City Council Work Session Transcript – 06/04/2019 Title: City of Austin Description: 24/7 Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 6/4/2019 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 6/4/2019 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:13:01 AM] >> Mayor Adler: All right. We have a quorum. Are you guys ready? Today is June 4th, 2019. We're in the city council work session here in the boards and commissions room. It is 9:14. Colleagues, we have a couple of briefings this morning, things to discuss. We're going to start with the staff briefing on homelessness, on homelessness-related issues. I had pulled item number 45 that relates to this so we could pull that at a time and talk about that issue if anybody wants to. The -- so we'll start with that. We also have a conversation about the planning commission appointment process, but before we do that I want to do the executive session on that issue. We have several matters to discuss potentially in executive session, and then we have three pulled items, 41, 45 and 100. We also have a late pull on item number 9 by councilmember alter and item number 64 by councilmember Casar. Yes. >> Kitchen: At some point it would be good to talk about time certains because we have a number of things on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. And we have some folks absent and leaving early so we'll talk about those things too. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: We also have -- Jimmy has indicated some action with respect to items -- a lot of the purchasing items, so I want to elevate that and talk about that while we're here to see if there's anything that staff needs to come prepared with respect to those issues. Kathie? [9:15:02 AM] >> Tovo: Yes. So some of the items -- I think I had requested a couple of executive sessions. I think they're not going forward today. Can we just review what is on our executive session for attend what is not? >> Mayor Adler: Yes. What I have shown on executive session is our continuing open government, our continuing item with respect to Austin energy generation resources, but we also have one with tenant relocation assistance, sign regulations. I don't know what you're prepared to go through today, though. >> Mayor, today what we were hoping to do is talk about the e-6, which is the property for shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness, the sign regulation, the planning commission lawsuit, and the homelessness ordinances, solicitation, et cetera. And then on Thursday we'll have the other three remaining. >> Tovo: Okay. Just so I'm clear on that. So today is sign regulations, PC, shelter and the homelessness ordinances. On Thursday would be open government, ae, tenant relocation. >> And parkland. >> Mayor Adler: Ae being discussed today. >> Tovo: Mayor, it's my intent to go listen to Travis county commission's discussions on palm school, which I think is scheduled to happen around 1:30. Just as a scheduling matter. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you for doing that. All right. Let's begin with the presentation on homelessness. Manager, did you want to open it up? >> Sure. Mayor, council, this is a nice segue from the work session we had last time looking at best practices nationally and today we're going to spend some time talking about all the work that we're doing within the city of Austin to address and support people experiencing homelessness. I'll turn it over to assistant city manager Rodney Gonzalez. >> Thank you, Spencer. Rodney Gonzalez, assistant [9:17:03 AM] city manager. Veronica is the director for small and minority business ordinances. She is currently the director of the homelessness section. This will cover our current response to the January resolution from council requesting that we look into an immediate homeless shelter. So with that I'll turn it over to Veronica. >> Good morning, council. Sue as Rodney mentioned I'm here to talk to you a little bit about what we're doing as a city in regards to the homelessness issue as well as what we can look to do in the near future and beyond. Before I get started in talking about what we're doing I did want to give a special acknowledgment. I think you will see through this presentation that this is an issue that we as a city have responded to in multiple departments and I've listed them on the screen. I want to give a special thank you to the departments that are working on this issue each and everyday and you will see often in many cases they did that out of their own initiative in a very organic way and I really appreciate their public service and I know you do as well. I also wanted to give a special thank you to our former interim assistant city manager Sarah Hensley. She really led these efforts for a time period and she really got us in a good direction with some momentum and I appreciate that as well. And finally, we have an interim homeless strategy office team. They've really hit the ground running with us and th've also come from all areas of the city so I want to give a special thank you to them as well for their hard work. So as you can see we have talked about homelessness as a city for many years, dating back I'm sure earlier than 1985, but 1985 was the first plan that we had from the city of Austin on the books. And we charted out some of the plans and some of the things that we have done to address the issue. Most recently adopting the Austin's action plan to end homelessness in 2018. Our most recent point in time count, and I know you [9:19:03 AM] have seen these numbers, provided to us from echo, the ending community homeless coalition. Our most recent count shows that there was a five percent increase overall in individuals experiencing homelessness. This is a number of 2225. Of these [indiscernible]. I would like to note that's an increase from 2018 to it 2019, if you look at the past five years this is a 142% increase of unsheltered individuals experiencing homelessness. During the same time period the overall population of Austin grew by 12%. And of the population that we're looking at that are experiencing homelessness, unaccompanied individuals or single adults. Homelessness as you know is a priority for city council. In fact, it was made the top priority for city council. Over the past five years council has approved over 30 resolutions regarding the subject matter. And you see a variety of some of these resolutions on the slide. They include looking at how we manage and operate the arch, panhandling alternatives, public toilets and so forth. We also as a city have had additional outward facing changes. To highlight, I mentioned the arch contract, based on council's guidance, we did restructure that contract. We had the endorsement of the action plan that I mentioned before. We're in the process of implementing the pay for success program. And we've also created a community brain trust. The city has also changed within. So these are some of the highlights of what we as city departments have done to address the issue, and often just because we saw a need. So for example, the public health department, they're providing rapid rehousing services and we'll talk more about that, the need for rapid rehousing as we're addressing the issue of homelessness. The public library, in this [9:21:04 AM] year's budget, has included two community service coordinators in libraries to help people experiencing homelessness directly. APD and ems have created the host team or homeless outreach street team alongside integral care and being an outward facing part of our city and helping individuals experiencing homelessness. We have the downtown Austin community court. They provide a variety of services, including case management as well. Our neighborhood housing community development department, which provides needed resources in the housing continuum to people who are eligible for services. The office of innovation received a blumeburg grant that you are aware of to address the issue of homelessness, as well as an additional grant from the Robert wood Johnson foundation. They also created the Austin homeless advisory council or ahac. This council is made up of individuals who have experienced or are experiencing homelessness, and this is a great resource for us as a city to receive input from individuals experiencing homelessness. And our parks department is working in partnership with the other ones foundation to look at park cleanups, camp cleanups and employing individuals who are homeless with day labor opportunities. We've also evolved our services. For example, our public works department has recently contracted with workquest to provide under the bridge cleanups a60 plus highway underpass locations. The watershed protection department has a pilot program called leave no trace, as well as the purple bag program to help with watershed cleanups. And they also partner with integral care to provide wraparound services as they are interacting with individuals that are experiencing homelessness in our watersheds. And finally, the creation of the homeless strategy officer. This was an important step that council took to really coordinate all the efforts that we're doing as a city within the city, but also [9:23:04 AM] with our external stakeholders. >> And mayor and council, with regard to the homeless strategy officer, that position was funded in the current year budget, which is fiscal year '18-'19, as you may recall we attempted to recruit for that position this year. We were unsuccessful. We refocused our strategy, we hired a national recruiting firm to lead the effort. We closed that position last week. We have a number of significant applications so we anticipate hiring that position very soon. I can't thank Veronica and her team enough for stepping in in an interim role. >> So I talked a little bit about this was an organic change as we approached our services as a city. And I think Richard Mendoza our public works director said it best in this room for contract for the underpasses. One of his responses was it's just the right thing to do. And I think we've seen that theme throughout the city with our city employees. It should be noted that these activities have been done intentionally. We have done things lik provide mental health training through integral care for our employees who are interacting one on one with individuals experiencing homelessness. And it's not uncommon to see our employees engage with a human centered service oriented approach to dealing with homeless encampments. I just have some visuals of some of the examplesful what we have done. Here's a pop-up clinic at the arch providing services to individuals. Here's a picture of a watershed encampment cleanup, a before and after look. Some of the work our staff has D these are the individuals on our Austin homeless advisory council that I had mentioned. So here's a snapshot of funding efforts that we have provided in these multiple areas. And you've seen this slide before. Sarah Hensley -- it's a part of Sarah Hensley's presentation about a year ago. We are in the process of updating that information and you will have that as part of your consideration in the budget considerations. This will give you an idea of where the funding is [9:25:05 AM] going and how we are addressing the issue of homelessness currently. Also I wanted to highlight the number of shelter beds. I've talked a little bit about the arch. That is the city owned shelter. It has 165 beds. But as you can see there's a variety of shelters in our Austin community that offer different numbers of beds for different populations. While it is important that we have shelters that address subpopulations, as we heard that is considered a best practice, there's also a need at looking at providing shelter for our individuals who are homeless and not fitting into one of these subpopulations. But currently as you can see we have a total of 822 beds in our Austin area from multiple resources. We are in the process, Austin public health is in the process of reprogramming at the arch. We are midway in that and we anticipate that the changes will be complete by the end of the year. So we look forward to taking an approach of what is considered a best practice and providing 100% case management to individuals at the arch as well as providing increased wages to employees and training as well -- increased training as well. So I had mentioned there was 30 resolutions passed by council regarding the area of homeless. There are two in particular that were approved this year that I wanted to respond to at this time. The firs one was passed in January. And it was regarding the need for an immediate shelter. You have a summary of extly how to look at that shelter space on the continuum pathway to housing. Not a pathway to homelessness. And also some of the considerations that we were asked to include. You heard from the national association -- I'm sorry, the nahc, the national alliance to end homeless a few weeks ago about what best practices are in looking at a shelter. But just to recap, first of all we stress that if we build a shelter, provide shelter space, it should not [9:27:05 AM] be seen as a permanent place for an individual to reside. Instead it should be an inflow with an exit plan to housing. We do see that case management and wraparound services are important to provide to all shelter guests. We do recognize that smaller shelters are seen as a best practice. This allows services to be tailored to the individuals' needs. We see the importance of providing space for storage at shelters. We know that individuals who are experiencing homelessness have quite a bit of belongings and their belongings are extremely important to them, so we want to make sure a shelter provides that storage space as well. And we also noted that including space for animals is also important. An individual who is homeless who may have a pet, a dog most likely, that's not only their best friend, but also it's security for them as William and it's important to provide a safe place for their pets. We want to see a shelter where there's medical and mental health services either on-site or near a shelter where there's access to public transportation. We'd like to look at a location that's in proximity to individuals experiencing homelessness. We want to make sure that this is a low barrier shelter so this is a shelter where individuals feel welcome and are able to reside in with little -- with low barriers. And we also want to make sure the shelter has -- provides access to all individuals regardless of background. So looking at next steps in response to this resolution, we have been collaborating to identify both city owned and privately owned property that meet these criteria of what would be considered a best practice. We've given consideration to existing structures, temporary structures or new structures. We do have a discussion of a potential site as you're aware in executive session to follow today. We recommend that we do provide case management and wraparound services for all shelter guests and we also encourage the inclusion of [9:29:06 AM] rapid rehousing on the onset, the minute that an individual enters a shelter we should be talking about rapid rehousing. And I have noted some of the programs that we already have and some of the contracts that we're managing as a city, but we had also always would -- there's an increased need in producing this housing stock, housing service, excuse me. And we recommend that that shelter capacity is set at 100 guests. In considering the funding and management of the shelter, there's a few options of what we could -- of funding opportunities that we could look to purchase the shelter, the land and the necessary costs associated. We have the waller creek tax increment reinvestment zone. These are funds that are accessible. They are not accessible until the debt is repaid. So we do have that time constraint to consider and we're working on what that time constraint would look like in terms of timing. We have the potential use of $7.5 million identified in cdbg funds if this goes through. It would be available on October 1. So there's a little bit of a timing concern -- not concern, but we need to be aware of that timing as well. And then the final option would be the issuance of co bonds. In regards to management of the shelter, we recommend initiating a process to -- a solicitation process to look at a service provider to provide -- to manage our shelter. As a part of that we would start outreach immediately to let service providers know where this is coming and get some feedback on what they would like to see in that relationship with the city. And we're estimating that funding for this contract would be about 2.5 million. And it would need to be built in to the fiscal year 2020 budget and then beyond that as well. The next resolution that I wanted to respond to was the resolution passed in April [9:31:07 AM] regarding the Salvation Army wrath gabeer and the downtown social service center. This asked staff to identify funding not only for the wrath gabeer center, which the Salvation Army has built and is short funds to open the doors at full capacity, but also to look at case management of individuals at the downtown Salvation Army shelter. So to give you an overview of the wrathgeber city, it is focuses on families. The Salvation Army