City Council Work Session Transcript – 10/29/2019 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 10/29/2019 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 10/29/2019 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. Note: (Due to technical difficulties the first 4 minutes was not recorded.) [9:16:05 AM] we had three major rounds of public engagement and released the plan in early August. We had a combined number of about 600 comments on the draft plan which we've addressed and which is the plan you see today. In addition to the review period, we have presented to 18 boards and commissions which is a testament to the city as a whole and the opportunity to align with many citywide goals that relate to equity, mobility and the environment through our long range plan. We've worked hard to craft a thoughtful engagement plan that would provide opportunities for the community as a whole to participate, but focused entintly on reaching the hardest to reach populations. I'd like to personally thank Justin Schneider who worked closely with Carol Welch and many others from the corporate information so sf on the extensive outreach for this planning process. The long range plan document does provide an overview of the engagement process and how it informs the plan, but you will also note in your [9:17:07 AM] backup a standalone in-depth report of the community engagement process and it's also on our website. I'm just going to briefly go through the many things we did as part of this process in terms of engagement. We held public meetings in every district through those three rounds at least once. While the public meetings were successful, we were pleased with pop-up events we held in all of our districts which accompanied each round of engagement. We designed several engagement strategies that allowed people to participate. The pop-up events that I mentioned were things that we intend to replicate because they were really successful. It allowed us to not only get into your districts, but allowed us to engage in hard to reach populations that may not always plug in. Some examples are a booth we had at an Asian supermarket in north Austin. We had surveys in mandarin. Others were back to school events and booths at the [9:18:07 AM] pride festival, the mlk festival, the jewish community center and more. We held, I believe, well over 25 pop-ups throughout the city in addition to our public meetings. We held focus groups with several members, many members of our community in specific areas. We had two focus groups of seniors, people with disabilities, representatives from both the school for the deaf and the school for the blind, organizations that represent untapped youth as well as off-leash dog advocates. We convened a community engagement advisory community that had a representative from each district. Many of you are the ones who recommended a particular park advocate within your community. This is something else we found to be very successful. This community served as ambassadors for public meetings and surveys and also served as a sounding forward our meeting material before public meetings helping us make sure that the language was accessible, the graphics were readable, and it was something we also would definitely do again because it was extraordinarily helpful. [9:19:08 AM] We conducted two different surveys. The first was a community wide self-selected survey, which means anybody can take it. And this was heavily promoted through multiple outlets. It was very successful and garnered about 4400 responses. We promote it had in a number of ways including interior capital bus ads and advertisements in el Mundo and the advertiser. We conducted a statistically valid survey with the etc institute so we could receive a response that was demographically accurate in terms of the cross-section of our community. And finally, we convened a technical advisory group that comprised many, many departments that all plugged in and really substantive and collaborative ways to ensure that our planning process aligned very careful by with other planning processes and other goals. From all of this public engagement, we were able to synthesize this information into different themes so that we could kind of make sense of what the community was asking for. And I'm not going to read to you because I think you can [9:20:08 AM] read yourself, but I will just go over briefly what our community is saying they want to see in our parks in the future. You will see that the community wants immersive natural experiences and unstructured experiences. More trails and linear parks. Urban spaces that allow for a variety of flexibility and programming. Enhanced programming around arts, culture and nature. A focus on access and inclusivity and feedback was received about the appearance of parks and what we can do to make them feel more welcoming. You will note in a few minutes when I go through our statewide recommendations that we do show you on each slide how our recommendations do reflect one or more of the community themes. I'm going to -- as part of the planning process it is our role of planners to give voice to the communities that may not have had an active role in the planning process despite our efforts as well as the population of future austinites that have not yet arrived. A significant part of the planning process involves analysis of many factors and plans and the implications for our parks and recreation [9:21:08 AM] system. Nancy is going to share a few examples of this type of analysis in the next couple of slides. >> Okay. So we did a lot of mapping in regards to the updates of the long range plan and one of the things we took a close look at is the work that other departments are doing as part of citywide initiatives. So we looked at the mapping for the urban trails network, which is the map on your left side of the screen there, to better understand where urban trails are planned for the future, where they exist, and to make sure that this process links to the strategic mobility plan and the urban trails master plan. These networks also become some of pard's land acquisition strategies as you collaborate closely with the different departments to ensure there is a comprehensive trail network throughout the city. We also took a very close look at the mapping that was done