City Council Work Session Transcript – 05/21/2019 Title: City of Austin Description: 24/7 Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 5/21/2019 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/21/2019 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:11:35 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. I think we have everybody here. We need to get started. Today is may 21st, 2019. We're in the boards and commissions room here at city hall. It is 9:10. We have two briefings today. We have the end homeless briefing. We also have a micro-mobility briefing. Alison is at a school opening, ground-breaking, so she's not going to be here until 10:00. She's asked us to hold off until 10:00 to start in micro-mobility, so we'll do that. We have four, maybe five items that have been pulled, half of which are micro-mobility. So I think what we'll do when we have some folks here from out of town is we'll start with the ending homeless briefing, then we'll go into that, into the briefing on the micro-mobility, and if for whatever reason that's before 10 o'clock, then in that gap, we'll do the non- micro-mobility-pulled items. Do we have -- we have executive session today, and we have one item on executive session. With that then, we have a quorum, and we will open with the end homeless briefing. Councilmember kitchen, you want to set that up? >> Kitchen: I just want to thank our guests from the national alliance to end homeless. Some of you may be familiar that they've been helping the city of Austin out with our revamping of the arch, and of course they work all over the country and are experts on what other cities are experiencing. So we're really lucky to have them here today to -- and I want to thank them personally for -- they were in town to work with the arch, and I want to thank [9:13:36 AM] them for taking the time this morning to come and talk with us. >> Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Thank you to all the members for inviting us to be here today and giving us some time to speak with you. I see we have some city managers, some assistant city managers, some other community mbers so we're really appreciative of having the time to be able to engage with you and hopefully answer some of your questions, and I think we will be able to really have a good dialogue around some of the things that you're experiencing here in Austin. My name is Cynthia [indiscernible], and I am the director for center for capacity building at the national alliance to end homeless. This is my colleague. >> Good morning. My name is Christy, I'm a senior the building specialist for the alliance. >> We've been coming to Austin for about the past year or so. We started coming to Austin about a year ago to take a look at -- specifically at the arch, but sort of just generally how the shelters were functioning in the homeless system here to sort of provide some recommendations about how to strengthen their role in the system, try to help them get some better outcomes and also try to help the city and the system help support shelters a little bit better to be more successful. So today we're going to cover a number of those topics. So a little bit about the alliance. The national alliance to end homelessness is a national voice on homelessness. We've been operating about 25 years, basically since homelessness started. We're headquartered in washed, we work in policy, advocacy, mostly at the federal level, so we work a lot with administration and with congress to make sure that we are funding programs at the highest levels we can, and also advocating for funding programs and policies that are evidence-based, things that we know are working, making sure that the funding is sort of going into the right -- to the right things. We also have a homeless research institute and we do our own research and research [9:15:37 AM] translation. We work with a number of researchers in the field, what we call our research councils, researchers whoork on homelessness and housing. Christy and I are the alliance that works directly in communities across the country. So we work in several cities, small and large around the country, really to learn from what's working well in homelessness, to reduce homelessness, we work in communities to see decreases, to see what they're doing. We disseminate what we learn to other commities to help them sort of implement better responses to homelessness. Our hole goal is to help communities reduce the number of people who are homeless in their communities. That is true our main goal. Then we take what we learn to our national partners to make sure that they are also kind of infusing what is happening to the ground in their national policies. So with that, I will talk to you a little bit about what we're going to talk about today. I know there's a lot in the powerpoint. That's largely for you to have the information. Some of these things I will sort of whiz through, but you will have it to sort of read on your own time and I'll kind of hit the highlights there because I know there's a lot we wanted to cover. I'llalk quickly about the national trends in homelessness and come in myths, we talk through with all sorts of communities. What does an effective homeless response system look like, what does it have, what are its characteristics, and really, most important, wt role do housing-focused emergency shelters play in that effective homeless response system ideally. And we'll talk about what is an effective shelter model. So just really quickly, I want to talk about the national trends. So these -- on the left, you have the trends from the different subpopulations from 2007, and on the right our most recent annual point in time count. I think many of you probably know that the federal government housing and urban development requires each to [9:17:38 AM] do a count every one to two years. If you compare the two charts, you'll see that homelessness has decreased over time over every subpopulation over this time. There are differences in the counting methodology and things like that, but if you look at the trend data, not year to year data, you can see generally that overall the number of homeless individuals and families has decreased and there's been a decrease in just about every subpopulation. The reason I bring this up is to talk about really what we know works, that these -- these decreases are happening despite, as we know, extremely high housing costs, stagnant wages, things like that. So despite really difficult, challenging economic forces that are outside the homeless system, there have been decreases. Why is that? Since 2007, as I said before, there's been an overall decrease of about 15%, and most dramatic decreases have been among veterans. Overall across the country, there's a 30% decrease. Here in Austin you have pretty much ended homelessness. Individuals experiencing long-term homelessness with a disability, a 19% decrease, and people living in sheltered locations has actually decreased. Many people living outside, not even in a shelter, but in their cars, under bridges, on the streets. And so since 2017, since this last point in time, 2017 to 2018, homelessness declined in 31 states. There have been increases, very slight increases. Between 2017 and 2018, there was a slight national increase of about .3%, about 1800 people. That's large fully -- largely in California. That's where it comes from. But I know you hear about increases. I'll talk about why that might be. Increases are being seen largely in the number of individual adults in your homeless populations, not families, not veterans. Some might include chronically homeless individuals. I want to point out nationally, homeless [9:19:39 AM] individuals make up 67% of the total national population. That's pretty reflective of your individual community as well. Individuals, meaning individuals who don't have children and are experiencing homelessness are not in a family, they might -- they don't have children, and they're on their own. They experience sort of the -- they usually make up the largest, most significant part of the homeless importance yet often we give them the least amount of resources, we target families, vets, the chronic, the, you're that's often where there's research coming, but we are now seeing the impact of that, we're seeing these are folks kind of being left behind. So we think one of the major reasons is there hasn't been a target investment in this population and we want to emphasize solutions that are for individuals that are really critical. So since -- why the decreases? Since 2006, the federal government and local funding has primarily moved towards funding permanent housing strategies, housing first permanent housing solutions and using outcome driven strategies. It's been an intentional strategy from the federal government. A lot of your funding is reflective of that. You really align a lot of your priorities to the federal priorities because they work and also because that's where the funding is coming from. The field has really moved from managing homelessness, sort of putting a temporary band-aid on it, to solving it, providing permanent housing for individuals in a large scale. We're nowhere where we need to be, but that's really where the decreases are related to. So communities are investing in housing focused solutions, are the ones that are really seeing the significant decreases. So why are there increases? Well, rising housing costs, stagnating wages. There's higher inflow into homelessness so this is a hard number to capture, but if you look at increases, you can't look at it at a static population, you have to think about how many people are falling into homelessness every year to really get a sense for why there might be increases. So your community, I have a [9:21:39 AM] chart that says you've actually housed more people this year than you did last year through your homeless system, but people falling into homelessness, there must be some sort of increase there. And it's not something that communities often measure, but they're starting to do so. Also, there's not enough flow into homeless -- into holes systems into housing. I'll talk about what system flow means. Not enough target investment in permanent housing resources. There's investment in temporary resources, but not enough in permanent housing and the kinds of flexible permanent housing that isn't permanent supportive housing, long-term subsidies, but short and medium term that we see helping communities bring more flow into their system. I want to talk quickly about some myths around homelessness. We don't know how to solve homelessness. This is something that you'll -- you'll hear a lot in the press this week. I'm not sure if you've seen the numbers from California, they're pretty depressing, there's a lot of increases in the bay area and San Francisco. We must not know how to solve homelessness, we see increases, we must not know what we're doing. That's a myth. The solution to homelessness is housing. We -- when I say we, the field of evidence, research, practitioners, funders, we've seen homelessness by the key to solving it for each person who is experiencing it. I wanted to point out one example of this that's pretty clear. In 2010, the federal government decided to spend five years of intensive investment -- and that investment has been ongoing, to end veteran homelessness, so really major a huge dent in homelessness, hud and va put a lot of investment into short and medium term rental [9:23:41 AM] assistance with services. If you had a veteran in your family, the veteran could get case management services. As you can see, the investment from 2010 to 2017 has degree, largely permanent housing investments, and the number of people experiencing homelessness has fallen by 47% that are veterans. It's not a coincidence. The resources given to communities was brought to scale, it was really to scale. There's enough money for each veteran, and what it also requires is leadership and coordination on the ground, a very strong, kind of, back-bone organization to really help figure out how to use that money well, or several organizations. But the resources are really -- the targeted resource in permanent housing really made a difference. They also really helped, you know, temporary housing for veterans become sort of better equipped to work with highly vulnerable veterans. So temporary housing shelters, what we call GPD transitional hours ago those were the kinds of things that were revamped to work well in this system. They weren't working well before in the systems, and they were revamped, retooled to become better, sort of, partners in this whole process of housing veterans. So we have the solutions -- they're housing focused, and ultimately the solution is adequate incomes or adequate supply of affordable housing so people don't become homeless in the first place but we know we are far short of both of those things, so until then, we have to help the vast majority of people move quickly back into housing, with short-term and longer term rent subsidies and connection in the community. I'll talk a little bit more about shelters' role in that. So we know that another myth is homelessness is caused by people's characteristics. So what makes people experience homelessness? Their mental illness, substance abuse, it's disabilities. This is a myth, largely. These things contribute to someone's experience of homelessness, but by and large, homelessness is a housing-driven economic problem. If there was a sufficient [9:25:44 AM] supply of affordable housing, there would not be widespread homelessness. I'm sure you've heard this before before the '80s, there wasn't widespread homelessness, a lot to do with social net being cut but also the federal government stopped funding vouchers and we fund less and less to scale. The amount of people that needed affordable housing, that need was not being met. And so today we are 7.2 million affordable units short across the country for extremely low income renters. And these are really the folks that we're talking about falling into homelessness. I just wanted to show you, this is from the national low-income housing coalition that has some really great data on each state. This is Texas. It's a little bit -- I don't know if you guys can see it in your powerpoints, but there's -- so Texas has -- I'm going to look at this; I can't actually read that. Thank you -- has 8043,000 renters that need affordable housing. There's 29 affordable housing units for every hundred that need it. So 74% of those are extremely low income renters. In other words, you're pretty short on the number of affordable housing units you need. -- It doesn't meanthe folks can't be how did on the very low income scale but there's a shortage. It's also driving the increase. You can see Texas is pretty red, as red as California, Washington, and some of the other -- Florida. These are places that have an extreme shortage. You can also see these are the ten states with the highest homeless counts, meaning highest rates of homelessness per capita. This is 2018 and Texas is in the top ten. Again, I just wanted to make that relation, shortage of rising housing costs understand a numbers of homeless. So the lack of affordable housing kind of has a duly effect. It pushes more people into the homeless system, that's that increased inflow into homelessness, and it makes it more difficult for people to exit homelessness to housing because it's harder to find the housing. Because there's not enough [9:27:46 AM] affordable housing, much of these people people are likely to fall into homelessness, just kind of something to keep in mind. Homelessness happens because incomes don't match housing costs. That's basically the main reason. If you think about just the people in your community, there's many people who have mental health issues or substance abuse issues or disabilities, but only about 1% of them ever fall into homelessness. And that's because they have economic protective factors, family, you know, health care access, that's a huge thing that people who are in extreme poverty don't have. And those are the things that protect them from falling into homelessness. But if you're on the very, very low end of the income scale and you don't have those protective factors, that toxic combination of slow wage growth and skyrocketing rents can really put housing out of reach. Zilla, the real estate company, has done a ton of research with some of the big researchers in homelessness, Dennis cohain at the university of Pennsylvania, and they looked at their housing data, the rental -- the rent data they have over many years, and they found, for example -- they're finding an increase -- sort of a clear connection between rent increases and homelessness. And they found that in L.A., for example, a 5% increase in rent translates into about 2,000 more people who are homeless. This is a chart here that shows -- which we haven't really seen data like this and we knew this to be true, but this is very specific, that homelessness really climbs faster when rent affordability reaches specifically 22%, meaning people are paying over 22% of their income to rent, and at a greater rate when they're spending over 32% of their income to rent. We know that many people who are in your -- in the low income scale, very low and very cost burdened, are spending over 50% of their income to rent, especially in this community as well. So it's kind of important to just keep making those connections. And so we know that the majority of people become homeless for economic reasons. Many people living on the street and in shelters do have income. We know this from just looking at the arch and some of your other shelters here, [9:29:47 AM] there's many people there who have income and, therefore, we're seeing three, four years, sometimes five years, we don't know how much longer, that's just how far the data goes back, and the people -- and that's because they're saving money to get out or it's really hard to kind of get that leg up you need, a security deposit, help with a job -- with an application, but they're working. And we know people who are living outside, on the streets, a lot of those folks are working as well. So what they need is some help, just kind of getting a leg up into housing, and some stability staying there, but they do -- a lot -- a lotof people do have income. This is what I mentioned before, that over 2017, this is from your data that was just recently released, this is how many people you have housed, your homeless system has housed, despite all of these housing costs and all of the challenges I just mentioned, I wanted to point out that over -- you housed over 1700 people at your homeless system, other 1700 people last year. And that was 233 more than the year before. So thousands of people are getting housed each year. It's really important to kind of -- when people say, well, there is no housing, we can't possibly -- housing is a market-based solution, how can we house people, you're housing people, helping them stay there, they're not returning to homelessness. It can be done. We just need to scale up the resources that are working with people living outside or refuse help because they want to be homeless. I assume a lot of people have heard that. It's something we get a lot of questions about. It's also by and large a myth. I can't speak for every person. People generally remain homeless, we know through a lot of survey data and just really getting to know what people want who are living outside, people remain homeless because there aren't available housing and service options that actually meet their needs. In other words, it's not appealing or helpful, people aren't giving people housing options, they're really saying do you want a shelter bed or do you want a place to stay for a night. For a lot of people, leaving [9:31:48 AM] their car, all their stuff, leaving their partner or pet behind for one or two nights in a place they may not want to stay in or they don't really see how they're going to get out of their circumstances feels better. So it's not giving them options that are actually going to help them. Often we find when you give people they do want that are going to help them, and give them a permanent solution, they're going to take that. We saw that with veterans in your community, for example. So we often ask people to go to shelters that are inadequate for their needs and are not offering a permanent absolutely. We ask people to fit our existing programs and we don't really make our programs fit people's needs and we really need to do better at sort of making programs accommodate people's needs. And I want to point out, emergency shelters are not housing, permanent housing. Offering someone a temporary place where they may have have to leave every morning at 5:00 P.M. And come back 5:00 P.M. And may be able to stay only a few nights, it's temporary. It's not housing. People do stay there for a long period of time, but they have to abide by rules. It's temporary place to stay, it's not meant to be housing. I ask rhetorically, if you were an individual, a couple, someone with a pet, where would you go in Austin? There's almost nowhere to go if you're a couple. There's very few places that take pets. So, you know, you have to ask yourself even if you would go, would you be allowed in? And would you want to stay there? And so that really, I think, helps us kind of be a little bit more client-centered. Think about what the experience is for people who are living outside and what's on offer to them. So what is an effective homeless response system? What does that really look like? So the goal of an effective homeless response system really, simply, community's response to homelessness, should be, ideally, to house people as quickly as possible, as quickly as they become homeless, and adversity people from imminent homelessness when [9:33:48 AM] possible, helping them stay where they are, they might be doubled or tripled up, help them find a safe housing solution, where it's a lot harder and more expensive to help people, people might be unstable but we can help stabilize them with a little bit of of financial resources and services. We them a systemic approach because that's what we see across the country, working to really reduce the numbers of homeless -- people experiencing homelessness. That means aligning your interventions and resources across all of your programs, in a coordinated way, around one common goal, housing people. That doesn't mean everyone has to be a houser, but everyone knows what their part is in getting people to that point of housing. If you have a lot of programs that are doing their own thing, they might be great programs and have great outcomes, but if you're not all understanding what your part is in the entire system, kind of what spoke you are in the wheel, it's kind of -- you definitely see a lot of fragmentation in the response and the outcomes. So the end game, really, that we're looking for, we, the field and communities, is that if you have a really effective system, people in a housing crisis have access to immediate help. Hopefully that's shelter. That might be services, but some kind of housing crisis resolution, including a safe place to go and diversion services. So hopefully you have a place to stay if you need it right away, and you're being helped to sort of be diverted from homelessness if there's any other options for you. People are not in shelter -- this is something just generally that people -- you would want to work for, people not being unsheltered, and people do not spend long periods of time homeless. In other words, if they become homeless, you have a system that bounces them back into housing and helps give them services to stay there. We don't want them to cycle back in, so we want to make sure they're stabilized as far as we can, connect them to mainstream other systems so it shouldn't just all be on the homeless system. We can't do it all, so [9:35:50 AM] connecting to the mainstream, other systems that are going to help them stay housed. The federal government and your community as well is sort of very outcomes-focused, and they're looking -- how do you really know that you're ending homelessness? You're reducing inflow into homelessness, you're increasing exits to permanent housing every year decreasing the time people spend homeless and increasing returns. One thing I want to talk about briefly is system flow. I think it will help -- the reason I'm bringing it up, I think it will help kind of position shelter within the system, and kind of help illuminate what shelters should be doing kind of in this effective homeless response system. I talked about housing but I want to talk about where things get stuck a little bit. System flow is essentially a concept of an efficient and coordinated process that's moving people from homelessness into housing as quickly as possible. You want that flow through your system. But oftentimes people are getting stuck in a lot of different places because the system is an ideal one, I'm talking about, you have many of the pleases -- pieces here in place. You can see it clearly with some of your subpopulations. You've built a system for veterans, you're building one for youth, so you're definitely -- you have a lot of the pieces in place, they just aren't to scale for all of your populations. So you have as many flow in some places and not in others. So what is poor system flow? It means you have kind of an unchanging or increasing number of unsheltered people, wait lists for shelter, long lists of sustained shelter which you definitely have here, high percent exits from shelters to homelessness, a lot of people going back, inflow is increasing, and you have long waitly I have this rudimentary animation to kind of show you what the system looks like. This is pretty reflective of what is happening here. If a lot of people are unsheltered, you have I. Shelter beds and more limited housing resources. [9:37:51 AM] Some people are moving from unsheltered to sheltered, as you can see. Some people from sheltered are moving to housing. Some people are moving straight from to housing, but by and large, you're seeing your numbers increase because there's not enough of the housing resources, and you can see the sad faces in shelter -- in the sheltered locations are long-stayers, people who are staying there for long periods of time. So some people say why don't we add more shelter beds? Just add some shelter beds and that's going to alleviate our unsheltered problem. So add some shelter beds, let's put some of those shelter beds in there. What you'll see, yes, you'll have more people staying in she recalled, less people who are unsheltered. But inflow is still increasing, people are piling up outside, and a lot of people are getting stuck in your shelter because there's not enough housing research. There's not a way to get them out. So people can get in, now you have more long-stayers in your shelters because they don't have ways to get out. How do you balance shelter and housing? Well, this is adding rapid rehousing capacity, let's say, rapid rehousing is one of the best ways to add flow into your system, so we'll add some housing capacity, and as you can see -- I don't know what happened there -- generally people are, you know, able to flow through both shelter and housing and some people straight from unsheltered to housing, much more quickly because you just have more ways to exit. Have to be able to get in and have to be able to get out. So an effective homeless response system means right-sizing your system, making sure the pieces are the right size, rapid housing to scale is really, really important, rapid rehousing is extremely important in getting that flow through. It's short to medium term rental assistance. Most people in your population, that's what they need. And you want to balance those temporary helps with permanent housing solutions, so you need both the temporary help, the shelter, the emergency services, and enough permanent housing solutions. And you want to treat each person's episode of [9:39:52 AM] homelessness as a community, as an urgent crisis, a crisis that needs a quick permanent housing resolution, and sort of not something that we need to wait for to resolve. This is some -- just some stuff that you know this -- you've had a 15% reduction in beds, 25% reduction in youth over the past year, and I just want to point out that you are experiencing success in these areas and you want to build on that. One thing I did pull here is something about your family resources, think about right-sizing. I'll walk you through this. This is essentially how much temporary shelter and transitional housing, you have temporary beds you have for families, how many people -- what percentage of people are unsheltered, so you have about 101% temporary housing capacity. What does that mean? You have more -- you have just about enough beds for every single family that's homeless. You don't lack bed according to your housing inventory chart and your point in time count data. And so -- and you have a very low percentage of people who are outside, which is great. But you only have 36% of rapid rehousing capacity for that family population. So