would be able to move families from their downtown location to their Rathgeber location: This is a benefit because it frees up 55 beds downtown for individuals who are experiencing homelessness. It also gets families out of downtown and into the Rathgeber center. The goal is to provide 100% case management services. Again, a bit of a broken record, but we do see this as a best practice when we're looking at sheltering. So what I would recommend is we look at a-million- dollar one-time contribution. About half of that would go towards the cost of the case management downtown and the remainder wards the Rathgeber center. We realize this doesn't fully fill the gap of Rathgeber, however we know the Salvation Army is working to raise money as well. We I believe they have about a million dollars in pledges at this point to fill that gap. And we're hoping if the city makes a commitment towards that, that will encourage other individuals in the community to help meet that gap for them. Next steps. I've mentioned the responses to two resolutions, but I want to emphasize that we see that these are two solutions to a complex issue. Homelessness is a very complex issue and it's going to require multiple solutions. Some of the efforts that I would like to see this office continue looking at, [9:33:08 AM] consideration of a location or locations for a day resource center. As you are aware, this part of the arch will be removed as we go towards 100% case management. I know Austin public health is working towards where can we provide those services in other areas in our community. We have a need for navigation centers, a place where people can go and be -- and help find the resources that they need. Ientioned storage space locations on site at a shelter. I also think this is a need around the community, so we need places where people can just put their stuff with confidence and not worry about it. And then again, the continuing that priority of a housing continuum. This is a -- we need to continue to address the need of affordable housing stock in our community. We will continue to evaluate both existing and new funding structures because we realize that this is -- multiple solutions does have an expense to it. And we're also continuing the exploration of a mechanism to optimize philanthropic opportunities. We hear there's an interest in this community to help give to this effort. It is not the city of Austin alone. And we want to find an opportunity for individuals, companies, social service providers, whoever is interested in helping us reach a solution to provide those solutions. I would mention that all of these recommendations, it's urged that they are geographically disbursed throughout our city. They should not be centered in one location I think you heard that from neh as well. And I wanted to note that we're collaborating with the equity office. When we're looking at individuals who experience homelessness, there's -- the number of people of color who are homeless is at a greater percentage than our population as a city and our demographics as a city. We're aware of that. We have had initial conversations with the equity office but because of that we see it as important to have the equity office involved as we proceed as an office. That concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions. [9:35:16 AM] >> Flannigan: When you are exploring the philanthropic opportunities you showed some groups that showed interest. I would ask for other government entities in that list. >> I meant to say that. We do see the need to go out to other government entities as well. >> Flannigan: Thank you. >> Kitchen: Two questions related to funding. It R it may also be helpful to reach out to home aid, which I think you've been connected to. It is a recent group in the city that is builders and building trades and they provide proceed bone know assistance -- pro Bono assistance with building things out. I don't know if that would be helpful with a shelter that we may -- I hope that we will approve moving forward with. I just wanted to make sure that was on your radar screen. And the last question I have, and I apologize I haven't had a chance to ask you guys this. I'm sure it's something that you've considered. We have 250 million in housing bounds bonds, and I know some of those -- certainly it goes for all kinds of things, but I had thought that those bonds were available for homeless shelter, and you've identified other sources that may turn out to be great sources so that we wouldn't need to use the housing bonds, but I'm not certain -- my question is why are those housing bonds not listed as a potential source of dollars. Did you guys rule them out or something? Or did you consider that? >> That's a good point that should have been mentioned in the presentation. Some of those housing bonds, some were identified for homelessness and I'm going to turn it over to Rosie truelove to continue. >> Good morning, Rosie truelove, director of neighborhood housing and [9:37:17 AM] community development. Our $250 million of affordable housing bonds are available to help with the permanent supportive housing or continuum of care housing aspect of the need to house our homeless population, not necessarily the construction of a shelter itself. >> Kitchen: Is that because -- and I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing that. I'm just asking why. I mean, that's not in what we voted on, right? It's more what you guys have looked at at where the important need is? >> That's how it was anticipated as we were developing the scoring criteria for rental housing and ownership housing developmental assistance. And I believe it was not laid out specifically in the contract with the voters that council approved. So we've been taking the approach of utilizing our funds from the bonds to help with permanent supportive housing knowing and realizing right now that we have the opportunity to be able to direct about seven and a half development of community block grants towards one-time shelter or land acquisition for a shelter or we have a building of a shelter. >> Kitchen: That makes sense to me. And the other question I had was about the bonds. The rapid rehousing funds, are those -- because those are not bricks and mortar, right? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: Are they -- are they contemplated in the bond? >> No, they are not. That would be more along the services aspect. And that's kind of the thing to remember with the housing funds. Cdbg and general obligation bonds is they really need to be exclusively used for sticks and bricks, for construction, capital construction of physical things. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> And even if we were funding, say, a multi-family affordable housing development, our dollars only go towards the actual units. So if, for example, someone is also constructing a resource center or a day [9:39:19 AM] care or community space, our dollars can't go towards that. They go towards the units that meet our affordability criteria. >> Kitchen: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie? >> Tovo: I -- thank you for this presentation and for all of your work on this really critical topic. I continue to be somewhat confused about the different pockets of funding and how we can use them. My main concern is that we're using our most restrictive funds in the most restrictive -- for the most restrictive purposes, and that we're retaining our more flexible funds for more flexible purposes. And I know that's a concern you shared too. Unfortunately my iPad just died so I can't pull up the conversations we've been having back and forth about how to fund some of these different needs. So to kind of step back a little bit, can you help us understand what would be -- I didn't understand the dialogue we just had about the bond funding. So the bond funding has to be used for brick and mortar projects and what I thought I understood from your response, director truelove, is that the bond funding could only be used for shelter for individuals who would be eligible for permanent supportive housing. But it's still the shelter piece of that, not the services. >> Correct. So think of it more along the lines of what we've done with housing first oak springs rather than -- so individual units, single room occupancy developments that we've seen through the years. Not necessarily a homeless shelter along the lines of the arch or what we're talking about with some of the recommendations that Ms. Bring 17io is bringing forward. >> Tovo: Okay. That helps me with that conversation. Can you reanswer the question that councilmember kitchen asked, was it in our contract with voters that we not use that money for shelter or is that just about how we've prioritized it as a city as we move to the application process? [9:41:20 AM] >> So I will want to go back and confirm. As I'm recalling how we laid out how the housing bonds were going to be used, we did spell out some things and we did not spell out did not for the homelessness shelter. We did specify for the longer term solution. So my recollection is that we did not include shelter space as part of the affordable housing bonds. And I will confirm that as quickly as I can, but that's how - - so then in our scoring criteria for how we deploy our bond funds, that's laid out in the scoring criteria as far as allocating points and extra consideration for folks that are providing what we call continuum of care units that will help folks off of the continuum care list that's úmaintained by echo. >> Tovo: When you say we didn't do that in our bond, are you talking about in our language that we presented to the voters? >> Correct. >> Tovo: I guess that's a better choice anyway because there are some funds that conditional be used or we think are likely to be used for shelter than the ones that you are describing. >> Correct. >> Tovo: And I'm a little bit unclear about where we landed in terms of the waller creek tif fund funding. That also has to be used for bricks and mortar projects. It can absolutely are used for shelter. It was less unclear if we could use it for transitional housing or for individual units. And I don't know -- I think I have an answer, a partial answer to that in one of the Q and as, but because that answer has changed a bit over time, it would be good to just get clear on whether that tif money can be used for individual units or housing that is not shelter. >> And I was also looking for that response. Oh, it's been handed to me. It was magic. So it looks like it can be. [9:43:21 AM] So the response is in general the city can use the pay as you go model cash funding to set aside a portion of tourist revenues on an annual basis for homeless shelters, transition housing for homeless people, permanent housing for homeless people or supportive housing projects. >> Tovo: And there's a piece of that -- there's a part that can also be used for operations and maintenance as I recall. That's a much smaller portion of it. So I think -- maybe instead of trying to have this conversation -- because we have this conversation and we come back to it and there's a lot at play here, if it would be helpful I can kind of put all my questions together and do it as a Q and a attached to this agenda, but I think it would be helpful to have one kind of memo that talks about the different pots of funding and where they're flexible and where they're not flexible. Cdbg I think is a conversation that the three of us have been having on email about whether general cdbg dollars could be used to purchase vouchers for hotel rooms, for example, for individuals who we want to house -- we want to have a safe place that very night. >> And I can speak to that this you want. >> Tovo: Great. >> The question is can cdbg funds be used for something like purchase of vouchers. And they could, however, it goes against our public service dollar allocation and so for any given grant year that we get cdbg funds we have 15% that we can spend on what we call public services. And what those are spent on right now are things like childcare, senior services, mental health services. Our Austin tenants' council contract is also considered to fall into the public services. And so if we wanted to utilize funds for that we would have to make a determination on -- to not utilize because we do have -- it's a hard 15% cap so we have that all programmed out already. >> Tovo: So it doesn't count as housing. Because I think we pepper the staff with lots of questions and some of them [9:45:21 AM] repetitive, if we could just kind of gather all of this in one place so that we're not kind of looking back at emails or the waller creek tif Q and a or whatnot, just to have a really clear picture of that. >> And I share that. That's a really great idea, putting it in one memo. So we'll work on that. >> Tovo: Great. And if it's helpful I'll commit to providing some questions that I know we've been asking and that we've gotten answered, but so all of it can be in one spot. >> We do agree with your approach of making sure we're aware of the constraints and using the most appropriate funding for the solutions and saving the most flexible funding. >> Tovo: I see the downtown density program, we did a resolution that made that available for services, for example, not just bricks and mortar. So I hope that using that for services primarily. The affordable housing trust fund is another one that we've said can be services and bricks and mortar, so I hope we're not using that for bricks and mortar projects. And that leads me to the question about the salvation Army shelter. How is that one million contemplated to be funded? >> We're looking at an amount that we could absorb in this fiscal year and working with the budget office that seemed like a good amount to do that. We had the goal of providing the case management downtown because of the impact to the individuals downtown. And we -- in knowing that the funding gap for the o&m of the Rathgeber, there's ongoing fund-raising activities. We felt that this was a good contribution that we could give towards the continued efforts. >> Tovo: Where is it -- how is it being funded? Through the general fund? Through general fund? >> I believe -- I'm not sure if Ed van eenoo is in the room. >> Tovo: Okay. You can get back to me. [Laughter]. >> So Veronica and I have talked about the-million-dollar recommendation for the Salvation Army. It would either be the general fund or since she's talking about it being a one-time contribution, [9:47:21 AM] reserves as the budget comes together we'll have to look at where it fits. And there's a lot of moving pieces in the budget development process right now, but those would be the two potential sources for addressing that need. >> Tovo: And I appreciate the identification of one million dollars. As I recall -- I'm not remembering the exact numbers, but the case services piece of that I think was about $400,000. So I guess I would say I see this as really one of the highest priorities in our budget cycle this year because it is -- that shelter is going to be open here very soon. We are -- as you've identified, as we've all identified, we have an extreme need for shelter, and we have a beautiful shelter opening up. That cannot operate at full capacity. So I would say that I really appreciate the city moving forward and identifying funds to anticipate in that endeavor and I agree with you that the Salvation Army is continuing to raise funds and will be successful in that, I hope. And I hope that all of us can continue to amplify that as a need in our different communities that we're apart of because everywhere I go I hear people talking about the importance of finding housing for individuals experiencing homelessness. And this is a very concrete way that everyone who is able to can participate in this community in helping raise those really important operating funds so that that shelter can be used as full capacity. That being said I hope that we can look at whether we're able to help further close that gap, especially for this year. Knowing that the case services downtown are going to take about half of THA about half of that amount. And it's really important -- I think it's so important that all of our emergency shelters downtown be moving toward this new model of providing case services. We know that that's how we'll help people end their homelessness. [9:49:21 AM] So making sure that the Salvation Army has the funds they need to do that case management is critical, but again, as we're looking toward different solutions for emergency shelter, including the other one that we're going to talk about here today, we have a beautiful shelter opening up that's not going to be able to operate at full capacity, and so I think this should be, again, one of our very highest priorities. So thank you. I'm going to continue to talk about what other funding options we have so that we can continue to help them step up both of those gaps. This is really as you said going to help us leverage those beds downtown in ways that are credits kel and also do something that's very long overdue of getting those children out of our downtown location. So thank you for all your work on it. >> Pool: Thanks. I'm trying to remember the sequence of events and maybe, Ann, you can help me with this. We started working on the housing focused shelter