as part of the uprooted study, which was conducted by UT Austin's community development law clinic. And this informed our [9:22:09 AM] community engagement strategies in areas that are at high risk of gentrification and displacement. And some of the strategies you will see in the long range plan reflect what we found through this mapping. So there are things like they're around community engagement and making sure that the engagement process is very clear when going into a new master plan for a park and some of the areas that are at risk for displacement. And then finally on the bottom right slide here was one of the important pieces of analysis of the planning process, and that's understanding how people get to parks. So we took a look at mapping showing people that are within a quarter mile distance of a park and a half mile distance of a park to better understand where there are park needs for the future. And this is really just intended to better connect residents with parkland. So council has a goal for parkland within a quarter mile in the urban core and half a mile of residents outside of the urban core. And this was based on some work that was done a number [9:23:10 AM] of years ago with the families and children's task force, as well as the urban parks work group and park and recreation board to increase park access for all. So that walking analysis helps us to understand where land is needed in the future. So we also took a look at where development is existing and where it's projected to grow, what parts of the city are projected to grow. We used the imagine Austin centers and corridors and we also looked at areas that could be expected to grow by more than double by 2040 as well as areas of existing population density to understand again where park improvements may be needed and where park acquisition may be needed in the future as well. And then finally, we heard a lot from the community about equity and wanting to make sure that facilities are distributed around the city. So we took a look at existing facilities, active, passive, arts and culture and natural type of facilities and grouped them [9:24:10 AM] that way to understand basically level of service. And we've -- Kim will talk more about this in a minute, but we've combined park planning spears combined areas so we can get a sense of how things are distributed currently. >> Okay. So I've gotten to the backup of sort of background information prior to getting to the citywide strategies. I want to point out that the plan document it's self-employed is a couple hundred pages long and so what you're seeing is really a high level overview of what are really detailed recommendations. So I am going to touch on them, but I do hope you will take an opportunity to review the multiple strategies that we described to kind of achieve these goals that we'll be discussing. And you'll note that as I said, I'm going to talk to you about a particular strategy and you'll note that on the left column -- and I know this is a little hard to see, but hopefully you have your presentation -- that we've identified the different community engagement themes [9:25:12 AM] that each citywide strategy touches upon to really connect what the community is saying they want with the recommendations that we've provided. The first strategy is to ensure that our parks can continue to act as a relief from urban life as we become a more dense, compact and connected community. To that end we have a stated goal to acquire between four and eight thousand acres of land to maintain the quality of life that our community has grown accustomed to. We're known for being quite the green city and we have strategies to ensure that we can maintain that goal. Other recommendations touch upon our community's desire for immersive natural experiences and a preference on the -- to some extent for unstructured spaces that are not overly programmed in most of the city. There's some contributions coming up -- contradictions coming up with respect to urban parks, but the community really likes their immersive natural experiences. We have recommendations related to our community's desire for more access to water through aquatics and/or bodies of water. [9:26:14 AM] You'll see throughout this presentation that our community wants the ability to be flexible, dynamic spaces that allow for a variety of programming. We heard a lot of feedback on off-leash dogs areas and have some specific recommendations for how to improve that. Community gardens are something that our community would like to see more of and we have recommendations for that as well. The second area that we would like to focus on is expanding and improving park access for all. And there's a lot of things that we can do to get there. We have, again, specific recommendations about how we can retool and just refine our community engagement strategies so that we have a very customized approach depending on the community we're going into, which I think we do now, but inks there's always room for improvement. We have a stated goal to make land acquisition in underserved areas a top priority. We have strategies for increasing access to parks through opening up more entrances to some of our parks. We have strategies about [9:27:15 AM] acquiring land for linear parks and for trails. We have very specific recommendations about how our planning process and goals should align with the Austin strategic mobility plan in terms of the mode shift towards multimodal access. We talked a little bit about distribution of facilities, which Nancy touched on. We have very specific approximate strategies for universal access, including a destination all abilities play feature and play features throughout our city. There is a lot we can do in terms of wayfinding and signage and digital access to our parks, as well as private automobile parking in our parks. We have had a lot of feedback about the types of urban park experiences that our community would like to see. Republic square has come out as a very popular model that our community really likes and would like to see us replicate. As you're probably aware, republic square simply wouldn't be possible between a partnership between downtown Austin alliance as well as the Austin parks [9:28:16 AM] foundation. So models like that partnership that allow us to provide