what I think is likely happening is a lot of people are in shelter, and a lot of people -- but they're not able to get out because they don't have enough housing resources to get out. So it's good that you have shelter, but you wouldn't want to add a lot more -- tons more shelter for families, you probably want to add a lot more housing resources for families. This is just a rudimentary look so I don't want to say that this is a definitive recommendation, but just with a quick look, kind of 30,000-foot glancing this is kind of what it looks like, I don't have your individuals data. I think it's probably much lower percentage of housing for individuals, and I know it's very low percentage for rapid rehousing of individuals. That's something to think about. You can look at your data in a way, how much do we have for whom and what do we need. This is just your point in time count and the trends. You are having an increasing number of unsheltered people, and an increasing number of individuals. And that seems like really where you want to target a lot of your -- I know you are targeting your efforts [9:41:53 AM] towards that, and it seems like that's really the right way to put it. So in all of that, what is the role of effective emergency system in this whole -- in this whole system? We know merge systems are critical to ending homelessness. As a system across the country, we have left emergency shelters out of the conversation for too long. They were one of the first responses that cropped up then around homelessness. It made sense to give people a bed, a cot, a mat, a meal, some basic needs because we didn't really understand 20 years ago, really, what the best way was to end homelessness, and now we do. And we've kind of left them out of the conversation, largely, in many communities. That's partially why the alliance is spending a lot of time in communities really focused on shelter and rapid rehousing, because we see those two as being really critical elements in moving, getting flow into your system, because people are getting stuck in these different places. And so they are important because people in a housing crisis are going to need a safe and decent place to go, that's immediate. We want to help people immediately have that kind of urgent need met, and that one that accommodates their needs, doesn't sort of say you have to be this kind of person and this kind of family and this -- you know, we want to make sure that that's available for people. And sometimes, since we don't he resources to stale housingwise, shelters may be the only place people resolve their -- get any services, any help at all. So we want to equip -- we don't want to put all of our dollars and all of our services into shelter, but we want to equip them to at least be able to help people in a reasonable way get housed. Right? So we don't want -- we sort of have to balance helping shelters get stronger at housing people and really helping them -- and adding housing resources to get people out. So what is the goal of emergency shelter? So traditionally, this is, I think, going to sound familiar to you, this is in your community, I think when we asked people kind of what their -- what type of shelter they have, a lot of people raised their hands and they said it looked like [9:43:53 AM] this. To provide -- the goal being to provide temporary shelter and safety. So you have kind of a hostile like involvement, like check in, check out kind of place, meets your basic needs, showers, laundry, mail. There's a lot of self-directed resource information referral. There's a little bit of case management. But it's pretty light touch and there's not a ton of support services. There's a lot of people, not enough staff usually. Or you could be a shelter that is really providing a path to housing, that the goal is entirely focused on providing a path to housing and ending homelessness for every single person that walks through the door. And that means you're resolving housing crisis permanently, facilitating soft resolution for people who can get out easily. A lot of people can get out easily on their own with just a little bit of house, rehousing people quickly, making sure you're pulling in people who are unsheltered, making sure your programs are accommodating to those folks. And connecting people to housing search and other resources that can help stabilize them once they get housed. Essentially you're trying to change the entire culture of the shelter, the entire purpose of shelter to be from a temporary place that's kind of holding folks, keeping them safe, a place to stay and shelter, to a place trying to get them out, trying to get them to housing. So the traditional shelter model, many people refuse to stay in shelters because they're not accommodating to our need. If you can't come in with your partner, your husband, your waiver, your partner has to stay in a shelter across town, you can't be together, and when you're -- you know, that's not something that a lot of people feel safe doing, or good doing. You can't bring your pet, your only -- you know, your only family, you can't bring them, you have to get rid of it, that's not an option for a lot of people, limited hours of operation, having to bring your stuff in and out, too many rules, some people feel unsafe, it's unclean, it's crowded. You can imagine if you have a mental health issue, that can be very difficult, so the smaller your shelters are makes them a lot easier [9:45:53 AM] to manage. Shelters really should focus on getting people housed, not just offering them a bed. That's really the work we're doing with your community now, not just with arts, that's the transition we're making them make. It's really about kind of making the shift, the cultural shift and the operational shift and the philosophical shift to really becoming kind of laser focused on housing and helping equip them. They definitely need the system to support them as well, but there's some things we can do internally within the agency and the organization. So these get in the way of people getting the help they need. Shelter should not be a destination right now it's a destination for people, they're staying there for long periods of time. It should be part of a process of getting people housed. The shelter is equipped, ideally, and resourced to help people get housed as soon as they come in a shelter and everything in that shelter is focused on getting them housed. People have to get into shelters, you be you have to lower those barriers, and people have to get out to housing. That's really the design concept of any shelter that we would recommend being part of this more effective housing system. So the outcomes we're looking for are to -- this is what we're trying to -- we're worng towards also and collecting a lot of baseline data on this as we make these changes at the arch, decrease long stays, so people who have been there for a really long time, let's focus on those folks and help them get housed, increases exits to permanent housing, decrease returns to shelter, and shelter utilization. We want more people coming through -- those beds aren't turning over so you might not need tons and tons of shelter for individuals because if you have people in your current shelter staying four or five years, those beds are not turning over, but if we turn those beds over and people went to a more permanent solution and didn't come back, you'll have more people coming through those shelters. One thing we really strongly recommend, don't just build shelters without a housing exit strategy. As you saw in the animation, if you add shelter beds, it might -- we've seen this in many communities, for six [9:47:53 AM] months or a year, you'll see maybe a down-tick in your population, but the next year it's going to go right back up, because the shelter is going to be full, people aren't going to be able to get in and you need to build more shelters. So shelters are really critical to the system and you just want to make sure that you're adding as many housing resources, really, as shelter beds. So if you want a shelter to turn -- a bed to turn over, say every 60 days, and that bed to turnover in over a years, you want to add six housing resources a year, every two months, for that one bed, so that might be -- you're thinking about - - it doesn't have to be permanent housing, six months of rental assistance often is what people need, a little bit of housing services, housing navigation services. You don't have to build those units out there, you can find the housing in your market rate units, you just need people to help connect people to those resources. So effective emergency shelters are smaller, they're less than a hundred beds often. They can be larger. But if you're building new shelters, I know you all are thinking about doing, I'd really recommend them being smaller, they're easier to manage, easier to get people in and out. They should be scattered around the community, not all gathered in one placements you want them to be close to resources so people have ways of getting to where they need to be. You know if you put everything in one place, it doesn't help that neighborhood very much. Focus services on housing people as quickly as possible. That's really a lot of the work we're going to be here this week at the arch. Accommodating people's needs, as I said many times, safety is very important, even though you're lowering barriers, your prioritizing safety. You want to keep them open 24/7, just because people leaving in the morning and come back at night, it's really challenging to stay in a place like that and go to work, for example, or even manage the, she can't -- managethe, she can't all the different shifts you have. It may take a resource increase, but usually not that much, and it will be so much more client-centered. [9:49:54 AM] It'll be much more appealing to people who are living outside. You might have heard of navigation centers that are happening kind of on the west coast. Those are basically low barrier shelters less than 75 people that are prioritizing folks in enexamplements into those shelters, letting them come in as they are, they're not looking at what gender you are, how many pets you have, they're just bringing you in and finding people are much more willing to go, people have been living on the streets for a long time in San Francisco, in the bay area, but they're lacking in housing resources so people are staying a little longer than they'd hoped, so that's something they're really having to pay attention to. At example, San Diego built, you might have heard, three large tents to get people off the street because they had an urgent outbreak and had to deal with it, now there's lots of people in tents and they're having a lot of difficulty getting them out to housing, so their numbers haven't changed, and they're -- they just needed to sort of -- they did it as an emergency response, but now they're adding the housing resources and the case management, like, staffing and things like that to sort of help the problem. Tiny homes, tough sheds, you might have heard of other temporary housing solutions, they're all fine as long as they have a permanent housing strategy and they're connected to services and they're decent to stay in. To create better system flow, you know, if you have -- basically, the solution is housing focused services and shelter and increase permanent housing resources, provided by the system, the funders to the shelter, and to the system to get people out. That's the basic -- the basic message I want to give you. So I'm going to stop there. Sorry I went a little bit long. But these are just some of our resources at the end, if you're looking for more resources on our website, on shelters and thing like that. So I'm going to stop there understand a let you all ask questions, make comments. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. Council? Anybody have any questions? These are very complete studies, very helpful. Thank you. [9:51:55 AM] Yes. >> Garza: I'm sorry if I missed this. So there was a slide about -- they're not numbered, but it was the end game and kind of a summary of, you know, what everybody aspires to, I guess, but is there an example of any city who has been able to reach that end game? >> For the entire system, there's some systems that have done pretty well, but it's been mostly population-focused, so I think that -- so even Houston, which I know has -- their numbers have increased a little bit more lately, but they have -- they saw significant decreases in the past five years, and they -- and it was largely because of sort of -- sort of retooling their whole system to be more geared toward this, so they've seen a heavy decrease in chronic homelessness, I think 80 or 90%, is that still right? Yeah, 80 or 90% in chronic homelessness across the big city. They also ended veteranness homelessness. Now they're really focusing on youth, and families, they've seen major decreases in family homelessness. I think what they're now trying to do is target more research towards individuals. But Houston is the closest maybe I think I would look at in terms of what they have done there. And there's several parts of the country, Minneapolis, Utah, it's interesting they were doing really well in Salt Lake City, and they kind of went back to some old traditional models that clearly made their system a little less effective, but there are pockets of the country that are -- 31 states have done decreases. For example, the state of Georgia, I think they have reduced homelessness across the state by 60% in the past five years. Virginia, about 60 -- I think 50 or 60% across the whole state, families, individuals, vets, youth. Basically, by implementing these things across the state. >> Garza: Okay. >> Connecticut, a 90% decrease in chronic homelessness. These are -- this is where we get this information, essentially, we look at what [9:53:56 AM] they're doing and this is where we get those, sort of, ideas, this is what they're doing and this is what we want to replicate. >> Garza: What did Houston do that led to that decrease? >> I think they did a really -- it was ground-up, and they changed the resources at the top -- right? -- So the local and federal funding, they really aligned that to what they actually needed. They looked at a lot of their data and decided, well, okay, we really need more money funneled -- a certain amount funneled toward chronic homelessness, we have all these veteran resources, just like you did here, figure out how to target those resources, and they sort of had a much -- they sort of removed a lot of the silos between the funding, so esc, coc, local funding, city funding, and a lot of the shelters, they sort of got them on board with what they really needed, the system needed them to do. So instead of having the stay center, let's make this a coordinated entry assessment housing crisis resolution have, it's helpful to give them shelters, but we're not resolving their homelessness, so let's use that in a different way. Let's target people to this kind of shelter, they brought a lot more rapid rehousing into their system, that was one major thing they did. >> Garza: So it wasn't necessarily an increase in funding, it was just realigning -- >> I think they brought in a good amount of funding as well. I think because they've been very effective, they've been able to attract more funding, private and public dollars. It was retooling their system and bringing in more housing resources, so there was an increase in housing resources, I would say and they really did retool their shelters -- >> Casar: Thank you so much for the presentation. A thank you for coming. We have an urgent syringes like so many folks do, to do stuff and put stuff on the ground and dedicate funding, especially lots of capital dollars that we now have made available. But I pay a lot of attention to the lines you put in red and in bold, like not building shelters without [9:55:56 AM] housing exit strategy, and I think that's been something that's been hard for us because we hear it a lot but we -- and so when do we know that we have a housing exit strategy or sufficient housing exit strategy for this number of shelter beds we want to build? Like where -- we have some housing exit strategy because we do have some amount of psh, we have some amount of rapid rehousing, but how do we -- what is the general rule of thumb around how much rapid rehousing and psh and -- is sufficient for X amount of shelter? >> I think that's a great question. I think that there's not -- there's -- it's not like there's a formula, but you actually -- your action plan that your system leaders have put together have kind of estimated what you need in terms of -- just based on who they're seeing come into the system and who's in their system, they've kind of figured out, we need this much rapid rehousing because there's an assessment tool that your community uses that basically assesses people for the intensity of resources they need. And I think you've gotten it down to sort of a dollar amount, we need this many more rapid housing resources, based on what we're seeing in our homeless population. So I don't think you need to wait -- wait until all of those come online. But if you're going to be putting -- if you're going to be putting shelters on -- we call these sometimes like right now solutions, like we have to put shelter up bass because there is an urgency, we see people on the street, there's all kinds of reasons we want to put them into a shelter while we wait for housing. You can at least design your shelters, if you are going to put shelters up, in a way that's going to be much more housing focused, staff to help people -- better case management ratios, kind of equipped to help people get housed, just with what they have. So if we take a sector of people, there's going to be a sector of people in every shelter that is going to be able to get housed based on what they have. They're not going to get a housing subsidy because there isn't enough but [9:57:57 AM] they're able to pull together their disability benefits or their -- you know, what their income is, and they're able to do short housing, they move in with somebody else or in with a couple people, and they're not getting a housing subsidy, but they're able to get housed because they have the kind of service -- they have the services around them to help them find that housing, get into that housing. And then you have probably a -- I would say probably -- I'm guessing about 60 to 70% of your population probably is in need of a short-term -- short to medium term subsidy. I mean anywhere from three months to two years, rental subsidy services, housing navigation, and case management to help people stay where they are. And so that -- you know, if you're going to build a new shelter, say it has a hundred beds, you'd want to think about how are we going to rapidly rehouse 60-70% of those people? Can we bring in both the beds and can we add 70% of short to medium term subsidies to our system so that we're able to house people. So these are just kind of rough numbers. >> Casar: And I don't want to take too much of your time, but I do want to ask for your help a little bit more than that when we can get there because I think we're in a bit of a somewhat unique situation compared to maybe some other states and cities in that the legal constraints we have on the way we generate revenue makes it way easier for us to invest capital, so it's even easier for us to build shelter than maybe in some other places, but way harder for us to do year spending for social workers and rent subsidies and the like. And so while I who'll I hea plan we say this is what the end game looks like but since it's so much easier for us to do shelt than some of the other things, maybe that mismatch may be even starker here given Texas law than other places that I worry that if we're, like, well we just got to get to this end game that we could wind up -- I'm sawing that we're making this mistake, but you've warned us in [9:59:59 AM] this, that other people -- you're coming to tell us other people have underbuild psh and it doesn't get us to where we want to go. I think that we need help knowing how -- when it is we have to cool it on shelter because we haven't caught up on the other stuff, and I don't know -- and I don't know where that is, and because we have this urgency to do stuff, I don't want us to take the foot off the gas because I want to keep on doing it but I don't want to make mistakes you have seen other folks make. Maybe this isn't a formula but we need help knowing at which point it is that we aren't keeping those two numbers in check together enough. >> I mean, I was just having a conversation with folks in Minneapolis yesterday about this. I mean, it is the difficult balance to make. I mean, I don't know enough about Texas law to know why it is you can't realign your dollars to do exactly the opposite of what you're doing, so, I mean, I think some of that probably needs to be explored. So there are ways that other communities like Houston have done that. I mean, the change we're talking about is really difficult, and it requires funders coming together, realigning, not working against each other, being all committed to the same performance goals. So, I mean, the work is hard. So how to balance, that like how can you leverage the benefit of that law? And at the same time not end up having people living in their shelt for three to four years like they are now. I can certainly provide, I think, guidance on that moving forward since, I mean, we've been working with the city now over a year so it's good to know that you have those restrictions. I think we probably need to learn more about what -- how that can be a benefit and how it will hurt new the future. >> And where else you can find dollars -- there are dollars I think untapped for flexible financial resources. There's, like, federal dollars that are not -- you can use so many different funding streams, home [10:01:59 AM] dollars, cdbg dollars, there's all ways to look at your funding again and see what is flexible, what isn't, and find and work with your philosophy community to figure out how to fill gaps and things like this, about you, yeah it does require realignment of how you really fund things now. I know that that is difficult. >> Mayor Adler: My sense is that we have at this point kind of a doubt as a council kind of the strategic plan at a high level that identities goals, but the real tactical plan that starts with an assessment of here are 50 different funding sources we have coming online, we know you're gonna be coming back to us to access the $30 million in the waller creek tif but that might be more capital kinds of dollars. If we go forward with the convention center expansion there's dollars there that would be operational that don't have any kind of constraints on those. That would be a dedicated income stream [ no audio ] Stepping up and saying that they're ready to bring dollars to the table if there was a plan that told us what to do. So I think that we're really at the place where we need that kind of holistic assessment here, all the different resources. You know, the capital expenses that Craig mentions could be spent either on shelters, that's a capital expense, or permanent -- or housing that's associated with the bond or rapid rehousing, so there's capital expenses associated with that with the overlay of services on top of it and it seems as if there's almost potential capital expenditure that would be possible at each one of these stages. But the hard part and the big question is if you have 1 dollar to spend, how do you spend that, that 1 dollar? One of the things that the council in prioritizing [10:04:00 AM] homelessness, people experiencing homelessness as the number 1 priority of this group and the city, was to bring in a strategic officer. Can you tell us where we are with respect to that? >> Sure, mayor, council. So a number of months ago we did a solicitation and we were not happy with the candidates, and so we have now rebid it, increased the level of the appointment to an executive position ensuring it has sufficient amount of salary associated with it, and so that position is actively being recruited for. We have hired an outside firm to do that recruitment. I know that they're looking to have resumes by the end of the month and hopefully we'll have someone on board this summer but in the interim we've appointed Veronica [indiscernible] To help spearhead this from the city manager's office so we're in active recruitment for that position right now. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann and then Natasha. >> Casar: Natasha, you can go first. I'll go after you. >> Harper-madison: Okay. You have a couple questions. On the map that shows the states color-coded, I think I'm just trying to go through and figure out what the similarities are for the red estates, have in common. >> The highest housing costs and lowest number of affordable units available. It's very stark across the board. >> Harper-madison: The other question I had, how do we remove the silos? It's something I think would be an effective means of avoiding duplicative efforts and maximizing the use of our resources across the board, not just with this, with everything, I think, unfortunately we're wasting finite a resources by way of [10:06:02 AM] duplicating efforts and not eliminating the silos. I'm trying to figure out, is there a plan? Is there a format we should follow to get the organizations to work together, to get more collaborative effort? >> Yeah, I believe you're actually in the process of starting a flexible housing subsidy pool here. There is something called a-- model called a flexing housing subsidy pool, started in Los Angeles and now it's spreading to different communities. Essentially, it's sort of taking a funder's collaborative model, you're taking all of the funders in the community or many funders in the community around the issue, private philanthropy, public entities, asking your housing authority to bring its vouchers, cic dollars, private philanthropists being willing to change their contracting processes and funding priorities and you start with a funders collaborative essentially and come together to agree on what are our priorities around this issue? And can we at least align our -- as Christy was saying can we align our goals insofar as we all kind of are working towards the same thing? We know we have different boards and different ways of contracting and different things we're trying to fund, but is there a way we can at least look at what we're all doing and at least fill gaps, not be duplicative, especially with philanthropy. In Los Angeles with the flex pool, it has leveraged millions of dollars of private funding. In other words we're saying, look, we'll put in this money, public dollars and housing vouchers and all this if you'll bring private dollars to make it work, flexible, so we can fund things public dollars don't fund. It's in a giant multi$000,000 housing pool. If someone comes into the system let's say or a person experiencing homelessness you're not going program by program trying to figure out where you fit in. [10:08:03 AM] There's a huge flex pool of dollars saying, okay, you need six months of rent and you need some housing obligation services and just a little case management, we'll pull those down from the six different places we can. We'll package it together for you because we've reduced all of the contracting processes, aligned priorities, we're able to -- we're really streamlining contracting processes also, you're giving these dollars to essentially one operator, a nonprofit, an agency, a county agency, public agency, city agency, to operate it and figure out all the administrative back end stuff. Everybody else said, okay, I'll reduce my contracting, sort of my -- we won't have 75 different ways to contract this money out, we'll have one or two ways, and we'll get dollars out based on the person's needs. So there's someone packaging what the person needs rather than having to be, like, well this person is an esg person or a city-funded rapid rehousing person or whatever it might be. So it requires a lot of back end work between all the funders in the community but that is really what we've seen be quite effective. It does take a lot of work in facilitating that but it helps to see where the gaps are, where you need more money, where there is flexible dollars in your system, where you need to bring more in and really reduces silos between funders. >> Harper-madison: I guess the second half to that question would be would this funders collaborative model, would it assist with a collaborative model for providers as well or is this the thing that makes us so we don't have overlap? >> So you can have, like, sort of -- you can rfp out the -- you know, if you're a shelter provide that's -- you only want to work on shelter, well, you can apply for the money that only -- say there's a temporary pool -- part of the funders, flexible has some temporary dollars in it, so sort of temporary shelter dollars for it, it's not all just housing dollars so you can contract that out to the shelter. People can apply. There's many different ways. People can apply essentially [10:10:04 AM] to provide services through that -- from the flex pool. This is something that California is moving towards as well, just across the state. They're putting a bunch of money into the new governor's budget to contract -- so cities and communities will be able to apply for the money out of this flexible pool. It's a little complicated, but there are different ways. So you then will have providers -- you can see who is getting what so you're not funding ten of the same things. >> Can I also add those furnishing I talked about they're all focused and agree on those performance metrics we put up, four basic performance metrics. And that there's a community message that providers in the system understand that this is what we're gonna be responsible for. So we see a lot more performance outcomes in the contracting versus what we currently see now, which is, like, performance outputs like track the number of people served, number of bed nights or number of meals served, things that are not really going to tell you how well you're ending homelessness so really looking at -- performance metrics and having providers understand this is their main responsibility in understanding how well they're really doing because most providers probably are not thinking about the work that they're doing in that sense in those performance ways. >> Because many of their furnishing are asking them to provide reporting on bed nights or meal server so if you've got your funders together in a room to agree, what are we really trying to do in terms of outcomes and they started putting that into their contracting process -- even if you didn't have a flex pool, and just the funders collaborative part where you're deciding what we can try to do and people can opt in or opt out, at least you start from a place of trying to align as many of your funders as possible. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Kitchen: So I want to go back to some of our conversation about shelter. And I want to ask you a [10:12:04 AM] question about navigation centers. But I first want to make the observation that I think I noticed from your data and also we've noticed from our point and time count that we're actually increasing the number of unsheltered individuals in Austin. And we're seeing that in our downtown area, we're seeing it in our neighborhoods, and it's leading to -- I mean, it is certainly an urgent situation, and we are hearing from our communities and seeing ourselves the urgent need for people to get shelter. So while I certainly understand the importance of getting the right balance between shelter and rapid housing, I would say that that doesn't mean that you don't build shelter while you're trying to get the right balance. And I would also say that that doesn't mean that you wait for detailed plans before you take action, particularly since we have -- since we have an action plan in Austin that our community has worked on. So you had said something about navigation centers, and I think I heard you say that -- that those -- it sounds to me like those are shelters, smaller shelters perhaps, that were -- have you seen them? Have you seen it done in communities where they have targeted particular areas of town or where they have targeted particular areas where people were living on shelter? Have you seen that kind of activity? And can you speak to is that? >> Yeah, this is something they're really trying in San Francisco, the bay area, which is where I'm from. So there's -- navigation centers are sort of rebranded, low barrier housing focused shelters, they're housing focused shelters that are really targeting people who have been experiencing homelessness for long points of time who have traditionally not come into shelters and often are in encampments. There's things that are working well, some things I would warn against. It was a pilot project at first to say how do we get people living in encampments [10:14:04 AM] inside. They don't want to come in for shelter and they interviewed lots and lots of folks living outside and they told them what they wanted and then they built these navigation centers. You could come and go, come in with the people you wanted to come in with, you could bring all your stuff, didn't have to get rid of anything, that's a big thing for folks, being able to bring in their possessions and they weren't huge, maybe 50, 75, 80 beds and they only brought in as many people as they thought they could house in three to four months also and prioritized housing resources for the first few shelters. They had, like, a 60 to 70% housing exit versus, you know, what most shelters are, 15 to 20% housing exits, that was because it was both they got people in and they had enough housing resources. Once the pilot was over they had to integrate these shelters into the rest of their system which meant they had to go through coordinated entry, permanent supportive hour, they had to be sort of prioritized as everybody else was, couldn't put all of the housing resources into these couple of shelters so their housing exits went way down, 15 to 20%. While they're able to get people in, a lot of people are leaving the shelter and going back outside because they're not getting housed. So they got people in for a short period of time and the people they were able to get housed is great, they have to build their housing resources up too. I will say people aren't staying because what's the point of me staying here? I'm not getting housed. I'd rather go back outside. So it's not because the shelter isn't really nice, because they just don't see the purpose of staying inside for much longer if they're not gonna get out. Again, they're definitely -- I think you can build 50 to 75 bed shelters easily, design them well and don't have to have tons of resources online for them to be effective. It's a both and it it's not either shelter or wait for housing. It's how do we figure out how to do a little bit of both in a way that alleviates -- to answer your [10:16:05 AM] question, sorry, they still do target areas. They put them all over, putting them all over San Francisco. There's a lot of [indiscernible] They use city properties, temporary shelter size sites, things that make the community more palatable for people but they are small and do target -- they're looking for one-to- one -- they know it's a visibility issue for the public so they try -- if they're putting a navigation center in that community, target people specifically in that community unsheltered to bring into that shelter, which helps sort of visibly show that there's a difference and also you're bringing those people inside in that neighborhood, that they're used to being in. >> Kitchen: I heard you say the pilot worked. Why didn't they keep the program that they had for the pilot? >> The program is fine. They don't have enough housing -- they had attached all these housing resources that the whole community needs to one shelter just to try it out. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> And that's not fair to the 90% of the rest of the people experiencing -- homelessness. They just wanted to try it. The great thing you see it works, program works, shelter model works, housing works. We can house the most vulnerable people and they can stay housed but without those rapid rehousing we see the model starts to fall apart. >> Kitchen: Okay. Well, I -- so the message that I'm hearing is that shelter is important. >> Yes. >> Kitchen: Otherwise people are on the streets. >> That's right. >> Kitchen: But it's the right kind of shelter, right kind meaning the right kind of program, plus it absolutely has to be connected to a pathway out of housing. >> That's right. >> Kitchen: Am I repeating right, correctly. >> Exactly right. I could have just said that. >> Kitchen: Pardon me? >> I should have just said that. >> Kitchen: I wanted to make sure I was understanding correctly. >> That's correct. >> Kitchen: So can you speak -- I don't have a last question. Does anybody else have a [10:18:05 AM] question? >> Mayor Adler: We have other people to speak, too. >> Kitchen: Go ahead. Then I'll ask another question. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Tovo: So I just I want to first thank you for the work, not just for the presentation today but really for the work that you've done with our community so closely over the last I guess couple years now and it's really helped us reshape and re-- begin that redesign of our own shelters and so thank you. I think that's really helpful. I wanted to just highlight a couple points that I think you said in your summary comment and make sure I'm hearing you correctly. As I understand the work that our community is doing, echo and I see Ann Howard here of echo, has worked with the providers to really respond to the federal need to create a system, and, you know, I've had an opportunity to see that continuum of care. Close up and in the indications. So I know that our communication is building out that system and, as you said, really has the right strategies in place. We just need to scale up our reach to those different populations. And so in terms of the work our community is doing, I see us as being really on the right path, yes. In terms of having that -- >> Yeah we would definitely agree. Part of the reason we also wanted to work here some of the success you do have, to learn from it, and do you have a really effective backbone sort of infrastructure for the system. Certainly echo, your city partners, all of that has made a significant difference in the success you have had. >> Tovo: As I see it we need tremendous more resources and more private partners among others to kind of help us scale those resources. But as we look at -- talk about some of what you described as obstacles of barriers and silos I think as a community we're doing our best to kind of move away from those, and I've [10:20:05 AM] seen just in the limited time I've been watching tremendous progress in that regard. One of the other things that I think is -- I'll just mention because it's up before us, we've talked about the arch redesign here but we also initiated -- asked our city manager to look at providing and identifyingfunding that would help the downtown Salvation Army shelter provide those caseworkers services that help make that a housing focused shelter, too, about the hope that if we can help along with hopefully lots of support, continued private support, if we can get the salvation Army's center up and at 100% capacity then the downtown shelter would have freed-up capacity and if we could provide resources for that housing-focused case management that that really helps that, again, become a more housing-focused shelter. I thought it would be good to pause. Can you give us examples of what does that support look like? So when we're trying to transform our emergency shelters into housing-focused shelters we've talked about case management and support but can you describe, like, the array of individuals who would be staffing services like that and what they would do? >> Sure. So this is largely the work that we're doing at the arch is trying to figure out how to take what they do have and transition it without really much increase in their budget. This is just sort of working within what they already have. And we sort of -- so berecommend a number of kind of effective keys to shelter. So one is generally taking a housing-first approach, meaning you're allowing people in who no matter that did their tenancy barriers might and you're focused on housing them without prerequisites for helping them. And we sort of the services [10:22:06 AM] part, housing-focused services part has a lot to do with intentional engagement with people from the minute they walk in the door so when people walk in they know this place is here to get me housed, may not want that and maybe this isn't the place for me but that is what this is and the engagement comes from what the place looks like from the first person you walk in the door with. We're going to talk a lot with the arch about creating kind of a radically welcoming environment that's still safe so it's not like you're necessarily -- you feel like you're there because there's -- people are going to help you and that intentional engagement is from the security person to the front desk person to the procedures to the people working in the dining room, whatever it maybe. Everyone is sort of intentionally focused on this, you know, somehow your housing going today? Have you been working on your housing? Whatever that engagement might be. Then you have a housing plan within seven to 14 days. People self-resolve as we said, figure what they need out usually within two weeks and if they don't they usual stay longer. You want to make sure everyone has a housing plan and are working on that housing plan with a case manager, we can call them housing navigator, we change the title sometimes so they don't feel like the traditional case management they're used to, now they're working with a housing search engagement specialist or something like that and that person is trained, this is what we'll be doing with the arch this week. We were here a few weeks ago doing training for all the shelters in your community and we'll do that more specifically but you want maybe not more than a one to 20, 25 case management ratio. A lot of times we're seeing 50, 60, 70 people on a case manager's ratio that obviously can be really hard to get those people get housed so they need to be able to access that housing planning services. We want that either the case manager or some other staff in the shelter to be housing navigators. In other words out there sort of looking for housing units, looking for apartments, helping them [10:24:06 AM] people to those apartments, helping them do job applications, housing applications, making sure that they -- little things they need might be I need to pay the application fee or I don't know how to search for a landlord or I need help with credit history, I don't have my id, all the things to become document ready so you definitely want people doing a lot of document readiness so once there is a unit and a landlord is gonna take them then immediately go into it. And generally you just have -- you're kind of thinking about if you have a group of people in your shelter that are kind of lower need let's say, don't need that many services, you help them -- light touch services and then you have 50 or 60% of your clients who have -- need more services so you want to make sure you have staffing to give them really regular housing case management, housing-focused search, navigation, getting them into housing and you want to be to stabilize them, don't have to work with them outside of shelter but connect them to services so they're not coming back to shelter because they couldn't get their benefits pawed or food stamps or whatever it might be that's gonna help them, job search help, things like that, things outside of the shelter, get those connections. I would say generally each person needs a bun to 20, one to 25 case management ratio and a few other people who are gonna help everybody sort of connecting to housing, landlords and housing services. Do you have anything? >> I would just add that I think it also translates into having I think the case manager to client ratio is important but I think within the staff, having solid staffing capacity. So we're gonna provide training and org code is gonna be here to provide training but there's training that has to go beyond that so housing specialists, whatever you want to call them are trained in [indiscernible] There's all kinds of other tools that they need to have [10:26:07 AM] in their toolbox in order to do that constant engagement and if the arch and other Salvation Army and other shelters you build are going to we hope even go a step further and prioritize the most vulnerable people to get them off the streets and into shelt serving harder to serve people are going to require intensive skills so looking at who are we hiring, what do their job descriptions look like, what are their salaries, what are the expectations for them to work with this population to meet those performance metrics that we talked about? So how does that happen in realtime? So it's a philosophical shift I think from the staff and the folks who are coming in to, say, the arch, what they -- they understand what the goal is there and that philosophical change is gonna take a little but the of time. People are gonna resist that. I've been able to stay here for four or five years. Wait a minute, I have to get out? That's gonna take a little bit. I think the other thing I'd add too to better support the arch and shelters, what is the community-wide messaging that needs to come from city council, echo and other providers so the community understand what's the role is of the arch or Salvation Army and what shelter is supposed to be in this community and the reality that most people are not going to get a permanent housing subsidy. So what being -- being really transparent and up front about what we are providing that there are services being provided here. It may look different just because you stay in shelter for X amount of years does not mean that there's gonna be some sort of permanent housing subsidy at the end of it so being really clear about what that is. >> Yeah. If we're gonna -- if the targeting towards people who are unsheltered I think is completely the right way to go and really important, and I think that if we want your shelters to be able to really focus on peoplwho are unsheltered right now those mean those people are a light more vulnerable and as Christy was saying we [10:28:08 AM] have to equip those shelters and staff and if we're asking minimum wage people to deal with the most vulnerable in their community that's a lot to ask without the support, training, all the things just mentioned. >> Other mainstream partners, one of the trends we're seeing across the country is the harder to serve people have been living outside and the aging population, like, people are coming into shelter now that are medically frail who should not have ever been discharged from hospitals, all those things and shelters are not equipped to be receiving those folks. So as you think about the models of the shelter that you want, like, really looking at what the needs are of those folks is gonna be really important. >> Tovo: Thanks. I letter your focus, too, on the staff and the need to support them both in training, in salaries, in other kinds of ways we can help us bol them because it is a major transformation of how we do things so appreciate your guidance on it. >> Mayor Adler: Pio. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. You know, we've been having this conversation. I've been involved with the housing coalition for years, and we've had this conversation for years already. You know, this is nothing new to us. But I just, you know, I'm really concerned about the arch. You know, that place doesn't seem like it has the capacity to accommodate all those people that just -- I mean, they're basically just outside in the element, all day long, and what would you see a solution to that? Would creating all these temporary shelters outside that area help the arch? Where we could locate some of the people? Because salvation has a policy of closing their doors, everybody has to leave in the morning and can't come back until the around which I see that's a big problem we're facing here. I've gone to other shelters like in Fort Lauderdale where they have an apartment [10:30:10 AM] building. You know, everyone stays inside. They're not outside in the elements. So what would you say would be a solution to all the problem that we're facing at the arch right now? >> So this is something we've certainly been looking at for the past year. And I think we've said -- said this in our report, what's happening -- the arch is not solely responsible obviously for what's happening outside. I think there are some things that could change in their service delivery model that can change what might be happening with the flow of people around the arch but largely what we've been learning a lot of people send people to that corner and to that walk from all over the city, from downtown, from other shelters, you know, because it's basically a decriminalized safe place -- I'm not saying we should criminalize homelessness. It's one of the myths I skipped over, but that's not a solution. But people are -- they feel okay being there because they can spend time there, people aren't going to necessarily ask them to move along. So they, you know -- there's all kinds of reasons that people -- there's all kinds of community decisions that have been made that are sending people to that so it's the arch, it happens to be the arch, but it's because a the love different community partners have said it's okay to send people there and we're okay with them being there. So the -- I think the strategy has to be all of the shelters kind of thinking about why this population is not getting served, figuring out whether anyone -- other shelters did serve them, whether these newer shelters you're thinking are going to target people who it looks like it's largely individuals. I haven't really -- I know there's been some survey data of the people outside but it looks like it's largely individuals. And some young people. And so that -- the intentional strategy to engage those folks should -- some of that can come from the arch but a lot of it needs to be coming from other community partners. Again, when Christy was saying what is the message we're sending? As a community what are we saying about that group of [10:32:11 AM] people? We need to give them someplace to go. Shelter is part of that. Then housing is part of that obviously. Or some sort of service engagement strategy that isn't just, you know, we don't really have anything for you so this seems like an okay place to be. So there's a level of acceptance that's happened around people people out there, and I think it's much better than criminalizing people and arresting them. That doesn't work at all. People just end up in the same place and it's very expensive for your community but there have been decisions made or maybe decisions not made that have resulted in those people being there. It's not a short answer. It would have to be a community-wide strategy, it's like if you have encampments in certain places, it's not just one group of people that's gonna be able to disengage or resolve that. We can move people along but they're gonna end up somewhere else or come right back unless we give some permanent resolution, which usually involves a few city departments, it might be police department but maybe it's your public works department or health department. It's a health crisis, right, to have people out there. It's really a public health crisis. So it's, like, sort of what services do they need? Where can we actually ask them something to what are we gonna do to permanently resolve things so they don't have to come back there? Also which partners are sending people there, too? We're telling people it's okay to be there, and maybe we need to say -- maybe we decide it's still okay but we have to figure out what we all think together about what we're telling people and where they can go. We don't want to keep moving them from corner to corner to corner. >> Renteria: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Would you comment real fast on the no camping, no sit, no lie ordinances? >> Sure yeah. It's -- so I don't know if you are probably familiar with the constitutional -- the case, Boise case from the ninth circuit that basically makes it unconstitutional to sort of criminalize homelessness. People experiencing homelessness just because [10:34:11 AM] they have no place to go essentially, their status, criminalizing them because of their status. What we do know aside from that, what we do know is the communities that employ those strategies is not a deterrent. It doesn't decrease the people experiencing homelessness. It often -- doesn't even clear the area. It might clear one block but people move to the next block. What we see often is that it's just really costly, it's costly for people -- for the police department to arrest these people over and over and over, they can't pay the fees, stay in jail, come right back out and it is doesn't deter people from being out there. They're just ineffective. They're ineffective, inhumane, people have nowhere to go. If you have nowhere to go and you're asking people to not sit, camp or lie that's where the ninth circuit case comes to down. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Ann -- Paige and then Ann. >> Kitchen: Go ahead. >> Ellis: Two quick questions. I know we touched ton a little but I wanted to hear more about geographic dispersion. I know there's discussions of having all your services available in one location but trying to make sure that's accessible to people who may not be at that location. Have you found any good ways of navigating where to put those, how to make sure you're reaching people, whether they're close to bus stops, doctors, grocery stores and things of that nature? >> Sure. I mean, it's community dependent. One thing we would say is not a good idea is the campus model, having everything on one campus, having every -- sort of a 1-stop shop in the community where everybody has to come to that one place or putting tons and tons of services in one shelter, for example, or -- we haven't seen a campus work anywhere. When we look at the outcomes we never really see anything that shows that it works well. If anything it's really difficult and expensive to Lunn and difficult for people experiencing homelessness to get to oftentimes. Then you're also putting everyone in one part of the community and that community is not very happy about it or it's in a place they [10:36:12 AM] can't really access anything else in the community. It's like anything else I think when you're experiencing -- if you put yourself sort of in the client's shoes, what do they need to get to and what do - - they need access to transportation, they don't want to have to go all the way across town for social services necessarily but are there enough things that are within reasonable distance that can sort of make them successful in doing the things they need to do? You can't -- so that's why the scattered site model is better, integrated into areas that you have access to food, not just feeding programs, access to transportation, so people can get to whatever job they need to get to. So I think it's, like -- that's why the smaller shelter model -- also then you don't have people, tons of people crowded into one community, one area, like you're getting in downtown. If you have a lot of things -- it's easier for people to go across the street to get a meal, come back to shelter but you don't want people there for long periods of time anyway, right? So I think if you can -- adding more and more to one area I think just makes that neighborhood more and more attainable for the pebble, for -- for the public. All of their services are there. Once they get housed they're gonna come back to that neighborhood for services which is often counter productive if people are trying to exit homelessness, they want to sort of transition into a -- other parts of the community. >> I was just going to say looking at where -- around the city or around the jurisdiction, where some community resource-rich areas, I mean, as best you can. You wouldn't want to build a shelter in a part of the city where, you know, there are no -- there are gonna be no services or the ability to build any natural supports for those folks that they won't stabilize. I think the dynamic looking past getting them from shelter and then into [10:38:12 AM] housing, can this community be a place where clients would choose to live because they're gonna stabilize there? If you're thinking about a lot of single individual or individual adults, not necessarily families, that picture might look really different. Schools might not be the thing because they don't have kids. So what are those things in the community, common sense, that are gonna help people, like, I want to stay here versus, you know, having to come back. Whether that's because there are jobs there or -- maybe these are gonna be folks who have -- are on disability and won't be working. What other kind of natural supports can they build there or other community supports that they can engage, faith-based, whatever that gamut of services would be. >> Ellis: That's great. Have you seen methods of outreach once some of these places are available or these services are available to try to reach those populations to make sure they know that something new is available to them? >> Oh, you mean -- well, I think what we've seen is so shelters that have transitioned to this model that we're talking about here, some of that stabilization work continues after. It's almost like rapid rehousing, which case management is home based there. So since all of the services are gonna be housing focused and we're not gonna have these programmer requirements where we have to do all these things in order to get into housing you can shift some of that case management to -- that you might normally do in the shelter while they're at home. Main there's a little bit of stabilization services after, or for -- we've seen, like, with individuals who are experiencing chronic homelessness, especially of street outreach, and I was gonna say as you also build shelters looking at the same time what does your street outreach look like and is it housing focused? Most street outreach in the country is not predominantly housing focused so that continuum of care that did happen through a street outreach provider who finally can get someone into shelter where that street outreach staff is partnering very closely with the housing specialists or case manager in shelter to help [10:40:13 AM] that housing plan because this person now has a relationship that may have taken years for them to develop with the street outreach person and then we've seen where street outreach is actually the one who does some stabilization services and kind of is checking in with that person after they're in housing. But it kind of like we were talking about breaking down the silos where you would have, like, these staff of these different providers working together around one case, around one person to provide that. >> Ellis: That's great. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie, did you say something? Ann? >> Kitchen: Just two quick questions. One, the -- could you speak to the role of recoupative care in the system? Some people call it respite care but what I'm talking about instead of discharging someone forea hospital on to the streets you discharge them to a program where they can recover from their wound or, you know, whatever -- wherever the physical illness is. >> I mean, it's a really important part of helping -- certainly helping shelters be equipped with not having to take those folks. I mean, this happens everywhere. People essentially get dumped into shelters and shelters have no way of taking care of them because they're medically fragile and having -- and most communities have a very dub certainly ve a shortage of respite beds or recoupative care beds, having more of those online for people is I would say very important. Your people -- the folks who are unsheltered we're looking at this just nationally, unsheltered people have a lot of medical issues from being unsheltered for so long. And so once they eventually do get health care access, they're gonna need more than a shelter bed afterwards often, not everybody, but a certain percentage of the population are gonna need that. And so, yes, it's definitely on -- it would be helpful for the system to bring more of those beds online. >> I would add we've seen [10:42:13 AM] communities where they have placed coordinated entry in the hospitals. Because the dischargech planning was so poor, that they basically put -- built partnerships with the hospital systems and said we will -- we would like to have a staff person in the hospital so that when the discharge planning process starts in the hospital the coordinated entry person is a part of that process. So some hospitals have been the ones to provide that staff person. Others it's been the homelessness response system. But that's one way communities have addressed just poor discharge planning. So, I mean, this is mostly for folks who have not been in the hospital more than 90 days, but having coordinated entry and those partnerships with hospitals is critical. We find it's still very difficult for communities to build those partnerships for some reason, but it's effective when they do. >> Kitchen: Okay. I have one last question. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. Close us out. We'll move on. >> Kitchen: There was some talk about the -- I think you said this, but we were talking -- I forget what we were talking about, anyway, we were talking about there's a cost of course to serving people on the streets without a shelter. And what I've seen anyway is to some extent -- I mean, that's important and necessary, but to some extent it's spinning their wheels and to some scents it's more costly to leave people on the streets with no place to be. >> Absolutely. >> Kitchen: Is there anything that you would say about that? >> Yeah. You can have -- you do have very effective outreach here. You don't have enough of it, but what you do have is good, interest what we've learned. But, yeah, if you don't have anything to outreach to, for the outreach workers, if you're an outreach worker, we hear this from outreach workers all over but also from your host team, if we don't have anything to give people, you feel like how many times can I give someone socks or water, meal or whatever. They need more than that. And so I think that to your [10:44:16 AM] point, if -- giving them something that's more substantial to take people to, attach -- that certainly could be shelter that people actually want to go to and or that it's more accommodating to their needs and then, yeah, and saying, like, also I think for people experiencing homelessness they want to know something is gonna happen in that shelt for them that's gonna be different. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you very much for the presentation. >> Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for the help with the city on the work you're otherwise doing, too. >> Kitchen: I want to thank you all again. I know it was an effort to get here this early, coming from the west coast. So I really, really appreciate y'all's time. And this was very informative? >> Thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Come on down for the next briefing. That would be helpful. Okay. . [10:46:20 AM] >> Mayor adler:we'll take the briefing and obviously mention it looks like through five things on our agenda this week coming up. >> Thank you, mayor, council, Jason John Michael assistant director Austin transportation department. I'll move quickly through the slide presentation so we can move onto the discussion items with me at the table is Jason Redfern, and Jacob Culverson, ground transportation. First slide, so we find ourselves about 18 months, little bit more, into regulating dockless mobility in Austin. Beer continuing to move forward with our policy models focused on both the definition and use of how and where to ride. Improvements to our service and the ability to regulate those companies that's in chapter 13 that you see in front of you. And then as part of that also look to redress the current ordinance that we're use to go regulate scooters, which is 14.9. That's a little clean-up. And then, lastly, when we prepared this slide presentation we were under the expectation we might be making adjustment to the fee ordinance. However, due to the timing of when that would be needed it would actually be next fiscal's fee ordinance and you can't make an amendment to something that doesn't exist yet. Even though that's up there we won't be taking that forward on Thursday. Next slide. So related to item 56, which is the ordinance around riding, this is the ordinance that we took to council two months ago. We're asked you to back to the community and continue to discuss and draft comment around what would be a [10:48:20 AM] meaningful set of rules around riding scooters and other micro-mobility devices, including bicycles in town. Through that we've got a series of different communications, and you find that in the current draft of 12-2. We also took a look, item 24 focuses in on the franchise model. So we're proposing a franchise model for shared bicycle and micro-mobility services. So that currently today would be any dockless bicycle service or any dockless scooter service. Lastly, as I mentioned before, we'd be making some changes to 14.9. This would help -- we're gonna remove the term "Dockless" to focus more on just micro-mobility as a whole. So this in a lot of ways would be a bit of a protection ordinance around future disruptions in the micro-mobility space. And then as mentioned earlier, one of the things that we're looking at is how we go about right-sizing the fee so that we can include hopefully both the ability to offset our costs of regulating that service but, more importantly, begin capital improvement to help sustain the continued and iterative, safe use of this solution. What have we been doing? We've been out talking with folks, as you've standard asked. We have been in front of the mobility community since we were last in front of council, the bicycle advisory council, both their April meeting as well as their meeting today. The pedestrian advisory council, we've been working with pard on their pilot, [10:50:22 AM] Austin police department and also meetings with both bike Texas and bike Austin. The remaining, as I said before, is the BAC tonight and the recommendations during council session this Thursday. So what we've heard from those different community engagements is that they -- everyone seems to like the proposed fee structure. Great interest in the shared mobility providers, in finding ways that they can contribute to the city's infrastructure to help sustain the saw use -- safe use of these scooters and penalties for bad scooter parking was also addressed in the last revised ordinance. Some other things that we also took back that we wanted to redress in our language related to chapter 12 changes included the definition of micro-mobility devices, where bicycles were separated from micro-mobility as the definition. Speed limits were requested on sidewalks. However, municipal is not allowed to regulate speed on sidewalks. Reasonable and prudent language was brought up as well, and that was retained. Fine amounts. We took note of that, and we kept the fine amounts what they were in the original ordinance so we did not double both of those fine amounts. And then we corrected some redundancies that some folks found in the language as well. So with that, I'd like to open it up for questions. And discussion. >> Mayor Adler: Council? Jimmy? >> Flannigan: So I have some concerns about franchise as a model. It's not entirely clear to [10:52:25 AM] me how this franchise model would work given where franchise is used elsewhere. It seems like a round peg-square hole situation, especially in the type of technology where we will benefit as a community from rapid innovation and new vendors putting pressure on the market to provide safer vehicles or whatever the innovation looks like. Is franchise the only way to accomplish our goals in terms of regulating these devices? >> We want to collect both monies to offset our costs plus the capital improvement. In working with law, I think that's one of the only off the shelf mechanisms that we have available to us to do that currently. I think law is here if we needed to ask more about that, but my understanding is that in order to collect monies to be spent on capital improvement to support that service would have to be something that's collected in that format. >> Flannigan: So that's the only way to work with vendors that are operating and doing commerce in the public right-of-way? >> I think there are different models that are available on it. Leela can address it but it has to do with where you can spend the money after you've collected it. The franchise model there's also just a fe model and that would be y'all's decision about how you want to spend the money. >> Flannigan: It might be good to do some of this in executive session just from a legal perspective so we can better understand the pros and cons in the legal framework because my instinct is not to support franchise model and to explore some of the other methodologies. I won't -- at this point I won't be supporting franchise this week, and I would ask the -- my colleagues to consider that as an option as well. Because I think there are other ways to do this that will not cause barriers to [10:54:25 AM] innovation in the market. >> Mayor Adler: I think just to reiterate, I think having an executive session on fees, licenses, franchise, administrative is something that would be really important for us to have. Alison, then Leslie. >> Alter: Good morning. Appreciate all the work that has gone into this process and the collaboration with the community and some of the businesses with respect to this. I have some questions. I think they're on 591st. I want to understand some of the liability issues and make sure that those issues are addressed. So according to this version, who is liable if a rider on a micro-mobility device injures another person or damages property? Is it the individual riding? Is it the company? Or some combination of the two? And where is that liability established in the ordinance? And how is it enforced? >> I'll ask for assistance from Angela Rodriguez. >> This is Angela Rodriguez from the law department. We don't sustain liability, per se, in this ordinance. That we leave for the courts to decide who is at fault. What we're doing in this ordinance is making it -- trying to make it easier for the courts to determine that by obligating riders to stop, obligating -- in our -- rather in our riding ordinance, ob imitating them imitating --obligating them to stop and give identifying markers and the franchise agreement and requirement that the companies cooperate with us in -- police rather, in investigation. So a court can decide who is liable and who is at fault. That's not something we can assign in our code. >> Alter: I guess I didn't mean -- I didn't mean we were assigning liability in the case without there being adjudication, but, you know, if you hit somebody and, you know, they're injured in some way and you're on a [10:56:27 AM] scooter, how do you get to the point that you have some consequences for that action? >> Well, I think that would depend because -- if for instance it would be the company's fault if the scooter was defective, for instance, or presumably it would be their fault in court. If the rider was riding neg lently or in a way contrary to the safe riding ordinance I think police would look at that as a factor for them being liable. So I'm saying it's -- we're trying to get tools to get us to who exactly is at fault, but I can't say -- and not an sup that somebody -- assumptionthat somebody is >> Alter: I think so. If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, in any case you have to take into the facts of that particular case and one might imagine situations where it's a default of the material of the scooter or other device and other situations it's the fault of the person who didn't render aid or whatever. >> Exactly. >> But is there still in the situation where it's clearly the person's fault, what kind of oomph does this give you other than the fact that they have to stop and render aid? Because beyond the rendering aid, if they do stop and render aid, and yet they've injured this person, how do you hold them accountable? >> Well, I believe we would -- if they were acting in a reckless manner or doing something contrary to the safe riding ordinance, doing an unsafe maneuver, then they would be kineticked in that case as well -- ticketed in that case as well. >> Somebody got a 20-dollar ticket and could render somebody incapable of working for the rest of their life and I'm having a little bit -- I understand that we don't want to have huge fees if you're riding with your phone in your hand and not doing and hurting [10:58:31 AM] anyone, but if you're hurting them the only consequence is a 40-dollar fine. I'm not sure how the ordinance is addressing that. I'm not comfortable if the only thing we've set up is a 20 -- I guess it's $20 and that becomes $40 if you repeat it. A 20-dollar fine does not seem like the only thing that we should be able to do in that situation. I'm trying to understand the legal layout for that. >> Mayor, may I jump in? It would be like aization where you have a car wreck case and say somebody ran a stop sign. We put the stop sign up and there would be a fine if you were involved in that. If you're in a car wreck and a private liability situation, then somebody who was injured would use the fact that you ran the stop sign, for example, to demonstrate your negligence, but that's where it would come into play. The city -- we would have our fines, just be for our municipal court, class C violations. We wouldn't adjudicate a private litigation between somebody who was unfortunately injured and somebody who was at fault. >> Tovo: Some of the instances that my office has been made aware of is scooters doing damage or hitting somebody and then riding off. So I guess I wondered if that was something as we talk about accountability of if that was something you contemplated because clearly the scooter companies themselves could help determine who that individual was. So that doesn't seem to be built into this system at all. >> Alter: I thought they did build in -- I think in the franchise ordinance -- >> Tovo: When we get to that one, if you could point me to that provision. I was looking for it and didn't immediately see it. In that way their assistance could help an individual who had been damaged, had property damage or an injury [11:00:31 AM] to rely on the assistance from the scooter franchises to get what they need in terms of seeking justice. >> I'll take a look again at 24. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie? >> Alter: I have other questions. >> Tovo: Sorry, I didn't [indiscernible]. >> Alter: I'm happy to share. >> Mayor Adler: Let's go to Leslie. We'll come back. >> Pool: I want to build on what Alison has been talking about. And of course, I have some other questions too. The piece about information being required from the franchise holders is on page 7 of 11. It looks like it's under 3. That's franchise ordinance 1389 and it's line 219. So it says in here that riders or users involved in crashes or damage to property incidents that the franchise holder would provide information to law enforcement or other city personnel. The problem is that we don't have anything in here that identifies the scooter at all. We don't have any identifiers, like a license plate or any stickers that have a unique identifier on them. And in the case that I heard most recently, a resident of mine was downtown -- actually, she was on her way to the long center and a scooter came up behind her and sideswiped her and she fell off the curb and she was not terribly injured, but it was a fright and she fell into the street where there was oncoming traffic. The scooter rider stopped, looked behind, said are you okay? And her presence of mind was a quick assessment as she tried to get back up and kind of get herself established, and he went on. She didn't have any way of being able to go back, say she had fractured an ankle or something, she would [11:02:32 AM] never have been able to go back and find that person. So my staff looked up some other cities with their ordinances that have requirements to display a unique identifier on each of the vehicles that's readily visible to the customer or any member of the public. And I think this is really key to at least providing some semblance of -- to get rid of the complete an non-anymorety that we have. We looked at -- Los Angeles has a really good unique identifier badge system. Denver, Colorado does. And Washington, D.C. Does. Dallas also has an identifier requirement in their ordinance, as does San Antonio, Portland, Durham, North Carolina. Atlanta, Georgia, and it looks like the city of Philadelphia. So I think we need to do the same and look at how our peer cities in Texas and in the United States with the micromobility ordinance appear to have a unique identifier requirement. It would be in the requirement that I pointed out on page seven of 11 that requires the franchise holder to tell us who was on that identified scooter at that time of day so then we can actually chase it back and find out who that person is. Practice so I'd like to see -- I guess this is coming on Thursday. I know unique identifier is not in here. Angela, possibly you could work with my staff to pull together the appropriate language so I could bring an amendment along these lines. We don't want to miss this opportunity. So that would be great. And then if I could just ask -- I'll have some [11:04:35 AM] additional questions later, but before I turn the mic back over to Alison, I wanted to get the municipality prohibited from setting speed limits on sidewalks. That's the first I've heard that. In fact, it has not been part of any of the discussions we've had with staff. So if we could get all of us that statute because you didn't provide a criteria, so we need to know what's the background for -- this says speed limits required to sidewalks for scooters and parenthesis it says municipalities prohibited from setting speed limits on sidewalks. So we need to get that citation so we could work with that. My understanding was we were going to limit the speed limits on the sidewalks. >> So I think the interpretation is that it's state uniform traffic code which addresses things within the travel right-of-way for vehicles, and that's where speed limits are addressed, as far as an enforceable speed limit by traffic uniformed police officers, and that's where our interpretation was. But we'll work with law to make sure that that interpretation is correct. >> Pool: Well, I hope so because clearly the traffic status would say no car vehicles can drive on sidewalks so naturally there wouldn't be any limitations on how fast they would be riding on the sidewalk. >> I don't think the uniform traffic code took into account scooters. >> Mayor Adler: When we get to executive session if you could take up that issue. >> Pool: I would like to see what that language is and also get some language if we are going to address that if we are going to allow scooters on sidewalks, which I'm not sure we should, but if we are I'd like to make sure because there was an element of our conversation from day one that they be limited in how fast they can go. >> Mayor Adler: At a really high level, obviously we have a new technology and our roads weren't set up with that new technology and now we're trying to deal [11:06:35 AM] with that technology. As I go around the community, you run into so many people that have had what they anecdotally report was near death experiences and you run into a lot of people that can't imagine life now without scooters and the like. I think it is real telling that we had over 700,000 rides in March, which is averaging a mile each I think was the data that you gave. It's a huge number of vehicle passenger rider miles that are on a scooter. I imagine a lot of those people are not walking or not riding a bicycle, but a lot of those people I imagine were not in cars for those trips. And in the city that has a mobility issue like we have, we really need to figure out how to make first and last mile solutions work and I am real encouraged to hear that we are seeing a lot of these things gather at transit locations which means people are taking them to or from transit, which is again something that's been incredibly hard to solve for. I think it's really important also that we have a system here that enables us to be able to iterate together with market as that is iterating both for us as well as for the rest of the country and the world. We need to be nimble enough to be able to do that. In the study that came from the CDC that talked about injuries, there were numbers that were reported in terms of total number of injuries. But there was no comparative numbers. So while it was interesting to see and I'm sure it didn't capture all injuries, just reported injuries, that in the entire study time there was just one pedestrian injury that was in the study, only one, which obviously can't be true, but it does say something perhaps about relative numbers because I'm sure there are injuries all. I thought it was also interesting that a third of the injuries or incidents involved somebody on the scooter for the very first time. So something that really addresses that first time [11:08:41 AM] user. I've now ordered one of the foldup helmets that looks like a ball cap that's out. It would be interesting to know whether those things actually work. And if there's a way to -- for the city to put those in hotels and everywhere with an Austin Loy logo on it and make it a fun thing to do that's not the clunky bicycle helmet. That cap actually looked pretty stylish. [Laughter]. >> We'll bring everyone one to work session. Bright yellow. [Laughter]. Won't do that again. We only make mistakes one time. We'll make new mistakes the next time. [Laughter]. But in taking a look at that, then the franchise I'm real interested in knowing what we can do that helps us be able to use this industry and this push to be able to generate dollars to help us with infrastructure changes because I think that's what we need to help retrofit a system. So some workable way for us to be able to do that. But at the same time doesn't lock us in in a way where we're no longer nimble enough to be able to iterate in realtime with the market. Are you going to go through each of the four things that are in front of the council this coming week to touch base on those? I think that would be helpful as well? >> We did. We down-selected from four to three since the fee ordinance won't be heard since it's for next year's fiscal. And that was changes to chapter 13 which adds a franchise for dockless mobility. >> Mayor Adler: But at this point it says you can do it, but doesn't say how it's going to work. It just says you can do a franchise. >> Correct. I think the way I understand that we go back to the drawing board and begin working on the structure and [11:10:42 AM] framework of the contract and some other things and then we -- how does that go from there? >> Mayor Adler: So part of this then is going to deal with the legal question of is this a structure that makes sense in order to be able to to fund the infrastructure that we need, but the second question in terms of how we do it will probably depend to a large degree of what it will ultimately look like. I don't know if there's a way to even talk about it on first reading versus otherwise or to actually see what it might be before we are -- before we finally do it because I think that's going to impact for me whether or not it's a direction that I would want to go. So I don't know how to deal with that element. >> We didn't anticipate really diving into those level of details around the actual franchise contract or those rules. I can tell you that we were probably going to at least from a starting point look at what contracts are throughout. And then obviously pretty much lift the current directors rules over and down and then look at what modifications we might need to make because it's a new regulatory environment. >> Mayor Adler: So as long as we were trying to carry forward what we had, that makes it easier for me than we're using this as an opportunity to come up with an entirely different regime. >> My understanding of the contract mechanism in the franchise is that's where it may give us the ability to be as nimble and as free market driven as we can be considering there are some rigid areas of a franchise and in the three readings and coming to council for any new franchisees. Where we currently are, I don't know if we'll see a level of additional franchisees coming in after this first round. There likely could be, but the marketplace as a whole is seeing a level of -- it's calming down for now I'll call it. And we're seeing right now [11:12:44 AM] new vehicle designs predominantly being the differentiator that new companies are bringing. >> Mayor Adler: And I can't even imagine the need for future controls or curbs with respect to the new technologies that we're about to see that none of us can even imagine at this point. But what are the other two pieces that are coming to us? There's the franchise piece. >> There's 14.9, which is our current ordinance that we're regulating scooters under. So they are -- both 14.9 and 13.8 are connected. If 13.8 doesn't move forward then we wouldn't need to change anything on 14.9. And the other is chapter 12, the definition and use, what we in conversation called a responsible riding ordinance. But essentially what it does is it defines the devices, their differences between bicycles and then where they can and can't be used. >> This is Angela again. One of the four you're talking about it's a redundancy. It's going to be pulled for changes and corrections. There are two amending chapter 12. You're only going to consider one. >> Mayor Adler: Got you. Thank you. Greg? >> Casar: So I want to make comments on the franchise question and then to smaller issues [inaudible - no mic]. I agree what's been, I think the [indiscernible] Infrastructure is the core piece of the safety issue and it's a piece that I think we're all headed towards, but we could -- it wasn't working. We spent that on automobile infrasucture and we just found out what these kind of scooters were what feels [11:14:45 AM] like yesterday. So it's not our fault we're just catching up, but I don't want to create too high of a barrier to where we are stifling changes that also could be coming that could help with those issues. So I think if we are headed down the