this year? >> Kitchen: Kennedy of January is when we passed it. >> Pool: So we wouldn't have had this on our list of items to include in the bonds because we hadn't been talking about it. Where I'm going with this is I think if we had known that this was going to be an initiative, that we might very well have included language on the bonds that would have been sufficiently flexible, that we could have considered this, and that is one of my concerns when we do a contract with the vote hers on the one hand it provides predictability, but it also ties our hands when we can't see that far into the future and we need to make adjustments. So this is a really good example of how that can work against us. So let me then just ask this question and maybe Ed you can answer it. If we had known that we had this initiative and we had known we needed the flexibility to be able to fund it, do you think that this kind of shelter would have fit within the confines of the statute regarding to bonds? [9:51:21 AM] For example, I know that operations and maintenance generally is not allowed with bonds, but this kind of temporary shelter could we -- if we had known about it could we have managed to fit it in under the guidelines of the bonding? >> I think just in general for bonding when you talk about a temporary shelter, I think it depends on the specifics of it. We wouldn't want to issue 20 year bonds and I don't know -- fo a shelter that might only have a five or 10-year useful life. If it's something that's going to be more of a permanent structure, then issuing bonds for that would make a lot more sense. >> Pool: And. >> And if I could add with respect to the general obligation bonds, that's something that we would want to potentially seek guidance from law on. I know the requirements with respect to how we can utilize bonds for affordable housing is something that we very tightly monitor and keep close check with our bound counsel to make sure we're not running afoul of what the ag might have said or says. So it might be something that we would want to get law to weigh in on with just respect to using general obligation bonds. >> Pool: Spencer, what do you think? Could that be a piece that we add to kind of the history that Kathie has suggested or requested for what we have flexibility on and what's restricted? Could we also maybe ask our bound our -- bond counsel for additional input? >> Councilmember, we'll certainly try to incorporate a lot of the themes of the discussion today in that memo that would talk about the uses and the flexibility of the funng that we would have for these services. >> Pool: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Greg. >> Casar: So actually, I'll mention the bonds issue first and then get to my just one question for Ms. Briseno, which is on the bonds issue it sounds like there is sufficient funding and other buckets to get shelter on the ground, but I do want to raise up, lift up [9:53:22 AM] just during our last -- our first approval of projects for those housing bonds that project transitions is a project as we know that I thought was d4, but actually on the d7 side of the line that is 100% helping folks that were experiencing homelessness, formerly homeless individuals. And I participate and expect that our next round of housing projects that we approve for the housing bonds, I hope that we will have multiple projects that have continuum of care/permanent supportive housing units as part of that package. So I just don't want -- I don't think that this is the intention, but I don't want folks taking away Ta that the housing bonds weren't supported by the folks providing the services and aren't addressing the needs, because one of the ones we just did address that. And on the other side because it's not rental or ownership, that's why the other buckets could be potentially used to address that. I just -- I think that's less for the council and more for folks watching to make sure that we know that those housing bonds are addressing where people go when they come out of shelter. We need somewhere for them to go and that's what the bonds can do that other source of funds aren't as capable of doing. But now back to Ms. Briseno. Thank you for the presentation. It's really impactful to see how much work and effort has been expended by every department and by this council and by councils for years on addressing the issue. One thing that I took away from the national expertise we had last work session and from your presentation is just how important it is for us to make sure that if we have more shelter beds that we have enough funding associated with them that people are going through shelter rather than to it and then staying there. And to me I'm very supportive of and hear the need for us to have more shelter beds, but I just want to make sure that I am understanding that it is our priority from your office and from the manager's office that if we're going to add shelter beds that we aren't going to make the [9:55:23 AM] same mistakes of not adequately funding the case management and rapid rehousing and then actually just spending -- spreading our money so thin that we're getting people stuck in shelter and leaving people on the streets rather than using them for what they are intended for. And again, I justant to ask that question in here, just because we're getting from all these presentations that that's the mistake we've made in the past and I want to make sure that by continuing to support the staff and continuing to support the resolutions and the process that we are all under the understanding that we're not going to do that. >> You are correct. We see as we move forward any shelter space that we build we see -- the utmost important that we fully fund it. We do see this as a pathway to housing andtainly not an end place for an individual to reside. >> Casar: I'll continue to be supportive of those efforts with that understanding that if it seems like we're going to buy more beds than we can serve with dollars or, you know, get out of step in that way, that somebody will raise their hand on the staff side because on the council side we can't know that because we aren't the people that are going in there programming the services, but we just need the staff and the manager to be able to raise their hand and say this is why we can't go to 150 or this is why we only have -- whatever it is, we just have -- we need y'all to be the back stop on that because I think there's so much intention to help that we want to add as many beds in psh as we can, but if we add too many beds and you guys can't adequately see a way to serve them, then we need your help tempering that because we want the same thing, but we want to push to do what we can, but he want with you to let us know where we can no longer fund what we're trying to get done. So thank you. >> Alter: Thank you. I look forward to this memo that details more of the financials. In the presentation for the shelter funding, you mentioned certificates of obligations. And I'm just wondering if you could speak a little bit [9:57:23 AM] to the circumstances when we can use certificates of obligation and when we can't here. Because to the extent that it is a health emergency, it seems like it might be a tool that we could use in this case. >> So certificates of obligation are just a form of non-voter approved debt allowed for in state law. They typically would be 20 plus years in duration to fund capital facilities. State law does prohibit their use for economic development and it explicitly defines affordable housing as economic development. Then you get into some gray area of where does trantional housing and things like that become affordable housing versus emergency shelter. So that's where I think sometimes it's a matter of getting the specifics of the project working with bond counsel to determine if that project would be eligible for certificates of obligation. Affordable housing is a definite no. I would say emergency shelter would be a definite yes, but then you have all this gray area where we would really need to understand the specifics. >> Alter: Is there anything in the legislation that just passed with the revenue caps that prevents us from using co's? >> No. There was no changes to our ability to issue or use co's and those are all part of the debt portion of the tax rate, which was not capped at three and a half percent. Council does have financial policies that also constrain your use of certificates of obligation. They essentially say that your priority is to use voter approved debt, but in certain circumstances you will use certificates of obligation. Those circumstances being the need is of an urgent matter. It was unanticipated or it's in the city's economic best interest to do so. A lot of times in real estate transactions you will see us come forward with certificates of obligation because obviously if there's an economic opportunity for the city, if it's a good opportunity for the city to do that real estate transaction, we can't wait five years for the next bond election or, you know, even [9:59:23 AM] six months for the next bond election and still be able to work that real estate transaction. But yeah, that's your financial policies >> Well, I'm looking forward then to our executive session on the details ofhat. But it sounds like a lot of the conditions that you mentioned apply in this particular case. That doesn't get us the services, obviously, that need to be provided. One other thing that you don't mention on there is the housing trust fund. Is that another source of fund for services in the shelter? >> I think that's going to be addressed in a memo that would be a follow-up to council member tovo's request. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I also want to join thanking staff for doing -- we're real anxious to get the staff member on board. So if the application process closed out last week, do we have an eta for when you think we might be onboarding somebody? >> Right now the national recruiter that we're using is going through all the applications that were received. I anticipate that we can close out this position within another month. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. That would be great. I'm not -- one thing that I think is a really big asset in this community is that we have an entire community that seems to be focused on this issue. There is broader consensus, I think, on dealing with this issue than any other issue that exists. I mean, we talk about mobility, we talk about affordability. Those are broad things and probably impact this issue as well, generally. But the homelessness challenge, I think, is huge in our community. And it is in so many ways bringing this community together, unlike some other communities where the debate on [10:01:25 AM] their challenges have deteriorated into demonizing people and really folks that are trying to do the same thing really angry and upset at each other. And it seems to be exacerbating challenges and creating problems. I think that one of the assets we have in this community is we have a community that's aligned. And I think we should try really hard to preserve that, because I think that's one of our fundamental strengths. At the same time, I think we have a community that is really, really confused. And they're confused because they don't understand why they're seeing more tents now. They're confused because the issue, the challenge seems to be growing anecdotally to them, almost exponentially. We know that not to be the case. The census showed an increase of 100 people year to year. But there are a lot of people that feel the increase is much larger than that, in part because the people here are more visible now than they were in the past. Certainly there's a larger physical presence when somebody is building a tent under an overpass than sleeping on a bed roll. So it's something that's more visible. We know that we were up about 4%. We know that the national average was up 5%, I think. And we know that cities nearby like Dallas were up 9% in that same period of time. We're doing a lot, and I really appreciate the path you took us down on the activity we are doing, both by ourselves and with partners in the community. Because part of the confusion, I think, that exists in the community is a lack of understanding that we're actually doing something. People want to know that they and for them their government is actually doing something. And I think that people need to be able to see that. [10:03:25 AM] There's also questions about the efficacy of what we're doing. Is what we're doing really working when the community still sees the challenge. So I think that we have to not only look at what we're doing but we have to look at the perception of what we're doing and not doing. And I think the perception's really important. Because that's what's keeping us together as a community and focused on this and moving forward. So I appreciate this presentation. I'm going to hold off asking the questions that I want to ask you at this point with respect to some of the resolutions that are coming up this week, until we have had a chance to go into executive session. But when we come out of executive session I have questions that I want to ask you about some of the ordinances that are happening in the presentation that you raised. You point out that we were up 142% over the last five years, which is certainly a really large number. You could also say we're down over the last nine years. And I think that those two numbers are both equally true but paint a very different rhetorical position. I'm concerned about a headline that says homelessness up 142% over the last five years. I am also equally concerned about a headline that says we have reduced homelessness over the last nine years. Both statements are true but they point out the difficulty associated with the challenge that we have in the community. So I just point out that as we have folks here that both of those numbers are true. I hope that as we get the team in we start looking at kind of new and innovative ideas and we can talk about some of these in terms of the other resolutions. Should our downtown Austin community court be a 24/7 facility? I mean, is there a way to divert [10:05:28 AM] people kind of the way we did in the sobriety center and be more active in those kinds of innovative solutions that you don't hear a lot of people trying. But I know that's going to be developed as part of the broader program. I just want to make sure we're looking at those kinds of things. We, in looking at how we're spending the dollars, one thing we put a lot more money on in the budget last year was the mental health teams, as we stepped up and took over that program. That's not mentioned in here. Does that help at all? Does that intersect with the population of people experiencing homelessness? >> Yes. And there's several contracts that we have in dealing with the men health aspect. There is one through the downtown Austin community court that I believe is $1.14 million. So there is funding in that regard too. And we will update those numbers for you as we move forward. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Because I think there might be programs we're spending money on that deals with this, especially in the mental health arena from what we did last time that I think we should highlight as well, because it's efforts directed toward this challenge as well. I really appreciate it and join the request with the memo that talks about all the funding streams and then the size of those. The waller creek tax increment finance zone, there was a $30 million associated with that but we can't access that. You're going to talk about that in your memo and the time we'll be able to access that as a potential source. What has to happen. In addition to the other things that seem should be part of that list, the housing trust fund and the other programs we have. I know people have mentioned the 2018 bond. There were some questions about other possible places we should be taking a look at. I think you need to add to that list the tpid that the council unanimously asked staff to take a look at and start pursuing so that we see what's necessary in [10:07:29 AM] the timing associated with that to see if the council was inclined, how quickly we could turn on that spigot to start getting money. I also know that the daa and the chamber are now organizing a real direct philanthropic effort with the faith community to start picking up some load. I think we need to make sure we're facilitating that and elevating that as much as we possibly can. I'm supportive of the salvation Army effort as well. I concur that case management is the key component. I concur with what Greg indicated. I need to better understand the nature of the one-time funding of that, just because as we go into the budget process I need to understand if that's really one-time funding or if it's not then how we're building that into the process. I think as you go through the budget, manager, we know that based on what the legislature just did, we're 50 some odd million dollars upside down with our existing budget. And here sitting in this conversation we have talked about increasing spending by a tenth of that just on the projects we've just talked about here. I really think that as you go through the budget we're going to have to really seriously test the concept we had when we did the strategic planning, which was to really do strategic planning, deciding what's most important, and then making sure we move funding to the things most important, which means moving funding out of the a lot of things people really like and are really good. But at this point they just don't rise to that level. Because of the budget conversation with respect to the [10:09:29 AM] things that we're talking about and making sure we staff is just real important. Jimmy and Kathy, Alison. >> I just wanted to quickly double down on what the mayor said about perception. I'm already seeing false narratives being put on to social media right now in the middle of this conversation. And this is really more me talking to the media. There are already blog posts being put out that cite falsehoods about the homelessness problem. Those falsehoods are not linked to source material. They are not vetted. And when you look at who the writers are and you look up the organizations that are paying their bills you find that they're deep conservative think tanks funding pseudoscience. As a community we have to be smarter about what we read and where the information is coming from. I see posts from the police association on a routine basis that are misrepresenting the facts around homelessness. And we have to be careful about how we talk about this problem if we're going to solve it. And I think my colleagues have done great on this issue, and you've had a lot of leadership on the homelessness issue, and I want to thank you for that. But we really need to make sure that the public narrative is being pushed back. Because what's happening right now is a complete misinformation campaign that I believe is intended directly to undermine government. That is where it's coming from. And you can't just repeat and share blog posts with suspicious authors that have no source material or no academic backing. That's not just happening on homelessness. It's happening on a lot of issues. A lot of issues that are in Austin. A lot of issues that are happening nationally. And that type of rhetoric is blending and bleeding its way to the greatest place to live the [10:11:30 AM] last three years running. So please, as the reporting continues and as the story continues, as the work continues, let's make sure that we're talking about facts, talking about reality, and not allowing misinformation to be funded from outside dark money. >> Okay. A couple of things. Let me just speak to the perception issue briefly. There are many different parts and aspects of the challenges with homelessness. So I'll just speak to the facts related to shelter and the need for housing-focused shelter. And I use the term housing-focused shelter, that's a shorthand for me to encompass the kinds of things that council member Casar brought up, and I think others have brought up too. I use the term housing focus, because what that means is the shelter plus the services to move people into permanent housing as soon as possible. So when I say housing-focused shelter, I mean that's one and the same. So the facts with regard to shelter is that we have increased significantly. I consider significantly. That's a judgment call on my part. But I think having over 1,000 people unsheltered, I think it's really important to look at these statistics. The last count was 1087, to be precise, in Austin and Travis county was 1,037, if I'm understanding correct, or 30 something, for unsheltered in the city of Austin. Unsheltered means living on green belts, places they don't have shelter. That is a bigger number. [10:13:31 AM] It is increasing. And that is a fact. Let's talk about the echo point in time count. Echo point in time count is where volunteers from all over the city go and it's a census, essentially. I consider it to be an undercount. But it's telling us that we've got at least that many pple living on the streets at that particular point in time. So I don't want us to say that -- I don't want us to play with numbers and compare percentages of this and that and the other. The bottom line is we have more people living on the streets unsheltered. And that's what our hard data shows us. So the other thing I would say is, yeah, I agree that there's a lot of education that would be helpful for people in the community. I do that as much as I can when I talk to people that I hear from in my district. And there are a lot of questions that we all have. But I do think that there is one thing that they do understand, and that is that people live -- that there is a need for housing. As the national alliance told us people are homeless because they don't have a place to live. And people are unsheltered because they don't have a place to live. There's no confusion about that. And I think that is something that our constituents recognize. So I would just -- I just want to pull those two facts out of the conversation. I don't think the public is wrong. I don't think the people that are talking to me about the folks living under bridges in their area are wrong or confused when they think in terms of people needing shelter. So with that said, I do [10:15:31 AM] recognize that there is a lot of misinformation out there and lack of understanding and stuff. And people want to understand. And so we need to share that. So let me just ask the question. My understanding is that what we're talking about today is a recommendation that we do need increased shelter plus services, I'll call it housing-focused shelter. Am I understanding correctly that that is a recommendation from our homeless strategy officer, and I really thank you for stepping up to the plate. I know that you have just dove in -- dived in, whatever. Anyway, you have reached out to all the experts. We've had the benefit of talking to the national alliances, the experts, what they have seen around the country. So my question is are you pointing out that there is an additional need for housing-focused shelter and are you recommending we do what we can to proceed with that? >> We do recommend that there's a need for additional shelter, housing focused, absolutely, as I mentioned in my presentation. I think that housing focus happens the minute somebody enters that shelter. We need to immediately start talking about housing options, and knowing that that housing requires wraparound services as well. But fully sheltered. >> Okay. I would just say that item 49 does three things. It takes the next step towards moving towards additional housing-focused shelter. It asks our staff to proceed through the process -- we'll have more conversation about it in executive session. To proceed with the process for determining how much it would cost -- and I appreciate the estimate of the 2.5. But how much it would cost in terms of who would be a service provider. And it moves forward with the process of identifying funds in the budget which, of course, [10:17:32 AM] we'll all have to deal with in August when we deal with the budget. I also would like to say that we also need to support the Salvation Army center, Rathgeber. But I don't see these as either or. When we look at the numbers for additional shelter that's needed, we need them both. And I hope we don't end up suggesting we need one or the other. No one has said that, I just want to keep saying that over and over again that we need both. This is very helpful information to tell us the existing beds that are out there and what their focus is. That I think we need to remember the importance of looking at shelters around the city. We've had a focus on downtown, which is appropriate and necessary. But homeless people don't just live downtown. And so I think it's important that we also, as we look at -- as we move forward with the housing-focused shelter, that we recognize that we need to provide services for people throughout town and not just downtown. And I think that the shelters that we have on the ground, first off, if you add up the numbers they don't reach what we need. Many of them are focused on the most vulnerable populations, which is necessary and appropriate. But we also don't have what we need in terms of the thousand plus that are living on the streets right now. So I just want to encourage us to think about the salvation Army opportunity. It's an opportunity for us to help community organizations get over the line. But that doesn't address the housing-focused shelter that we need in the community. So we need to be thinking about moving them forward with both. >> Mayor Adler: Kathy. >> Tovo: So I agree that we [10:19:33 AM] need them both. I think the question is whether we can fund them both. And I'm not privy to the dollar amount that you just suggested. I don't know if that's a conversation that we're about to have in executive session, the $2.5 million, or if that was in yours. Was that for the expense -- the bricks and mortar expense? Or was that for the operations as well? >> That's an estimated annual amount for the operations of the potential shelter. I apologize. I should have numbered the slides. But if you look at the response to the first resolution, the third slide in that series references -- the shelter funding and management of a shelter, we're suggesting for a shelter that shelters 100 individuals, we're looking at $2.5 million annually. >> Tovo: This would be for a new one. >> Correct. >> Tovo: I think we need to take a solid look. Council member kitchen, I agree with you we need both. But here's what I see. We would be spending $2.5 million to run it plus the capital expenses to run a shelter that would serve 100 people. We need to do the cost benefit analysis of how many individuals we could shelter if we provided more funding for the salvation Army shelter. Granted, we're talking about different populations of individuals, but I think that cost benefit analysis is important. As I talked about before, it looks like we're providing maybe 500,000 to the Rathgeber center. That will not close -- what I understood to be like a $4 million gap. We have shelter space that don't be fully utilized. At the same time we're putting significant funds into creating a new. So help us understand this question. You know, a lot of the individuals who are experiencing homelessness and are unsheltered are individuals and wouldn't necessarily be going to the Rathgeber center. [10:21:34 AM] On the other hand, the downtown shelter, that frees up rooms in the downtown shelter. So we need to understand what our investment gets us in terms of housing in these different areas. You know, especially since -- I mean the one is a pretty costly price tag. >> I'll note, council member, that will be a very important conversation that will happen during the budget process. And we'll make sure the data is there to be able to ensure that council has the appropriate information to weigh some of those factors. Because these are going to be critical decisions as we're moving forward with the budget. But that will come in a few months. >> Tovo: So I may have misunderstood too, then. I thought when we talked about identifying funding within the general fund for this year for shelter, I thought the salvation Army money was actually coming out of fiscal year '19. >> We are recommending the Salvation Army funding to come from this fiscal year. But I think he is referring to additional funding. >> Tovo: For previous years. But we believe we could do some funding -- you have identified some funding that would be rather immediate. >> If I could explain on that. I know you know this, council member, but the interest in the Salvation Army is to have that shelter open and running before the school year, the importance of having families start school. >> Tovo: Which makes it critical we identify as much funding as we can. And I echo the mayor's comment about that being ongoing funding. Two quick questions. The library program, I'm glad to see we have dedicated statue. Staff. I know there have been college or graduate students that have done programming or have provided some social work assistance at our central library. Are those efforts still ongoing? >> I am not sure, but I will get that answer to you. I'm not sure if somebody from libraries is in the audience. But if not we will respond to [10:23:34 AM] you. >> Tovo: Great. I know we had that conversation when we talked about adding staff, we wanted to amplify the existing programming, not replace that good work we were getting through partnerships with local universities. And just a mention that we -- now that we have taken on -- I think we talked about this during the conversation we had about txdot about our absorbing the cost of clean ups on txdot land, we talked about the need to provide trash cans and recycling bins in those areas. I assume now that we're taking on the responsibility of cleaning we also will have permission from txdot to service those areas in a way that will keep them more sanitary. So in driving around town, I'm not seeing that happening. >> We are working on that. We've -- as we brought public works into the area of clean ups, we are starting to meet as a city the different departments that are providing clean ups in different areas of our city. But that is one thing we have identified as a need. Trash cans, also potentially looking at a purple bag pilot program, like what has been done in our watershed area, and expanding that. We absolutely see the importance. >> Tovo: That's great. Are there any impediments to doing it quickly? I mean, do we have the permission -- do we have to seek permission from txdot? I guess what's the impediment from putting out some garbage cans and having arr service those. >> They are currently in discussion with txdot but I'm not aware of any on the on set. We are looking, as we provide those services, we are looking at a pilot level so we can understand if there's any increased funding that we need to bring back to council. But we believe that we can start within our existing resources, a pilot where we identify at least ten sites where we start. >> Tovo: That would be great. I regard that too as something that would really be of big benefit, especially if it can be done rather quickly. [10:25:35 AM] >> Council member tovo, I did get confirmation that the students are still providing those opportunities at our libraries as well, the central library as well. >> Tovo: In the central library? Super. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> So in highlighting homelessness as a top strategic priority and through the leadership of mayor Adler and council member tovo and kitchen, we're at a sense that things need to be done and what we're struggling with is trying to make sure we have the funding to do that. We're not alone as a city in trying to tackle this. We're fortunate in Austin to have a very strong bench of nonprofits that are in here working with us. There are other governments that are working with us. And I think it's really important that the public understand that compared to where we were two years ago. I think as a community, as a whole, we have a better sense of the levers that we need to pull and where those investments we need to be making. That's a role, when we're trying to solve a problem, that government can play well, particularly when we're convening and collaborating with folks. In this case we are in need of more resources. And the community has an opportunity to further join with us in solving this problem. And I want to invite the community to join us in doing that and to recognize that we as a city do know what needs to be done, but we need some financial help, particularly in light of the revenue cap process. To that end, you know, just in today's presentation, there was one project in particular that very clearly -- we have discussed it in the past, but for the public with the Rathgeber center and salvation Army, where we know exactly how much needs to be invested in order to provide exactly how many more beds that we can [10:27:36 AM] provide that does things. So can you speak to how somebody who wanted to make an investment in homelessness might be able to help fill that gap for the Rathgeber center with the Salvation Army? >> Absolutely. I did not include contact information to the salvation Army for those opportunities. But we can certainly get that word out to the public and help communicate that. I know that they have a strong fund raising arm that's working towards filling that gap so we can make sure that information is accessible to the public. >> We are a very wealthy city. We don't have the traditions of philanthropy of Houston or Dallas. And my hope is that with respect to the homelessness issue, now that we are at a better point of having our plans and really knowing what investments need to be made and which ones will be most impactful that we can have some broader engagement on that. My second question has to do with the faith leaders. I know that in my district there are a number of faith communities that are actively working with folks experiencing homelessness. And there was a mention of a new program or some new efforts with respect to coordinating with the faith leaders who were not always included in the city's discussions before Ms. Hensley was working on it, as I understand it. So can you speak a little bit as to what those efforts are? >> Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. As