definitely require some interdepartmental review and coordination. But we definitely think there is opportunity with each of these areas to make [9:53:27 AM] some targeted and tailored changes that would have the effect of letting people get closer to the maximum capacity allowed by the zoning regulations. And as mentioned -- as I previously mentioned, all of the other options, all of the other questions, missing middle housing, compatibility standards and parking, also have the potential to affect housing capacity. So let's transition now to policy question 3, which begins at page 19. And this question is basically to what extent should the land development code encourage more missing middle housing types such as duplexes, multiplexes, townhomes, cottage courts and accessory dwelling units. You know, in the options available include maintaining the range of housing types provided for by the current land development code, provide for a range of types that are comparable to draft 3 or provide for a greater range of housing types than were offered in draft 3. Draft 3 included what I believe staff -- I believe planning staff feel like were fairly modest enhancements to the range of housing types that are available relative to current code and there are certainly, you know, a great deal of housing -- different housing types that are allowed under current code as well. So the options available to you again are really to sort of preserve the range of housing types that are already available under current code, to go the draft 3 rout and beginning at page 21 it kind of outlines the ways that draft 3 of codenext sought to increase housing types. And then the third option again is to pursue some further eat [9:55:28 AM] would go further along the lines that draft 3 sought to pursue in terms of opening up further opportunities for different housing types. And those options include mapping new transition areas. Further reducing barriers to missing middle housing. Compatibility standards. And that's question 4 and that starts at page 25. Compatibility standards are an important part of the city's code and they've been in the code I think since 19 81 -- 1981 and they're intended for the ordinance adopt compatibility standards specified for neighborhoods from the impacts of adjacent commercial and industrial development. There is some indication in the record of sort of development that's occurred in the city, the compatibility standards may have impacts on housing capacity and that compatibility standards can at times create a certain level of uncertainty. Unlike most regulations, compatibility standards are not triggered solely by how a property is zoned, but they're triggered by some of the -- by how adjacent properties are actually being used. There were a number of options considered in draft 3 for sort of attempting to moderate the impact of exalt standards on housing -- compatibility standards on housing standards and those are set forth in the memo. Other things in terms of reducing the impact of compatibility standards would include having the regulations really be structured in a more traditional way in the sense that they would be triggered by the zoning of a property rather than how a property happens to be being used. [9:57:31 AM] The goals of compatibility standards as staff has outlined in the memo are also things that can be furthered through more careful mapping of transitionnary Zones along corridors and adjacent to neighborhoods that are the most likely to be impacted by commercial uses. Compatibility standards everybody recognizes serve important goals and they're an important part of the code and it's not an issue easy to address, but I think planning staff has done their very best to kind of outline the pros and cons and the trade-offs that sort of attach to each of the three options presented. Parking requirements, and this is the last of our regulatory questions to touch on, and then we'll open it up for questions. The question set forth at page 32, to what extent should the city's minimum parking requirements be modified to provide additional opportunities for development and/or encourage transit options consistent with imagine Austin. The options, again, are to maintain the parking requirements that are comparable to current code, reduce the impact of minimum parking requirements in a manner similar to what draft 3 sought to do and then finally go further in the direction of reducing minimum parking requirements. This is a fairly basic and, I think, easy to understand issue. Parking provides important benefits. People have to park as much as the city, through its various planning efforts, wants to incentivize and move further in a direction of not being dependent upon cars and of emphasizing transit, people still have to drive. And parking is an important value, and the regulations serve to try to ensure that sufficient opportunities to park is available. But it also has impacts. It has impacts on [9:59:32 AM] walkability. It has impacts on the viability of transit. And it has impacts potentially as well on housing capacity. So the document starting at page 33 and going through towards the end of the document at page 39 just kind of gives you an overall summary of what our current code does with respect to parking, how draft 3 sought to, you know, make some targeted reductions to minimum parking requirements, and then the options that are available for sort of further expanding the scope of parking reductions that were afforded by draft 3. So those are my comments regarding the memo. We hope it's a useful document, and we hope it provides a good transition into the next phase of this process of revising our land development code. Again, planning staff are available potentially to answer some questions, and we'll open it up for questions, but we definitely -- you know, we're here to talk at a high level. The manager has indicated that this can be an item on future work session agendas and we anticipate further, more focused discussion will occur in the near future. >> Mayor Adler: Just real quick, housekeeping, the -- we received a II page memorandum today and then the document goes from pages 1 to page 37. So there's not a 38 and 39 in case anybody looks for that. >> I apologize. >> Mayor Adler: Not a problem. Just want to make that in case anybody was trying to follow along. So, manager, do you want to address this? >> Sure. Again, really thank staff for that overview. The goal today was simply to provide that overview for both the council and for the community. That was a lot to take in, but as Brent said, just moving forward with what that appropriate next step is from where we left things [10:01:33 AM] in August, I really feel that, as I said in the last work session, that providing some additional policy guidance before we can even develop the kind of work team, if you will, the project team even, what -- the next steps in the process, this is the first step in determining what that would be. So I look forward to this continued dialogue. Again, I anticipate, with council's agreement, putting this on the work session agenda on subsequent meetings and also on the council agenda. So not only if you're prepared to or ready to vote on any of these questions, but also allowing the public to weigh in because that agenda item could be pulled and individuals could speak on it at that time as well. So with that, if there are any clarifying questions, that would certainly be welcome. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember kitchen. >> Kitchen: I wanted to just first off thank you all for this. I know it was quite a bit of effort to put together, so appreciate that. And thank you, city manager. So I wanted to stay on the process question for a minute. I think it would be helpful at some point, when the council is ready, for us to lay out in a little bit more detail how we want to proceed to address policy questions. And what I mean there exactly is I'm wanting to make sure that the public understands on what days we are actually going to take this up and, also, whether we want to consider a process where we say at X council meeting we will do public hearing and at Y council meeting we'll vote, or some -- I don't have a preconceived idea about how that happens. I just think that laying out [10:03:34 AM] those near-term expectations in terms of how we'll handle the policy would be very helpful for people, both for the public to understand how they should proceed and what days they should be talking with us publicly in a hearing and how we -- so we will understand what to expect. So at whatever the right time is, I think we should have that conversation. In my mind, I think that I'm wanting to move relatively quickly. So, you know, so I might propose -- I just want to give you a concrete example. I'm not set on this, but just to give you a concrete example, so we might say on our April 11 work -- council meeting we're going to have public testimony. And we might say we'll then vote on April 25, or whatever it is. Or we may set other dates. Or we may say this is such a -- this is an important topic that we want people to have enough time that they're not speaking to us at 10:00 at night, we might say, well, maybe we just need to set aside a day, although I know that's always a problem. Anyway, I just think we need to be real clear on when we're gonna hear from people and how our process is going to allow to hear from people and then vote. So. . . >> Mayor Adler: I think that is worthy of discussing so that we kind of lay that out. Just to throw an idea out there, too, for folks to consider, the manager had said putting it on the agenda at the work sessions and at the council meetings in April, that makes sense to me, too. Since we obviously haven't discussed this, this was just given out, my hope is that people might go to the message board now in response to this even before we would gather on the 11th. That might give us a feel [10:05:36 AM] for where some people are thinking. But maybe -- in order for me to feel comfortable answering that question, I'd like to hear back from people first because I don't have a feel for where collectively we are. But I could see us at the meeting on April 11, after people have weighed in or after the community has spoken to us, answering those kind of scheduling questions on the 11th. But as a default thinking about putting it on the agendas for the ninth and the 11th for the work session for the two meetings in April and then at that first work session or first week we could then say, okay, this is whether we are. That's what I think I would propose. Councilmember Flannigan and then councilmember tovo. >> Flannigan: Manager, remind me when this memo went out? Because we didn't get it today. We got it, like, two weeks ago, was it? >> March 15. >> Flannigan: March 15. So my hope is that we can actually have that discussion now, mayor, because I think we've had time to kind of contemplate what the memo says. I think councilmember kitchen has a good kind of first idea, is to say have this on the agenda for the first meeting in April as an opportunity for deliberation and public testimony, kind of like a first reading situation, as we might do on an ordinance, even though I think it would probably take the form of a resolution. And then hearing the public testimony on the first meeting in April, maybe doing some initial amendments, just getting a sense based on that testimony and then adopting it at the second meeting in April to formerly kick off the staff process. I'm certainly prepared to have us do that work in the month of April and get this into the drafting process as soon as possible. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: As we continue to talk about a time line I think it's important we note be voting on the same day that we're having public testimony for the first time, and that seemed to be [10:07:38 AM] unclear in our conversations about April 11, which would be our first day to have public testimony. >> Casar: Mayor, I hadn't thought exactly about time line, but the way that councilmember Flannigan and councilmember kitchen and yourself sort of laid out that we could have testimony one day and then dedicate another day to trying to have a final vote makes a lot of sense to me. I'll -- for me, the questions around time line and scope and the policy issues are intertwined and public testimony, all those things to me kind of fit together as one. We have been hearing many of the same things for years now, right? Imagine Austin was passed, I think, back in 2012. So we can't wait another six or seven years to address the things that people are bringing up then and bringing up constantly to us that need to be addressed. I hope that we can provide addressing housing costs, the help that we can provide addressing environmental damage, what we can do to help people get to child care, to their job more easily, we have to do what its that we can this year, understanding that we might not be able to get absolutely every single thing done perfectly all within a single year. My answers to the policy questions generally -- and of course I'm open to hearing from the public more and working with our colleagues, and I know it's gonna take time, but my answers generally are that we have to take concrete steps in 2019 to address those issues because we've heard from folks so often and so long, not that they want to see government work slower but they want to see us address their problems as quickly as we can. So whatever it is that we can do in 2019, votes that we can take that actually map changes in 2019 to address the key issues that the manager has laid out in the memo is really important to me. [10:09:38 AM] So I just don't -- I don't want to spend so much time trying to figure out exactly the right housing capacity such that we're in 2020 or 2021 or 2022 and we've missed out on addressing the housing needs because we've taken so much longer. The environmental damage caused by sprawl and not meeting our housing goals continue to happen and so the more that we can try to get something significant done for the community in 2019 I think is really critical, and I think to is stay on that kind of time line I do want to try to hold ourselves to getting a vote out to the staff in April, that answers a, B or C to each of those questions, as you've asked, manager, and then provides some additional direction. I like the idea of on the message board sort of trying to hash out what that concise direction could be so that staff knows what it is that we want and so that staff could be successful in bringing us something back and we can work thoughtfully and deliberately across our districts to get to the end goal. But to me, so many of my answers will flow from the public input we've had and the search -- planning that we have already done with the strategic housing blueprint, we know our housing capacity doesn't get us to the goals in our blueprint and people will be displaced and our city will become more exclusive if we don't get there. We know the missing middle goals we set are 30 percent of our housing should be, of a housing type more accessible to more kinds of people. We know our current code and codenext draft 3 we're not doing that well and with our mobile metrics we've set we know we can't get there with what it is we have now and if we want a transit investment and have great transit planning we should make sure we have a land development code at least pointing in that direction. We need to make bold steps to help our community quickly but not drag it out such that we're actually hurting our own cause because we're trying to get absolutely every piece done [10:11:39 AM] absolutely right in a single year. We have to just do our very best I think this year. So I'm ready to answer your questions as you've laid them out, probably provide some additional direction and know that my answers on compatibility and parking and other places flow from the planning that we've already done and the things we have heard about protecting our environment, slowing displacement, making our community more affordable and accessible and for us to do that I think we have to move quickly and listen to one another and continue to work with the community on it so I don't think working fast means we aren't listening, I think it means that we are and I continue to hear that we just need to do something. So I'm good with that kind of a time line, and I appreciate the memo as you put it out. You're forcing us to make choices and I think putting those choices out there in our responses makes a lot of sense. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. In preparing for today's conversation, I went back to a document that mayor Adler and councilmember kitchen and I prepared back in feb February 2018 that laid out shared goals for the land development code and I wanted to share that again with my colleagues, particularly our new colleagues who may or may not have seen it. Because for me this document still guides how I'm thinking about the land development code, and I think there's value in us also recognizing where we do have common agreement. The memo is very much shaped to focus on the disagreement, and I think that in any situation where we're trying to solve a problem or address something, understanding and recognizing the common ground of where we're sitting in the shared values is a useful place for us to be starting in terms of recognizing our shared goals and intentions. The choices before us, as presented in the memo, involve trade-offs. I believe that if we roll up our sleeves and we are [10:13:41 AM] willing to dive a bit into the nuances that are there that are not necessarily in how they've been presented, I think we can come up with some direction moving forward, and I'm committed to trying to do that. We have a lot of work ahead of us. I'm not sure whether the timetable that has been put forward by my colleagues is fully realistic, but I took it as an example of how we could move forward. But I do -- I would ask that my colleagues maybe take a look again at that document because I think it's really easy for us to feel like we don't agree, and I think we have come a long way in terms of things that we do agree on and there are pieces of it that are not part of, say, the questions that are before us that set us in the right direction for making the revisions for the code that we would do well to remember. So for instance we -- I think there's pretty broad agreement that we want to have more residential options within commercial things. There are a lot of places where there are broad agreements that would take us in a step -- in a direction of a code that will allow us to reach our goals. So that's what I wanted to share today. >> Mayor Adler: Delia. >> Garza: I think it's important to have the discussion now and as soon as possible, and I think I like the -- I hadn't actually thought about that, thank you for bringing that up, councilmember kitchen. I think that's -- I like that plan, having some public hearing on the first April council meeting and then taking these votes. I, too, am ready to vote on this. I appreciate the way that it has been laid out. Looking at the team, I really like the team that you've put together, and I really like that there's a lawyer explaining those nuances and helping us [10:15:45 AM] understand -- >> Nonpracticeing. [ Laughter ] >> Garza: Okay. I think once you go to law school your life is changed forever. There's so much gray in the world. [ Laughter ] Yeah. I agree that it will be hard to do this in a year, but I think it's important that we do as much as possible this year. There has been a lot of work, a lot of community engagement, and I think we can build on that. And every time we talk to our constituents, they give us examples that are, you know, displacement examples, gentrification, affordability issues, and they're all giving examples based on the current code, based on the system that we are boring with. And we have to change that. We have to -- there's gonna be trade-offs and it's gonna be really hard. I mean, this in a yea reminds me of connections 2025 when we revamped the things we did at capital metro and it was an extremely hard decision and we took away some routes, added some routes, but in the end we're serving more people. Ridership is going up. I wasn't a hundred percent happy with the way that worked out, but it was an important step in changing the way we serve our community and improving the quality of life and making sure that all types of people can continue to call Austin home. And so I'm a hundred percent on board getting this done as quickly as possible, getting as much work done. It's gonna be hard, but that's our job to make those hard decisions and help austinites. >> Mayor Adler: So I like the process that you've set up here. I like the that's what came out. I think one of the reasons why -- one of the reasons why the process that we had before didn't move forward was because the council [10:17:45 AM] hadn't -- this council had never given really basic direction, which meant that the range of possibilities that was being discussed in the community was, I think, overly broad. My sense of the council was is that we were in a closer band but we hadn't really given that measure focus I think to the community or to staff. So I like doing that. I like coming back to the council to do that. And from a timing perspective, I would also just -- if we're kind of building consensus or indicating on the dais, I, too, would like to see us get as much as we can get done this year. My hope is that a lot of next year we're focused on the mobility questions and then -- and trying to figure out what it would take to bring high capacity rapid transit to the city. So I think it would be helpful to the degree that we can to be able to work through land development code issues. I like setting it on the agenda right now for the two meetings we have, both work sessions and general sessions. I'd be comfortable saying let's have a -- let the public know that they can comment at that Thursday on April 11, if you take a look at the agenda and try and give us an agenda that would help support that, I think for me that would be good. I agree with councilmember tovo that there should not be an expectation that we're actually taking a vote on the 11th because I think that this is a big enough thing, these five questions, for us to take comment and actually have an expectation the community would be voting the same day. At the end of that, then, if it's on the agenda for the last two meetings in April, maybe it will make more sense. We'll have a better feel at that point for what is appropriate at that point in time, but the default being to put it on the agenda for [10:19:45 AM] those two, that makes sense. And I do like the idea of us communicating in the interim on message board postings to give people a sense of where we are, what's gonna be discussed or put at issue or what people thoughts or rehabilitation -- reactions are. Pio. >> Renteria: Mayor, I'm willing to wait to the end of April but we have had an election. We've already had people who said this and we need to start moving on this quickly. You know, we realize that it's a -- it's real critical problem that we're having about lack of affordable housing and housing middle -- the missing middle housing that we're having right now, and we need to address that issue very quickly. You know, we're losing people, and when our firefighters and our teachers are having to move further out, further out, you're gonna have problems because these teachers are gonna say why even bother coming all the way in. We're passing all those other school districts, we can just work there. So we need to address this problem quickly, and I hope that, you know, we really address that issue as soon as possible. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie. >> Pool: Well, I agree with a number of my colleagues around the dais who have weighed in about the time line and I'm really glad that Alison brought the document that you and Ann and Steve had written and given to us last year. It's especially helpful to remind us of where we were and it's a good document for our two new colleagues to have a look at. So I think we have a lot of common ground, and I think there's good possibilities for a nuanced approach. I think that's what the community is looking for. There's lots of options laid out for us here, which is really good. So I'm looking forward to [10:21:47 AM] having the discussion, seeing the time line, and having the discussion over the next few weeks and months. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Pool: Thanks for this work? >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy and Ann. >> Flannigan: I would love to get into policy stuff now but I'm getting the sense people are waiting to do that later, which is fine. I have a long list of things to talk about. Mayor as a suggestion main you can do the first post on the message board that way four of us don't rush to make a post and they're not organized in a single place. Maybe if you can do an initial post and we all can fill in our thoughts underneath just as a structure. >> Mayor Adler: Let me think about that. Maybe it's something I delegate to somebody else on the group, but something to kind of launch that, to give us a good place to start sounds good. Thanks. Ann. >> Kitchen: I have a related process question so that -- city manager, maybe you could speak to this. One of the things that I think is important for the public to understand is, so then what? Is that question of what's next? And I understand that we need some flexibility in terms of time lines and that kind of stuff but I also understand that we all are interested in moving as quickly as is appropriate to get through these things. So I wanted to -- I understand that the goal is to get some - - get the policy direction from the -- at least on these major -- these five issues before proceeding, but I do think that it's really important soon to lay out what are the expectations after that and what the time line is after that and what -- who our team is that's going to address that. So can you speak to what you're thinking -- your thinking is about when and how the public can expect to see something like that? [10:23:48 AM] >> Councilmember, how I tee this up is one step at a time and some of those questions would be answered based on how you can -- the decisions made by council. But that doesn't mean that some initial socializing, if you will, about what the next step could be could happen concurrently. So as we have discussions at the next council work session, we hear testimony, I will think about if there's even some options I could be putting forward during the month of April. But, again, I really can't make those determinations about any recommendations for process until at least there's some clarification about what these -- how these questions are answered. >> Kitchen: Yeah. I guess what I would be thinking would be when we finish this process, whenever that is, I would then want to accompany that policy direction, a pretty specific time line for people so people know what to expect. I'm talking about the public in general. For example, it could be something like, you know, we take our votes on policy, we give policy direction, and then the next steps are that the code language will come back to us -- you know, I hate to give you a month, but September, October, November, whatever it is. I think people need to understand that so that they know when they have an opportunity to come back and talk to us about specific language. Also so that we have some understanding of really how out. So that's what I'd be thinking. >> Great. >> Kitchen: And so is that what you -- >> That makes a lot of sense, yes. >> Kitchen: All right. Mayor, I have one other thing. Did someone else want to speak first? >> Mayor Adler: Hang on a second. Let Paige speak. >> Ellis: I wanted to say I'm excited to participate in this process. I had to watch from the shrines -- sidelines before. [10:25:50 AM] I think there's already a lot of good public involvement comment and that because this has been a lengthy process previously that it's good that we have something to see what did work, what don't work, what our community stakeholders have already identified and it's really nice to enter this process knowing that there's already been a really robust public involvement rose. I like to see that as someone who used to do that professionally. I want to mention even over the past year, as, you know, half of us were campaigning, the number 1 issue was affordability. We've all talked about the need for an increase in housing and how we can utilize certain methods to protect our environment and help with flood mitigation. So I'm just excited to see this moving forward and wanted to say thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Jimmy. >> Flannigan: Real quick, I think it would also be good for the public to understand what isn't going to be addressed by a land development code so that we can focus our conversations in April and also what questions do we need to get right in April because we won't be able to unpack them once the draft is drafted. That was one of my challenges about codenext is by the time we were handed a draft it was too complex to go through and fix the parking issue or to fix compatibility because it was just threaded throughout the entire document. So, you know, things that are -- that I'm hearing from the public, certainly fees are not related to the land development code, what it costs to get a tap to the water system. The challenges of the permitting process not directly related to the code, although the complexity kind of implies to that. The issue of deed restrictions, right, we can't undo these private contracts that are deed restrictions and there's confusion in the community about that. Other questions about how we use city-owned lands and things -- I think it would be good for the public to know what parts of the code -- what policy decisions have to be decided up front and what ones can we do at the end, what a the -- is it a ten-day period, is it a 40-day [10:27:51 AM] appeal, those things where you can go in and change one number and it addresses the community's concern as opposed to these heavy -- it's threaded through a whole document question. That way the public knows exactly what we're debating up front and what we can debate at the end. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Kitchen: Yes. First off, thank you, councilmember Ellis. I think that's the way that we want to think about this as we go into it because it is our chance to address -- you know, to address a lot of the problems that we've been dealing with. So I'm glad that we're getting to this point. I think that -- building off what you said, councilmember Flannigan, one of the things that I wanted to ask for that I think might relate to what you're saying is that I think it would be helpful for me to have a piece of paper, like a table or a document, that lists for me the additional issues outside of these five and the ones that we may think that we have consensus on and the ones we think require further conversation. I realize that that has some complexities to it, but I would ask that you think about that because it would certainly help us with identifying the other things that we're gonna need to address. It might also surface -- like what I think the goals document does. I think it might help us surface where we have consensus, might help us move faster on some things, and it might help us identify areas where we think we have consensus and we didn't or areas where we think we don't and we actually do. So I realize that that may be a little bit complicated on how that's done, but I really would ask you to think about if you can provide us something like that. And then related to that, then, is I will have some [10:29:52 AM] more questions when we get down to the details. Can we -- is there a specific way to submit those and is there a way to submit them so the public can see them? Have y'all thought about that? >> Councilmember, I know we're working on a portal similar to the budget q&a and I don't know if it's up and running but it will be shortly. So we'll alert both the council and public when that's available for you to submit those type of questions to staff. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: I wanted to just second councilmember kitchen's request, because I think that these five questions taken in context of other things where we do have common ground or if we don't have common ground but I think we have common ground would affect some of the choices that I would make. For instance, you know, where we're -- how we're moving forward with some of the drainage and environmental choices would affect how I'm thinking about the answers to the five that you've highlighted, but, you know, I'm going to need to have a sense of where folks are on some of those. I think we have consensus but we haven't actually confirmed that and I think that would be also important for the public as we're trying to push multiple goals through what has to be achieved through the land development code. >> Mayor Adler: Paige. >> Ellis: Just as the newcomer to this, just wanted to point out that, you know, councilmember harper-madison and myself are new to this process and we're trying to have a new approach moving forward and I just don't want to fall into a pattern of because it was agreed upon a year ago, you know, it's -- another year has gone by. We do have new councilmembers and we also deserve the opportunity to weigh in on these -- as well. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else. >> Renteria: I want to say I really want to thank you for this report here, the way you have it laid out with the links. I encourage anybody out there in the public to come online and take a look at it because you also have all the links of all the [10:31:52 AM] ordinance and your reports so I really want to thank you and the staff for that. >> Mayor Adler: Great. >> Casar: Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Ready to move on? Greg. >> Casar: To that point while I know there are other issues outside of the five that you've laid out and I think it's important, as councilmember Flannigan and others have pointed out, to figure out if there is anything missing, I'm gonna challenge myself and I think you've challenged all of us to really try to answer those 51st or to answer those five and then go from -- then go from there because I do think that those are some of the core -- some of the core issues certainly that we discussed. You didn't pick those five for no reason so I appreciate you pressing us to really get into the weeds on those five and of course we need to figure out if there's anything beyond that that you need to be able to draft anything. >> Mayor Adler: Would you launch us with the message board post, Greg? Delia. >> Garza: I just lost my train of thought. Oh. As far as the process, just for those of us I'm assuming who have said we want this done as quickly a possible there's still the legal requirement -- and this speaks to, I believe, what you were touching on, that there will be public hearings required, there will be first reading, second reading, all of that still applies, correct? I just want to make sure that the public is well aware even though we're saying let's get started on this, let's get going, there's still a time line and framework that it has to be built into this process. >> Absolutely. [Off mic] >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? Thank you very much. This is great work. I think you've launched us well here. Manager, thank you. Move on to the next item, work our way through the items we have -- lot of things on the executive session. Let's see how quickly we can [10:33:53 AM] work through the pulled items. Greg and Delia you pulled item 14, which was the strategic strategies and metrics on the mobility outcomes. Greg, you pulled that. >> Casar: Sure, my two questions are the same two I had when we were at the central library, which are -- which are -- and I mentioned it to staff then and yesterday, that easier -- I think quicker to address concern that I have on how we're measuring sidewalks and bike lanes is that I want to find a way for our metrics to talk about the higher needs, medium, high, very high need sidewalks and bike lanes and a way for us to elevate those because if we fill in a sidewalk gap in a subdivision where folks are generally not walking, while it's interesting information and important still for us to do, I think our metrics should align towards where we've made priorities. So I don't know what y'all's thoughts are. I'm not even suggesting a particular amendment. That's just my concern and I want to figure out what we should do. >> Councilmember, Leanne Miller, Austin transportation. We added metric after the workshop and feedback, we added metric c6, missing sidewalks and all [indiscernible] Completed. That doesn't directly address your very high priority, but that would be reported under that metric, we would be reporting the type of missing sidewalks that were completed. >> Casar: That's different than what we had before. Before it was lane miles of sidewalks, which is what flagged it for me. Got it. I'm comfortable leaving that as it is if we're tracking the breakdown of high, very high. I didn't notice you added the word missing which I [10:35:53 AM] think really addresses the bigger issue of just a -- tons of bike lanes being built in a brand-new sun subdivision. >> Chief performance officer. What I'll do is make sure to take notes of the concern regarding prioritization amongst those so that what Leanne was noting when we do report on that particular metric we can make sure that we're breaking -- segmenting it down in that particular way. Would that address -- >> Casar: I think that addresses that. >> Okay. >> Casar: Then the other one is I think it's a5, correct me if I'm wrong, it's reduction in travel time on a corridor. So oftentimes we'll make improvements, it is to reduce travel time that is reduced compared to what it would have been if we did nothing but it's not necessarily -- in a growing city, short of a recession, a lot of times you're just gonna keep on getting -- making things get worse. What we're trying to do is make things less bad. What this doesn't -- again, the concern I raised at the central library was if we just are trying to reduce the overall amount of delay or amount of time you could do that by folks going faster during off-peak hours or if you're measuring it by the difference between peak and off-peak, actually slowing things down during off-peak kind of closes your gap. That doesn't seem really what we're trying to get to. A suggestion I had had and I don't know if there are metrics like this in other parts of the country but what we hear is folks want to spend less time stuck in traffic in their car by themselves and anything that we could do that addresses that, be be that how many people we get on the bus, how many people we get walking, whether we make traffic flow more reliably or consistently when you're in a car by yourself maybe that is better measuring what we're trying to fix, which is how much time -- how do we reduce the amount of time somebody is sitting in traffic in a car by themselves. Because we're trying to come up with lots of solutions to [10:37:55 AM] that, including more reliably moving in traffic in a car by yourself but also including other options. I don't know what the fix might be. Again, reductions in travel times on a corridor we can address through lots of things that maybe aren't really what we're trying to get done here, including, you know, making it really fast for you to speed at 6:00 A.M. But not necessarily making things better at rush hour. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Someone else pull that they wanted to go. >> Casar: If you think of anything between here and Thursday, that would be great. >> Alter: So I was -- >> Mayor Adler: Do you want to respond to that now, what Greg said? >> I would just say that you're absolutely correct and we can look at what the data source was for that and see how it could be segmented. But definitely when we have the measure of mode share it speaks to what you're talking about, that we're trying to move towards -- with the asmp motivation, the 50/50 rode share, with the idea as you shift to other modes they're all becoming reliable and they're all becoming -- what's the word that we use? Time competitive with each other, which is how you get that mode share. So it will be a multimodal approach to looking at how we measure that and what do we define as success, which is what you're getting at. >> Casar: If you all get me the underlying what you're planning on measuring for that, that may help address it. >> Pool: Mayor, my question has to do with that particular -- >> Mayor Adler: Further questioning? Okay. >> Pool: I think Alison was going to a different one. Okay. I am curious about whether we can cross-tabulate some of these metrics. For example, looking at a5, the reduction in estimated vehicular transit travel time in corridors evaluated, how does that then intersect with the safety piece? Because we're not necessarily saying that we want everybody to drive [10:39:56 AM] faster, which I think was one of the points that Greg was making, but we want to make sure that people get to where they need to go safely and then all of the collateral people, whether they be pedestrians or bicycle riders also are safer. So how are -- so a cross-tabulation on these with safety would then show not only are we improving our vehicular travel but we're making it overarchingly safer throughout, which is the vision zero piece. So I guess what I'm saying is I want to see the vision zero integrated more completely and comprehensively into how we analyze all of the metrics. So I guess I'm going to a different step here really. We get the metrics and then we analyze them and come up with some kind of estimate on whether we have in fact provided a safer transportation environment for all the people who are in Austin. >> We'll definitely working with the vision zero team to see in terms of data we're planning to collect through the metrics stated here as well as work in general that the vision zero team is doing to see where we can do that and a cross-tabulation that you mentioned. There's -- there might be some -- it might not be something that's reported out directly from under an se23 header but it might be something we can report and create that collaboration opportunity. >> Pool: That would be great. I agree, I don't think it would necessarily be in here, but it comes from this. >> Yes. >> Pool: This information? >> It speaks to our desire for just increasing our collaboration amongst departments, amongst programs and things like that so it's up will -- the alley of sd23 as a whole. >> Pool: Great. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: On the point that Greg raised, I agree with Greg that I would like to have a metric that actually goes to what the ultimate goal is, but I also like this metric, too, because I think that's what the public wants us, wants to have an answer to as [10:41:57 AM] well. So I think I would support putting in Greg's metric. I'm not sure I would support taking out the metric that you had proposed. So I just throw that out there. Anything else on this issue? Anything else on this your? Okay. Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. On the day we had the discussion at the library and shared some comments and thoughts, and I didn't see much resolution to them in the document, and I've asked for some clarification in writing and still look for that, but I wanted to surface them and see if you had some responses. So one of the things that I noted was that one of the big challenges with mobility is that we have a lot of regional partners, we don't own all of the surfaces, we don't control all of the surfaces. We have identified a challenge of how might we effectively collaborate with agencies and organization. We have at least two mobility strategies of coordinating with cap metro, et cetera, and the regional partners, but there doesn't seem, as far as I could tell, to be a single metric that helps us to understand how we're doing in terms of that cooperation. And I don't know what that metric is and maybe no such metric exists but I'd like to understand why there's not a metric. And we can pause there. >> So we looked through the metrics with that kind of lens, intergovernmental cooperation, and we were able to quickly pull out ones we felt like do be reported on with a break-out or a segmentation or supplementy information from other agencies. For example, a1 modes based on time to work, a2, travel time reliability, that one in particular we noted transit so there would be a definite cooperation need with cap metro for reporting there. Also looked at b1, percentage of household [10:43:58 AM] costs attributed to transportation and c2, percent satisfaction with transportation options aside from the personal vehicle to get around Austin such as ride share, bus, train, bike, walk. Those are ones that immediately rose to the top we saw could demonstrate intergovernmental cooperation. If you all want to add anything to that, particularly with -- perhaps about, like, b1 or anything. >> Right. Just that in b1 and a1, we can report those on a regional -- at the msa level as well as at the city of Austin jurisdiction level so we can compare how maybe we may be improving in Austin or not and how that relates to the region as a whole. We know as household costs may decrease, as you move outside of the central city your transportation costs may be going up so that is a critical one we would want to compare between the city and the region. >> I think in addition it's not just reporting on the metric but also how we're utilizing those metrics because of the role that councilmembers serve and serving on cap metro board or campo and the sort I think there's opportunities for the data coming from these particular metrics to be brought to the attention of these cooperative organizations to kind of drive some of those conversations. >> Alter: I hear what you're saying and I know it's challenging to measure. I'm not completely satisfied that we should give up. One potential way involves a little bit more of looking at the outputs than the outcomes, per se, but we have been very successful in the mobility bond of leveraging outside funding. That is bun way of measuring. I don't know what the appropriate measure would be, but sort of leveraging those funding or the number of joint projects or something that is a -- something to keep in mind to see over time how we're doing in those relationships and keep an eye on that and [10:46:00 AM] maybe over the next day or two we can think about what that might look like in an appropriate way. The second area, and this may be that this is addressed under health and environment but I just have mobility in front of me, our mobility choices intersect with our environmental outcomes. We are very close to non-attainment in this region, non-attainment is largely a function of the mobility choices that we make, but there were no measures of air quality that I saw in this section and I think that as we are looking at our mobility outcomes that I would want to understand that but I don't remember if it was in the environment section. It's just in a different place and we still -- obviously we are still tracking that data but if these are going to be the measures that we're gonna be focused on then I would want to have that as a measure in this section as well. >> So there are two measures within the health and environment outcome specifically under the environmental quality indicator category that speak to air quality. First there's number of days per year of good air quality, which is an air quality index value of less than 51 and then there's number of days per year in which ground level ozone concentration exceeds EPA standards. There was conversation about air quality metrics at the workshop and the -- I think the ultimate conclusion was that the existence of those metrics within health and environment was satisfactory, also taking into account the fact that there's an expectation for the outcome -- the acms to be collaborating together on all work but particularly in this as an example this would be an opportunity for acm shorter and -- I apologize, I can't remember her name, the new -- the incoming acm over mobility, [10:48:01 AM] an opportunity for them to collaborate strategies and programs and initiatives that would address that metric even though it appears specifically under health and environment. >> Alter: So will we be -- I mean, it seems like, though, we also could have some kind of cross-tabbing in the way that councilmember pool was suggesting at some point that happens as well. >> Yeah. Amy, Austin transportation. I hear what you're saying and all of the metrics -- the mode share and multimodal perspective that we discussed at the work session and what you're seeing memorialized here, the mobility outcome all are going towards the positive externallality -- transportation has negative and positive certain allots towards that air quality is definitely something we value and we've had air quality programs as you know both in office of sustainability as well as Austin transportation and we collaborate across the departments because it really is the work of -- you know, the missions of many decimal move towards that goal. And so we can certainly look at what -- where there might be maybe an output measure that looks towards moving that needle. I'm not sure. But I think as we develop the health and environment outcomes in the workshops last year, air quality was at the forefront of something that we needed to measure and ultimately we made a decision to put it in health and environment, and that -- realizing that all the work that the transportation department was doing was definitely working towards that. >> Alter: Yeah. I may consider -- I'll have to think about it but I may consider something that's kind of, like, in a -- I don't know a star to the chart or whatever, you know, that says this is also referenced because I think it's -- in this case it is a very clear connection and its absence says something I'm not sure I'm comfortable saying there. [10:50:02 AM] So I'll take a look at that, with that. Then the third area that I had raised is there were a bunch of metrics in the regional incident management plan that all right to congestion and other things, and, you know, there are individual measures. I don't know if there's any kind of index of them really rolled up together or something, but it doesn't seem to be that our efficiency and congestion measures are getting at those issues, and those are the kinds of things that the public would understand. So just help me understand if it's just -- I'm going down a level from where these indicators are or whether there's a value of some kind of aggregate regional incident response time type measure. >> I definitely think that there is validity in wanting to measure those metrics of how well we are clearing crashes. Those contribute to our travel time reliability, which is a metric that you see in a. We do have an indicator in the Austin strategic mobility plan specific to the amount of time it takes to clear crashes from a roadway. We have to the set a target for that indicator but that's one that we would be tracking through the asmp. If you think that it would be good to include also in system efficiency and congestion, I think that would be appropriate as a contributor to congestion and reliability. >> Alter: Okay. Maybe we can touch base on that. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Paige. >> Ellis: I had actually a few comments that are on here, and I know that I and my staff were communicating with you and probably giving you a bit of grief in all the questions we were asking. So I apologize for that. I don't know if this is best to try to have some sort of working message board, if Alison has got things that [10:52:03 AM] she would like to bring forth as well, but I know that coming into the -- kind of the end of this process we had a few things that we may want to kind of tweak a little bit, like the e3 metric talks about percent of street inventory maintained by preventative maintenance and we thought maybe this could be he will bellished a bit with the addition of crosswalks and kind of the identification of, you know, a full service of how well we're doing in this metric. So maybe I'm asking for a bit of guidance from my colleagues or staff on if it's better to try to identify these and let other councilmembers have a little bit of input and time to think about it, but there's a couple things in here that we just maybe had suggestions on and I felt a little rushed kind of coming into the end of this to make sure that all of our questions were answered, knowing that we did have a meeting at the central library that was really involved, but in seeing these edits there's still some questions that I have. So I didn't know if other people wanted to see those and review them. >> Garza: Did you want to respond? >> We received those contents from your office and we're in the process of reviewing those and to be able to provide feedback. But I think your suggestion about posting things to the message board, that would be incredibly helpful, not only for yours but any other comments or questions that may arise so that on Thursday if -- hopefully we're able to address those in advance of Thursday but if in the event we do need to have further conversation on Thursday we can be as prepared as possible to give you the best feedback as possible at that point. >> Ellis: Okay. So I'm thinking what I'll do is probably wait to get your comments back on the questions we've asked and then from there probably put our intent on the message board just so other councilmembers can have a look at it. [10:54:04 AM] Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Pio. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. You know, my question is, you know, we're experiencing a lot of -- you know, we're implementing vision zero but we still have a lot of pedestrians being hurt, injured or killed. I know that we have a problem where people -- some of these streets are -- where the houses were built are not designed. They're able to speed up and lose control of their vehicle, and we've had a couple accidents where cars have hit homes here recently. So when you see those kind of issues, when you identify that and the design of the street, are you gonna be addressing the speed there and seeing about reducing the speed? And are you gonna be protecting -- are y'all gonna be able to recommend where you can put protective barriers so in case there's an accident they won't go and hit a house or a pedestrian walking on the sidewalk? And the other one that I'm really concerned about is, you know, we have identified streets -- you're saying also about enforcement focus. Is that gonna be requiring police officers there with radar guns, identifying what areas are -- where they're speeding and there are accidents and you're gonna come back and make recommendations on that? Because speeding is a big problem in some of the -- especially in the neighborhoods now with all the traffic going and people are always in a hurry to get there. And the mobile strategy number 1, you know, you're saying through education and enforcement focus. I was just wondering what does the enforcement have to -- what do you see about enforcement? Is that more police officers on patrol there? I'm just curious. [10:56:04 AM] >> Yeah, good question. On strategy number 1, which is under the mobility strategy, we have -- again, we've been coordinating these metrics with the strategic mobility plan, and we have in the safety chapter, which is the update to the vision zero action plan, our two-year update, we have a specific indicator that speaks to -- there is a map called the high injury network, which is also referenced here in the mobility outcome, where we've looked at where we should focus strategically for all aspects of vision zero, not just design. When we look at projects along those -- on that high injury network, but also for education efforts and enforcement, as you're speaking to. So the target within the asmp is to focus at least 50% of our education and enforcement efforts along the high injury network, meaning that we want to leave flexibility for what may come up as we're monitoring safety and as we're monitoring our education efforts in an effort to look at an improved culture around safety, which is what we're saying is our strategic focus in the asmp. And so how we do that, I think we need to be creative on how we do better with enforcement. We have our Vu and -- vision zero and action program that will continue and we'll continue to evolve that which is a partnership with the police department. >> Renteria: Well, that's great but I'm starting to see a lot more people that -- the way the streets are designed where they are traveling real fast, you know. They're speeding really. And unless we have -- education is great, but not until you enforce it and they start getting the ticket will they really change. It's just, like, don't block the block, you know? [10:58:06 AM] They didn't stop doing that until they started getting tickets. And when I see enforcement that's what I see that they're going to be start issuing tickets to people that are speeding down our streets. So I would hope that y'all can identify the streets that are having the most problems and maybe work with the APD and try to get enforcement done so that we can slow down these injuries and deaths that are happening on our streets. Pedestrians are afraid now to stroll down the sidewalk with their babies because they're afraid some vehicle is going to speed down through their neighborhood and they can get run over. So I hope that we address that issue when y'all look into that. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie. >> Pool: Thanks and thanks for your continuing good work on our strategic outcomes with mobility. I know that a goal of our outcome measures is to map our progress and improving city operations and all across departments and also to communicate it all really effectively to our residents. So I liked what Alison was saying about pollutants and clean air and I understand why that particular measure was put into health and environment, but I notice it had missing here as well. And I think that we meet a significant sector of our population with that particular issue, like asthma, for example, children oh who have asthma and elderly with breathing issues. So I would like us to acknowledge that our air quality is irrevocably tied to congestion. And as a corollary of course is as we move to electrifying our entire fleet and hopefully walk the walk so that businesses in the community will voluntarily go that direction too and more people will have [11:00:06 AM] non-petroleum based kind of vehicles out there, I think we'll start to see some reductions overall and get us out of that close to over -- being out of compliance with the clean air act. So could we have a block -- and I'm really kind of asking this generally, not just on mobility, but could we have some kind of a way to show cross-referencing that measure in health and environment has significant impacts on some of the measures in mobility, for example? And there would be other -- I think what Pio was talking about with law enforcement, there's a piece there that also we can get some movement with the safety piece through mobility. Or is that something that you think would maybe separate and apart and maybe staff could create something separate to give us those measurements? >> Let me propose kind of a concept and see if you think that this would address what you're talking about. Something I have been thinking about -- because we had done a little bit of this work during the development and was trying to make those connections, but I could work on developing kind of a larger scale matrix that literally just lists out our strategies and our metrics going both directions so you can show how a safety strategy connects to mobility metrics or mobility strategies or a health and environment thing. So you're able to see how one particular metric or strategy can have connections to multiple other facets of the different outcomes. That would be a very high level initial stab at that. I'm just trying to create those connections, but it would also possibly create opportunities for more productive types of conversations. Did something like that start us down a path to addressing your concern or am I off there? >> Pool: No, I think you're right on point. I think that's great and it also reinforces the cross [11:02:06 AM] departmental cutting that we want to do so that we eliminate or at least redste the siloing effect. So through that then we can see that what happens in this department has a direct effect on these other five. So that would be terrific if there were a way we could pull that together. >> And our departments are also going through a very detailed alignment process in terms of their mission and their goals and their kpis in relationship to sb 223 so we have a direction in terms of where a department is setting a particular goal and they feel like it relates to a certain strategy and we might be able to say other departments have goals and those goals particular to a particular strategy and we start connecting those dots. We kind of have to break it down into layers. So we're kind of just at the -- chipping away the very tip of the iceberg. >> Pool: That feels like the next phase. >> Mayor Adler: More discussion on this issue, Alison. >> Alter: I would kind of respond to that is "Yes and." And I think it's something that we should move forward, but for this case we should have -- I'm happy to work with you so it looks like in the table or whatever, but something that just references folks right at the bottom of this to health and environment indicator X and Y that are those two things so they are called out at the bottom. They can still fall under health and environment, but that -- if anyone is looking at our mobility indicators in isolation that they see that that's something that we are aware of and placing value on. But I'm happy to work with you so that it graphically doesn't create havoc in your process. >> Mayor Adler: So I would jump on board on that thought. I know that we were trying to limit the number of metrics so that we had the focus, so we had a certain number we didn't want to exceed, which forced us then [11:04:07 AM] to put it in one category as opposed to another category, but it's been a recurrent issue almost every time we've picked this up. So keeping with fact that we're limiting to no more than six in each other I think from a formatting standpoint we could certainly put something at the end of transportation that said, and by the way, this is one of the metrics in health, but it also obviously relates here, so maybe there's a way just to list the six that are the primary ones, but note that there's something. So I think it's more of a graphics issue, a layout issue than anything else, but if it's already one of our main metrics, not advocating for any new metrics, it's already one -- I think that maybe a way to just handle it that way. Makes sense to me. Jimmy? >> Flannigan: So some of this conversation has gone down to the asmp. Will we have a separate conversation on 50? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. Ann? >> Kitchen: Just a couple of quick questions. And I think you've mentioned before that where possible we'll break down metrics by demographics. I just want to reiterate that point because I'm particularly concerned that we -- that we be sure and look at metrics for the senior or elderly population. So that's a yes. And I would just second what has been discussed about the clean air metric. Then I would ask about the metric that relates to the number of people reducing the number of cars in your household. I'm not sure that that -- I'm looking for the number on that. Oh, that's number b-3, percent of households reducing the number of cars in their household. So just remind me, I'm wondering if perhaps that's there because it's a number that we can access, but I'm not sure that tells us what we need to get to because it's not so much the number of cars, it's how they're using them. And also -- so what comes to [11:06:07 AM] mind to me is it might be better to measure the number of people that are buying bicycles or other kinds of ways of getting around. Just talk to me about that metric a little bit because I'm not sure that it's focus focused and -- I'm not sure it's the point that we're trying to get to. >> So this would be a new question that we would add to the community survey and it wouldn't just be a yes or no kind of thing. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> We're still toying with the answer selection options, but ideas that we have out there in draft form include things like lack of a driver's license, there are fewer drivers in the household. We have access to other transportation modes. Cars aren't available. It's easy to walk to places or it's too expensive to own a car. Or and then also leaving an another fill in the blank thing. So as just asking are you resolution the number of cars in your household, trying to get clarifying information, leaving it blank, kind of other options if there's something that we missed. And in starting with that and seeing where that takes us in terms of analysis opportunities. >> Kitchen: And that survey also asks questions about the use of the car, right? Because to my mind it's not so much whether you get rid of the car, it's whether it sits there and you use other options. So I wanted to make sure that we were getting down to that level of question. >> I'm trying to visualize the survey in my head. >> Kitchen: You can get it later. >> Let me go back to see the questions about car use that we have in the mobility section, but then one of the other bonus aspects of that survey is all the demographic information that we collect, demographic and geographic information that we're able to look at, okay, you're reducing the number of cars, but we're also able to see where in the city you're located, we're also able to -- one of the other questions we ask about what is your primary place of [11:08:08 AM] employment, like where is the zip code of that so we're able to look at where they are coming from, where are they going to and cross-tabbing that with car, questions, things like that. Let me go back and look. >> Kitchen: Yeah. Just think about that aspect of it. And then I think my -- I would second the concern that councilmember Renteria raised. I'm just concerned that the safety section -- I know we need to look at high impact and the fatalityies but there are a lot of safety issues that don't rise to that level and I'm afraid we may be missing things. So the example he gave about people walking in their neighborhood and the speed along the streets. But the concern also about the street design and the lack of sidewalks that could potentially contribute to safety issues. So I just want to make sure that we think about that aspect. And the very last thing is that -- and this is overafternooning to what I just said. The metrics appear to be focused on car safety and they're not really multimodal. And they're really about crashes between cars. And -- or maybe I'm reading it wrong. So I was just thinking about accidents related to other vehicles and that kind of thing. Am I looking at it too narrowly or is that something you guys could think about? >> Well, I'll point out that the high injury network that has been the data analytics that went into producing that map in the asmp that is measured here as far as that metric is [indiscernible]. I know we have a glossary section because I know this came up at work session and [11:10:08 AM] it's not abundantly clear and it speaks to the culture that we speak about what we say crash we think about motor vehicle to motor vehicle. And many of our serious injuries are vulnerable users so we need to make that clear in the glossary. That's a good point. >> Kitchen: Or as have sixth asterisk or put the word multimodal in there. >> Mayor Adler: Something else on this issue? A lot of things to hit. We're going to lose people here after lunch. Alison? >> Alter: It will be really quickly. I just wanted to note that same issue that you and councilmember Renteria is something that I'm trying to understand in the asmp in terms of what we're doing on the enforcement when it's not the high injury network. So if it's something that you guys want to talk about please let's hook up. >> Delia. >> I'm going to talk about this in the asmp as well, but the third strategy -- I can talk about this until I'm blue in the face, it's not just healthy food. I hope to propose an amendment that will be similar to the one I'm proposing for the asmp, which is healthy food including community amenities such as grocery stores because -- I'll wait until the asmp to the way that point, but it's not just about access to food, it's about access to families need at affordable prices so they don't have to make several stops to get all the things that they need. And then real quick, to councilmember kitchen, I like that question and maybe I'm just thinking about it definitely about how many cars because -- I guess because it intertwines with affordability and I know that this is the mobility one, but we're going to have that cross, I guess, what's the word? I don't know. Tabulation. And I think the statistic is [11:12:08 AM] about $700 a month to own a vehicle. So I think it would be interesting to know how families are -- like you said, where they're living because my assumption would be families that can use one car would be close to frequent transit. And I don't know, I thought even digging deeper than that, maybe the question is how many families have been able to reduce their intern combustion vehicles. Like we were able to go from two gas vehicles to one gas and one electric because know we have the gas one and we have to drive to San Antonio or whatever. But I think that's an interesting data to have. >> Mayor Adler: On c3, and again the focus being on outcomes and not just occupants, you had raised that issue earlier on something, Alison, that you were trying to measure and one of your examples I think is a valid output too, raising money, drawing down extra money. I think that's an end in itself as well. But on c3 the question was the number of pilots that are getting launched. I had asked before about whether it made sense to have successful pilots. I know that we have a better chance of hitting successful pilots if we start iterating and trying stuff. But that's a method to an end. The end is whether we're being creative and trying enough things so that we end up with success. Pilots. I had mentioned that before and would reiterate that. Anything else before we move on? Let's move on. Next item, 15, I addressed earlier. 16 and 17 are the pay for success elements. Jimmy, you pulled those? >> Yeah. I just -- when it was originally posted to the agenda the backup didn't include the objectives and the metrics that were going to be used for the payout, but I wanted to give staff and the public an [11:14:09 AM] opportunity for a one minute review on what this is. There's plenty of scrutiny about how we're spending money so I want to be clear with anyone who is watching what the six million dollars is for, what it's measuring and how it's going to be paid. It doesn't have to be a long presentation construction a quick one. Can I say that one, just a quick one. >> Employ morning, Stephanie Hayden, director of Austin public health. The pay for success model is a model in which a public entity identifies a critical issue that they would like to address and in this case it's homelessness. And they work with a third-party investor to put the money upfront in order for the investor to pay the upfront cost. Services are provided and outcomes and performance measures are established. And when the performance measures after being evaluated are a successful measures upon an agreed upon time period, then the back end payer makes the payment back to the -- an intermediary, which ends up paying the money back to the investor. So it's like a circle. So you identify the issue, which is homelessness. And the investor puts the money up, services are provided, performance measures are agreed upon and once they are successful and have been evaluated then the back-end payer, which is the city in this example, is wanting to be the back-end payer is wanting to be the investor. >> In this contract the metric is people who are removed from a homelessness condition for six months, is that right? >> So this is -- yes. [11:16:10 AM] This is housing stability so initially six months is successful if it is a successful exit to housing. Overall we're looking for housing stability. So 12 months and 18 months. So it's like a rolling 18 months per group of individuals and the goal is to work with 250 individuals who are high utilizers of the emergency room as well as psychiatric systems and jails. >> Flannigan: Will we be able to see numbers at the end about how much money we saved in those other areas as a community? We're not the only partner. We have central health and Travis county that will be joining us in the effort. Will we be seeing those numbers specifically or is it impossible to do that? >> Good morning, Bella Carmen, Austin public health. There will be an independent evaluator that will be evaluating on several different things. One will be the outcome payments and there are different outcomes for the different end pairs. As Stephanie mentioned for the city it's housing stability. And then they will also be doing a learning evaluation that will look at learnings of the intervention and the potential savings and the impact to the community overall. >> That's great. And I just want to thank councilmember tovo. She just rolled back. I know you worked really hard on this and I just want to give credit where credit is due. It's nice to see this come bandera to see this come forward and to see other jurisdictions joining us in an effort that impacts all our mutual goals. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: At a really high level I think that's a really good point to emphasize that by pulling everybody together here we haven't had a community-wide effort of the kind that this involves and I think that was one of the additional advantages if not the [11:18:11 AM] central place going after. I think -- I also want to thank staff for working through this. This is not an easy model to make work and there are a lot of people who are trying to create, pay for success pilots around the world right now. And to be able to actually be able to align metrics that can be independently evaluated, so at a really high level I would just add to that description which I thought was good the concept that in order for the donors to get reimbursed they have to hit goals that we have set that are above what we're trending for in this community. So there is risk being taken by the donors. It's also important to really understand the donor base. The donor base for this are really people that are predisposed that are giving money to social causes around the country and in cities. And part of the model is to get those donor bases to contribute as they are to this cause. But to set up a system where we hopefully will prove up a pilot that not only other cities can use, but to then take that money and put it back out so that it can then fund the same kind of efforts and other kinds of cities. So this pay for success model that hopefully will see in things other than homelessness as it gets refined is an existing concept, but actually getting it to happen and figuring out the metrics that can be independently evaluated that represent risk so a as to justify a return or investor to participate, not an easy thing to do. So the city's participation in this I think as important as homelessness is is our number one priority, goes past that in helping to establish a model. And I love that the city of Austin may be at the forefront of actually headache making that work. Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I'll have more to say on Thursday -- thank you, councilmember Flannigan, but I really want [11:20:12 AM] to add my thanks to the staff and the partners here in the work session. This was a multi-year dream of echo and others who saw this as a really impactful model that we could use here in Austin, but it was wildly, wildly complicated in just the meetings I sat in on, which were a fraction of the meetings that were had to work through the obstacles indicated really the level of complexity that had to be worked through to get to this point. So I'm super excited to be able to vote for this on Thursday. And thank you. >> Casar: Yeah, I've gotten a chance to study this and I have questions. I'll probably have more questions offline, but generally many of my questions have been answered by what the mayor a mentioned and the folks at echo had mentioned that the money upfront could be better categorized as donors as opposed to investors. That the folks putting money up for this attempt are community development foundations and health care organizations and people from the philanthropic community that are trying to work with us to find a different way for these sort of -- for them to use their dollars for good. I like the idea of the return for something run by non-profits and works well on a non-profit model. I think we have to be careful with the way things are structured and who we do it with to make sure we are doing the things in the way we want them to be served, but I think with the questions I've had so far in terms of who we're working with, it seems to be a way of organizing a lot of people around a new idea and then for us to reimburse dollars that are well spent so they can continue to go [11:22:13 AM] back into the community-based work and specifically the ending homelessness work that it sounds like these donors are committed to. So I think there has potentially been some missceptions about whether the goal of this is actually for folks to get a return and my understanding is it's more if our dollars are so well spent that we go above and beyond our standards, then we should be happy with how well these dollars went. So I'll still have questions to make sure that the way these are independently monitored, is thorough, but I wanted to make sure that that word got out there. >> Mayor Adler: Ann? >> Kitchen: I would just add that the other thing that's really innovative about this and important to remember is as a community is something that you mentioned earlier. And really the interconnection between what the city is responsible for doing, what the county is responsible for doing, what central health is responsible for doing. That interconnection between housing and health and other issues. So what's really important is that all of our entities step up to the table and participate and understand the connection between what we all do in getting results. And that's new and different because organizations are used to funding, looking only narrowly at the benefit to them. So they may only be looking at a return on investment that is so specific to health or so specific to housing that they say why would I do that because it doesn't give me that return on investment. Because all of this is interconnected. So what's really innovative and exciting about this is for our community partners to step up to the plate with us and participate in testing a model that really has a huge amount of promise for our community. [11:24:15 AM] >> Mayor Adler: Maze hi den mentioned the metric that -- Ms. Hayden mentioned the the metric that we look at, but what central health is looking at for number of emergency room visits, the county is looking at it in terms of number of people that are put in jail. >> Kitchen: Yes, but what I mean is housing stability is important to health and even -- yes, central health needs to from look at a specific metric like emergency room use, but housing stability is a social determinant of health which is recognized in the health care field, so it's a measure that's important to them too. So I'm just -- just suggesting or saying that I think what everyone recognizes that we had to look at these metrics about how they interconnect also. >> And that's what I was trying to corroborate and back up by point outing that even their metrics are based on the same kind of contact. Al snob. >> Alter: I wanted to echo my colleagues' thanks for staff to working with us finding a way to take this on and to once again applaud councilmember tovo for her leadership on this and our community partners including echo and Ann Howard who have stewarded this through a lot of Shoals to really getting to the point where Austin hopefully will not only be attacking a problem that we recognize as a community is out there in an innovative way, but shining light for the rest of the country and even the world on some innovative ways to fund it. We talked a little bit about some of the funding mechanism and I do want to point out that the investors are bearing a lot of the risk and to part of -- part of the innovativeness of this is it does shift risk from the city to other actors and in part of doing that there is also an upside, but that upside only comes if we are actually as a city accomplishing all the goals that we had in the first place and that's part of the beauty of this is [11:26:16 AM] aligning all the incentives in the right direction to provide and deliver the outcomes that we want in our community. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy, you had also pulled this item number 30. >> Yes. And 30 was in a similar sense wanted to understand there was some public media around what txdot had done and who knew what and when and kind of to understand what txdot's responsibility is to their own property as compared to this new additional spending that we're going to be taking on. I did have the opportunity to talk to Mr. Mendoza earlier, but I thought it was really important to let the public know that this is in essence an unfunded mandate on property that we don't get to dictate what occurs on that property because it's state property, but it is entirely on us to spend city taxpayer dollars to maintain it. So I kind of previewed everything, but Richard if you would just kind of explain a little bit. >> Thank you. Richard men Mendoza, director of public works. So this proposes we enter into a contract with work quest to provide debris management and cleanup surgeries under 67 locations in underpasses and elevated roadways throughout the city. Previously this work was conducted by the district seventh office of txdot, which stretches approximately from bastrop westward to llano. And they have always viewed this work activity as elective work, and we are under a municipal maintenance agreement for those state right-of- ways that reside within our incorporated city limits. And their interpretation of that municipal maintenance agreement in regard to these specific locations is they were responsible for litter [11:28:17 AM] and for vegetation control. They view this as work that they have been conducting as above and beyond that basic service. So I had started conversations with them last summer to share this sensitivity around heightened level of health and safety issues caused by some of the homeless encampments under some of these underpasses and shared with them that we had a desire for a couple of the specific locations if we could increase the frequency of cleanups from the once a month that they had traditionally done. They shared withe at that time that they really felt that this was something that the city was responsible for. That they had been doing this in an effort to ensure they have safe access to the bridge inspections. So I was open to those conversations and we started to talk about how would we manage the transition of this work to the city. During that time, however, we did have some emergency flooding that strained their resources and the timetable in which we had initially talked about transitioning the work was compressed. And so we continued to work and talk with txdot and we are doing so now because we view that this work is something that needs to be addressed earlier this year in January we formed an interdepartmental team across city staff, and we talked about the challenges. This consisted of code, of health, watershed, public works, transportation. And we certainly understand that this was an unplanned, and probably demand that was placed on us sooner than we had anticipated, but we feel strongly it needs to continue. And we'll remain in conversations with txdot on what we feel are the responsibilities under the [11:30:17 AM] existing municipal maintenance agreement. >> I also want to mention in this contact, in case -- for folks that are watching, there was a press conference this morning where the point in time count numbers were announced. Councilmember tovo and Casar and Ellis and I were there. There are it about 7200 people every year that intersect with our support systems, every year. But on any given night that's what the point in time count measures, folks that are homeless in our community. The numbers in our community have gone up five percent, which is about 108 people, up to about 2250. And our population has grown at about that same rate regionally over Travis county, a thousand square miles over that time. Which is one way to understand that number, but at the same time that number has gone up and our goal is to end folks -- end homelessness as being experienced by folks in our community. It had really two really good observations. One is the number of homeless vets has gone down and really dramatic reductions in homelessness of children. That has been really the focus over the last year. In fact, the number of homeless children 18 to 24 has gone down by 25% and the number of homeless children who are actually on the streets has gone down by 50% over the last year. So these efforts that we do in this city when we focus attention I think are seeing results. The point well taken about kind of the unfunded mandate is we take over a program from the state and I would just point out to everyone just to remember that with respect to this expenditure and the pay for success expenditures is we're spending taxpayer dollars on things that our taxpayers want us to spend money on because this is a priority. [11:32:20 AM] Our budget drivers are rising at about 3.8% year to year. That's our existing budget, no new programs. That's increases in health insurance and wages going up 3.8%. There is an effort up at the legislature to cap property tax revenue, which is the only revenue we have that can increase greater than what is 401(k) Two percent because the rest of our revenue is down at that level. But if we get capped at two and a half percent we don't have enough money in our budget to pay our existing cost drivers. So my hope is that the legislature does not enforce that kind of cap because it's going to mean that we have to prioritize and stop programs that beer doing even if we don't add programs like this. But if we want to add programs like this, then that means that there's even more cuts and difficult choices we're going to have to ultimately make. It's working its way through the legislature now. My hope is if we have any kind of caps or cuts -- caps at that level that there are exclusions for things that are shared community values with the state, shared state priorities like public safety, what happened outside the cap I think would be appropriate, roads, that kind of stuff, and maybe this kind of expenditure as well. But at the very least excluding things so that there's enough money within that cap to be able for us to few fund what our community wants to do with homelessness, including this program. >> Renteria: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Let me go to Jimmy and then Pio. >> Flannigan: Let me be clear, mayor, that I don't can us as us adding a program. This is state property that the state does not allow us to dictate because it's state property. In fact, the city doesn't even have a majority of the votes on campo where state road decisions are made and funded, yet we are going to be bearing the full cost of maintenance on these lands. [11:34:20 AM] So I don't see this as adding a program. I see this as the state saying hey, you do it. It's our land, you can't do anything else. You can't build small tiny homes under the overpasses. You can't do a little police substation. You can't do a homeless neighborhood center. You can't do anything on that land and you have to pay to maintain it. So I don't see this as maintaining a program. >> Mayor Adler: Better to say adding a cost than adding a program. >> Renteria: I want to echo that too. I had my state rep jump all over me when we funded money to improve Lamar, north Lamar, past 183 and song, past Ben white and saying why are you putting money up through fixing it and repairing the streets when it's a straight responsibility. And that's -- because you guys don't give us any fund for it so we have to address the issues because our residents are out there demanding that we do something for that. So these kind of mandates that demands that they put on us, but at the same time trying to restrict our funding so that we're not able to address those kind of issues that a street that's torn up, our sidewalks, and we're investing our own money from the city to do repairs and at the same time they're trying to say we're going to cap you at 2.5. So if we do that I hope they will come back with the money for the repairs we have to do for the work on their land and their property. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie? >> Tovo: Yeah, I was just surprised, not pleasantly, to see this on our agenda. I share the concerns that councilmember Flannigan raised. To underscore point I would say it was a process and not a fast one to put a portable toilet on what is state land and I just -- I am just so troubled by the notion that we would take on this [11:36:24 AM] expense. And I don't know whether -- I'm not sure what the alternatives are here or whether those are things that we need to discuss in executive session rather than in open session, but you know, my -- one of the reasons why I'm so surprised is that txdot had initiated probably a year and a half ago a really useful process of pulling together stakeholders to talk about just this very issue. And Ashley Richardson on my staff participated in that. I had an opportunity to hear a txdot representative at one of the ending community homeless coalition membership partner meetings who addressed this issue and there were maybe quarterly stakeholder meetings. As I mentioned Ashley Richardson on my staff participated on one of those. And it was pulling together social service providers, other representatives, interested parties. I think councilmember Houston's office participated to talk about how better and more healthcarely to address the -- holistically to address the issue going on in our overpasses. Trying to bring services to the individuals sleeping there and really the answer again and again in those conversations kept coming back to the need for more housing resources, more social service resources. And the fact that all of the organizations who are participating in those organizations, including the city, were so strapped for funds that those resources didn't exist. So for txdot to go from there, from doing such a proactive holistic approach to convening the conversations and saying now we're not going to continue our piece of maintaining what our structure is surprising and unfortunate and I'm really, really concerned about it. And so I believe we have submitted to the council Q and a a question about where else is this taking place. Are there other places throughout the state where txdot has decided they're going to pass on the maintenance of their facilities to the local municipality, and if so what are those? You mentioned the [11:38:24 AM] maintenance agreement. I would like to see that. And in the fiscal note it refers to the various city departments that are now going to be charged with identifying funds to help come up with with what councilmember Flannigan said rightly is not a program, it's not a new program. It's someone else's expense. What are those various city departments that are now not going to be able to potentially introduce the program, including the programs that would actually make measurable significant change in this area, like proving social services or providing additional permanent supportive housing or providing funding to departments like the new Salvation Army women and children's shelter. So that's my concerns. >> Mayor Adler: Paige? >> Ellis: I echo those sentiments that you have all brought forward. I was curious if you knew off the top of your head, I saw a list of what underpasses were called out under this contract and none of them are in district 8. I didn't know if that was a matter of just copying what contracts they were letting go of or if we are going to be expected in other areas beyond these locations to be coming up with the funding for this as well. >> Certainly, councilmember. So the portion of the contract that txdot let expire were only for these 61 specific locations that were experiencing homeless camp environments. That was only one part of a district-wide contract that they use for right- of-way maintenance, litter, vegetation control. These locations will still receive those txdot services that they view as their base level of maintenance responsibilities. So that will continue. And I did reach out to the surface provider. [11:40:24 AM] They were only providing this type of service, only at these locations within the city of Austin, no one else in their district, which would include some of our surrounding communities. I'll have to research if other -- there are 20 some-odd txdot districts throughout the state. I'll have to do some research and see if those have done similar things for other urban centers. So I don't anticipate beyond this that we're going to have to assume any additional contracts because the only portion of the work that they allowed to expire was this scope of services specific to these homeless encampments. They'll continue to do the basic litter and vegetation controls on these kind of ways and the rest of the state own right-of-ways throughout our city. And we'll continue to be in conversation and collaboration with them. In fact, as part of the transition I requested that they send a representative to meet with us when we have the kickoff to ensure that transition goes smoothly. And then also I can request with them a letter explaining their position on the mma, which they form the basis of their decision to let this scope of work expire and share that with council. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Kitchen: So I would echo what my colleagues have said. I too am concerned about this kind of cost being put on the city, particularly at a time when we're talking about revenue caps. I would just also echo that-- I said echo. I'm really sorry that I wasn't able to make the press conference this morning. I've always participated in the point of time count and I think it's really an excellent way for people to really talk to folks that are living on the streets and get a real personal understanding of what's going on. So -- but the point just [11:42:26 AM] wanted to make is that these cleanups are really important and so we've got to pick up the cost. I think we're all saying that, while rise recognizing that it's important to do whatever we can to work with the state to recognize that really this is a responsibility that they're push off on us. I would also just echo what councilmember tovo said and that is really that the more we continue to work on the root of the problem, the more that will help us with these costs. When we're putting dollars into cleanups that we're really just not getting at the real source of the problem, then we're using dollars in a way that we have to right now, but they're not dollars that are effective in getting people housed. So the resolution that we passed at the end of January about looking towards immediate shelters is really important and I'm excited about us continuing with that. So those kind of programs and the other programs that we've been working on and prevention is really where we need to focus, and that's really the best use of our dollars. So we need to continue and work on cleanups because that's critical, but I want to keep our eye on the ball that these dollars are not the most effective use of dollars in terms of really helping with the issues around homelessness. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Leslie? >> Pool: Thanks. Yeah, aimed echoing everything that has been said here, but I'm also -- would like to see what the mama a, what the language is in there and why they've decided to reduce the scope. And in effect what we are being asked to do here is endorse the state's pushing down yet another unfunded mandate to us because our residents want these areas to be clean and safe. [11:44:28 AM] And I don't understand why we're being forced to do this, but we have had so much difficulty with txdot even getting access to the underpasses in order to move the homeless communities into safer locations. So I don't know where that happens to be at this point. I know that Ann was working on that with txdot to try to get address to the different underpasses in district 5 and I've got some issues in district 7 along these lines, but I'm really just fundamentally very concerned with simply adopting yet another unfunded mandate. And our public doesn't in addition that this is really txdot's responsibility because we're picking it up and we're doing it for them and we're making it any kind of protest to it. So I guess I'm not even sure if we take this up. What would happen if we delay this and if we had more conversations with txdot and see if it's in the mma and try to understand better why yet another unfunded mandate is being pushed down to the city of Austin. >> Thank you, councilmember. Yes, and we did discuss that at length at the staff level. The consequence of us not entering into this contract for these services is there would be a lapse in service because our departments don't have the internal capacity right now to conduct this cleanup with city staff and still take care of the other basic services that we provide. While we would enter into that debate if you will and participation in the municipal agreement to have them reenter the contract. So it was a lapse in service and we did discuss this at length that we felt it was such a public health and safety item. APD was one of the components at the table and they were coordinating with txdot very closely tone sure that this vulnerable [11:46:30 AM] population was treated humanely and they had access to services when we conducted the cleanup. So that's why we felt a sense of urgency to bring this up sooner. >> Pool: So colleagues, I believe there was a gap in services because our staff wasn't able to do it because the state had been doing it. Now the state is saying we need to do it, but it seems like we didn't have sufficient time to even respond and they're -- not even in a negotiating table. We didn't have the opportunity it sounds like to push back and say we don't have the funding for this, we don't have the programs in place or the resources. Now we're having to run to catch up on something that was something that was outside of our participation of programs for operations for the year. And I know that with public health and APD and the rest of our staff working with txdot did the best they can, but they were also in a posture of well, we have to just take this. We can't say no, we can't do anything to try to ensure that txdot continues to assume its responsibility. So I'm just having a lot of fundamental problems with not only $1.56 million -- not necessarily just going to work quest, but we're having to allocate this money. We are once again being put in a disadvantage by the state and then we're looking as you were mentioning, Steve, about the 2.5% revenue cap. This is a program that would be very vulnerable if we don't have the additional -- we can do this because we have the additional revenues ostensibly, but if that revenue cap goes into place we won't. So I'm wondering if this is an item that we should maybe pull from our consideration on Thursday. Just wondering. >> Mayor Adler: Ann and then Jimmy. >> Kitchen: I really appreciate the concerns you're raising because I have those concerns, but I'm very worried about the lapse in services. [11:48:30 AM] What's happening with us right now is we often don't have sufficient cleanups as it is and it is a public health and safety issue. So I appreciate what you're saying and we're really kind of in a bind here. So I don't know what the solution might be, but I really do not want us to have a lapse in service, particularly since we're dealing with an agency where we may not have many options and may not have any quick options. The other thing my understanding is -- and we would want to check -- verify this and I know you're going to verify this. We've been told at times in the past that really the overpasses in our community are the only ones that txdot has actually been doing cleanups for. So from their perspective they may view what they've been doing as sort of outside the norm. So I'd like to find a solution, but I'd like to do it in a way that does not result in a lapse of service, particularly since the services and the cleanups that we've had in place have not been sufficient, they've just been as much as we could do. And they're really not often enough. >> Jimmy. >> Flannigan: Mr. Mendoza, can you remind me? I believe that state law provides that txdot can not do this and force it on to municipalities, is that right? >> The state statute as I understand it is once a city or municipality incorporates an area they take maintenance responsibilities of all the right-of-way assets to include the assets within that right-of-way area. It's analogous to a neighborhood requesting to be a gated community and then community says you're gated now the street are yours, the sidewalks are yours. Unless that municipality, and this happens across the state, enters into a municipal maintenance agreement in which we request the state to support and assist the city with maintenance and operations of those state assets. And we've been entered into [11:50:31 AM] that municipal maintenance agreement since 1986. I've been here two years. I suspect why we've not updated this because of my experience in other cities is every time it's updated it resolves in more workload on the city and less on the state, but that's the way the state statute is written is my understanding. >> Flannigan: Thank you. And so I think -- councilmember kitchen, I think you kind of nailed this and councilmember pool, I think we're all emotionally in agreement. It doesn't seem right. I'm ready to move forward with this because it just needs to be done, but I think it's a good conversation for us to introduce at the campo level because we're certainly not the only municipality in the region that is finding ourselves taxing our local jurisdictions in order to maintain public right-of-ways. And I would argue that some of our smaller jurisdictions have a greater proportional pain because you think of a city like cedar park where they built 183 a so the rma has a role to play in this conversation too. A large part of their fairly small jurisdiction is txdot right-of-way. So it might even represent a larger proportion of that budget impact than it even does on that. So it's a conversation I'd like to bring up at the regional level. I also have as we all do have folks in the community concerned about what they see in the overpasses because my district touches cedar park and Round Rock. I also hear that from constituents in cedar park and Round Rock. I think it's a good conversation to have at that level. And because of the state law provision I think it's something that we also need to talk about at our state delegations and look at Texas municipal league and other folks to say does that even make sense as a role, that all being said, our local txdot folks I think are great and I enjoy working with them and I don't think this reflects on the local folks where we partner. I think this is a systemic issue that based on an agreement from 1986 we haven't had to confront as detectively as other communities have. So be mindful of that [11:52:33 AM] conversation. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie. >> Pool: That sounds good. I didn't know it dated back that far, but I know now have a question of why did we get such a hard time on getting to the overpasses from txdot to do the homeless cleanups in the first place, which was be bedeviling the concerns in district 5. >> Kitchen: Maybe I'm not understanding your question. >> Pool: Didn't we have to have a memorandum of understanding with txdot a year or so too long in order for our staff to be able to go into the underpasses where the homeless were camping in order to do a cleanup? >> Kitchen: I'm not certain about that. I think the kinds of barriers that I am remembering experiencing was more about resources in time to do it as opposed to permission to do it. But I may be missing something. >> Pool: Okay. And my reaction is we just didn't have the authority to go on to that property because it wasn't city property, it was state property. >> Kitchen: I don't know. Others are -- others may be more familiar with that than me. >> Renteria: Yeah, I think Jimmy was working -- it was that we had -- the police officers could not go and -- [phone ringing]. I'm sorry. They couldn't go and question the individuals that are in there because they were on private property. But I think there's an agreement now, a mutual understanding that we can do that. >> Pool: All right. So the state statute didn't extend to that activity. Okay. So I would wrap up by saying I think this would be a great item to put on our 2021 legislative agenda and do whatever work is necessary in the ensuing time to get something like this with the municipal league and the urban counties and the rest to see if we can affect some better responsibility at the state level for these efforts. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Tovo: I'm just not ready to concede our need to [11:54:36 AM] take this on, though I completely agree with the need to continue this service. I want to be very clear, especially I want to be clear because the memo I think identified district 5 and one other district as being the source of concerns about this and as probably the cast that my office has forwarded with indicate, certainly I hear a lot of concerns from constituents in district 9. We have lots of overpasses that generate concern among district 9 constituents and others who write about district 9 overpasses. But I guess what I'm confused about now is that we have a state statute that says one thing, but as I understand it, the maintenance agreement that you've referenced modifies that provision and so this state maintenance agreement that I'm going to ask for through the Q and a in 1996, is it still in place and why would we amend it? I guess that's really the fundamental question I have for legal staff? If we have a legal agreement with them that they are going to maintain the overpasses in this way, that's our document. >> So yes, we do have a maintenance agreement and it still is in affect. It's been amended because over time certain state routes have been added and certain routes have been taken off their system. An example, Cesar Chavez, that was taken off the system so it was amended in 2003 or fourish to reflect that. But the specific terms in terms of who is responsible for what specific maintenance activities, street sweeping, pavement repairs, lane striping, crosswalks, litter control, ledgevation, those -- vegetation, those have been in place since that time. We have been in conversations with them to update that municipal maintenance agreement to better reflect the current mode of operations for both the city and the state, but this crosses multiple departments and I have been working with my colleagues to develop a matrix of [11:56:37 AM] responsibilities by state asset which we're comfortable and we would propose going back to them to update. But yes, that maintenance agreement is in place that allows txdot to come perform, believe it or not, maintenance and repair and spend money on their own assets. So that's why we have it in place. >> Tovo: I have more questions, but I'll leave it for now and address it outside. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Thank >> Mayor adler:thank you. Let's move on. Thank you. We have four more items and also the zoning items. It is -- it's noon. With respect to item number 50, which is the asmp, my recommendation to my colleagues here would be that on Thursday we not take a final vote on asmp because I think that we've had planning commission that was just hearing it today. I think that staff has gotten other kinds of comments. I mention that now because I don't think that's something that if we do that -- and I think it's a great thing to do, we don't have to resolve all the asmp questions here today. That would have us doing the public hearing on Thursday so that people can give us comments and the like, but then to give staff an opportunity to be able to respond to the suggestions, some of which I think staff thinks are good suggestions, but to let staff then come back and tee us up to take a vote. The only issue on Thursday would be whether we take a first reading approval or whether we just hear the testimony. But I raise that now, thinking that that might impact the kind of conversation we have at the work session or need to resolve issues. But it is noon. We have those three plus that one, and then we have four zoning items, five zoning items that have been pulled. Do you want to keep going before we break for executive session for a [11:58:37 AM] little bit and see what we can knock out or take the break now and then come back? >> Kitchen: Can we speak very quickly to the asmp that you raised? >> Mayor Adler: I'm fine with pulling -- some of these might be quick as well. I'm fine doing that. Do you want to do that? All right. Let's do the asmp first and then we'll come back to the others. >> Kitchen: I wanted to speak to what you were suggesting. Is that -- others may, too. That works for me. I would suggest we also at a time -- add a time certain so people have an idea when they can come and speak about it if we do the public hearing on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: We can certainly say rather than time certain we could certainly say we're going to keep the mic open for a certain period of time so if someone is there earlier in the day we certainly could but we agree we'll keep the mic open for a period of time. Further conversation about that process? Question? Delia? >> Garza: Not about process. Are we going to talk details or are we not going to? I'm confused. >> Mayor Adler: I would suggest that if we're going to not take the final vote then we can daylight issues but might not have to resolve issues here at the work session. I think that would be a better thing for us to do and then maybe we can get to some of the other things on the agenda. >> Garza: With that in mind I will daylight mine quickly. There's more, but if the understanding is, is we want to be -- we don't want it to be lengthy, I'm fine with that. These are just -- these are in draftish form. I am not -- I've never been a big fan of wordsmithing stuff, but that being said I think there's some important things here that I want to be included. So we just -- and I'm happy to hear from my colleagues about concerns. If you want to pass one to staff. Under the first edit in the red is improve connective in [12:00:39 PM] our street grids to better distribute trips across the community as we welcome new infill development. I need to work on that language more but I will be totally transparent. I am not a fan of crash Gates. I think they get added too often during planning commission recommendations. I feel like if -- in a city as Progressive as ours I've often thought there's this weird disconnect, we don't want to build borders and walls in other parts of the world but it's okay to build borders and walls in our own neighborhoods. And so I've introduced this language to address part of that as well as there's another part that specifically talks about when crash Gates should be used as an absolute last resort, and I hope -- you know, it's about connectivity, and when we only allow one neighborhood to get in and out one way, that's -- that just makes our congestion issues worse. And so that's what I'm getting at at that amendment one. Amendment two I touched on with the mobility strategies. Again, we talk about healthy foot a lot, and I think it's important, but what has happened, with all due respect on the staff side, has been -- we're talking about market -- what are they called, food markets, and those kinds of things. Not all families can go on a Saturday to, you know, a place in republic square park and pick out their favorite kale and that kind of thing. It's not just about healthy food. It's about access to toothpaste and affordable diapers and amenities, and as we have not addressed our land code issues, families are pushed out and it created a sprawl in areas that don't have grocery stores so I want language that says if healthy food is mentioned anywhere I'm asking that we include healthy food including community amenities such as [12:02:39 PM] grocery stores. And then amendment 3 is -- touches on the whole crash Gates thing, just asking that it's a last resort. Amendment power is about family friendly -- amendment 4 is about including diverse amenities for families. Then the last one is about adding public safety vehicles, ems, and fire. So those are just the initial ones. I have more that -- I'm glad to hear this will only go on first reading, if we decide to go that route. >> Flannigan: I would support first reading and closing the hearing on Thursday and getting through the longer amendments process as a council. I handed out three amendments very specific to my district. These are areas that have old schools, suburban style development where everything funnels out to single exits on to major arterials so I'm trying to correct some of the lack of grid connectivity. Certainly in some areas that are green field and in the middle of turning over from residential to commercial, in fact one of the zoning cases that I pulled -- I pulled it is that precise thing, where there's a home flipping into commercial in an area where we should be creating more grid connectivity. The staff was great in some of the things I proposed for district 6 but some of the other ones they were hesitant because it intersects with the txdot project and weren't necessarily comfortable communicating that. I can understand how staff wouldn't want to lay that up themselves. These are my amendments on road connectivity, including pedestrian and bike, and staff priority which staff did make changes to and trail systems specifically in robin springs. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. [12:04:42 PM] Okay. Alison. >> Alter: I would prefer to do a public hearing and not do first reading because there's so many amendments flying I don't even know what's -- the planning commission is meeting tonight. There's a lot of stuff that's on their agenda. It just feels like I would rather we could take those amendments and really digest them to understand what is being put forward in first reading, and I'm not exactly sure unless we have a first reading that is simply what was put out first. I'm not sure how to do that or what the advantage of that is since we could just pass it, you know, the next time on all three readings if we wanted. But, you know, in an interest of planning it would be really helpful to know whether we're going to have a first reading put forward or just do the hearing because I think that how we approach things would vary significantly, given the magnitude of the amount that's before us. >> Mayor Adler: I don't see an advantage on first reading and I would propose that -- I mean, a deliberated first reading. So I would propose either that we just have the public hearing, close the public hearing, or if we wanted to have a first reading vote we would have a first reading vote on what was proposed but would not be parsing amendments at that point. Because once you cross that line I don't know how to stop that line, and it could be that some of the amendments we'd be prepared to talk might be obviated by staff coming back to us in a couple weeks and saying we've heard this deal and this is what we propose to do so I would recommend either no vote on anything or first reading vote on just what was proposed. Do you guys have a preference on that? >> Mayor and council, Robert spillar, director of transportation. Although I would not suggest a preference, we will be bringing a number of amendments as part of your initial consideration that we've heard from a range of [12:06:43 PM] folks, boards and commissions, certainly from councilmembers, the public, as well as we've gone through. Those amendments are basically two or three different types. One -- certainly there are typos we're trying to correct so we would offer those as staff proposed amendments. There have been some changes, some clarifications based on comments we've received from the community with regards to the maps for instance or definition of projects where we thought it was in keeping with the proposal to bring forward those as recommended by staff. We'll also be presenting to you other amendments or other comments brought by the public or boards and commissions where staff would recommend a different approach, and so that would be embodied in what we bring as a recommendation. Of course we're bringing that on -- as a fully ready to go proposal, but it's council's prerogative to take it just a public hearing and close the public hearing or do first reading or all three rearing. That's your prerogative. We'd be ready to support you on all of those but that's really your call. >> Mayor Adler: I'm a little hesitant to us voting on Thursday. >> I understand. >> Mayor Adler: Since that hasn't been distributed yet. Again, I'd recommend either no vote or first reading vote on what has been available. I don't have a problem at all, it might be helpful on Thursday if you just daylighted those things. >> Absolutely. >> Mayor Adler: The community would be able to see them so they would be part of the conversation, but I would hope as a body we wouldn't be parsing them or discussing them until we were further on in the process. Alison and then Leslie. >> Alter: I just wanted to clarify so that my comments about the amendments flying were not misconstrued. I think the broad outlines of the asmp are very clear and I think there's broad agreements. It happens that the parts that need to be reresolved at this point get very much into the weeds so it's not something that you can necessarily -- we can probably grow that, you [12:08:44 PM] know, we're comfortable with having grocery stores in there but there may be something about a particular street and a particular place that we need a little bit more time to look at than we normally get on the dais. So I didn't want that comment to be misconstrued in terms of the volume of what we're looking at in the scope of the changes that might be in the works at least as I understand them. >> Mr. Mayor, we'll be bringing the original asmp as originally sent out to you as the draft. What I was meaning is we will also be bringing a set of amendments for your consideration. >> Mayor Adler: That's good. And my lemmings would be for us to approve on -- recommendation would be for us to approve on first reading what had been put in backup. We signal to the community that this is the direction that we're going in but we hold all amendments until later but we do have the public hearing, close the public hearing as part of that. Leslie. >> Pool: I agree. I think that's a good approach. It would also give us an opportunity perhaps to -- those of us who haven't crafted amendments ourselves, we can offer them on Thursday so staff has all of those kind of -- sort of our public input to the process as well. And then coming back we can take them all together. >> Mayor Adler: Sounds like a good plan. >> Pool: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Ann and then Kathie. >> Kitchen: I just wanted to say I think that's a good approach to not vote on Thursday. So I also wanted just to get -- >> Mayor Adler: I was suggesting a first reading vote but no deliberation. >> Kitchen: To me it makes no difference. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Kitchen: Whether we do that. So feedback, these amendments look like things I can support. Mayor pro tem Garza, I may have some language that I might want to suggest. I'll put it on the message board. I agree with the concerns about connectivity. I want to make -- I'm thinking that we may be able to give a little bit more context to one of your [12:10:46 PM] sentences with regard to crash Gates and the last resort, maybe mentioning a few factors that sometimes are worth considering that relate to safety. So I'll think about it and I'll post it. >> Garza: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else on this? Alison -- sorry, Paige first and then Alison. >> Ellis: I just would appreciate -- I know I just had a meeting yesterday with community stakeholders in my district, and want to work with you, because I know you've been communicating as well to kind of see the updated language involving some of the overlapping agreements that we're working on. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Alison. >> Alter: I just wanted to flag that I have some questions that I'll need resolved with respect to number 2 on motion sheet 1 for Flannigan. It looks like it goes through the preserve, but I'm not sure from this map. >> Flannigan: To be clear, number 2 is through the 3M property and then through utility easement but not the one on the back end that's part of the reserve. >> Alter: So I want to talk to you about that to get some further clarity on what you have in mind there. >> Flannigan: Sure. >> Alter: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Delia. >> Garza: One last thing. I guess just -- it's in this -- I don't know what the booklets are but the summary as well as the main part, it's on 281 on both, I guess, 281, there's mention of -- it's about the access to food and markets, mention of the food environment analysis, which is not a council-approved document or something that council has given direction on. And so I'm concerned about what could be a light endorsement of something that has not come before council and this is just something that, you know, my office has been working on so that's -- you know, we [12:12:47 PM] were able to see that. I just want to make sure that in other areas where maybe I am not keeping an eye on it that we're not putting documents or reports or anything like that that has not been approved by council, brought before council, like that. So I will also be asking to strike the mention of the food environment analysis. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I think we're done with -- Leslie. >> Pool: Last comment. You will be including the recommendations from the urban transportation commission for sure. Are there any other commissions whose recommendations may be coming forward? >> Councilmember, we've been meeting with a number of commissions and we'll include all the comments that we've received. Utc because urban transportation, yes, will be making special notes of those but also the planning and zoning commission is required to provide comments. Is that correct -- planning commission, sorry. Planning commission. Because it's an amendment to imagine Austin and so we'll make sure you see those as well. We're meeting with them tonight to receive their comments. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Would you please get with the clerk and as much as you can give the clerk to be able to post in backup for this so that the community can see it and council can see it. That would be helpful ahead of time. >> Yes. >> Mayor Adler: If you have copies of Jimmy's three amendments and Delia's amendments, if you could make those part of backup as well, post them so that people can see those as well, I think that would be helpful. If other people have amendments and you could post them on the message boards, that would be helpful, too. And what we'll do on Thursday is we'll on the public hearing, we'll take the public testimony, we'll close public testimony, approve on first reading what has been originally proposed by staff, and that's all that we'll do. >> And Mr. Mayor -- >> Mayor Adler: And you can daylight the conversations as well. >> Yes. Mr. Mayor, exhibit C with all of the comments thus far is already posted. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. [12:14:47 PM] >> That also has the recommendation by staff whether to accept or modify or not object to, with the exception of the planning commission's, which will be added tomorrow as soon as we receive them today. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Mayor, I'd also ask on Thursday if you would allow me an opportunity to lay out the motion before you, perhaps before public hearing just so everybody knows what's available. >> Mayor Adler: That sounds good. >> I have maybe six slides. >> Mayor Adler: We'll go ahead and do that. Alison. >> Alter: I thought we said before we weren't going to pass anything on first reading and you just changed that. It -- I mean -- >> Mayor Adler: What I had said is we could do it either way and it was hanging on either way. So what I said a couple minutes ago, I said let's pass first reading that way we signal to the community -- >> Alter: One of the things that I object to is in the base motion of the other, and I'm still hoping that that will change, but it's got to go through the hearing process for that, and so I'm just very uncomfortable with switching this back and forth and it really doesn't allow us to prepare for what happens on Thursday the way that you've laid it out. >> Mayor Adler: Then maybe I misspoke. What we would do is have the public hearing. People can make suggestion ons what kind of amendments they want to raise. We would open with the introduction, laying out of the bill, open up the public hearing, people talk about changes they want to make, we would close the public hearing, and then we would pass on first reading what had originally been proposed, without any amendments to it so that we're not parsing any language or any amendments to it. We would then come back at some point in the future. You could lay out what amendments you wanted to raise so the public has a chance to see those. If other councilmembers wanted to lay out amendments we could do that, too. But we wouldn't be taking votes on any amendments prior to that time. That's what I would do absent the will of the council expressing something different. Yes, Kathie. >> Tovo: That sounds like a [12:16:48 PM] reasonable plan to me. I just want to say that, likely, based on the public testimony that we receive on Thursday or hear about in upcoming weeks, I might bring forward some amendments so those won't be ready Thursday. I think we should always position ourselves in a way we can respond to the public comment we hear so I would note that. I would suggest that we not make a decision today -- or I would suggest that we keep the public hearing open because especially if we are proposing amendments in the interim or the staff may present something on Thursday, I think it's appropriate to allow the public additional time to comment before we pass it so I would suggest that we close the -- that we not close the public hearing on Thursday but we can certainly provide reasonable guidelines to people, you know, if you've made your point on Thursday please either make a new point if you have one or let others speak. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. So let's talk about that parameter on Thursday. The vote on that. Leslie. >> Alter: I want to register that I would rather not us vote put forward on first reading because I don't see how we prepare with the planning commission stuff and all of -- it just seems like we have a full agenda to deal with as well and that it just adds complications that I don't think are necessary. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Leslie. >> Pool: I just wanted to point out that the planning commission is only going to be reviewing all of this tonight and providing recommendations and in fact we may need a little bit more time than just two days, and it kind of runs afoul of our general accepted procedure not to vote on something without having enough time to look at the recommendations coming from the citizen commissions. >> Mayor Adler: To be clear I'm not suggesting we vote on any amendments that come from the planning commission or any amendments that come from anybody. We were only proposing we do as we have often done on things as we move something along administratively with what is currently a file and currently before us so there's no additional work [12:18:49 PM] that anybody needs to do and in no way does it suggest that anybody is cut off from making any amendments, either those that are brought forward on Thursday or those that are not brought forward on Thursday. There's no limitation to that either. >> Pool: That sounds -- >> Mayor Adler: That's all that was -- >> Pool: Does that give room for Alison's concern that she has some requested amendments on the staff's recommendation. >> Mayor Adler: I would assume lots of people are going to have amendments on the staff recommendation. What I was proposing was on Thursday we not consider anybody's amendments to any -- to the staff recommendation, that we not get into that -- the whole point of this is not to get into a conversation. So I suggested two different ways, one we don't take any vote at all or a vote where we take a first reading vote on the unamended recommendation that had originally come from staff, not the new recommendation that's just been posted. Jimmy. >> Flannigan: And I would say I think it's -- as common a practice as anything much like on a zoning case, we vote on first reading to move it through the process, signaling our intent to finalize it but not saying what we voted on at first reading is the final form in any way that it will take and everything can still be amended later. I feel like this is more along the common practice. >> Casar: I have to leave at 3:00 and I won't have a chance to do executive session on Thursday and I think we'll have a chance to do these on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. All right. So let's move on to this one. So we've now taken -- the items that we have left -- there's been ask Q we go into executive session. We haven't done 32, haven't done 37, 40 or 50, and then we have five zoning cases. It's been requested we go into executive session. Do you want to do that? We'll do executive session [12:20:49 PM] and come back and handle these other matters after that. So we'll now go in closed items to take up three items pursuant to 551.086 of the government code, dcuss matters related to e2, Austin energy generation resources and pursuant to 551.071 legal matters related to e3 and e4, which is [indiscernible] And Texas association of business versus city of Austin. E1 and e5 will not be covered in executive session today. Is there any objection to going into executive session? Hearing none, hear at 12:21 we're going to recess for executive session and then come back out. [ Executive session ] [1:28:21 PM] [3:37:29 PM] >> Mayor adler: it's apparent there wasn't a quorum walking back with me into this room so I'm going to announce we're out of closed session. In closed session we discussed matters related to e2, legal matters related to items e3 and e4. It is 328 -- 3:38 and this meeting is adjourned.