enhanced programming, maintenance, operations and security to urban spaces. We also support downtown Austin alliance' vision of an urban greenbelt connecting all of our downtown spaces. We have specific recommendations around lighting where appropriate in order to increase the sense of safety and security and as well as extending people's ability to be in a park. Again, various flexibility, the ability to be nimble and to be able to do things in parks. We heard a lot of feedback about events, good, bad and otherwise. We're not ever going to get consensus on events in parks, but I think what we can do as a parks department is work harder to provide a clear picture of the cost and revenue information and benefits to the city as a whole and benefits to our park system about events. So to that end we intend to provide more information so the community can easily access that. We have other [9:29:16 AM] recommendations around increasing access to healthy foods through parks as well as continuing our historic preservation efforts. Some of the themes that came out again and again and again in terms of programming are more nature based programming, more arts programming, more pop-up programming. Being able to move around the city and not necessarily have to have a facility. The idea that we should be able to provide programming all throughout the city. We have specific recommendations for increasing low income access to our programs and then generally recommendations on how we can continue to keep our finger to the pulse of what the community needs so that we can shift more quickly. And finally, we have recommendations related to the efficiency of our operations. This covers everything from the need for our parks department to take very seriously our own administrative and sort of building needs as well as our facility maintenance needs. We are bursting at the seams and it's something we'll have to address in the next few years. We have recommendations for [9:30:17 AM] improving our procurement processes so that more people can plug in and do vending in our park system. We do have specific recommendations follow continuing some of the work we're already doing, like the work first program that is in line with the council's really I think humane approach to our issue of homelessness, which I know you will be talking about today. And I want to speak just briefly about something that we are already working on, but we've noted it in the plan, which is providing a framework for how we structure our partnerships and making it much easier for people to bring their time and their outside funding and philanthropy to our park system. Our director is already convening work groups and discussions with our partners to figure out how we can do a better job of partnering with multiple people and multiple levels. And we can talk a little bit more about that at the end in terms of implementation. [9:31:17 AM] And finally, I'll just touch on multiple sustainability and resiliency goals. We have the ability as a parks department with multiple facilities throughout the city and thousands of acres of land to make a real change and energy conservation, water conservation, reduced mowing, things like that, and we've called out some of those goals. I want to just spend a minute to explain the structure of the more geographic recommendations that will impact your area. If you've had a moment to look at the plan, you'll note that we spend a lot of time delving into the different -- the differences between all of your districts and different parts of the city. I will say that we continue to use 26 planning areas that the city established in the 1980s. We've used these in our planning process decade after decade. They work very well for us and help us track on our changes over time. We don't use council districts because as you know, they will change after every census. [9:32:17 AM] And so you will see that we've grouped these planning areas into different geographic areas of the city, but we do continue to use multiple little smaller planning areas so we can better understand kind of a micro vision of these different areas. But it's too difficult to ask people to plug in and look for their park within 26 areas, so you will see that we've grouped them. If you read the plan, you'll note that we provide extensive details and a high degree of analysis about every area of the city. We delve into the demographics of each other of the city, including age, race, the percentage of residents living in poverty, as well as projections about population growth and job growth. We also look at the population of residents who lack access to parks and we provide recommendations for current needs in terms of facilities and programs and based on both community feedback as well as the level of service analysis that Nancy stated. There's sort of metrics out there about how many athletic fields per cap that that we should have. [9:33:18 AM] So we've looked at all of that. So I'm going to go through the different areas of the city and we've provided a very high level overview of the recommendations. If you go into the plan you'll see that we provide far more detail B you we do want to give you a sense of the parks that we intend to be present in, touch, and have some sort of impact in. This is an example of how the plan is structured. You will see that for each planning area we have identified goals for park development, we have identified goals for feasibility studies that need to make place in the next 10 years. We've identified partnerships that are existing or have the potential to grow within every area. We've identified critical acquisitions for either infill parks, destination parks or acquisition priorities along critical watersheds for connectivity. And we've also identified master plan priorities, parks that may be either undeveloped that need to be master planned or parks that [9:34:18 AM] have been around for a long time and need a fresh look through a master plan to really convene a community around a vision for that park. And so as you'll see, we've provided this in an overview snapshot for you for this presentation, but it really doesn't do justice to the level of detail that we provide in the plan for what specific type of development. We get as detailed as we're comfortable with acquisitions, but obviously