we're working with not only the nonprofit community, we want to make sure that we're working with the faith-based community as well. In looking at the creation of this office, I do see one of the roles is to coordinate what's already existing. I'm hearing, in many ways all the great things that our faith-based community is doing in this community. It's little things from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to providing shelter space. I do see it instrumental as this office progresses that we have the ability to try to coordinate [10:29:37 AM] those efforts, to let the public know, communicate those opportunities as well. I'm hearing that if we could have a better sense of how those efforts are streamlined, that would be helpful so we don't have four churches show up at the arch on the same day, having the ability to coordinate those efforts. The faith-based community is a crucial part of the addressing the issue of homelessness and we want to be sure we're assisting with that. >> Thank you for your work and I look forward to the new staff member being in place. I would like to ask if you could speak about the issues raised by council member tovo and how you would like us to be thinking about the budget elements and how we're supposed to weigh these things in the absence of having that clear cost benefit analysis on the agenda this week, and some real choices before us. An absence of knowledge at this point, understandably, because the revenue caps were just passed. How would you like us to be thinking about this process as we weigh the pros and cons, even if we all agree we need to do both. How do we think about those decisions before us? >> Sure. Certainly appreciate that comment and I'm looking forward to the conversation that we'll have this summer. And I'm just paused by saying our departments are still getting back to us so we're a little bit early in the process to bring some of these choices back to council. So if you could allow me a few more weeks. But I will be teeing up some of those discussions to be able to have both in the public setting, so our community can weigh in, but to ensure that we have enough data and information so those decisions are being weighed effectively. But we're just getting the information back from departments to see what kind of constraints and opportunities we have within our existing budget. >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy, then Ann. >> Thank you, council member alter, for bringing up the opportunity with faith communities. That's something I'm working on [10:31:38 AM] in my district. I have had three different church leaders come to me with different versions of how they want to help or how they might help. So we're going to start convening kind of as a pilot idea some of the churches that are geographically constrained in kind of a little area that are already finding people experiencing homelessness coming to their doors. Even St. Thomas Moore, which is a catholic church on 620, there's not even a sidewalk, much less a bus line, and they still find people coming to their door looking for food and looking for help. St. Thomas Moore is an interesting example because St. Thomas Moore used to have a home on their property where people experiencing homelessness could stay as they got back on their feet. They no longer do that because the sprinkler system inside the building was broken and the city would not longer allow people to occupy the building and the church couldn't raise the money to fix the sprinklers. So we're piecing these things together. I have churches in my district that provide preschool service. I have some that provide mental health counseling. I think there's an interesting way to tie all these groups together that can tap into some philanthropy, but not just looking to churches or faith communities as places to show up and deliver a meal. But an opportunity for people, for organizations and communities that own land, that own land that could actually be the communities that surround folks that are in transition. So we're working on stuff for that in my district that hopefully becomes a template. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> I just want to speak briefly. I think that council member Flannigan and alter, thank y'all for pointing to this. It is a community-wide issue. It's the kind of thing I've said before. I think it's all hands on deck come together, to come up with solutions. And so I hope we are -- remain [10:33:40 AM] focused on that system that we need and we move forward with that. I don't want to assume that we can't create the system that we need. And I also don't want to assume or start talking from the standpoint of we can't do this or that because we don't have enough dollars. I think we need to understand what it is that we need. We need to understand the city's role in moving forward. It's an urgent need. We need to move quickly. And then we need to partner with the kinds of folks that people have mentioned. And we need to consider the dollars that we have available from a city perspective to contribute to that. I don't want to get -- I personally think that as a community we need to step up to the plate and make this happen. And the city has a leadership role in doing so. And, to me, that's not we need to wait. That's not a we can't do it because we don't have enough money. It's not a we have to choose this over that. We need to create the system that we need. And for lots and lots of reasons, all the way from the humanity of it to the importance for our community. We've seen what other cities have experienced. If we don't get ahead of these issues, we don't want to go down that road. So, anyway, I just wanted -- I really wanted to say I appreciate all the brainstorming that's been raised here. >> Mayor. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead, Pio. >> Renteria: I also want to thank y'all for your presentation and effort that you have put in there. It's very sad that we're having to ask for permission to the state to clean up their underpasses. It's very disappointing. You would think that since we're invested in our taxpayers' money [10:35:44 AM] cleaning up the underbridge, the land that they own, that they have fully control over and they wouldn't be coming down to us and saying thank you and making a presentation and recognizing our effort to help the state, you know, their land, you know. It's really frustrating. You know, we take care of their roads and we have to ask them to do the repairs on their streets, like south congress. Like Lamar. North of 183 that we have to get their permission to fix up their roads with our money. And they still, the way they respond to us, you know, we have reached out and tried to work with them and we still have to ask for permission for that. That is a sad state of the state, you know, from the way they are treating Austin. But I really appreciate the citizens of Austin that have stood up and said that we are going to invest our tax money to address these types of issues that we're having. It's going to be very hard because of the cap that was imposed on Austin, you know. And we're trying to address these issues and make Austin into a great city. And we're constantly frustrated to see -- and I believe there's some people just dumping their trash underneath these underpasses, because you clean it up and the next day you see a truckload of trash underneath Cesar Chavez, with bikes and all kinds of different -- I mean, it's just frustrating. But I really want to thank the city staff for the work they have done. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: I'm going to recommend now that we take a recess. We go into executive session to discuss two items. We'll break for that and come [10:37:44 AM] back out. I want to conclude with, again, I just want to emphasize that our community is so united and directed to try and do something about this challenge. It is clearly the number one priority as I go around the community what people want to talk about. It is what the council has identified as its first priority and its strategic planning process. I think it is important that we get the numbers out for people to understand the numbers. Because it's a complex issue. And I don't think that it's playing with numbers to talk about the percentages that we have on the sheets. I think it's important for people to know and understand. And I do think that people are confused. We have -- I was on TV this morning and on the radio station and people were asking what they can do to help. Should they be bringing sandwiches and clothes somewhere? Should they be raising money to help with providing support services? Should they be making donations to the Salvation Army or to the city or to echo. People are asking what can they do to help. And I think that everything that we're looking at, the conversation about the ordinances that we're going to have after the executive session. People are confused. But they so want to do something to help. And I think we should take that as a strength and use that to be a community that actually is able to meet this challenge when so many communities are having difficult. So with that said, we're going to go into closed session. Initially we were going to take up two -- I don't kno that we'll talk about sign regulations. I think we're going to try to come back out and finish the conversation about homelessness. But while we're in there we'll probably talk about the planning commission too. But I want to come back out to [10:39:44 AM] be able to address those before we lose people. >> I think we do need to talk about sign, but we could do that on Thursday if we need to. We just need to talk about the sign regulation. >> Mayor Adler: No question. Or when we come back out and finish the conversation on homelessness, we could go back to lunch and also continue to executive session and do the sign ordinance, if that's a possibility too. So I'm not saying -- I'm just trying to get us into executive session then back out here so we can finish the conversation on homelessness as quickly as we can. Yes, Alison. >> We're going to be coming back with homelessness? I just had a question for the staff. I didn't want to make them stay for number nine. If they're coming back anyway -- >> Mayor Adler: I think we're going to come back and talk about homelessness, but I want to have parameters on the conversation we have. Punt to 551.072 we're going to discuss real estate matters related to e-6, the shelter purchase, 551.071, legal matters -- I'm going to call e-4, e-5 -- even though I don't think we're going to hit e-4, but e-8, the homelessness ordinances. Without objection then here at 10:40, we'll go into executive session. [Executive session] [1:59:13 PM] [Executive session] [2:04:19 PM] >> [2:17:05 PM] Mayor Adler: All right. We have a quorum back here. It is June 4, 2019. It is 2:18. We were in closed session. It was announced earlier in open session, and we discussed real estate matters related to east 6th and legal matters related to items E 5 and e8. We are now back out. We have another discussion item and some pulled items. The discussion item is the planning commission appointments. Colleagues, as -- as we all know, I think, all of the planning commission members' terms entire at the end of June, so I would anticipate that at our last council meeting in June we'll take a vote on planning commission members for the term after that point. If you haven't gotten your nomination into the clerk you should do that. If it's a new nomination there has to be, I think, a ten-day period or something like that where their resumes are sent out to people. If it's a reappointment of someone, I don't think that same rule applies, but in any event everybody should -- should do that, and then we have the issue of if everybody likes all of the names, then it becomes real easy. We just approve the appointments the way we ordinarily approve them. If that's not the case, and given that there's been a history of differing opinions as to the interpretation of the charter with respect to membership on the planning commission we're going to have to figure out a different process or some way to -- to handle that. [2:19:05 PM] I don't know if anybody has any recommendations at this point or any thoughts on this appointment. If there aren't any, I'll give it a thought and make some kind of proposal as we get closer to that point in time. If anybody has any suggestions, either give them to me or go on the board, message board, to propose things. But we know that that issue is going to be coming up and we'll have to decide that issue the last week in June -- or our last meeting in June. Anybody have any other thoughts on planning commission people? Okay. Then we'll proceed. Get your -- get your nominations into the clerk so we can at least assess where we might have some discussion items. All right. Now let's do pulled items. Kathie, as we know, is over at Travis county right now. My hope is, is that she and the community will help convince the Travis county commissioners court that that's a really important cultural asset, the school and the important that makes up that track, and hopefully they'll consider extending themselves to keep that in the public domain and part of waller creek park. But I know that that discussion is going on over there and that's where Kathie, I think -- that's where Kathie is now. Item no. 45 I pulled just because I know there's just so much conversation going on in the community. I have some questions or thoughts on it, but I'll defer to you, Greg -- >> I think the city attorney handle that is on his -- handling that is on his way now, so once he gets here. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Let's hold that in abeyance, city attorney coming down. Council member pool, you pulled item no. 100. >> Thanks, mayor, and this [2:21:07 PM] was -- before it was item 100 I think it was item 47. We expanded the posting language to include some of the recommended language, direction, primarily from the mayor but also from a lot of folks around the dais. So thanks for your help with that, and I think was -- mayor, do you have an amendment that you wanted to pass out? >> Mayor Adler: [Inaudible] >> Pool: So my understanding, and maybe you want to speak to it because I don't have anything to say except thank the advocates for their work in drafting draft crafting this. We've done this economic symptommage or boycotting in the past, even this dais has on a couple of occasions, so we're sort of following that template. And mayor, I think your change is simply to take the sentence that's at the top of page 3, starting on line 45, and make it its own be it resolved. >> Mayor Adler: It is, and I just want to thank you for being responsive to the post that occurred. We almost had a complete council conversation over the message board. >> Pool: It was great. >> Mayor Adler: And I appreciate you picking up all those, and this is more just of a Nick rather than anything else, that it applies to everything, not just one section. So thanks for taking that as well. >> Pool: You bet. >> Mayor Adler: Any other questions or thoughts on this item 100? Okay. Council member alter, you pulled the five-year consolidated plan? All at I have to talk about a couple issues with staff, if I may. >> Mayor Adler: Certainly. >> Alter: Good afternoon and thank you for sticking around here. So first of all, I want to thank staff for all of your work on this. It's clear from everything I've seen that a tremendous amount went into this planning and that there was a lot O outreach that also went into it. I wanted, though, to understand a couple of the choices a little bit better and just raise awareness of those pieces of the plan. [2:23:08 PM] So first of all, I understand that we are repurposing some of our dollars in future years to allow for additional investment in job training workforce development programs that will, you now bemanaged by the economic development department. Can staff speak a bit to the vision that they have for that and can you clarify whether you and EdD anticipate those funds being new, additional dollars above and beyond what EdD already spends on job training or do we anticipate those funds to be replacements for existing investments? >> So first and foremost, hi, true love, director of neighborhood housing and community development. They would be in addition, funds in addition to, not replacing current programming. As we were going through our consolidated planning process this year, there were a couple of different areas that we recognized. We had the opportunity to address some of the priorities that council has laid out. One of them being job training. And so we made the decision given the constraints that come with using community development block grants and the home investment partnership grant for things like rental housing development assistance and the availability we have for our bond funds to help supplement that -- that program to a much greater capacity than what we can achieve with our federal dollars. We made the decision to recommend that we reallocate some of those funds for years 2 through 5, right? Year 1 of those funds is the funding that we're allocating towards a public facility of homeless shelter that we were talking about earlier. Years 2 through 5 are community development block