franchise path I would want to know some of those details or be at least able to direct and give some direction around what kind of a franchise model we want to see so that those concerns can maybe blunted in the process of you coming up with the contract. Councilmember Flannigan, I'd be interested in hearing what your particular objections are to franchises not because I would disagree, but because they're of interest to me and figuring out if there's any kind of hybrid approach or if there are directions on how to franchise to make us avoid some of the pitfalls of, for example, the way the taxi industry are franchised or ways we could use a different model but still get the infrastructure money. I think we're looking for that middle place. And I don't know if we can figure that out between now and Thursday. I don't know if there's a reason to get it done systemic on Thursday, but I provide those as options. That's my thoughts on the broader big franchising issue which I think is the main issue before us. On two smaller issues, one, I still am interested in getting more information and maybe submit a Q and a or something on flat fees per scooter versus per ride because it seems to make sense to me when you're talking about per ride fees that that can further incentivize scooters being sent to more places where there aren't quite as many rides, but is good to have people have that last mile option where there's not a lot of pedestrian density. I am interested in how it is we're choosing between flat rates or rates per ride or hybrids of that as one thing. And then finally on the issue that's been brought up around the sharing of information with the police department, I have some [11:16:45 AM] question or concern not as it relates specifically to scooters, but just to a broader civil liberties thing where we don't want a slippery slope that we have in the scooters so to could wind up somewhere else. As I read it, and I could be wrong, if we didn't include this provision, scooter companies could still voluntarily give us gps data and people's information. They could also not want to give it to us and we could get a warrant through a normal process, but it seems to me -- again, I could be reading this wrong -- that what this language would do is just in the situations where the scooter company doesn't want to give it to us and we can't get a warrant then we could still get it. And it seems to me that if they don't want to give it to us and a judge says we shouldn't have it then I don't know whether we should be requiring for you to operate a business for you to give us stuff we can't get a judge to order it could be active into us. And to me it has much less to do with I don't want this to be reported on that if somebody shoplifts a store and escapes on a scooter that Greg doesn't want to get the stuff back. To me it's a much broader civilly heties question if if -- civil liberties questions, making sure that you do business with the city you have to give us information that a judge would otherwise deny us, which makes me nervous center a broader civil liberties perspective. Maybe nobody else cares about that, but I care about that so I just want to raise that in case that resonates with anyone. >> Mayor Adler: I don't think Paige has had a chance to talk about that. I asked about the comparative data and I didn't give you a chance to answer that. Do you have that? >> We can pull txdot's database which currently counts all pedestrian bicycle, motor vehicle and vehicle. >> Mayor Adler: If you could look at that setting and give us the ability to take that data in context that would be really helpful. Paige? >> Ellis: I wanted to echo Jimmy's concerns about franchising and how we as a [11:18:46 AM] city are approaching innovative technology and obviously we encourage it. And just trying to make sure that there's a level playing field for all participants who are creating this technology. I know we did see it with taxi issues and just wanting to know if we are encouraging safety rules or allowing for certain behavior that we're doing it across the board in an equitable way. But also on number 59, and I apologize, I had a few days out of the office last week. Did that just get released on Friday? Because I feel like I need a little more time to wrap my head around it. I didn't know if I was the only one feeling that way. >> Yes. >> Ellis: Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann and then Jimmy, Alison and then Leslie. >> Kitchen: I have a question about enforcement related to -- it's the -- what are we calling it, the driver's safety or rider safety -- >> Definition of use. >> Kitchen: So we've talked about this before because that came to us as the one that we delayed that we considered voting on a month ago or whenever. >> March 23rd. >> Kitchen: So I just want to remind myself and the public about the way in which that one addresses the concerns we're seeing in the public. And those are concerns that both relate to where a scooter is parked as well as how a scooter is ridden. And you know, I don't need to remind everyone. We're all seeing concerns about safety related to people on sidewalks as well as on the trails. And as well as the behavior of riders in traffic. So can you just remind us -- you said earlier that some of the changes were made -- the fee was not raised as much. So the question that I am getting from folks is how do [11:20:49 AM] we expect to actually enforce these safety kind of requirements? Both with regard to parking, with regard to behavior on sidewalks, and with regard to behavior in traffic. >> Do you want to start? >> We've added -- we've coordinated with the Austin police department and added language that they feel they can pass down to their patrol officers that can help provide additional regulation. We didn't change the fine amounts because of some of the concerns we heard from the community, but we did add a portion in the end of the ordinance that allows a parking enforcement officer to also help regulate these activities as well. >> Kitchen: So just a few follow-up questions. A parking enforcement officer means our staff as opposed to APD? >> Correct, yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: Okay. And is that staff person able to write tickets? Is that the thinking? >> Yes, ma'am, that's correct. >> Kitchen: And can they write tickets on any of these kinds of violations? Whether it's parking or whether it's riding on the sidewalk or driving in the streets? >> Yes, councilmember. Any violation of this section of ordinance would be enforceable by a parking officer. >> Kitchen: And that part is new, right? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Kitchen: So just walk me through that. So how does -- how are we working with the companies to make sure a ticket is paid? In other words, my understanding was that it was possible if someone didn't park in the right area, for example, in one of the boxed areas, that the companies were working with us on assessing that fine on the credit card that they paid with? >> Any violation, parking violation in this ordinance, would go to their criminal history. It would not be related to the company at all. This would be an interaction between the city of Austin and the person who has created that violation. >> Kitchen: Okay. So how are we going to [11:22:50 AM] collect fines? >> It's -- I believe it's a class C misdemeanor or a civil? It's to the rider, so it would be similar to a person being pulled over for speeding in a hertz rental car. >> It's a misdemeanor. >> Kitchen: I guess I misunderstood. I thought we had a 311 app and we could report and that information went to the companies. They're not doing anything with it. >> The Austin 311 app is available as well and that's to report any kind of maintenance issue, any kind of scooter related issue. You see something in a waterway, you see the domino effect of all the scooters. You can snap a photo and then it asks you just one or two questions. And then that citizen service request goes to the companies that have been identified, but it also goes to staff as well. And so that's an automatic notification. And I think that may be different than what you're talking about is the actual behavior of somebody out there. And then the 311 app I don't believe is useful for that particular issue. It's more for maintenance related issues and things that are in the right-of-way that can be addressed by the companies. >> Kitchen: So two more questions. Then what are the companies expected to do with the information? >> The companies are expected within two hours -- it depends on the severity of the issue. If it's in a waterway we want them to handle it immediately, but they have an hour to respond to it and we have a two-hour time frame to respond to any other types of issues and that's per the director's rules. >> Kitchen: And do we have a feedback loop so that we know that that's happening? >> Correct. What they'll do is they'll contact us and let us know, hey, we had a csr. We corrected the issue. [11:24:50 AM] We also do direct contact to them to see if we can close it out. Because we can't close that request out until we have confirmation from the company that it's been addressed. So staff actually has to get in there and do that. >> Kitchen: So in some ways they're acting as an extension of our cast system for 311? >> Yes. >> And I would point out between the companies and ourselves, we're figuring out -- some of the 311 requests identify scooters that are parked correctly that meet the rules. However, a person, a resident, might not be -- running around with a back pocket of rules in their pocket so they've put in a request and it's just anker rant request at that point. >> So we have data available to us now about the number of complaints and how they've been resolved and that sort of thing? >> We have T csrs. And I think the resolution is typically like a text box type format. So it's not something that's a field that's searchable. It's just a text box. >> It requires some additional effort in order to make queries on that. Just the same as aph or the hospitals when they're looking at trying to pull that information out for the health study, it's all in the narrative. Similar issues that APD has with crash data or accident or ticket data as well. >> Kitchen: That's something that I would suggest that we do something about because I think it's important for the public to understand that we have a system that tracks, you know. Because one of the main concerns that I hear is that -- is where scooters are left, scooters being on sidewalks and things like that. So if we have a system to resolve those issues we need to be able to tell people whether or not they've been resolved. So creating a checkoff box or something that cat gore eyes that, I really -- combat gore rises that, I think that's really important. >> That's my fault. We changed the slide deck a [11:26:52 AM] couple of months ago because we were using the same slides and just updating the material on those slides. And it got kind of old. So we took out the 311 slide. More than happy to put it back in on our next update. >> Kitchen: But it sounds like the system needs to be updated in terms of how the feedback loop is captured because right now you couldn't tell me how many complaints are there, about how many are left in the sidewalk -- >> I could, but I couldn't be reticent in that information. It would require a data analyst to query the database. >> Kitchen: I'm looking for a more efficient say so you don't have to spend a lot of resources to do that kind of thing. That's just helpful. I think as we put these ordinances in place we're going to need to be able to show the public that we're doing what we can. And part of that is data to show how we're tracking things that are happening. >> We can work with 311 on that. >> Kitchen: Is that possible to do? >> We can certainly ask them. >> Kitchen: And then the last thing is just in terms of the enforcement, there's a lot of concern within the public, so how would you answer that? It sounds to me like we're doing -- we're doing one thing different and that's in terms of who can write tickets. What else can we do to both educate the public and make sure that people understand there are some consequences if they don't -- if they ride in a way that is not safe for others? >> My intention would be upon Thursday if we're successful with chapter 12 that we'd move forward in a similar format that we've done in the past related to other transportation safety initiatives around vision zero. So it would follow something similar to don't block the box kind of campaign or no texting and driving campaign where we go back and that's a human behavioral response. [11:28:52 AM] You've heard me talk about plot every number on a number line and we'll plot education and we'll see people move over. We'll warn them and not give them a ticket. That will help move more people to understanding how to ride properly. Then we're left with that last 10 to 20% of folks that, quite honestly, need the level of enforcement in order to be reminded on a daily basis on what it means to ride safely. >> Kitchen: And you will be reporting those programs and can you report that back to us? >> Absolutely. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Natasha hasn't had a chance to ask a question. >> Mostly comments, not so much questions because when you go last everything already got said. So one of the things that I wanted to point out about -- hopefully you were talking about sharing helmets, as a parent of elementary school kids and with virtual stock in delousing materials is not the kind of thing that I think we should encourage people to do. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't mean sharing at all. I just meant available. >> Harper-madison: >> Harper-madison:, I thought you meant at hotels where everybody is wearing it. [Laughter]. A lot of my colleagues brought up things that I agree with in terms of the question I have. So pun absolutely intended, I absolutely think we need to pump the brakes again. I really appreciate, councilmember Ellis, that you brought up the fact that we only got item number 59 on Friday. I think we just need a little more time to sort of parse through some of this stuff. And then I'm looking forward to executive session because councilmember Flannigan, you definitely brought up something that raises some concerns for me about the franchise model. And councilmember Casar, you echoed some of my concerns about that potentially leaving some of the little guys out of the game, which [11:30:55 AM] I think is -- could be problemmatic if we don't have the same level of playing field by the way of ordinance that we implemented. Councilmember pool, you brought up something that got me thinking too about this unique identifier system requirement. I'm looking forward to having my staff and hopefully staff look into how that's more broadly applied. And I'll tell you why I ask. So a friend of mine who subsequently has not reentered the workforce and it's been three years, she was riding her bicycle and a pedestrian walked out in front of her bicycle. She broke her collar bone, had some other injuries, and that person was able to shuffle off. And he didn't have a unique identifier, you know, but he was still absolutely 100% liable for the injuries that she suffered. So I just sort of wonder what that -- what the other folks who have already done it, what that looks like. But I have some concerns around that not being equitably applied. I just have questions. And then what was the other thing I wanted to ask about? And I guess it was another question about the franchise model. I do have one question that doesn't apply to that. What is the application process look like? Do we have a proposed timeline? >> For the franchise? >> Correct. >> Our understanding is that we would go through the process of creating the contract -- an application and a contract to go with and rules to go with that, and then we would open up an application window, time frame, at which point the companies -- anyone that was interested would apply. And then we would utilize that application and the rules in that application to score those applications based off of criteria. Criteria that hasn't been created. >> Harper-madison: So I guess maybe the answer to that question then would be the window. What does the window look like? >> I think that's up for us [11:32:59 AM] to unpack and decide what that is. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. >> If I could add, if you will notice on the franchise ordinance for the chapter 13 and the chapter 14 amendments, those are set to be effective in November. And I want to explain why. Were this to pass on all three readings this Thursday, then atd would need some time to get the applications in order to assess everything, and that process we're looking to be completed in August. Once the franchisee is selected, then the franchise ordinance granting the franchise would come back to council. And because of charter requirements, it has to be three separate council readings. I believe they -- they have to be 30 days apart and then once council authorizes that franchise, the franchise does not take effect for another 61 days, which brings us to the November 19th day. So to answer more specifically your question, the goal with the application process is to have everything in order by August and the franchisees selected. And that is if this were to pass a all three readings this Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Jimmy? >> Flannigan: Thank you, councilmember harper-madison, I was thinking very similar things about the liability and the ids and there are a lot of unfortunate moments people experience on public right-of-way. And I don't know that there's a way to solve for all of them. The insurance questions are valid, but I worry about doing the I don't job that the state is really supposed to do when it comes to insurance. Of course they have no problem doing our jobs, but power dynamic is a little different. So I'm not sure how I feel about that. The -- specifically because I don't think that the [11:35:00 AM] challenges around people people having a crash of whatever kind and then fleeing the scene is going to be addressed -- [lapse in audio]. ... A little less than I used to, but they all have unique ids on them. They're not big flashy signs, but if the point of the identifier was so that someone could spot it as somebody sped away, I don't know that there's a signage from a usability perspective that that would really accomplish that. And we don't require it other devices like bicycles. There's no license plates or anything like that. And the anecdotal stuff, mayor, I'm glad you brought that up because we're not a courtroom here and so I really hesitate to try to bring up stories. I could say that I had a constituent tell me about a time of a person on a bicycle ran her off the road. I don't have a constituent that's told me that, but I could say that and there's no punishment here for what our constituents are reporting to us. We've got to be very careful about how we set our regulations that they're based on evidence and not based on one story we heard. The questions I have, and these might be executive session questions, but the line between what atd's parking enforcement folks can do and what state law requires APD to do is a line I'd like to know about because it seems like a very interesting area of more affordable enforcement, I'll say, on some of these issues. And maybe an area where the cost of service includes that component of atd that is now enforcing the very devices. And then the last thing is has there been any contemplation about physical requirements for the devices? [11:37:00 AM] Defining for the market the minimum physical requirements on the devices themselves? And in my experience having ridden quite a variety of the scooters myself, there is some real variation and I choose to take some devices instead of other devices, depending on the size of the tire and the size of the platform you stand on, more specifically the type of braking. Technology is a big determiner for me, but I don't know that safety in devices operating in the right-of-way is something that the market should require themselves. That's why we require seat belts in cars. We don't say if you want a seat belt you can buy a car with a seat belt. That's not how we can do that. So I wonder how we have contemplated physical requirements on the devices themselves? >> Specific to the physical requirement, that's something of great interest to atd. It's also a great interest to the U.S. Department of transportation and others. Every department of transportation is interested in that as well. Because that's whereas we look at how -- at the permanency of this mode of transportation, whether it's existing scooter design or not, at the number of rides that we're gathering per month it's something that is becoming quite a dependency amongst a lot of folks in Austin. To your point, each person that I talked to, and myself included, we all have our own personal preferences of what ride comfort we like or what kinds of devices that we like to ride on. There are a number of devices that are of the same general design, and what we're seeing now is iterations on those designs as they move past the commercialized product and move towards a fully functional what I call fleet ready product that has more interchangeable parts of the parts that wear and tear. Those things we'll begin to see more iterations of that. We're in a monitor and track [11:39:02 AM] currently and looking to collect information on what designs that we see have an immediate, direct safety impact. So one of the things that we've noticed is a wider foot board creates a higher level of safety as well as ride comfort. We already know that the design of the tires and suspension system not only adds a level of ride comfort, but it may offer a level of additional safety conveyances associated with different imperfections in the roadway or wherever they may be riding. These will continue to iterate for some time. So I'm not sure if we're ready to start specifying a certain design type yet. I think that we're close, though, with 18 months and now seeing most scooter companies iterate their designs in order to, quite honestly, get better unit economics around those units so they can keep those units as a serviceable unit a lot longer, will begin working towards those overall designs. But to your point, braking, how you stand on it and the tires and suspension and the kick stand, very important, kick stands are incredibly important. More important than anybody ever thought, because a broken kick stand will take down an entire standing set of scooters as well. And so that's where it becomes more of a disruption of itself. >> Flannigan: So we expect physical requirements to happen at a higher level of government or is it something that we might do here? >> We plan to move forward with some level of that. I think there's more epidemiology study that's needed. What was done last year for those three months was a point in time, right? There were certain weather characteristics, environmental characteristics, et cetera, that only paint a certain picture for that particular fall time frame in Austin. Quite honestly in order to [11:41:03 AM] do that, not wanting to service any other market, we're hilly here. What we have here would be different as far as brake longevity than, say, Tampa, Florida. So there's a lot of that that needs to go into it as well. I'm a part of a national conversation that's being had on this where we're looking at -- we've already created a national community of practice that's bringing different cities together to talk about everything from data standards to vehicle standards to lessons learned on things like badging and other things like that. Obviously everyone's sharing as much as they can related to the different ordinances and fee structures, et cetera, and then more importantly what they're seeing on ground. In other words, what are the day-to-day operational takeaways from that. So the next steps, I don't know if you've heard me say this before, but after we get enough epidemiology work done and the evidence of that, we can begin what's known as human factors research. So that's where we leverage or university partners, our transportation centers. There's one hosted by UT, the university of Texas center for transportation research. They're one. And then of course tti in College Station also does it. They both have their different strengths associated with human factors. And I could foresee a future with enough data, maybe not just from Texas, but from some other places around the country, they would be able to create -- be able to develop a human factor study around both what the behavioral aspects of scooter usage and the human as well as the built environment and the device's place in that built environment. Both are different human factors research programs. They can be implemented. And there would be multiple universities across the country that would probably pool in to create that. >> Flannigan: That was going to be my next question [11:43:04 AM] is it's not just an Austin problem. Our local resources shouldn't be the only ones going to consider research. So it sounds like you're collaborating across the nation and with other cities that are trying to figure this out. >> We are. So there's another epidemiology study. It wasn't done to the same level of detail that aph did with partnering the CDC, but UCLA did a similar study where they -- their questionings were a little different, but there is another body of work out there that addresses the health and safety of scooter riding. >> Flannigan: Great. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. I have several questions, but I wanted to start with [inaudible - no mic]. My understanding is it allows more than just infrastructure costs. I know we're going to talk about some of that in executive session. But I believe it also allows us to get in some of the equity issues because they understand that they have a commitment over the long-term in Austin that it allows us to include in the contract requirements to reach different parts of the city. It also potentially helps us with respect to maintenance and safety and being able to have that iterative conversation with folks as well as some of the tracking opportunities, you know, that we would need. So I just wanted to invite you to take a few minutes to talk about what you see as the benefits of the franchise model over the fee model to the extent that you can share those with us outside of executive session? >> Certainly. >> Alter: And then I have other questions after that. >> May I ask Mr. Redfern to add in, I would say that on a high level from what I see as someone who would be responsible for regulating that, after the law is put into place, it gives a clear [11:45:05 AM] understanding of Austin's intentions related to scooters. It's not necessarily a free, everybody can agree and stack hands today, but then if we decide to eliminate the permit later we could do so just with my council session versus a franchise creates a discussion around the -- I'll use this term loosely. The utility of a particular type of service. And that's what we see with the number of rides. By the way, after March, 700,000 something rides, we expect it to go back town do the high two's, high three's, and it hasn't, it's stayed in the four's. May is looking at closer to 500,000 rides probably. So we're not seeing it even continue to go down back to what it was previous south by southwest. So it also gives companies the ability to have more permanency in the right-of-way. So right now scooters park predominantly on sidewalks. Creating this gives us a more cleaner version of moving forward with carving out parking spaces or other things in the right-of-way for scooters. It removes the question of who is paying for that? And it also does a benefit of putting that parking area not necessarily in a pedestrian pathway. What am I missing? >> From a venture capital standpoint too we think the name franchise in that, that authorization will give the companies a leg up when they have to go borrow money and invest in the city as well. That franchise will help put the emphasis behind their company and provide additional venture capital for them. >> So it could be helpful for new market entrants that [11:47:05 AM] are smaller. >> Alter: I look forward to learning more in executive session. I think it's clear that there are other benefits beyond the infrastructure buildout, which I think is really something that we have to figure out how to leverage this new technology and this use of our right-of-way to build out our week and ped infrastructure so everyone can benefit. It willing the most important thing for making these safe is actually having that on the ground. So I look forward to the broader conversation in that in executive session. I then have some specific questions. So in item 59 it says a police officer designated by the director can issue an violation for this ordinance. You talked about parking officers. I wondered if that officer could also be a park ranger? >> I -- >> Alter: If designated by the director? >> I believe so. Chapter 1-3 is where the authority is established for officers who are not certified law enforcement officers to write citations. So as long as -- they have to be an employee of the director, I believe, but there may be responsibility to extend that to another department as long as there's some sort of agreement. I think I need to consult with law and look at 1-3 to make sure. It would be great to supplement the workforce and spread the load and other other law enforcement agencies besides APD to help enforce that. That would be fantastic. >> Alter: One of the places I'm hearing that enforcement is a challenge is the hike and bike trail where we have prohibited the use of them I'm hoping we can be creative in stepping up the enforcement options and this this set of resolutions will allow us to do that. I don't know if you have any thoughts on what else with he need to do to make sure that we're able to enforce that and that it continues [11:49:06 AM] to be a prohibited use. >> So I think the -- this will cover the use on sidewalks andtreets. The ordinance that prohibits the devices I believe is in chapter 8. So we would have to have a discussion with the pard department about sharing resources and figuring out what their intent is and what they're looking to do. So there would be a cross-departmental conversation between the directors in the departments. >> Alter: So what happens under this set of ordinances if somebody does take a micro-mobility device on to a trail they're not supposed to be on. They hit somebody. How does that play out? Dr.a -- from a legal perspective. Do all of the ordinances apply if it's not in those locations? >> No. APD decided to defer to pard on those regulations because they're still doing their pilot program. So this ordinance is silent and does not apply to activities on trails. >> Alter: But we said we would hold people liable. That doesn't transfer over to the park system if that's applicable? Or what if they're riding on an urban trail run by the parks department, like the lower half of shoal creek and they're allowed to be there, none of this applies? >> There's been a discussion about the the presence of a term in the ordinance that would give micro-mobility device users the authority to use a trail, and so we have to look at the pilot and see if we actually want to allow these types of devices. So we would have to enforce any prohibition on the trails under chapter 8, [11:51:06 AM] whatever that ordinance looks like. We would have to do enforcement under chapter 8. >> And I would add that while we've had some conversations with pard on some anecdotal preliminary information of their pilot, I would want pard here to talk about the outcomes, what they've seen in their pilot thus far. I think it's important that whatever they're collecting is shared. But we've got to wait for that to finish. >> Alter: Okay. But what if I'm not riding my scooter on public right-of-way and I'm in a parking lot and I violate this in some way? Am I not liable for rendering aid? I mean, like -- is this written so that you don't have responsibilities? >> We could only regulate what happens on our right-of-way. So that's why it's specific to our sidewalks and our roadways. So is it wouldn't apply if you were in a parking lot acting recklessly on your scooter that case. >> A private parking lot. >> A private parking lot, excuse me. >> Alter: So they fail to render aid, it wouldn't -- >> Not under this. >> Could you make it? >> Alter: Can we make it do that? I don't know if we want to -- >> On a private -- on private property, I'd have to look into that. >> Alter: Okay. I'm more concerned in the immediate term about parks. That was sort of a tangent that I got to from what you were talking about, but it raises a host of questions because as you know, I'm very concerned about how we get the right definitions so that when there is an accident and when there is an approach that we have the legal basis to be able to do something. And I'm very concerned about this with respect to parks. We're not supposed to be having any scooters in our [11:53:07 AM] parks at all, but yet this is not setting up all of these rules applying to that. >> I think also -- correct me if I'm wrong, but the -- >> Got it. >> The deference was to pard to regulate their trails and atd to regulate what its responsible for. So that's why atd avoided purposefully stepping on pard's toes on what they're responsible for. And as he said, there were discussions of including trails in here, but then there were concerns about the definition and how far it went and so -- and the pilot itself. And leaving pard to deal with their own resources. And atd to deal with what it's responsible for. So that's sort of why it turned out this way as far as pard is concerned at least. >> Alter: Okay. I will have some additional questions that we can take offline only to digest that a little bit. I think these scooters provide really important mobility needs and we have an opportunity with this to get our infrastructure and to address some of the safety and other needs, but I think we also have to be mindful that we have a park system and we have a trail system where sometimes it's not appropriate for those to be on. And we have to be in a situation where we can regulate those appropriately and pard does not have the same resources that atd or APD has. So we have to be setting this up in a way that it works in those settings as well. So I will come back to that. Can you speak to what does it mean to be operating in a reasonable and prudent way on a sidewalk? >> Sure. So in working with APD in helping better understand what would be something that [11:55:08 AM] they felt that their officers would be comfortable with enenforcing given the vast differences as we've unpacked in this session. There's a lot of differences between where people can ride, public property versus private property, but for an officer that's looking at quite honestly a safe condition of the built environment it would come down to whether or not that person was riding in a safe and reasonable, prudent manner, very similar to how they currently address the uniform traffic code and the signage thereof, but take into account different environmental conditions that would warrant something more than that. For instance, the story that's usually used for us is you have a posted speed limit of, say, 45 miles per hour, however it's sleeting outside and so therefore someone who is driving in that kind of environment at speed limit, if it was deemed by the officer that they were doing so in not a safe and prudent manner, it could be a potential offense. There can be plenty of opportunities where scooter riding or any kind of micro-mobility device riding on a sidewalk, bicycle or otherwise, could be with people intermixed, could be construed as completely safe if that person is following some what we'll call just general standard of care type of things, not being -- being prudent. And then you can see an example of someone in the same kind of environment that's weaving in and out between pedestrians with not a lot of care could be construed as not being reasonable and prudent. So it addresses it from the perspective of allowing our [11:57:08 AM] partners as well as ourselves the ability to move forward with both an education and more importantly the one part of the campaign with some teeth so that people understand that there is an expectation of behavior that the city expects when you're using a dockless mobility device. >> Or new device, I should say. Chapter 12 is focused on all riders. >> Alter: Thank you. Going back to the fines of the $20, can you clarify for me, if somebody runs a stop sign or violates one of the rules of the road this ordinance says they have to follow, can they also be fined whatever is for, say, running a red light or are they only fined $20? >> Any violation from an operator of these devices would be 20 or $40, 20 for the first violation or 40 for the second violation, subsequent violation. I think what you're talking about is if somebody was in a vehicle and they did the exact same thing in the vehicle then the citation amounts would be higher than that. So we heard about equity, people who may not be able to afford to own a vehicle but have a less powered conveyance, and so we agreed that let's try 20 and 401st. Actually, let's enforce this ordinance and see what kind of reception we get and move forward with education, warning, informing and citing and see where that gets us. If people are just -- it's a rash of people running stop signs or doing whatever they're not supposed to do in this ordinance than if we need to go back to council and say, hey, we need to raise these fines, we certainly can. [11:59:08 AM] But there was a question of equity that we were trying to address. >> Alter: Thank you. That's helpful background there. So my last question has to do with the monitoring of the dockless injuries by public health and atd moving forward. We got the study back. March the plans -- what are the plans moving forward on monitoring injuries what we're experiencing from a public health perspective. >> We're currently looking at how we can create a more long-term study, after the public -- after the press release that was done with aph there has a series of activities supporting that. So then we went right straight into preparing for this week. So haven't been back to aph yet to start the conversation about what we're gonna do next. It's the intention of atd to find some way to move forward with some more epidemiology work. They're -- they have the format and everything set and ready. It's just starting to take in more intake. To councilmember kitchen's point, it's a heavy lift right now to pull that stuff out of the narratives. But the way that that study is architected it also requires a lot of phone interview or interpersonal interviews. The national community of practice is also trying to address that, and so there may be an opportunity for us to not only collect our own information but look at other cities in the united States that may have some similar characteristics as ours and be able to pull some information off of those as well. That's the intent, to look at it both from a national perspective and take what we can, that makes sense for Austin, but to continue the study in Austin as well. [12:01:09 PM] It's such a new thing and we're hoping to be able to collect data that showcases whether or not we're making any meaningful improvements in human behavior. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. I have a lot of pretty specific questions I can run through most of them pretty quickly. Let me just emphasize I agree with councilmember alter about the parks. I didn't understand that we weren't considering or contemplating enforcement actions for people riding on the parks and the trails. I hear about that with great frequency. And so I think that there certainly are things, and I believe we've been forwarding on these suggestions to the parks department, there's -- I continue to hear from constituents a suggestion that there be better signage, more frequent signage, you know, more education around that piece. Because clearly there's still people on our trails, and I've seen it -- this is both something I hear from my constituents who take the time to write and provide those examples, and also I've seen it myself directly. So I've also seen individuals now at least -- at least twice just right out here, driving the wrong way on the 1-way street in the lane of traffic. So I would -- I have a couple questions about the fines. Who was -- where the people you were talking with about whether the fines were calibrated properly? >> The bicycle advisory council was one of the stakeholder groups that we spoke with. And we had representative from the urban transportation commission as well, some of the commissioners and a previous utc session were also expressing concerns about the fines and how they could cause problems for riders. >> And I assume the same contrue of any of our fines. And I understand the [12:03:09 PM] interest in making this continue ton a low-barrier form of transportation. >> Yeah. >> Tovo: But that's -- that is, especially since you're going back to 50% of -- or, you know, cutting back from the initial suggestion, I would just ear mark that as something that we should really watch. I think some of the violations are relatively minor. I think going the wrong direction in a one-way -- on a one-way street in front of traffic -- a couple weeks ago I saw two scooters cut across in front of a line of traffic on this side of city hall at rush hour. So, you know, when you're talking about violation that's endanger lives, both their own and others, I think that's a very serious moving violation and needs to be treated as such and I'm not sure we send the right pricing signal if the fine is a $20 fine for really endangering the lives of those around you. >> Understood. >> Tovo: With that kind of an action. Then I have some specific questions about the ordinance that I think we can fly through pretty quickly. On page 1 -- >> This is the -- >> Tovo: Sorry, 59. >> Okay, yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: 59, I see that you've eliminated scape, and I just want to be clear, like, clearly you're not trying -- the elimination of skating isn't to suggest that people can skate on public landscaping or amenities? >> No. Just the feds and state already addressed that. >> Tovo: Okay, thanks. On page 9, 22-36c, a separate offense is committed each time an offense occurs. Does that mean if a person has committed several offenses at once they will be assessed -- >> They could be, yes, that's correct. >> Tovo: Okay. And then could you help me [12:05:10 PM] understand the rationale for the helmetting? I vaguely remember a conversation about helmetting in the past where we talked about it, or was it car assets -- car seats, I think it's with car seats, if you bring yourself in compliance the ticket goes away. Help me understand why that would be the approach here for helmets for youth riding micro-lity devices without helmets? The regulation would require it. >> Right. >> Tovo: Of individuals under, what is it -- >> Age of 18. We essentially -- >> Tovo: But if they're assessed and then they produce a helmet, there's no more -- the violation goes away? >> Correct. I mean, this -- so this is left over from the previous ordinance. It was there previously. And so, you know, we can fine somebody $20 or if this is a first offense then, you know, $20 is probably better spent on buying themself a helmet. And that's what the program or this ordinance is trying to do, is trying to encourage safe behaviors verse penalties. And so that would be the rationale. To leave it in there the way it was, is that if people go and purchase that safety equipment, that they're eliminating that for the next time. It's more of an educational piece and that they're gonna be in compliance from here forward. >> I'll be getting a lot moalue, obviously. >> Tovo: That sounds like a valid explanation. Have you checked that with our public health department, about whether that's a best practice and something that they feel would be is the way to handle these kinds of -- >> Specific -- >> Tovo: Because they talk all the time about how to encourage healthier behaviors and caution against unhealthy behaviors. Is this -- have we gotten any feedback about whether they think this is the right approach? I say this in the context of having talked to the director of emergency room services at Brackenridge about how frequently they [12:07:11 PM] are seeing head injuries and also life-altering injuries, so it just -- I want to make sure that if we're doing this with the rather that we think it's gonna promote healthier behaviors moving forward or safer behaviors for scooter riding among youths, that that's actually a tested kind of best practice. >> In our work with aph, they're definitely supportive of what we've put in. As any professional who is fully focused on human health, they would prefer a lot more. My doctor would prefer that I don't eat as much beef and salt, but I still do. So at the same rate we have to take into consideration what would be successful for us here at the city and given our city with helmet usage around bicycles and cyclists, et cetera, I got read in on that, I think this is a good meaningful step forward to include this as part of our existing policies on helmet use for underage people. >> Tovo: Okay. I mean, I would point out -- I appreciate your example, but the difference is that you're making that choice for yourself. >> Agreed. >> Tovo: And these are adults making -- you know, making choices for their underaged children that they're gonna let them get on a scooter without a helmet which they do with frequency. I think I've seen a couple kids with helmets and the rest not. >> Correct he can. This would make that an addressable thing. And thus we could move forward with move meaningful conversations with adults. >> Tovo: Yes. >> Who allow their children to use these, which we won't get into whether or not the companies will agree that or not but it is a practice we can acknowledge is happening. >> Tovo: Okay. >> I'm sorry, my comment was more associated with the adults and whether or not we could get an adult to wear a helmet. >> Tovo: Yeah, no, no. I get that. I understand. Not taking on that issue again in this community and just focusing on youth. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. [12:09:13 PM] >> Yes, ma'am. >> Mayor Adler: Ellis -- I'm sure, go ahead. >> Tovo: Sorry. I did have two more quick questions. Can you address the -- are the director rules in place? Now they are. >> They are, correct. >> Tovo: Okay. Let me say also, you get a lot of constituents -- a fairly regular stream of constituent email and I really appreciate the responsiveness of both transportation to my constituents directly but also setting up systems for them to provide that feedback directly to you, which we're encouraging them to provide that feedback directly to you, even when it comes through us. So thank you so much for that. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: In one of the responses it talked about -- it involved operators. This is just an example. I don't want to focus on the example. But it involved an operator who was deploying scooters in an area that was, I think, a no-parking area. Yeah, it was a no deploy zone and they continued to deploy them. So the response that came back from staff was that the current director rules do not specify a fine for operators who are in violation though the director may establish penalties on a case- by-case basis. I'm just not sure I understand what that means. Does that mean that the director has the discretion in an instance like this to assess penalties? >> Yes. >> Tovo: Or that they may establish penalties in the future? >> It's -- so it is -- we can charge for the cost of us providing the service, like, if we were to declare the devices, like, abandoned or abandoned property, under a certain ordinance we can go back and charge them the cost that it takes us to rectify whatever the issue that is. And so that would be the penalty that is transmitted back to the company. >> Tovo: And you have the ability to do that currently? >> Correct, yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: Just for yesterday I believe it was, we had a constituent report a scooter in some body of water. >> Yes. >> Tovo: I think y'all got out and addressed it right away. It St. Our intention then to [12:11:13 PM] recoup the cost that have service from the scooter company? Setting aside the fact it was creating an environmental hazard. >> In that particular case I don't know if we would -- I don't believe we would charge them for the cost of us providing the service because we -- it wasn't the operator that created -- we don't know. We were pretty sure it wasn't the operator that created that error. It was somebody who was in the right-of-way and decided I hate these things and just chunked it over. I mean, that isn't necessarily a fault of the operator. We have talked with watershed about recouping costs if we have to go put a boat in the water and go get it ourself. Then absolutely we would venture to recoup our costs in that manner. But we have been communicating with the providers, and they are going to the location and they are physically going in the waterway to remove that piece of equipment. In that particular case we wouldn't give them any kind of a bill for our service. >> Tovo: Okay. I think that if we could kind of fold that conversation into our executive conversation about fees and fines I think that would be helpful. Thank you. Again, thanks for the quick response. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Mayor Adler: Leslie. >> Pool: Thanks. I think back to some of the conversation earlier about pard doing their piece, it's separate from what atd is doing, if we have regulations come out pretty soon that don't include the specifics about scooters in parks, then people are going to think that there won't be any. And we will either be asking a lot of questions -- answering a lot of questions about, well, that will come soon but we don't have it yet or by the time it does come the public won't be looking for regulations. They won't -- the timing will be wrong. I think the best plan would be to have the scooters and parks piece be addressed in tandem with the work that -- [12:13:15 PM] with the regulations that are coming from atd. And if we can't have them, we need to have some placeholder or reference to them saying that specific regulations relating to use of micro-mobility devices on trails or in the parks are due and they're coming in six weeks or whatever it is so that people understand that we haven't excluded them. Some of the biggest -- I'm hearing equal numbers of complaints both on just the traffic ways, the travel ways, and on parkland. So if we don't include that in our discussion or if we don't signal that that will be coming, then people won't understand that it will. And so for the transparency and accountability piece, I think we need to at least give a nod toward the fact that pard is working up their regulations. And are you working on those regs too? >> No. Mary Ramiro. We've been working together. >> Pool: Okay. >> What was I going to say? I can't remember now. Oh, yes, the pilot isn't going to end until the end of the year. What I was telling him right now is what I would be able to do if atd lets me is put something to the effect of in the bottom, you know, rules and regulations, what have you, regarding trails, urban trails and parklands will be addressed under separate ordinance. The only problem I have, as we were saying, I don't know if I could put a date necessarily in there since they're not gonna end -- we'll discuss that. >> Pool: Sounds great. >> That's the signaling I was thinking to do and I'll check with Mary. >> Pool: I think that signaling is very important and we can remind everybody there is a pilot underway. >> Exactly, yes. >> Pool: Played to be complete by the end of this year and regulations will flow from those. >> That works as a binding. [12:15:15 PM] >> Pool: That would be really, really helpful. On the parking enforcement officer, do you know what kind of training will be involved and who will be doing that? And how many new officers will we have for this? >> Those are all very good questions. So it depends on what the fee discussion looks like too, right? We would definitely coordinate with the Austin police department. They have trainers, and we would certainly go through some scenarios with them and become comfortable. We have parking enforcement staff now that actually issue class C misdemeanors so we have that capability right now. We -- ideally we would like to add anywhere between ten and 16 officers would be great. But, again, we just need to look at what our expenses are going to be, how far we want to talk those expenses, and then what we have left over for the innovation for the enhancement of the system as those are all things to be determined. >> Pool: Okay. I have some experience with the disabled parking ordinance that's at the county level. >> Yeah. >> Pool: And they have a cohort of volunteers who go around and look for the violations and then they're able to issue tickets. >> Yes. >> Pool: I want to think about that a little bit and maybe talk with y'all to see if maybe that model could be imported here and we could engage volunteers to help us with the eyes on the street. >> I can answer that question. >> Pool: We already know we can't have as many police officers that people might like here. >> Right. >> Pool: When we add this as additional new assignment to them it may be that it stretches that fabric a little bit too thin. >> Yes. >> Pool: So we may need to think about more innovive ways to approach the eyes on the street and the regulation. >> Absolutely. >> Pool: And then I wanted to touch on what plans the city has for signage that will specifically state, you know, when we get -- and [12:17:15 PM] this, I guess, goes back to pard, but specifically with the parks, if scooters are not allowed in there, I think that the trail foundation has a banner up on one of -- on butler trail to say you're not -- scooters are not permitted but by the time you get to it you may have already been on the butler trail for a couple of miles. >> Right. >> Pool: So one way to educate the community is to make sure that -- we have adeqte signage. It wouldn't just be pard involved in that. We probably need some kind of signage for public education to explain to people on the streets they should be following traffic laws, which you don't go the wrong way on a one-way street. We shouldn't have to tell people that. >> But we do. >> Pool: Clearly we do. So the various regulations we are putting in place that they are adequately notified and that we have regular visual reminders for people of what they should and shouldn't be doing. >> Yes. >> Pool: So will atd and pard potentially have some sort of a plan going forward to what kind of signage we will have sprawled installed. >> Our director reached out to the director at adder and offered that whatever elective signage we come up with that it would be our sign shop that would likely do the design. >> Pool: Okay. >> So it would be a uniform process. >> Pool: Okay, great. I wanted to make a note that the CDC report that we got, the reporters themselves cautioned that the data that they looked at was by definition -- incomplete because they couldn't get all of the injury information from the hospital. I wanted to remind everybody that caution was in the CDC report itself and to the extent that seemed to be -- it's being interpreted as a positive thing, frankly I think along with vision zero tenets that anybody injured should be taken really seriously and that we should not minimize the fact that you have X number of rides [12:19:15 PM] and Y number of injuries coming from that. Because any of those injuries should be -- >> Important. >> Pool: -- Very carefully reviewed and taken to heart and also the fact they weren't able to get the entire universe of injuries and -- and so just to remind everybody about that. I think that's all of my follow-ups. I see we have a couple of representatives from the scooter ands I just wanted to let them know that -- I don't know if they heard earlier, but one of the amendments that I'll bring on Thursday will be to look at a badge identification system, which has been successfully implemented in an array, almost a dozen, at least, other cities. And to look at the best practices there and maybe you all can assist in having the right approach so that it will protect both the firms and also the riders and then anybody who might be injured along the way. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: It's 12:20. Ann you want to close us down on this? We have three pulled items, but we can hit those and go into executive session unless the pulled items will take a long time. >> Kitchen: We're going to talk about franchise more in the executive session but one of the concerns I heard is not seeing what the specifics might be in such an agreement. So can you speak to the time line for developing an agreement in the public policy for -- public approach for addressing what's in it? >> So for people that may not be familiar with that process. In other words, it's not a rule- making process, right? >> No. >> Kitchen: It's like a contract agreement. >> Mm-hmm. >> Kitchen: So the specifics that go into it has to come back to the council. Is that correct? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Just give me an idea of the time line again for that company. >> If this -- if the franchise model passes this Thursday, then the applicants would submit [12:21:16 PM] their packets per the -- in the ordinance it says what would be in the application, I believe. They would do that and then atd would select which franchisees it believes council should award a franchise to, and that work should be done in August. After August, council will be presented with the franchise ordinances. They will have what's included in -- in code there's some must haves for the franchise ordinance. It will have all those requirements and perhaps some others atd would recommend. But they, again, would be recommended to council. Council would have to read -- rather approve those franchise ordinances immigranting franchises on three separate meetings of council, regular meetings of council, they have to be all together more than 30 days apart. >> Kitchen: I'm familiar. >> Yeah, okay. Once that happens, once all three readings are done, it takes 61 days for those franchises to be in effect, which would bring us to November 19, which is as soon as -- as soon as those franchises would be valid on November 19, that would be the effective date of the ordinance requiring franchises. >> Kitchen: And what level of certainty does that create for the requirements? Once they're in the franchise agreement, they stay in the agreement? I mean, there's not a -- I'm trying to understand the level of certainty that that creates. In other words, can you change what's in it with an ordinance? Can you change what's in it administratively? >> Once approved? >> Kitchen: Yes. >> No. An amendment would have to go back to council for the same process at the three readings and the 61 days. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Although I was thinking now that I think about it I was speaking with councilmember Casar's office, we could work flexibility in there as we did with the taxi franchses [12:23:17 PM] up to this many years or at least this many devices so we can do things line this, be creative like that. But to actually revoke, amend or renew it would have to go before council. >> Kitchen: The reason I ask that is one of the concerns -- there's a lot to discuss with regard to franchise agreement, but one of the concerns has to be with the certainty of what the requirements are. Which at this point in time is not something that people can see. So that's what I was trying to get at, to -- once you establish a franchise agreement, the degree to which that establishes certainty. >> Really, it's pretty -- it's pretty stuck unless we combo back -- go back to council again with all that process. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much for the briefing. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Kitchen: Mr. Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Combo through the pulled items. We have three pulled I'm sorry, 11, 29, 50 that we'll go through now. Councilmember -- >> [Off mic] >> Mayor Adler: Ann pulled item 29. Delia do you want to address 11? >> Garza: Sure. So this is the -- it's for the dove springs health center approved by the voters, I believe to approve the design build method. Am I -- my questions are more about, you know, generally at the higher level, because it's my understanding that this is not slated to -- I don't know if it's finished or started in 2023. I know that the city manager had said that there was gonna be some possibly new process because all these bonds passed and how we could expedite, you know, or better efficiently build these very needed facilities. So I'm wondering if there's [12:25:20 PM] anything in this item -- I'm looking for creative ways to get this built as fast as possible and I don't know if that's a p3 or what that is. And I just want to make sure there's nothing in this item that could prevent us from looking at other options or speeding up the time line to get that center built. >> Good morning, capital contracting officer. Let me speak to the action that's before you today and then that can inform the conversation about if you want to look at other alternatives the city may use. In terms of the most expedient contract delivery method we have design build is that tool for us. This first step is allowing us through council's vote on this item would be allow us to move forward with the design criteria manual. And the dcm, as the acronym, allows us to put that -- once developed we're thinking we should finish that in about October of this year. We use that tool to insert into the substation that goes out that informs what we're looking for for db, design builders to respond to. We believe this methodology will allow us to build it as far as possible with quality in mind using the current city tools we have in our cfe delivery program. That said if counc decides to look at some other tool that's a 3p, for example, we believe that the design criteria manual can also be used to form that process. But, again, we think that the best way to do this project using the city processes that we have is through design build, and we believe once we get the design criteria manual completed in October, we can move forward quickly into this phase and have something before mayor and council hopefully January of next year to award a contract for the design build entity and then look at all the different ways that we can do to build it sooner than July 2023, which is the proposed date we have right now in preliminary [12:27:22 PM] plan. Certainly when we have a design build company on board, under contract, they provide us recommendations, options to look at to build this a lot sooner. But we won't know until we have that design build on the contract. >> Garza: You said July 2023. Is that when it's slated to break ground? >> Slated to be open, available for use, ma'am. >> Garza: Okay. So if by October 2019 you mentioned that as some kind of benchmark and then January 2020, that's -- I guess that's the part it's, like, three yeah, almost three years from January 2020 that this is slated to open. I know that there's, you know, the bandwidth of so many things going on in the city, but I just don't -- it's so hard to explain that, you know, to folks that it's gonna -- it's gonna take that long. And I'm concerned for several reasons I've expressed before but, you know, we've seen where many of the health centers right now, not city of Austin, like clinics, and I know this is separate from a clinic, have all been placed in the parts of town that were -- needed them at the time and now central health is in this situation where they're trying to push their clinics further out, and so while this part of town is not gentrifying as quickly as other parts of town, I'm just concerned of spending a lot of money on the center that's needed now, it was needed probably five, ten years ago, and then we're in a position where we've put all this money and now they might be in a position where the families aren't even there anymore that need that help, which is a food pantry, which is connection to nonprofits. So I don't know -- I don't know the solution, but I just really want us to get this built as quickly as possible. And so if you can assure me that passing 11 does not mean -- does not prohibit us from finding that or exploring p3, then, you know, of course I want to [12:29:22 PM] support this moving forward. And so it sounds like that's what you said. >> That's correct, ma'am. So moving forward with this item would get the design criteria manual ready to go, our goal is to have it complete by October. In fact I would want to have that conversation with y'all to make sure I'm not putting a request for qualification on the street we don't intend to really use. I think that would be a disservice to contractors out there so I want want to be confident that's the delivery that we're going to be using so when we're out there that we're committed to following through with this delivery method and contractors aren't wasting their efforts on the contract that may not materialize so we would want to have that conversation and rest assured that's the direction that we're gonna move forward hundred%. In terms of before 201960 20 -- 2023, July, we are looking at our processes. We have a design process from the five fire stations, we learned things there, incorporating those into our processes. We're always thinking about ways to condense periods without impacting the quality of the project. I will say, you know, some of the feedback we did get from contractors is that, you know, we don't allow too much time for them to consider bidding on our projects so they always ask for, you know, five to six weeks. As long as we're not mitigating that time period, allowing folks to do their due diligence and give us a good proposal we can look at every other area to condense the time but there is a lot of work going on right now and I think the more time we give folks to really consider to winning the bid the better it is for the city of Austin in terms of quality of contractor. >> Garza: Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I think the goal is not to give up on any kind of quality or any issue. I would hope when you actually got the proposals back, you know, being angle to move quickly through the project would be one of the things you would be looking at with those folks if there's other things we as a council can do internally or regulation standpoint or resource standpoint that would help get that on the ground more quickly bring that back to us and let us [12:31:23 PM] know what things we might do to facilitate it. >> Appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Greg. >> Casar: I think you both covered those points but I wanted to pick up what you said, proposed design guidelines if we could figure out ways we can implement those through different pathways if, one pathway is faster that would be great or also I don't know if there's anything we can do to make sure when folks are bidding, that time line who it is that can get it done in 22 instead of 23 or what have you, that could be part of the consideration. >> Absolutely. We have criteria embedded in our evaluation process that looks at firm's proposal to expedite things and how to move things faster and that certainly gets scored a little higher. We look at that already and something we keep in mind as part of our process. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. >> Elaine hart. I wanted to mention thatio -- we're also working on a forecast for the construction industry and people who might bid on our projects what our expected projects are that have not been solicited yet so then start judging early on while -- oh, I really want to bid on that one or this one so they know what workload is coming because of the kind of construction going on in town not just by the city but the county and others plus the private city. That will give them a better sense of what time line and how long they will have to bid a project. We think that will help us as well. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. Jimmy, you want to hit item 50. >> Flannigan: Simple, zoning case in my district that the applicant requested cs zoning and staff, zoning and planning came back with gr but it is a place I think should have housing. It is on the one local bus route they've in district 6 and it is surrounded by job opportunities and other multi-family developments and so I'm going to be [12:33:25 PM] moving to do]-mu which I have been advised is permissible since the original request was cs so we haven't exceeded the original requested entitlements. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. Item 29. Ann. >> Kitchen: I guess I should wait -- >> Mayor Adler: Until Kathie comes back. >> Kitchen: I have one question. >> Mayor Adler: Why don't you at least daylight it because we'll go into executive session? >> Kitchen: Okay. I can daylight it. I had a question for her related to the palm district master plan. Which I support doing that kind of master plan. But I wasn't -- I was reading what she had written as making a decision that we wanted to do a palm district master plan. Which, again, I also don't have a concern about, but I wanted to put that in the context of earlier direction that we have already given to staff about identifying a number of projects for our district-level planning process. And so I've attempted to write some language that reflects that the palm district master plan is not the only plan that we're talking about. And that we've already asked for some direction on. So that's the attempt there, and so councilmember tovo will have that and she can watch that. I'll try to let her know about that. The other question I see it as additive to what she's doing, not changing what she's doing. The second thing I would say is, I had a question on page 19 about the convention center expansion. And that was whether there's costs involved to the -- what number 1 says, the city manager is directed to recommend an initial design and then over the next page, number 7 says the city manager should present as much of this convention center expansion analysis and initial design by July 31. So but I'm not seeing anything here where there -- [12:35:25 PM] is that just a staff effort or is there some dollars that need to be expended to accomplish this? >> I don't see anybody here so I'll answer it. There's not sufficient time for us to spend any money -- >> Kitchen: That's what I thought. I didn't know -- it says initial design. That's the part that I really had a question about. The rest of the analysis I know our staff can do. But I didn't know how you were gonna do an initial design. >> Well, you can pick an alternative or a scenario, but you would not have the initial design done by that date. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: I think the intent here was to say to move forward with this instruction and come back at the end of the summer probably would be the only thing we hear back is how staff is going to approach it. I don't think there's an expectation that we'll actually see design work. >> Kitchen: My larger question is really by voting for this are we committing a certain -- certain dollars out of our budget that will be spent on this at this point in time? >> No. No, ma'am. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Want to go back to the first one with Kathie here? >> Tovo: Sorry, I had to step out. >> Kitchen: That's okay. I passed out a potential amendment. My apologies not nor getting it on the message board. I am reading the resolution as intending to start the process for the master plan, palm district master plan and also to make a decision as a council that we actually want to do a palm district master plan, which I'm fine with and agree with. But I wanted to put that in the context of earlier discussions that we had had and direction we had talked to our staff about, additional district-level planning. So in particular since the last part of this resolution speaks to putting it in the budget for 2019, so since this is not the only item we've asked for to be in the [12:37:26 PM] budget for 2019 related to district-level planning I just wanted language to acknowledge that. So. . . >> Tovo: Yeah. I think that's -- I think that's okay. Very useful. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. I'm not sure whether Kathie can answer this or not or whether this would be staff, and I know this wasn't officially pulled. I think a bunch of us thought other people were pulling it so it didn't get pulled. So my questions are specific to the convention center expansion and the financial analysis behind that. So I would really like to understand the opportunity costs associated with this with respect to the hot dollars being tied up in debt services and just to understand the risks involved and the trade- offs of -- for other projects that might want to be done. Just so that we're going in with this with open eyes. We didn't have the financial analysis end point. This is not to say I don't like the shiny -- 5-2 is great but we still have to do our due diligence with respect to the financial stuff. So I have some questions on that. I don't know if you're in a position to does or it should be staff -- I know Carlos Stefan is out of town until Thursday so I may need to ask these on Thursday, but I do have those questions. I'm not sure what the best way to do this since it's a council resolution. >> Tovo: I see Greg canally here. I would say, too, when that financial analysis comes back to us that's where we will have yet another opportunity to really look at the financial assumptions that the staff are using as well as the costs and see, you know, how -- I think the question you've asked is certainly one that the community wants to hear, which is what is the opportunity cost of allocating our hot tax and [12:39:29 PM] our venue tax in this way, but I don't know if -- again, I think Carlos often who we hear from on this subject but I see mark tester as well as Greg canally here and they may want to walk us through this. Let me say this resolution is in no way to foreclose those conversations and I have every expectation when the financial analysis comes back that it will help us restart that conversation about what the financing opportunities are. >> Greg canally, city finance. Absolutely, I think we read the direction in this resolution to go off for convention center and corporate financial assistance needed in that file due diligence of the financial modeling around looking at the potential expansion, and&so I think it will be a full a to Z on that. >> Alter: Appreciate that. I think, you know, I think we want to make sure that the public receives the maximum benefit from this investment. Should everything else line up. And so I'll probably be bringing some language I think that strengthens the type of financial analysis that's requested. There's just some specifics in there that I think we need to make very car that we need to have back in order to be able to make the decision and no doubt those were implied in what you said in there, but I think for the interest of clarity and making sure that the public knows that we are -- there's still a whole lot of work that has to be done with respect to understanding the risk, understanding the financial analysis of how this would get funded that needs to happen if we want to achieve 5-2 and make sure that we get to the point that we get the benefits that we're talking about in terms of opening up the space to the community and creating the park spaces. So I will probably be bringing some language to ask for some additional financial analysis. I was also hoping you might be able to help me understand the significant price differential between [12:41:29 PM] scenario 4.1, which is priced at 450 million, and 5.1, that is priced at 725 million. I'm trying to understand what accounts for the $275 million difference. It seems like it has something to do with the tower space and you have to kind of stare at the two scenarios multiple times to figure out there's any differentiation because the side views are the same but the floors are different and then there's the tower. But I'm trying to understand what that 275 is buying us across those because you could still do the other part of it without -- you can do phase two without the tower but -- you could take section 4.1 and then do 5.2 as far as I can tell. I'm not advocating that. I'm just -- I need to understand the difference. >> And I think, again, as part of the -- I think you're referring to the university of Texas place making study. >> Alter: Yes, sorry. >> Certainly as part of that place making study, part of the tree tried to put some boundaries around costs on each of those scenarios, those four scenarios. So prior to Thursday we'll visit with them and revisit with them and have them kind of reexplain to us those differences in those scenarios. It's multifaceted and a lot of it is perhaps what potential partnership revenue could come in and also what would be on tax rolls. It wasn't just a construction number. It was kind of multifaceted but we'll get an answer from the UT team and get that to you. >> Alter: I think it's really important we understand that difference of how it plays out because honestly I think you could put 4.1 together with 5.2 and you'd get something similar, not exactly the same amounts of stuff, and it might cost a whole lot less for the taxpayers and [12:43:31 PM] for any money funded out of hot. I'll leave it at that. I think we can be creative. I think that we really benefited from having the UT survey. I'm really glad that we decided to wait and to get those options because I think what the UT study does is present us with ways forward that really open up the space and create a vision that can be adapted and designed in different ways but that really allows us to place make in that area of town. But there are trade-offs. There are costs. There's no land costs included in these numbers. We have to actually know that this is a feasible thing that we can accomplish before we get too far down the road. And we may have to make some choices along the way, and some of those choices may depend on our comfort level with some of the assumptions about the demand level that needs to come out. You know, one of the other things that the UT study shows is that only about 10% of all hotel rooms are booked because of the convention center. And so, you know, there are some things that, you know, if we get into the nitty-gritty of the accounting and the financial stuff that we really do need to understand even if we all agree that the place making and the park and the other opportunities that come with this change and this district approach are welcome. >> Mayor Adler: Delia -- I'm sorry, do you have a response to that, Kathie? >> Tovo: Yeah. I wanted to say what you've sketched out in terms of potential amendment or ideas that would feed into an amendment sound very useful. So thank you for them and look forward to reviewing them. >> Mayor Adler: Delia. >> Garza:I can't I don't councilmembercasar, as a cosponsor, I don't know if I can support your amendment. It sounds like small area planning and it doesn't -- and we had a really long [12:45:32 PM] discussion about wanting to put the brakes on that. The Orange and the blue were the Orange line is north Lamar all the way down to congress. The blue line is, you know, the airport. And I believe the yellow line is south Austin, which is manchaca. So I'm just curious, is that what this is? >> Kitchen: Well, it speaks to a time line. So it's not suggesting that these be done in any order. And it's the same thing as the palm district process. So it just acknowledges that the palm district plan is not the only thing that we're considering for planning. So I'm not intending for it to establish any priorities or any time line. It's just that we did -- what we talked about doing when we talked about putting the brakes on and we didn't continue with that other resolution, my understanding -- or whatever it was, rfq or whatever, my understanding is what we were doing is we were asking staff to go back and think about the whole picture, you know, and how many would you do and when would you do it? So it wasn't that we were saying, no, we didn't want to do any district-level planning, we just needed to think more clearly about what order it was and when to do it. Because I know there were questions raced about north Lamar but this is not -- the Orange line -- it says portions of. I mean, the staff may come back and say, well, the time line is such that it's not time to do north Lamar, for example, for, you know, a couple years or they could say that about, you know, south congress or -- I don't know what they'll say. So but what I wanted to avoid was stepping in right now and saying, well, we're gonna do the palm district plan and not acknowledging that we've talked about other ones and we've talked about the need to have a full time line for when we do things. >> Garza: I just feel like your amendment goes a little bit beyond -- I'll mention it says to identify [12:47:36 PM] resources as well. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Garza: And this entire -- the entire item 29 is all about palm and then it's like we're just adding this -- hey, let's also talk about time lines and resources for these other parts of town and where this is a very specific resolution for a specific part of town. And so -- >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Garza: -- I'm not sure if it's relevant to add something that's talking about district planning that sounds like small area planning in other parts of town because part of that discussion -- I feel like we're bypassing what we talked about putting the brakes on. >> Kitchen: Okay jog that was for staff to present and give us a better understanding of exactly what these are as well as consideration of pleasant valley so this doesn't even mention pleasant valley so I'm concerned about putting a priority on lines when we said we're gonna put the brakes on it if this does the exact opposite of that whole discussion about, what, thee weeks ago? >> Kitchen: That was the same concern I had because I think that does this with respect to the palm district plan. I'd be happy to leave out this entire language but I know that councilmember tovo wants to bring it forward, and I guess the -- I guess you -- others want to, too, which is fine. But this is choosing one. Where we said before we weren't gonna choose, and so I'd be happy to add pleasant valley or think about what's the appropriate language here, but I don't think it's appropriate for us right now to say we're going to do the palm district plan when we just a few weeks ago said that we weren't ready to talk about which ones we were gonna do. That's all I was trying to do. If the language needs some work, that's fine. >> Garza: And I think it's a bit of an apples to Oranges comparison because I think the palm district plan, I think it's right to include it in here, and I think this is the exact example of when we do these kinds of things [12:49:38 PM] when we have this -- this is the perfect example of why they're good, and I don't feel like these other ones are there yet. All the other three examples are there yet. So I absolutely support having the palm district plan. I think it's the perfect example of when we do those kinds of planning. But I can't support the -- I support the language as-is, and those are my concerns. >> Kitchen: Okay. Well, I think, for example, it is time for the yellow line to be looked at. I wouldn't speak to the Orange line because you guys know more what's going on with the Orange line. But to say that we're gonna choose one and not others causes me a great deal of concern, particularly since this is so definitive and it talks about putting funding in there and it says -- and it just -- it takes it out of order what we just said a few weeks ago. And it does involve transportation. I mean, this whole area, as the resolution recognizes, as it should, is the Orange line goes through that area. So you're not gonna be able to do a lot of the planning that's discussed in here without considering at least a portion of what's happening with the Orange line. So I guess that's -- that's my concern. I don't think it's appropriate to, you know, just a few weeks ago to say that we had to consider -- which I agreed to, instead of trying to bring forward something that I thought was ready, I agreed to say, well, let's wait and see what staff says. And now just a few weeks later we are saying -- we're putting something in place and we're saying we're gonna do it and just ignoring the fact that perhaps there are some others some of us would like to see considered. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I would say with respect to the conversation we've been having I think the UT study that came out was a really important thing and I'm happy we waited for that as well because I think that the place making opportunities that it present ready really -- present ready [12:51:42 PM] really important. I think the financing model that we need, these don't include all the things we mentioned. If there's a way for you to post that language prior to the meeting since we're not able to talk in a quorum, I think that would be helpful. The other part of the UT presentation was the one that went to the fact that there's cannot a risk for the city because it doesn't hit general fund or cost pairs because of the limitations that the money is spent but I certainly welcome the financial analysis to go into that in more depth and demonstrate how that works on this particular project. To the degree that people are still raising that issue. Greg. >> Casar: Let me speak first to the issue just being discussed between councilmember kitchen and mayor pro tem Garza. I think potentially what you were both saying, potentially, is that the city manager should bring forward the resources on palm district planning alongside resources for other small area planning as laid out in our April direct your attention. It sounds like what y'all are both saying we don't want to -- we don't want to do something differently on that other small area planning different than what we agreed to in April. On those back pages where I think there was actually consensus, so instead of picking -- instead of -- and I think that's what -- I would be okay with saying let's move -- if the manager recommends resources based on the direction we gave in April for small area planning and the prioritization that we had this whole discussion about to go ahead and do that. Because I'm -- because instead of trying to parse out exactly what this means I'm comfortable with where we got to in April, which was a multipage document first brought forward I think by councilmember pool and kitchen that then had lots of amendments and I'm cool with saying we don't want to preempt that process. As far as other questions or amendments I might have here, it looks like the resolution was a lot of work. I appreciate all of it. I'm going to better try to [12:53:43 PM] understand the right-of-way fees question, because I want to understand if there are -- funding that's currently going to the general fund that is then being distributed -- >> Mayor Adler: This was the Rainey street? >> Casar: Whether any of that funding is currently going to high-end need or high-risk areas and whether or not it should or -- should or shouldn't continue the way it's currently happening. I don't know that much about it. And I'm happy to hear more about it but I don't want to lose time here because potentially I know there's been prior direction on it and I just haven't done my file due diligence. Potentially what I might ask is just for the city manager to really explain what the city manager's recommendation might be about rerouting funds. And then, you know, there -- my appointee to the tourism task force really has emphasized and -- the fact that there are a lot of tourist industries and employees in labor that is a key part of making any of this work so as this moves forward I'm going to be thinking about ways to make sure we have workers rights focus and labor at the table to make sure as we do all this we create the highest jobs. I appreciate the [indiscernible] That is -- that's the extent of what I'm looking at for Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie. >> Tovo: Yeah. Thank you. And thanks. Really, this is -- has been a lot of work from both my staff and from cosponsors and community members. So I appreciate the additional suggestions here today. I would say with regard to the Rainey street historic fund we've been working to try to get some clarity on where those funds have gone to. With regard to the license fees and right-of-way fees and have had a series of conversations, and the staff are looking into it. It may not -- there may not be an answer by Thursday about where those have gone [12:55:44 PM] to, but the intent, we have gone back -- I mean, the resolution. I don't know if it goes into this level of detail, but we did go back and look at the tape and look at the original intent and talk with people because we had been hearing concerns from the community that that was their understanding of the intent of that fund. So it seems pretty clear what the council as intent was. It wasn't fully captured in the ordinance language and&it's the ordinance that's riled ruled on that. At a minimum, this is the approach we've brought forward and certainly we can have conversations about whether that's the right approach but I did want to provide that additional context on it. And, you know, with regard to the -- I don't know if we want to spend more time talking about the district plan or why this one -- you know, I - - I would have supported moving forward with the district -- with the small area plans a few weeks ago. I know we had a conversation and several of the councilmembers who represent those areas encouraged waiting, and others did as well, and so, you know, I went along with the will of the council, but I think planning is important and we should continue it even though we have other initiatives going on, including the code rewrite, and I think this part of town that we're highlighting with the palm district master plan is -- you know, we will lose opportunities if we don't immediately start, you know, taking more proactive action in this area, especially with regard to implementation of the master plan. We've invested considerable resources in the waller creek master plan, considerable resources in the waller creek tunnel but we don't yet have a regulating plan that actually holds accountable the development that happens along waller creek to make sure that it's happening in a way that really makes use of that wonderful, rich resource. And with -- in 23 pages we've probably, you know -- there's lots of language in there about why I think it's important, but it is -- you know, there are a lot of critical things happening at this time that I think make a district plan just exactly the right response to try to [12:57:44 PM] bring these conversations into one, into one from the Rainey street connectivity issues to the fate of palm school to the waller creek and its ability to implement a master plan along that creek to the eventual fate of the convention center. And so -- but, you know, again, we can have continued conversations about the extent to which we want to pursue small area planning or district planning in other areas. Because I think they're all important. >> Mayor Adler: It's because I think they're all important. >> Mayor Adler: It's. 1 o'clock.we need to move this to the end. Leslie and then Pio. >> Pool: I'm going to bring two small amendments and I wanted to just check them with you, Kathie, to make sure that these would be okay. On page 20 of part 2, line 387, where we have the list of stakeholders, I wanted to recommend that we include the tourism commission. And then the second one, I'm working on exact language here, and I had to step out so it may be that you already talked about the funding mechanisms. Did somebody touch on funding mechanisms? >> [Off mic] >> Pool: Right. So I want to provide -- I don't have it all laid out yet, but some language to clarify the fullest of potential financing mechanisms that would be available, and I wanted to explicate -- let's see, it says funding mechanisms should be considered in funding mechanisms, it talks about occupancy tax, then the statute of the tack code, then I would include specifically 4.5 cents of the convention center tax fund also under section 351.1065. [12:59:46 PM] The 2% venue tax by public election under section 334.24, convention center facility revenue, then it goes on to say and public/private partnerships. And I would also suggest some amending language along the lines of the financing plan should reflect maintenance of the annual funding of both the historic preservation fund and the cultural arts fund at the full 15% of hotel occupancy tax revenue allowed. So that would both describe the various funding mechanisms that are available, so specifically the ones we would be looking at, and then it would also specifically state that we do not intend to erode or take funds from the two 15% buckets that we have already established. >> Tovo: Let me speak to the latter first. >> Pool: Okay. >> Tovo: I think absolutely I do not wanted to erode the 15% of the cultural arts and the 15% of the historic preservation, so to the extent this resolution is silent on that, I appreciate the addition, because that was, with regard to the historic preservation, a very long and difficult conversation, and I sure don't want to see slippage on that. In fact, I did have a question about some -- or that was one of the things that popped out to me from the memo that we got from Elaine hart, that it talks about that additional pot being allocated to cultural arts, and I think it should be also allocated to historic preservation. So maybe I made a note of that, but maybe your language accomplishes that. I didn't capture all of what you suggested as additional financing mechanisms. Are you able to post that on the message board? >> Pool: Oh, absolutely. >> Tovo: I look forward to seeing it but I think that's in line with -- I see that as completely compatible with identifying the other funding options. >> Pool: Great. That's great. [1:01:46 PM] My chief concern here is looking at what may be happening at the capitol and having some impact on our general revenues. I wanted to make sure that whatever we do with the expansion of the convention center, that the funding for that expansion would come from the convention center funding sources itself, and not from general revenue. >> Tovo: Yes. I think the mayor actually had added language that made that really clear, the language about it shouldn't include general obligation debt, et cetera, and so -- >> Pool: Great. >> Tovo: But I think your clarifications will also better articulate that. >> Pool: Great. And we're also kind of creating that official record as well, so when the day comes we might not be sitting around this table and other people are there, that they'll be able to come back and reach back to the history of our decision-making at this point and know what our intentions were. I just had a couple of really quick questions. I know we're getting hungry, but if I could ask maybe our -- Mr. Canally to come up? I just wanted to check in with you on the venue tax, the 2% venue tax, and to confirm that if we use the 2% venue tax, that that would require an election of the public. >> The venue tax? That's correct, venue tax requires an election. >> Pool: Okay. And then is staff potentially contemplating an election or any commitment for the convention center, for example, on the venue tax, are you contemplating that action? And if so, when would that election take place? >> So I think it would be premature -- I think part of the overall financial modeling that Carla and her team have to do is looking at all of the different options. >> Pool: Uh-huh. >> Both based on the direction [1:03:48 PM] that council would be giving on Thursday, then from a financial modeling, look at that, in terms of -- the assumptions around or existing debt, obviously, is one of the key things that we always look at, and anything around law, legal aspects of the existing hot tax and any additional 2% venue. So I think it would all be encapsulated into that financial analysis. >> Pool: Okay. I don't know which of you two gentlemen can answer this, or maybe our law department can, can the hotel occupancy tax be used to promote our local music industry more directly, or local business? I know in the resolution we have a section that goes to music venues being direct recipients of a benefit from the hotel occupancy tax. So are we able to promote our local music industry more directly with through H.O.T.? >> More directly than what we're doing now? >> Pool: Maybe you can explain how we're doing it now and whether we could do it more directly or more comprehensively. >> Okay. We have the 15% that we have allocated for cultural arts, and there's no prohibition against using that for music. So I think that it is, in fact, used for music. I know there's been a conversation going on about whether or not it should be used only for nonprofits or whether that should be expanded to for-profits. >> Pool: Uh-huh. >> And that's more -- their policy direction, I think, messaging that needs to happen there, then also their -- there's legal framework into which that would have to fit that's not quite set up at this point, but there's not a prohibition, per se, against using hotel occupancy tax for for-profit venues, although we have to make sure that that fits within the [1:05:49 PM] context of using city funds in general, making sure that it's a city purpose, that we're getting the city benefit, that we have a way to track that, and that we're not making a grant to a private entity that we're prohibited from doing. >> Pool: Through cultural contracts, do we now make grants to music venues? >> I believe that we make them mostly to nonprofits for the actual performances. Now, there may be other programs that give out grants under our chapter 380 program, and under a number of other programs that the economic development department has. They would be the best people to answer those questions. >> Pool: But they don't use hotel occupancy tax revenue. >> The economic development department has the responsibility over the cultural contract, so they do, in fact, monitor those, and they can speak more directly to those contracts and how they handle those. I think they generally try to get them to the artists. >> Pool: That's my understanding as well. So the piece I'd like to get more precise information on is the ability for us to use hotel occupancy tax revenue for music venues. Not the performers within them, but the actual venue. Because I think that was something that we were attempting to find a source of funding for, so I'd like to kind of nail that down to see if we can do that here. And I think that I will just leave us with a suggestion that I'd like to have further engagement with Travis county, with the commissioners and the county judge, to preserve a full 2 cents of the hotel tax revenue for the expo center and possibly other geographically disbursed cultural centers and tourist related investments so we are looking as broadly as possible at the best uses of these funds. And I know that Travis county [1:07:49 PM] commissioners have been talking about expansion of the expo center, and I think it would be helpful for us to understand that conversation and see how it may have a nexus with our conversations here. Thanks. >> Alter: Thank you. Leslie covered a few of the parts of the financial analysis, and we can talk a little bit about those pieces, and, mayor, I will do my best to get my amendment posted online. I think part of where I'm coming from is that we're hearing a lot of questions in the community about the Travis county expo center and other things and trying to understand how this impacts that, and I think there is a way forward that it doesn't, but we haven't seen that analysis, and so I think we immediate to make sure that if we are going to move forward on Thursday with this direction, that that analysis will be, you know, forthcoming back to us so that not just we but the community can see that and that we have, you know, those things laid out. And there are just some broader issues. Yes, it is hotel occupancy taxes, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any risks to us, and we really need to understand what those are if we're going to take on this kind of debt, even if it is backed by the H.O.T. Tax and not general revenue. >> Renteria: Mayor? My support is going to be -- I'm supporting this amendment here, I mean the palm strings district resolution, but it has nothing to do with my support of the convention expansion. I'm supporting the expansion of the convention center. I think the -- by expanding the convention center, it's going to just improve this whole area, and that's how I'm approaching this. I also have talked to management and said I want to make sure that when whatever plan that we adopt [1:09:49 PM] on the expansion, that we're going to be able to afford to pay for it and, you know, if it's at 300,000, 400,000, or 900,000, I just want to make sure that we're going to have the resources to make sure that we can pay for a moment. You know, Rainey is getting to that poi now, where it's almost at its capacity. I mean, it's just -- I mean it's going to be built out completely, and it's going to create a big problem, and we have to identify what's going on down there, and then we also have capital metro talking about they want to put the blue line through -- under need the red river street. So there's a lot of discussion that's going on here. So we really need to get to this master plan quickly, also, but it has nothing to do with my -- I mean, I'm supporting the expansion of the convention center and whatever price that we can afford, that's what I'm going to support. And I just want to make sure that we also get this plan done because it's not going to wait for us to make a decision, it's already growing. >> Flannigan: At the risk of speaking while hangry, which I don't think is a good idea, generally speaking, you know, we passed a resolution on the expo center last year that I sponsored. My understanding is that staff is in conversation with Travis county about what the future of that site might be, and I would really hope councilmember Madison, that those conversations are including your office. They weren't including mine, even though my office sponsored that resolution. I've communicated that back to staff as a frustration. The -- I have actually met with the -- some of the U.T. Study folks, the researchers at the university, specifically about the risk on the debt, and it [1:11:49 PM] seems very clear that the debt that we incur related to convention center tied specifically to hotel occupancy tax does not put our general debt ratings at risk, it does not put the general fund on the hook. In fact, it puts it all back on the tourism industry as a whole. So there's a pretty clear and definitive legal separation between those two sides, so I don't see that as something that we need to worry about. We can certainly do the analysis, but based on the analysis I've done, it's not an issue. And I think if we're going to be talking about partnering with Travis county, then I'm glad that the palm school is on the same resolution because I have real concerns about things that I've read in the media and conversations that have been relayed to me about the county's desires for palm school, and, you know, we're both public entities, as I've talked about many times, and I represent two counties, as you all are sick of me saying. We need to be better partners, and we all have a responsibility for cultural arts, we all have responsibility for historic preservation, we all have a responsibility to our challenging historic past. And I hope that Travis county takes that as seriously as I know we all do at this table. >> Mayor Adler: Delia? >> Garza: I justed to follow up on my concerns with this and councilmember Casar providing that context. I would just ask, then, we be transparent with this language because it sounds like it is small area planning, and that we do include south pleasant valley and the specific parts of the Orange, blue, and yellow line if we are going to be deriving this -- be giving this direction because it was going to include pleasant valley in this process. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Kitchen: I'll work on some language and post it. I just have a quick question for councilmember tovo. [1:13:50 PM] Someone had asked me if the language as it's written now commits any -- any of the 15% historic -- our bucket of 15% historic, whether it commits any projects to the next round. I'm not seeing that in there, but was the intention to say in this that the next round of the historic 15% pot shall include xyz projects? >> So I don't -- >> Tovo: Let me back up and say that with regard to palm school -- >> Kitchen: We're not talking about palm, we've already designated palm. >> Tovo: Yeah, we've designated atom a couple of times in our conversations about preservation dollars, we've designated that as a potentially eligible project. >> Kitchen: Right. >> Tovo: I would not see -- I don't know if that's -- I hadn't contemplated that question because I think the answer is no. >> Kitchen: I'm not seeing -- >> Tovo: It's not the historic asset we've really discussed -- well, that's not true either, the fifth street Mexican American cultural corridor is one we've called out a couple of times of funding through preservation H.O.T. Dollars and it has not been funded so one of the pieces of direction actually is to go ahead and fund it, finally, after providing direction to consider it. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Tovo: So I think in that regard, yes, we are providing pretty clear direction that we think that should be -- >> Kitchen: So what we're saying here is that -- >> Tovo: Well, no, actually, I'm just looking back. Maybe I'll revise my language because I didn't realize it was somewhat ambiguous on it. It indicates -- it says indicate whether the corridor finding has been identified for fiscal year 2020 historic preservation spending. Let me say if it hasn't been, I'm [1:15:51 PM] going to make a motion during budget time to include it because I think we've indicated a few times that we want that to be funded, and it's time to move forward with it. >> Kitchen: Okay. 2. >> Mayor Adler: Is there another -- >> Kitchen: I don't have a problem with that, because I know these have all been projects that have been considered. My question really was, we're not actually making those decisions with this, we're just making a strong statement that we want them to be included, probably sooner rather than later, but the reason I'm asking that is because we had asked for -- a while back, we had asked the staff to give us, like, a five-year plan for how we were going to use that 15% bucket, and maybe I missed it but I don't think I've seen that. And so that's really what I'm trying to get at. We really need to see a five-year plan for how we're considering what years, and these things are high priority. But what years we would want to see certain things slated for that bucket of H.O.T. Tax. That's really what I'm getting at. Maybe I can talk to the city manager and maybe I'll give some direction on Thursday to please bring back to us the five-year plan for the use of the H.O.T. Tax. Does that make sense? >> Tovo: Yeah, I think you're right, I don't think we have seen that. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> I'll follow up. >> Tovo: And I'm going to do a little thinking about some of this language, now that we're going back and looking at I and see whether it should be appropriately more directive, with regard to the way funding, particularly. Thanks for raising the question. One of the questions no one has asked is how this corresponds to the red river cultural district, that's part of this as well. We didn't call it out in this resolution but I'm considering adding it in just to make it clear that clearly this is part of the area as well, but we have provided -- one of the reasons that wasn't an area focus is because we've provided direction about it before I think some of that action -- I think we are still awaiting action in some of [1:17:52 PM] those areas along red river -- well, in many of the -- in many of the recommendations that we brought forward, I think we're still awaiting action, other than the alley. And that was also an area identified for potential H.O.T. Investment. >> Mayor Adler: Let me start off by saying I support, and appreciate you coming forward with a resolution that talks about planning for the palm area and for waller creek because I think there are a lot of things that are happening, so I appreciate that happening. I'm encouraged that it includes also the convention center expansion, so I appreciate that. And the point that it's called out as being independent, but they certainly inform one another, I think that's also called out, and I think that's an important thing to note, but that they're independent. I love that we're on the dais already trying to figure out how we're going to spend the extra money that comes with the convention center because there's extra money that comes with the convention center. I'd be a little bit hesitant for us to, like, spend that money until the staff actually has a chance to go through the finance models and we see how much there is to spend or not spend with respect to that. One of the things that I'll be really interested in hearing, to Leslie's question with respect to the music industry, you know, for 20 years, I've watched the music industry and the -- and the nonprofit music industries fighting over the cultural arts monies with the 15%, and I think that one of the really wonderful things that came out of the four-month analysis of the group that got together on the task force, the tourist or visitors task force, whatever that's, is they sat down and for the first time in 20 years actually came to an agreement between those two communities as to how the H.O.T. Tax arts monies were to be spent. And importantly, it ensured that involuntary existing monies that [1:19:53 PM] were coming in that are currently going toward nonprofit arts, as they would increase, was being captured or otherwise diverted, and I think that was real good and I was real encouraged by the work that was done in envisioning then, how with this next crunch, there might be some opportunities -- in fact, there would be opportunities to help with the music industry, and I hope as you go through this, without predetermining that or as saying you have to spend it or how much you have to spend because we don't know, let's wait until you come back and tell us that there's a viable way to do this, would be my preference. But I would expect that to be addressed because it came out of that visitors task force. It'll be interesting to see, in case people are listening to this, I know that in the old finance two years ago, the two percent for the chapter 334, which is the venue tax that requires an election, which we have right now, that is available to the county because the chapter 351 is not available to the county, that's just for cities for the convention center expansion. Our chapter 334 two percent doesn't get paid off till, like, 2029, something like that, but part of the plan was to pay that off early so that becomes available, and there was nothing in the old finance schemes that had us spending, recapturing, the two percent chapter 334 money that would otherwise be available to the county. I don't know if that's where you'll come back to. Councilmember pool's amendment would have you considering that use as well. I tell you from where I circuit I -- from where I sit, I like the old finance model that freed that up for other parts of the community to use in other places if there was sufficient effort to do that. So I think a lot of that stuff will be in the particulars that we're asking you to go away and wrestle with and then come back and tell us what the field looks like that we could be playing in. [1:21:55 PM] It's 1:20. Do we want anything else before we go to executive session? I'll have until 2 o'clock, then I'm going to have to leave that room. >> Tovo: Yeah, I'll make this super quick. One, I just want to suggest city -- deputy city manager, your memo to us -- I think you provided a memo to the Austin -- to the tourism commission, the convention center did I think it's helpful, it's information we've gotten in the past about what requires an election, what doesn't, and the H.O.T. Increase would not. Someone asked me that question this week and I couldn't remember the answer to it, but this lays out that it wouldn't. Though I would just note there's some -- as I mentioned earlier, some suggestions in here that an additional two percent would yield 15% for cultural arts, it's my understanding it would also yield it for historic preservation, and I think that should be a piece. And then there are some questions that I have that may be I'll submit through the Q and a about it, talking about the bonds for the convention center and what those can be used for. But let me just suggest that it's been a while since we've talked about the financing mechanisms and the different chapters, and I wonder -- I don't know whether we would have time between our July -- between now and our July break, but if we do, I think that would be a good briefing for a work session, just to talk about this again. And I've certainly heard questions from commissioners and from community members, and I think it would be a nice idea to have a fuller conversation about that. And just to clarify, councilmember kitchen, when you were talking about the financing didded the spending plan for historic preservation, it was my understanding you were talking about spending our existing -- our existing funds, which we know we have. >> Kitchen: That's what I was talking about. >> Tovo: 13.5 million this years, and we know we have those funds available for the projects, including for the projects that are called out in this resolution. >> Mayor Adler: And I also support that larger study that you asked for and that Jimmy asked for so that we would have the -- kind of the universe so we're not making ad hoc decisions [1:23:55 PM] so the community could see what it was that was on the plan to happen. All right. So -- yes, Leslie. >> Pool: Just to follow up on what Jimmy was talking about with the expo center and that I had also brought up, I pulled up that resolution and I think it passed did the I don't know if it was unanimous, but a bunch of us were co-sponsors on that. I would like to get a presentation on that in upcoming work session if we could, please. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Pool: So that we can have a more up-to-date appreciation for what's going on there, also for us to understand what steps we may need to take to further that activity as well. >> Mayor Adler: I understand. >> Pool: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: All right. City council will now go into closed session to take up four items pursuant to 551.071, items e3, 24, 25, 59, e1 and e2 have been withdrawn with without objection. It is 1:25. We're going to go into executive session. I would urge all my colleagues to move there quickly because some of us are going to have to leave in 30 minutes. [2:39:00 PM] >>Mayor Pro Tem Garza: We are out of closed session in closed we discussed legal matters related to items e3, 24, 25, and 59. We have no further business so work session is adjourned at 2:40. Thank you. [2:40:00 PM]