we're not going to tell you exactly which piece of land we're looking at. And finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about implementation. We did work through this planning process to identify kind of through peer review and comparative analysis other types of funding strategies that we need to be looking at. We're well aware that the need to diversify our funding streams for operations, maintenance and capital funding is critical, especially based on some of the legislative action that's impacting our cities. So you'll see that we've identified a number of [9:35:20 AM] things that other cities are doing that we can simply consider. And I will say that our director is actively working to explore some of these options and get a better understanding. So just know that this is in the works. And then I wanted to also acknowledge that we are so fortunate in the parks system to have some incredible partners that have brought outside resources and are leverageing philanthropy on increasingly high levels. We're extraordinarily grateful to these partners and expanding our partnerships and making it again as easy as possible for our community to plug in to our parks system and provide their time and outside funding. And I will say that the intention behind these conservancies from our perspective is not just to provide enhanced experiences for our community, but it also allows us as a parks department to use our resources in parts of town that may not have the capacity or that kind of [9:36:25 AM] necessarily outside funding. So it's sort of a twofold opportunity for us as a parks department. With that, we welcome your questions. Thank you. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I just had a quick question in relation to access to the parks, I guess. There's a page where you talked about -- I guess it's the walkability analysis. Did you also look at -- is there a drill-down in here to look at parking needs or transit in other ways to get to parks so there's not as much parking necessarily required in the park? >> So what you'll see is that we've identified specific opportunities, not necessarily the answer, but what needs to happen. [9:37:27 AM] So we identify opportunities to partner with capital metro in multiple ways. We talk very specifically about goals that are in the Austin strategic mobility plan that will improve intersections at parks, will allow for additional access to parks, improve specific issues like working with safe routes to schools, which also aligns with where a lot of our parks are. Improving the -- making sidewalks to and from parks a priority as well as bicycle facilities. We also talk about standards for really understanding how much parking is necessary. You're probably aware that that -- we're going to hear more and more about parking. And obviously it can be an access issue so we want to acknowledge it's not a simple issue, but we do intend to work with transportation to align with their plan, but at the same time be mindful of access issues. So you'll see things like reserving space for high occupancy vehicles. [9:38:28 AM] Making sure that we have car share space. So really looking at our parks as an opportunity to promote multimodal access. >> Kitchen: Okay. Thank you very much and I'll look into that. The reason I ask is one of the things that I think is important for us to consider is that the ability to reduce the amount of parking actually in parks wherever possible while not sacrificing access because the use of our green space for cars is something that I think we should reduce wherever possible because it basically takes away the green space that we need for many reasons. So thank you. >> Thank you. >> Alter: Thank you. I look forward to really diving more in-depth into the plan. I really just wanted to thank you for the very expensive outreach. I had an opportunity to attend several of the events and talk to people who came. I know in my district you were very creative in how you reached out to folks and [9:39:28 AM] very impressed with the level of engagement moving forward. And want to also appreciate the partnerships that we have as a park system and as we operate under refuse caps, those partnerships -- under revenue caps those partnerships are going to be that much more important so I'm particularly in learning more about your ideas, director Mcneely, on how we can up our game in those areas. You don't have to tell me right now. [Laughter]. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. I think this is great work and I too appreciate all the work that you did to try to make sure as many different Austin voices got included in the process as possible. I too need to spend more time actually digging into the draft, but I wondered if you could talk -- I notice on the slide overviews several times you've referred to the intent to work with aid to develop shared spaces. [9:40:28 AM] And I know that's been a long time on goal and that we've had some successes in that area, but I wonder if you could highlight what some of those recent successes have been and kind of what the next steps are for engaging aid in those partnerships because that is-- I think you may have referred earlier to the urban parks task force where a group of volunteer citizens come in together and kind of look at this and suggested that as a really good option for getting those pocket parks in places where we have park - - need for parks. >> Great. You'll note we summarized it here, but you will note that we actually call out very specific schools in every sub-area of the city that we intend to work with ain't really every school. We have enormous opportunity to partner with aid. As you probably know we have school parks, which are parks where we have an undivided interest, but there's also opportunities I think for us just to work more closely with aid in general. So it is a stated goal. As you remember, they're in the middle of a pretty [9:41:30 AM] difficult process so as far as potential shared facilities in the future, that is a question we've been asked. We're giving them the space they need in order to work through that, their facility process. I just wanted to add that we are very well aware and tend to work creatively once their current process has come to an end. I think there's some really great examples of -- that we