grant funds that we recommend allocating towards a job training-type program that we would be working with economic development to create in accordance with federal regulations to help low and moderate income austinites. >> Alter: Thank you. So that's not been decided what that job program would be at this point? >> Correct. We know we have a year to [2:25:08 PM] work on that and to create it and to partner with our friends in economic development, and we know kind of the federal regulatory constraints that we have, but we're looking for -- we're looking forward to the opportunity to find a good creative way to infuse that kind of capital into a much needed program for Austin. >> Alter: Great. Thank you. As you're considering that I hope you will look at job training related to the skilled trades. One of the reasons we have an affordability issue is because construction costs are so high because there's a shortage of workers and it's a great opportunity to channel folks into high-paying jobs and also to reduce some of the overall costs and facilitate construction. The secondary that I wanted to highlight is that some of the funds are going to be moved over to Austin public health in terms of who's going to be overseeing them. >> Correct. >> Alter: I believe that those are in the areas of child care, mental health and center services, and I'm actually very pleased that in this plan that we're taking things out of nhdd that are not in your wheelhouse. We've had some audit issues for some other areas, and so I'm glad that we're moving those. Can you speak a little bit to the hopes for that Austin public health funding and your anticipation of whether those contracts will be reopened and reimagined under Austin public health and will we be able to leverage those for greater good in this scenario? >> So what is similar to how we recognize that nhdd is not perhaps best positioned to administer a job training program, we are similarly not in the best position to administer contracts relative to child care services and mental health and senior services, and so we've had conversations with -- with the leadership in Austin public health, and they are welcome and opening to the concept of administering those dollars through their department. So they would be, again, [2:27:11 PM] additional dollars. As you may recall, with community development block grants we have up to 15% of our annual allocation that could be spent on what is considered public services. Right? So in -- in the terms of how we've used those dollars in the past, those public services have been for things like child care, for senior services, for mental health services, our tenants rights contract falls into public services, as do contracts related to small business. And so -- and it's, I think, for this coming year, the public service amount is about $1.1 million or so. We have recommended that we maintain those programs, although those dollars could be reprogrammed and used for something like homeless services if the council decided to. That would be a -- that would be a big change. That's something we would need to think about and take time to process accordingly, but we're in a position now uniquely because we're going into a five-year planning cycle where we can make that kind of a change. It would require us to not consider the con plan on Thursday and instead do probably another round of public input because we are changing the con plan from what -- what we have -- what has had public comment up until this point but we would have time for the federal government to be able to do that if we considered the con plan in August. And I bring that up largely because I heard what the mayor said this morning about we might need to make some hard decisions about how we fund things and the initiatives that we do choose to fund. So I'm just putting that on the table and I'm saying that that's a possibility. But with respect to the way the con plan is currently drafted, it does maintain the services that we have anticipated for the first year that we have done traditionally with our federal dollars. In fact, even the same suite of contracts that we have. But what we are anticipating and have communicated to our contract holders is that come year 2 of the con plan, which is fiscal year 2020-2021, that those dollars would be administered through health, that there could be scoping [2:29:12 PM] changes and there could be, you know, a competitive opportunity rather than just a direct subrecipient, which is how we've handled our cdbg contracts to date. We've been working with our partners in health and we will work on a transition plan and make sure we dot all of our I's and dot our T's and get that ready to go for however they would choose to design that, but again, we recognize that they're in a better position to help leverage, you know, the $186,000 that we have allocated for mental health to combine with all the other mental health services we're doing to make sure we're meeting the needs for the community. >> Alter: Just to clarify, I wasn't asking to necessarily reopen it. I just wanted to make sure that we would have an opportunity with those funds within the bucket of say, child care, to re- imagine what those are being spent for. On the issue of child care, I was concerned to see that our child care investments are decreasing, as I understand it. And I believe you have reasons for that, and I wanted to just hear from you why those investments were decreasing. >> Sure. We have -- for the last 15 to 20 years we've had the same series of contracts for our community development block grant dollars for those public service contracts, and in the last year two two years one of our contract holders in child care are dropped out. They informed us that they weren't in a position where they could continue with that contract, and so we put out an rfp to try to program those dollars and had no responses to that rfp, and so in doing that we're making the choice now to, you know, as we're shifting dollars around, to just reallocate those dollars elsewhere to help meet the public facility needs and the job training program. >> Thank you. You know, as we move forward I -- I hope that Austin public health will look closely at our investments in child care. We have a tremendous need for child care dollars in the city, and, you know, as [2:31:13 PM] these contracts that are existing and remaining are transferred over and just in the broader context, that we really do need to think strategically how we can get our investments to go further. There's some interesting, exciting opportunities with on hb-3 passing where the state is going to be investing more in pre-k and exploring how we can leverage more of those dollars and other kinds of things, but I'm not thrilled that we are reducing that amount. I understand that there's a contract issue and what not, but I think we need to be doing that with open eyes and being mindful of that moving forward. >> And we are excited about the opportunity to have our contracts help provide perhaps better leverage for the dollars that are being expended through Austin public health. You know, ours is but a small sliver of the total amount that's going in each of these service areas, and -- and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to, with administration through that department -- will be able to get more bang for the buck, you know, stretch the dollars further and provide a greater level of service. >> Alter: Yeah, I mean, we have, you know, made some really important investments of, you know, you can do $16,000 into a classroom refurbishment and then those classrooms, those schools get access to leverage state dollars on an ongoing basis. And so just being really mindful of those opportunities I think is important that keep returning returns for those children over time. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any further discussion? Just to highlight a really high level, one other thing you said you guys would take a look at is student housing, discussed in that report, but student housing, UT and HT, to see if the student housing in the [2:33:13 PM] city -- the number of students that are also competing in the market for affordable housing, does that have an impact, and if it does, then what we might be able to do in conjunction with those universities that might be a relatively inexpensive way for us to help free up housing for -- for nonstudents. So I'm anxious to see that work as well. Anything else? All right. Yes? >> I was wondering where -- it doesn't say that you were doing that. >> That was actually a question that we added to the housing market study, to have the consult that we hired for the housing market study to perform an analysis to kind of help us gauge the relative impact on the substantial number of students that we have and how that impacts our housing that's affordable, market affordable and income restricted. So we were in a meeting earlier this weekend, and I mentioned that we had that in the housing market study but I have not yet had a chance to go back and pull that information out of the housing market study, so we'll get that pulled out and share it back. >> Alter: Does that need to be in the consolidated plan at all if we wanted to make sure that that was something that -- worth pursuing. The mayor and I have been talking about this for quite a while, and if you you take UT alone we have 40,000 students that don't have housing at UT and many of them are in affordable housing across the city, and if we could find a way to house them more quickly, we may be able to make bigger dents in our housing faster, and so does that need to be in the consolidated plan in some way or does that fall under other buckets enough that you'd be able to pursue those opportunities as we get greater clarity on how to do that? >> I think it's the latter. I think if we were looking at expending dollars it would be probably looking at creating housing through our -- potentially our bonds rather than using cdbg or -- or other federal resources. But it is part of the [2:35:14 PM] housing market analysis that is one of the required pieces for doing the consolidated plan every five years, and so we'll be -- we'll share that information back with council, but I don't know that that needs to be called out specifically in the consolidated plan because I don't anticipate using federal dollars for that. >> Alter: Okay, well, I would just like to second what the mayor is saying about that being a really important direction for us to be considered moving forward. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thank you. Let's call up item no. 64. Are the attorneys here yet to do the homelessness issue? >> I'm here. >> Mayor Adler: Are you doing it? Okay. Well, then let's go back and let's pull up item 45, and I will let you open since it's your resolution. >> Casar: Well, I just want to start out again by thanking everybody that's been engaged in the conversation and mentioning that I am, you know, proud to be on a council and part of the city that's focusing so much on addressing the root cause issues of homelessness, and, you know, just -- in that last item we're going to dedicate $8 million more to addressing issues of homelessness. We have an item on the agenda to open up more shelter beds. Like I said, our last set of bond dollars opened up more permanent -- funded more permanent supportive housing, so we know that to address homelessness at the end of the day we need housing and services and mental health care and all of those things, and -- but these ordinances are a part of our alarm. We have to figure out how to address them. They were raised in a 2017 audit, they've been a part of community conversation quite a bit ever since then, and my intention, I think I can speak on behalf of my co-sponsors on this points, was to -- point, was to change the ordinances so that the ordinances only banned behavior that is dangerous, only banned behavior that is -- that is inconsistent with the use of public space, only banned behavior that actually harms health and safety and not [2:37:14 PM] have ordinances on our books that we can't -- that are banning something that we get say is wrong or banning -- or having ordinances that ban something that constitutionally some of us may feel uncomfortable with saying that something is constitutional. So I want to lay out what is actually on the agenda because I think there's been some misinformation around what is actually on the agenda and what it does, and I want to do some of that by conferring with the city attorney to make sure that what I say is -- is accurate so that everybody understands what it is that we are doing. And so the intent is to no longer have as a criminal offense like leaping sleeng in your C if it's not endaipging, but using public space. To no longer ban ask for money, say at night or asking for money in a way that is nonthreatening, and so -- but I have had people ask lots of questions, so I want to ask the city attorney to confirm if these things are true. So some people have asked whether or not the changes proposed would allow for aggressive behavior like touching somebody in an unwanted way or screaming and saying obscene things to a person. They've said, well, is this going to allow for people to say obscene things in a way that disturbs the peace? And my understanding is that nothing posted on the agenda is going T change those state laws that already ban aggressive behavior, touching a person, yelling obscene things at them, that those things are not allowed regardless of whether you'r asking for money or not. Is that correct? >> There are state law provisions that the city would rely on if you change the ordinances that are in place now on solicitation that would prohibit, for example, assault or touching -- unwelcome touching, that kind of thing. >> Casar: And some folks have raised the question of [2:39:16 PM] whether those state law provisions, the ones you just described, like disorderly conduct or simple assault, that that could force police officers to use a higher level misdemeanor but my understanding is simple assault which would be that kind of touching or disordering conduct, are class C so they're at the same level. Is that right, that there are class C options for disorderly -- >> There are class C option and I know you've asked us to come back and have a public conversation, have a public documents we can produce to help people know what the differences are. We have an ordinance right now, if you pass what -- and state law. We'll have scenarios we'll put together that I hope will be helpful to the public. >> Casar: Some people asked questions around whether or not this changes our rules as it relates to park, because some folks have asked, well, if people can sleep out doors and not break the law, then could they stay overnight in our parks? But we don't have any changes posted to our parks rules, and so my understanding is that park curfews and all other park rules would still apply. >> That's correct. The park allows disallow camping right now. >> Casar: And so it was -- we've also had other issues and questions brought up about whether somebody could camp at a school, but my understanding is that schools can continue to set their own parameters about who can be on campus and who cannot be on campus and what activities are allowed to happen at schools. So is it correct that schools could continue to operate as they are, that this is not changing what happens and doesn't happen in a school? >> Certainly on school property itself, the schools will be able to maintain their schools and their own rules. I think some question had been about the area around a school, which becomes a little bit different. >> Casar: And some folks have said this will allow for -- this could put us in situations where people are endangering themselves or endangering another person, but the ordinances say specifically that it's still [2:41:18 PM] against our rules for you to endanger yourself or endanger another person. So if somebody brings up endangerment, the current ordinance -- the ordinance as it's posted, ban camping or sitting down or lying down in a way that endangers yourself or another person. Is that generally -- >> Right, a police officer would have the ability to cite if somebody was endangering themselves or endangering others. >> Casar: Or if a person was making it unreasonably inconfident for you to use the sidewalk or unreasonably inconvenient for you to use public space? >> That is your current language. >> Casar: I think that there are potentially other questions and issues out there. Some of what I've heard about or been asked about have to do with issues of drug use, public intoxication, other issues that plague some of the most vulnerable members of our community, and I think we all recognize that those are really important issues that all of us lose sleep over and all of us work on. This doesn't change any of the rules or laws associated with those things either, and changing these ordinances isn't going to fix -- I haven't heard anybody say changing these ordinances is going to fix on its own, but what changing these ordinances presents us the opportunity to do is to not have, in my view -- not have laws on the books that say something is a criminal act that somebody just can't help. And I think council member kitchen said just earlier today, I thought it was exactly right, that people are homeless because they don't have a place to live, and that there is no argument about that. And so if a person has no place to live and -- they need to sleep somewhere, and if they are sleeping somewhere and they aren't violating curfew, they're not getting in anybody's way, they're not endangering themselves, they're not endangering anyone else, I can't figure out how I can continue saying that that is against the law, if they can't help that and they aren't endangering or causing any problem for anyone. So at the end of the day that is the intent of what it is we're trying to do, is to try to align that with [2:43:18 PM] our values, and to me it's just not about homeless individuals. To me it's actually about all of us because we all benefit as a community when our laws reflect not only our values and our constitution but when our laws say things are wrong, when we can identify that they're actually wrong. We all benefit from that. That makes our society a better place, that we make sure our laws only target things that are really wrong, and if a person is so poor that they don't have any money, they have to ask for money to survive, if a person is so poor that they don't have somewhere to sleep, then I just can't figure out ethically myself how to say that that is a criminal violation in this city. So that's the intent. I think it's a hard conversation. It's something that we have to take -- you know, we have to try to figure out. We've taken some time trying to figure that out. We talked about it at the audit and finance committee back in 2017. The public safety commission has reviewed it. We've had multiple executive sessions on it. It was talked about during the homelessness action plan. It's a hard thing but at the end of the day I still haven't figured out how I can leave something on the books that says something is wrong and that I can't identify how it's wrong, if it's just a person surviving and they're not doing anything else besides that. So I would just urge that we try to get that word out because some folks are saying, well, this would allow people to be aggressive or allow people to break public intoxication laws, and it's just not doing any of those things so I look forward though that continuing conversation. I appreciate the city attorney answering those questions. In the interest of creating some of that time and space for those questions to be answered I think I and the co-sponsors are going to recommend that we vote on this on June the 20th. Again, I think that there is real critique I've heard from some people experiencing homelessness themselves, that we've been talking about since 2017 and before that, so I don't want this to drag out too long [2:45:19 PM] but I think given there has been misinformation and that we need to correct that misinformation, I'm ready to set this for a vote on June 20 but I would not feel okay with going another summer of continuing to have a law on the books saying if you sleep in your car that's a criminal violation, to say if you don't have enough money to eat and you ask somebody for money to eat and it's 7:30 at night, that that is criminally against the law. So I just feel like we need to get this done. I think we should get it done on Thursday, but given some of the public discussion and wanting to make sure that the correct information is out there, I'm ready to vote on this on June the 20th to have more time. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Thanks. I -- I appreciate you and the co-authors willingness not to have a vote here on Thursday, but I want us to talk about it on Thursday 23 ifwe can. And it's a decision for the council to make. As I said this morning, I think that we're really lucky in this community that we are so aligned as a community from top to bottom, that dealing with the homelessness challenge in our community is our highest priority. It's reflected by the strategic plan vote that this council took. It's certainly being evidenced by how we're spending resources in this community, the time and attention, bringing in a new executive-level position in the city that's going to deal with it, the engagement with the stakeholder groups, with downtown Austin alliance, with the chamber, with the trade associations around the city, and certainly neighborhood groups. Everyone seems to be involved in this, and everyone, I think, has expressed a real commitment to doing everything that we can in a city that is as -- has as many resources as we have, actually bringing those things to bear to deal with this challenge, and I think it is great that we are this united and the degree to which we can [2:47:19 PM] maintain that. I think we will be best able to help the people that we want to help. I think that the community conversation right now is -- is happening all over the place. I think it's good for you to have answered some of the questions that you answered this morning. I think there are lots of other questions too, as I listen to the radio and see what's happening on social media, and as I get interviewed and as I go around the city, there are a lot of questions and concerns. I think we need to daylight those, and I think that Thursday provides us a real opportunity to do that. And what I would suggest, colleagues, is that we hold off the general public debate on an issue, as we would normally have it, until we set it to vote, but on this first meeting, since we're -- we were going to just postpone it, but I would have us pause long enough to almost curate a conversation, and I would bring in perhaps some of the stakeholders that helped draft this and speak to the rationale behind it. But I would also like to have the opportunity for representatives of the -- a representative of the downtown alliance to be able to come and speak to us, perhaps a member of the police association to come to speak to us, our chief to speak to us. Maybe there's a way for us to curate a conversation, with the point being to elevate and air everyone's concerns and hopes with respect to this so that either at that meeting or following the meeting with the city attorney's office we can respond to the questions and concerns that are being asked so that we make sure that whatever we do is best reflective of what it is that is our best intent as a community. This is a conversation that's happening in a lot of places all over the city, [2:49:20 PM] and if we could pull it into one place to identify the issues that need to be addressed or the concerns that are raised, and I think we have a real opportunity to do that on Thursday, and so -- so if there are -- I would recommend that we tell the clerk not to open up the public side in for this event, this item on Thursday, because we're going to postpone it, but that we -- if you identify, council members, people that you want to make sure -- have a chance to raise concerns, I don't want to cut off anyone here from being able to ask a question of someone they want to ask a question of. I'm thinking in terms of maybe, you know, five to eight people that would -- that would be able to speak to us to raise concerns or something like that. I think we have a real opportunity to advance this conversation so that it is as factually based and as data-driven a conversation as we can possibly have. This is an important conversation. Everyone I talk to is trying to achieve the same results, the same objective, everyone, and we just need to figure out how -- how to make sure that we are addressing or at least indicating we hear everything that everyone is raising. >> I guess I have concerns about the picking out certain stakeholders, because -- and this is the first time I heard this suggestion so I'm just kind of thinking out loud at this point, but I mean, the realities is there are people experiencing homelessness -- they are not going to be able to come here and tell us how the barriers that these kinds of ordinances put up for them and how it makes it harder to access if you get a ticket and then go to court [2:51:22 PM] and get a warrant, it's harder to access housing and harder to get a job. And I'm concerned about the majority of what I've heard thus far from people not wanting us to rebuild that, honestly for reasons that I feel are misunderstandings of what we're doing. And so I'm concerned about skewing the public debate to -- and the headline being the majority of speakers that spoke said they didn't want this to happen. And so I say we either open the public debate up to anybody who wants to come or we don't open it up, but I'm concerned how we pick who those stakeholders are and what the -- what that would look like. Much and I don't know if I can add much more to what council member Casar said about this, but I was listening to the work session -- I was at a groundbreaking in my school and I heard council member alter speak about reaching out to the public in the instance of asking for philanthropy and asking our public -- these are such difficult questions and I cund of what -- kind of want to make a similar plea as we continue to have discussions on this item, to -- you know, this is a situation where everybody can give to this -- not everybody can give philanthropically but everybody can show some compassion about this issue. Everybody can -- can try to understand the circumstances that our fellow austinites are in and unable to access housing. And so, you know, the mayor also mentioned people wt to help in this homelessness issue, and that's how I would ask our public to help, to not -- to not turn this into a debate about [2:53:23 PM] undesirables, to this be a conversation about compassion and making sure we're reducing barriers for people to get out of a very vulnerable and very -- very, very sad situation. And you know, I'm seeing this more of the human element of -- for me, I'm -- I can support postponing this to the 20th, but I -- I'm steadfast in my support that we need to repeal these ordinances, and I am prepared on the 20th to continue to be a yes vote. And lastly I'll just, adding to that human element part of it, I remember council member tovo telling a story once of her kid seeing a homeless person, her explaining that to her child, and I just recently had that conversation with my 4-year-old. And it was really -- you know, to me, to explain to her that this person was there because they didn't have a home over their head, and to see her face and how, you know, she kind of understood that and how it affected her. It affected me that -- you know, that we have people and we're having to explain to our children that people are in our community that don't have homes. And I think this is a way that government can do go and break down these barriers to people trying to get out of the situation. So again, I support a postponement, but I will vote yes on the 20th, and I hope we all -- we are giving the public a chance to continue to have this conversation, and I think two weeks is time for that, to get all the information out there, the correct information out there. >> Mayor Adler: Just to respond real quickly, and it's certainly the will of the council and certainly nothing I suggested earlier, I would just -- there's so much conversation that's happening, and a lot of it I think is -- it doesn't accurately represent what's in the resolution ore what the laws -- or what the laws are. So my thought was really to [2:55:24 PM] try to elevate some of those issues so that over the next two weeks we might be able to actually focus the conversation on -- on what's really at issue in this, and it was in part giving people that -- one, I think we should have voices represented there of people that are experiencing homelessness, because I think that is a really importantly perspective. It wasn't intended to be a thorough conversation or anything, but mostly just identifying issues in hopes that our legal staff where at that meeting we could kind of narrow the issues and say, well, wait a second, that's not part of this or this is part of this conversation. I just thought that we have a very unwieldy conversation that's happening right now, and if we could direct it a little bit over the next two weeks, that might help us do that. So it wasn't in terms of much -- you know, public testimony as much as it was almost just continuing a briefing kind of format that we do normally in work session, but giving, I guess, an additional briefing opportunity so that we or our legal staff, we could respond to the concerns that were raised. Natasha? >> Harper-madison: Yes. I guess I'll echo what mayor pro tem Garza said, not adding a lot to what you said, Greg, but wanting to put some highlights on some things that you pointed out and something that council member Flannigan pointed out earlier, the misinformation. It can lead people to make really poor decisions that doesn't necessarily reflect our values, like you pointed out. We want our deciding making to reflect our values, and like mayor pro tem pointed out, you know, being careful about not letting the conversation sort of extend to the concept of human beings being undesirable. You know, one of my [2:57:24 PM] constituents sent me a note and the way she described homeless people, she used the word "Dirty." And so her concern was that she has to talk to dirty people, and I just think that's -- I appreciate that you want to elevate the level of conversation that we're having, because ultimately what we're talking about is people who don't have homes. I also appreciate, you know, you pointing out, mayor, that we all can agree on at least one thing: People need homes. Everybody -- housing is a human right. Everybody needs a house. I think the one thing that we're not pointing out in a way that is as profound as the -- the concept is, you know, we talk a lot about equity as a council, and we're not saying enough, that the people who inherently are affected by the ordinances that we're proposing to repeal are people of color, are poor people, are people already existing in the margins, and them receiving citations and/or arrests do not eliminate their homelessness. It makes it worse. It exacerbates the issue. And so if we can all agree that the goal is for people to have housing, we have to also all agree that we consistently have conversations about the importance of us addressing a lack of equity in the city of Austin, and if and and if and when we do that, we are acknowledging that we have the opportunity on the 20th -- which I'd also like to point out I really appreciate the opportunity to postpone. I know that the conversations have been happening since 2017 and there are probably some people who are very frustrated by the continuation of conversations that frankly have already happened. Stakeholders who frankly have already had the [2:59:25 PM] opportunity to express their concerns. Those haven't changed, I'm certainful it's the same concerns. But that's to say I'm a newcomer. Councilmember Ellis is a newcomer. Maybe we haven't had enough of an opportunity to engage these stakeholders and talk to them about what their concerns are. So I really appreciate having the opportunity to extent the conversation, but I do have some concerns when I hear us say that first reading or that first opportunity to talk about it. I would say on the 20th we come armed with the opportunity to say I vote in yes or I say no. And my hope is that we will say yes. My vote will certainly be yes. And to echo what you said, councilmember Casar, there's no need to drag it out. Two weeks is sufficient time to have the opportunity to talk to the necessary stakeholders and express our concerns and hear theirs, but then move forward with a definitive decision on the 20th. And I'll life it at this. -- Leave it at this. Mayor pro tem, I am hesitant to cry in public because it is not pretty. I mean, it is bad. But you really stirred something up in me that reminds me, you know, one of the reasons I decided to open myself up to the level of scrutiny that a council person experiences, and that is my children are watching me! And they're watching all of us, all of our children are watching us, how we respond to an issue that is so important and how we wield our power, they're watching us. And I want them to be proud of me. I want them to be proud of you all too. I want them to acknowledge [3:01:26 PM] that we took a difficult and complicated conversation and decided that if at the end of the day the thing that we could make stop happening, which is the continuation of the criminalization of homelessness, if we can have any part in making that stop, then I think we owe that to people experiencing homelessness, we owe that to ourselves and our city and we owe that to our children. And I'll stop there. Thank you for your time. >> Mayor Adler: Pio and Jimmy. >> Renteria: Thank you, mayor. I've been working on this issue for over 30 years ever since we went out and bought a gooseling at Callahan called Homer and we've been fighting to house the homeless is one of the organizations that we worked with for years. So you know, we've had a lot of conversation when it comes to the homeless and the panhandling and sleeping and all, all of that, because even 30 years ago we were advocating for housing so that we could get these people housing, a decent house, a roof over their head, and a place where they could store their possessions and be able to take a shower. And relax in safety. So to me that's more of a god given right and we should all try to get to that point where we don't have the homeless situation that we're having here in the United States. One of the richest countries in the world. So I'm going to be actually really -- I'm going to support this one because I know it's the right thing to do. >> Ann was next. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I agree with what everyone [3:03:28 PM] has been saying, you know, that -- and thank you for all of your work over the years, councilmember Renteria. The bottom line is that we need housing. We need housing for people. It's just -- and I think when I talk to my constituents that's what they're feeling. They really -- they really feel the concern that we're all expressing for people that are living on the streets. So songwriter some opportunities to do something, a number of things that are concrete around taking steps, whether it's housing focused shelter, whether it's the Salvation Army, whether it's these ordinances. And the many other things that the council is trying to do. So we need to keep working on it. We need to keep saying that housing is a priority and we need to make sure it happens. I see a real opportunity with this proposal, this 45, and I think everyone who has been bringing it forward -- right now what people are really concerned about, I think, is certain activities or behaviors. And there's a lot of confusion about what we do as a community about them. And we have tools to do something about them. But that's really what the issue is. It's not about about people ING homeless. It's not about giving someone a ticket because they're homeless because that's not the right thing to do. So what we need to be saying is okay, are we clear enough that- - I forget the exact words that are being proposed, but are we clear enough in how we change these ordinances to get at what's appropriate, what's really appropriate, what we're trying to do. And are we all on the same page. And by all, when we take a step as a council is what we [3:05:32 PM] thinks going to happen what the public understands, what our police department understands, what our court system understands? Because what we have in place right now doesn't work for anyone. It ends up criminalizing people that are homeless and it doesn't get the kind of activities or behaviors that people have some legitimate concerns about with regard to public health and different things like that. We've all talked about those specific things. So I think this gives us -- I appreciate the chance to have a little bit more time to the 20th to really think through those kinds of situations that we're really trying to get at and make sure we're focused on that, make sure we all understand that so with what we're coming out with is something that everybody is understanding and on the same page with. And then we can write something -- we can right the wrongs that may have been happening -- that have been happening in terms of just being criminal because someone is homeless. It's too broad a swath. It's not really what we're trying to get at. So I look forward to the continued conversation between now and the 20th. >> Flannigan: Mayor? Just quickly I want to thank councilmember harper-madison for what you said. And on top of that, there are values in this community that we are trying to reflect in our ordinances and laws and practices and rules, et cetera. There's also the factual issue. As they say, facts are facts and there are things being spread about this that are not facts. When there's a photo shop of congress avenue lined with tents,, that is not a fact. That is not going to be allowed on any change we're contemplating here. And there are other examples of that being spread around. There's a whole conversation about our community's values and there's also facts are [3:07:34 PM] facts and we've got to be very careful with our constituents and being clear when the things that are being said by whomever is saying them whether or not there is any factual basis or if it's just propaganda or rhetoric. >> Mayor Adler: Any further discussion? Paige? >> Ellis: Just a few comments. Councilmember Casar, I appreciate the frequently asked questions you've handed out. I hope they'll be available public fiscal year for other people -- publicly for other people watching who are curious. Some of the questions fell in line with some of the concerns I did have. I don't think that homelessness should be criminalized, but I also had worries about aggressive panhandling or if people are going to be able to camp for long periods of time in places that may not be the best for them or other passers by. And I just also am approaching this with a unique experience someone who was on the front steps of city hall with the occupy movement and is now sitting on city council. And that's a vastly different perspective when you're shouting at city hall and then you're tasked with solving these problems. I think all our hearts are in the right place. I'm happy to be a co-sponsor on councilmember kitchen's work with a shelter and I think we all really want to do the right thing here and make sure that if we're telling people they can't be in a specific area how important it is to tell them they have a place to go. That they're going to have services and access to things like education and a housing exit strategy. And I think that we're really on the edge of that here and I think we're all submitted to doing the right thing. And I'm happy to have a little bit more time to ask questions and make sure we're feeling very sound in the decisions that we're making. Thank you all for bringing this. >> Renteria: I will post the faq on the message board. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Yes, Natasha? >> Harper-madison: Councilmember kitchen brought up a really good point which the goal is housing. One thing I would like to [3:09:34 PM] say and have everybody remember, you can't get housing if you've got a warrant. So let's really think about some of the impediments to housing. Even if we create the housing if there are barriers that exist by people not having their id that got lost in all their stuff that got stolen when they were arrested or them having an active warrant be an impediment to them entering these housing opportunities that we create, then did we really help? So just want to put that out there as well. >> Mayor Adler: So finally, I think it's important to note that on Thursday's agenda while we're discussing these these ordinances we are also discussing putting additional shelter beds in place. And the conversations involving more than one location as we see the conversation develop, it includes putting together a classically Austin, truly innovative solution for trying to protect people's opportunity to have id's and all their materials by using block chain technology. I see that the university of Texas just joined a consortium on that today and their people are helping with the city's office -- the city's efforts in this regard. This is the highest priority. I just believe that if we can have a conversation where everyone listens to everyone else we can go though what is true and what is not true, what is possible, what's not possible in a very honest conversation that will hopefully advance us as a community to do what it is that we all want to be doing here anyhow. So I appreciate the incredibly constructive feel that this has right now. All right. Let's go on to the next item. We had -- yeah? >> Kitchen: Do you want to address time certain now or do you want to wait until we're at the end of everything. >> Mayor Adler: We just have two other things real fast. [3:11:34 PM] Greg, you had item number 64, mobile home. >> Casar: Yes, mayor. We have our mobile home rezonings. We'll be handling half of them on Thursday and the other half at the end of the month. There's also an agenda item to potentially modify how many rv's are allowed on a mobile home site. That's an ordinance that is posted. The -- there is one zoning case where the existing owner has 80% of their units being rv's and the ordinance as posted by the staff has that only at 50%. So one thing I'm going to sort out between here and Thursday is whether to bring that up to 80% to allow for all of the existing mobile home and rv parks that we're rezoning to be in conformance. I'm just raising that because I didn't have the chance to post it on the message board to move it from 50 up to 80. So I want to give people head's up. >> Kitchen: Can I speak to that? I'll be happy to work with you on that. I think that may be the one that's in district five and I don't want to create a situation -- they're existing now well. >> Casar: The whole purpose was to try to preserve and keep what we have existing. So this might help. So let's talk about it. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else on this point? I think we're okay. That gets us then to Jimmy. You had indicated pulling a whole series of things. Do you want to address that? >> Flannigan: Yes. So I was going through the procurement items in my agenda review as we often do and saw a a few that maybe need to be evaluated within the context of the legislature's change to law. And rather than dragging us through a long and involved conversation in short order about whether or not each individual item is a good idea, I went through and found the ones that I believe can be pushed off to the 20th so that staff has time to give us a little bit more information about what the long-term impacts are of these contracts given the long-term future of our [3:13:34 PM] finances is not the same as when those procurements were first put out. >> Mayor Adler: That might be a good conversation to have. I don't know if you've pareed down the list. It looked like some of those things were enterprise fund requests and some were general fund? >> Yes. >> Those almost seem to be two different kinds of conversations to me, but then I don't know what kind of conversation you anticipate having. So I certainly don't mind them all coming up. But one is kind of susceptible of the cap kind of conversation and the enterprise funds operate outside of that. >> Flannigan: I think they're a little more related and it will be worth for us to hav@ a deeper conversation about that. >> Pool: Along those lines I had already sent in a request for information on if we have to do away with those red light cameras. That's one of the contracts that we have. >> They're already gone. >> Pool: How much money are we saving by having to terminate that contract? So that may also be some information that we could get based on your request. >> Flannigan: My hope is by the time we get to 20th there's a larger conversation about tax caps because I think we're getting a briefing from the legislative team and others. So there will be a lot more information coming to us about the impacts, which is part of the reason why the push. >> Mayor Adler: Ann. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Flannigan, have you posted a list that I missed? >> Flannigan: It's on the message board. >> Kitchen: Got it. >> Flannigan: I posted it yesterday or the day before. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Any other discussion on this? All right. I think those are all the pulled items, all the discussion items. Now let's talk scheduling. Ann, you wanted to raise a time certain issue? >> Kitchen: Well, I have two items for time certain and I imagine others do too. The butler pitch and putt, I'll be pulling that so we can have a conversation about that. And I wanted to suggest a 2:00 [3:15:37 PM] 2:00 time certain. I'm sorry, I'm not remembering what number it is. >> 39. >> Kitchen: 39. And then 49, which is a housing focused shelter, I wanted to ask if it fits with other timing that we do -- that we have a time certain of 4:00 for that one. >> Mayor Adler: So I would say that I think that Natasha, I think that you're out much of Thursday. >> Harper-madison: Yes, with a great deal of regret that I have to be out, but I've had the misfortune of watching my relatives grow and age and missing the opportunity to see them as they get older and I don't want to miss it. Sorry, aunt Shirley, but she is getting old. So I will be visiting my family and my aunt for her birthday. So I will miss you guys, but I will be out on Thursday. >> Mayor Adler: I've been invited to attend, it's actually kind of timely right now, there's a north American meeting of mayors in Mexico so there's a bunch of Mexican mayors and selected U.S. Mayors and some mayors from Canada. I'm going to miss the Thursday evening program so that I can be here Thursday during the day. But it was my intent to fly out Thursday night after dinner. So it's possible I could drive to Dallas late when our meeting was done, but if there's a way for me to leave at dinner to be able to pet get on a plane I would do that. I mention those things, if we're setting time certains later in the day where we can't bring it up earlier if we wanted to, we may miss some opportunities. >> Kitchen: I guess the point of these two is afternoon. Because the folks that I had heard from were interested in doing it in the afternoon instead of in the evening, but I don't know what everybody else needs and I don't have a good idea of how much time we need during the day. Because you had a conversation earlier about [3:17:38 PM] Fritch so we need to -- about 45 so we need to figure out when that's happening. >> Mayor Adler: I think we'll do that one as quickly as we can so hopefully we'll set up a table and have people talk to us and answer questions. That would be a record that anybody could look at on that. I can't imagine that there would be a problem in saying we'll pick up those two after lunch just because I don't think we'll have an opportunity toes resolve that. We could certainly say we're not going to vote on them until after lunch so that if someone shows up to speak they would be given that opportunity to be able to do that. >> Kitchen: Okay. I don't think they will be able to be there in the morning. >> Mayor Adler: They wouldn't have to. We will say we're not going to take a vote on either of those two things in the morning so we know it will be extended to the afternoon. And if- anyone shows up in the afternoon they will be given the opportunity to speak. It could be we don't even call it up until the afternoon, but at the very least in the event we're able to take some people who wanted to speak to it in the morning, we can. But we're not going to take a vote on it and we'll keep it open for speakers after lunch. >> Kitchen: Do you think we would say we'll be taking the pitch and putt first and after that we'll take the housing focused shelter? >> Mayor Adler: I'd be fine doing that. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Okay? >> Casar: Mayor, I'm sorry. I was responding to a message -- putting the thing up on the message board, the faq. Were you describing if we decide to ask a few people some questions on the ordinances, did you all just discuss what time that would be? >> Kitchen: He was suggesting the morning for that. >> Casar: What I would love to do is when I post on the message board the faq, maybe include a suggestion for a time and mayor, maybe you and I can talk about that briefly because if we want some of the folks experiencing homelessness that have been in stakeholder meetings to come, I would want to figure out what time that they could undipped I want to think about what mayor pro tem Garza said about about if we were going to ask people questions, maybe having slots being -- two advocates, two of the stakeholders have been for it, two of the stakeholders [3:19:39 PM] have concerns, maybe a service provider and a person experiencing homelessness, something very prescribed. >> Mayor Adler: And I would love to work with you on that and curate by invitation. We're trying to daylight issues. >> Casar: So maybe when I post faqs we'll post on when folks should anticipate to have that conversation so I can have a moment to check. >> Mayor Adler: That's fine. And I don't think it's necessary that we do it all at the same time. It could be that we could take one or two people in the morning and they could talk from their perspective and then we could take somebody else at a different time as well. >> Mayor, for clarification for the clerk's office, are you all going to close the speakers? >> Mayor Adler: No speakers sign up for this -- >> Casar: It would just be asking questions. >> Mayor Adler: Kind of like a briefing and we may invite people to participate with us in that. But let's talk about -- make sure that we have the right people in the right way, not necessarily the same place. That way we can fill gaps with people and we will make the accommodation that Ann requested with respect to items 4 and 39. >> Kitchen: Would it be -- when he with say after lunch, should I say 2:00 or 1:30? People like to have an idea in time. >> Excuse me, we have four executive sessions during lunch. >> Kitchen: Oh, okay. [Laughter]. I forgot about that. Thank you, Ann! We'll say 2:00 and see what happens. >> Mayor Adler: I think 2:00 would be fine. I think it would be fine to tell people that. Okay. With that said I think we've taken care of everything that we need to. It is 3:22 and this meeting is adjourned.