would like to continue. You might be aware that we have a city's connecting children with nature program at the parks and recreation department and thanks to some support for our council for funding positions in that area. So we have a green school park program, which has allowed us to build nature play and elementary schools that serve low income communities. So there's some great examples of work like that that we can continue. So the green school parks is a great example of the work that we can do and that's possible with that type of collaboration. The other thing we're looking at is a new type of [9:42:31 AM] park, which is called a button park, which is the idea that even these little school parks that may be sort of closed to the public during the day, should have some recreational opportunity for families that may not necessarily be plugging into that school. So we have a new park type designed specifically to respond to that type of opportunity. Do you have any other feedback? >> No, I think that's a good overview. I think we definitely heard throughout the process how important these infill and school parks are, so I think it's something that we focused on. >> Tovo:... One of our button parks with the mustang be one? >> Yes. I would have to say I'm not the most -- I don't have as much knowledge about that particular park as I wish I did, but that's an example of a -- I think these are less than a half acre, but it's the idea of being able to provide some accessible space where you at least have either passive recreation or -- and/or just several play features. >> Tovo: That's really especially striking because it has - - of course, [9:43:31 AM] councilmember Casar and I were talking about the other day, sort of horse sculptures to climb up on. >> Correct. >> And a green school park would be Barrington elementary that I think we celebrated last year opening that. It not only allows for recreational play, but it allows for the curriculum development around environmental sciences so that the schools' teachers can also have outdoor teaching opportunities and the community can also utilize the knowledge that the teachers have to be able to further that throughout the non-school hours. >> I think that's an important piece. It's not just the physical infrastructure, it's the programming opportunities that exist with aid. So thank you for adding that. I don't think I was clear in my answer that that's an important part of our program. >> Tovo: Thank you. I have just one more question. In the feedback from the community also highlighted an interest in seeing more programming opportunities, more access to individuals [9:44:31 AM] of all ability. I wondered to what extent the parks department's plan also considers what I know is a goal of having more intergenerational programming. Can you sort of brief us on what some of the opportunities are there? >> Yes. We didn't go into a level of detail with this presentation, but you will see in the plan that -- let me go to that slide. We have some very specific recommendations around adult and senior programming and the need for more intergenerational opportunities. We heard -- we had two focus groups with seniors. We had one with seniors that are currently using our facilities and one with seniors who are not, so we could figure out why. Some of the things we heard were recommendations about even changing the know men culture of senior centers to something like adult activity centers to kind of take the idea that you're making it more accessible to adults over 50 and that people would respond more to that idea. And we obviously need to work with individual senior [9:45:31 AM] centers to explore those ideas. But on the whole we heard that intergenerational seniors wanted walking programs, they want gardening programs. Could you expand maybe something that I think I left out? >> Sure. I think there was a lot of conversation about understanding what is available and sort of the signage and some of the elements of park design as well, like related to programming. So that came up a bit with the discussion of seniors and just improving access to understanding what's there and -- I think more intergenerational was definitely a point that came out quite a bit. >> And we did brief the commission, on the same day actually, briefed the commission on seniors and the early childhood council, which was an interesting day. And both expressed a desire for more opportunity for intergenerational programming. So it's something that is well -- that those commissions have also pointed O. >> Tovo: Great. Thank you. I see that as a great area of opportunity and I look forward to seeing what comes from all of those conversations and planning. [9:46:31 AM] Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Renteria: I really want to thank your partners, park foundation, and I believe St. David's is another partner of the park that have done some outstanding pork in my neighborhood in my district. And and they improved our parks and they have planted some senior gardens. So I really want to thank you on that. But I'm really concerned also that we might have some missed opportunities. You know, we have gotten some funding from some park foundations and other groups to do some development improvements to our -- like our cultural center. That work hasn't been done. You know, we have an opportunity there at fiesta garden. We have the state-of-the-art handicapped accessible sky [9:47:32 AM] accuse launching pad there that no one can use. And people want an opportunity to go down to the water, but that's not being available to our public. So we have another -- I believe St. David's is also trying to do some improvements there by the ball parks. And that still hasn't been done. And I'm just really concerned that we're doing a lot more studies and delays, and we're missing out on a lot of opportunity there. So I really would like to see y'all really focus and take -- pay attention to what we need there in our eastside neighborhood. Thank you. >> Thank you. We'll be sure to follow up on some of the specific issues that you raised. And I will add that we do have an implementation component to this planning process to help hold us accountable to the plans that we're making, and we intend to make this [9:48:32 AM] available to the public through story maps, which are basically gis kind of spatial, very easy for the public to go on and literally click their area of town to understand what's happening. So we are working harder to make ourselves more accountable to these plans that we're making. But thank you for your feedback. >> Renteria: Yeah. I'm glad to hear that because this has been going on for not months, years. And I'm really concerned about that. >> Okay. Thank you for raising those issues. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you so much for the presentation. This is a really good plan. I saw a lot of community engagement when I was in my district and y'all were doing a community event there. The website is also really in-depth. So I know if people are listening at home, austintexas.gov/austinfuture parks, has a lot of information and you put a lot of the content -- the feedback that you received to help kind of guide this plan that's really helpful. [9:49:32 AM] One possible suggestion, I know there are some parks in my district that have like advocacy groups and local neighbors already involved in the parks near them, but if you see any gaps, maybe there could be a spot to highlight these are places that maybe no one has picked up, just so that people that are out there that want to get involved have kind of a landing space to go to say hey, I want to help. >> That's a good suggestion. We do have an adopt a park program, but I'm not sure how proactive we are. I think we're sort of welcoming, but maybe not as proactive as we could be. I think that is a good suggestion and I'll pass that along and make sure that we follow up on that as well. >> Ellis: Thank you. It's a really good plan. >> Mayor Adler: I want to join in thanking you for this. It's a lot of work, provides a real roadmap moving forward. A couple of questions. I couldn't find on it, and it might be that I just couldn't find it, the thought or possible extension of the trail around the lake extending east to the dam. [9:50:35 AM] I don't know if UT has some land in that area that the desire is to extend that trail. We should make sure that it's visible if it's not. And I may have just missed it. >> You did miss it. [Laughter]. It is in there. But thank you for mentioning it. We have a very -- we have a stated goal to explore the feasibility of extending the butler trail to red bud isle. And I will mention to extend the trail system as a whole all the way to Trevino park. So imagine being able to go all the way there and it's a wonderful vision. We do identify UT as one of the partners that we need to be engaged. And so I do appreciate you pointing it out. There's obviously a lot of work that needs to happen in order to make that happen, and maybe some leadership -- certainly some leadership from this body given the high level of partnerships. But we share your desire to see a connected Austin [9:51:36 AM] through our trails. >> Mayor Adler: And then there was a conversation that Kathie brought up about aid and it's really good. We're looking at these potential additional sites as new opportunities for us. Another partner in getting the four to eight thousand acres that we need would be tribute. >> Absolutely. >> Mayor Adler: Is Travis county also investing in parks in the city as opposed to -- or separate from parks outside of the city and in the county? I would hope and assume that we're getting a fair share of city taxpayers that are also county taxpayers, the county investment in parks in the city. Is that happening? >> I will say that if you look at Travis county's park plan you will see a lot of the acquisition that they've identified as in the further west and sort of further [9:52:38 AM] eastern parts of our county, especially along critical waterways like low land creek and other areas like that. They do have some interests in the city. There was a park called Allen park that they do still manage. We do work collaboratively with them so that we can make strategic acquisitions. As with UT and with other partners, I think there is always room for improvement in terms of our partnerships. But they do play a very important role in providing parkland overall to the community because the community, quite frankly, you know, they don't care if it's a county park or a city park. They simply -- or an hoa park for that matter. She just want access. We do work carefully with them and closely with them and meet with them frequently, but I will say that most of their focus is around the sort of outside of the city and the outer limits of our county. >> Mayor Adler: If you could take a look at that I would like to know what their investment is inside the city and their investment outside the city. >> We would be happy to take [9:53:39 AM] a look. >> Mayor Adler: That would be helpful. We -- there was a question about all access and I know there's an emphasis on that and providing all access opportunities in parks. There are some cities that have all access parks, so rather than having a piece of equipment in lots of parks, there's a park that becomes then a real convening opportunity for people that need special equipment and special opportunities. Did we look at that possibility? >> We did. We specifically call out the need for our ability to have an all destination play area. We cited the example in Round Rock. It's a shame, to be quite frank, that our community members feel they have to drive to another city to experience that type of a play feature, but that really is what we're dealing with now. We do a lot of other things to serve people who are experiencing -- who have disabilities of different sorts, but we acknowledge that there's room for improvement. [9:54:39 AM] So in addition to a destination play feature, we intend to incorporate all abilities play features in major play areas in district parks as well so more people have that opportunity. Kimberly, you might have something to add. >> If I made add to what -- might add to what Kim said, we are currently working with our partners in Austin parks foundation to seriously explore this ie field trips to other locations, checking out different entities that have boundless playgrounds. And it will likely come sooner rather than later. We don't have all of the details, but it's being actively explored as we speak as something that's very important to our city. >> Mayor Adler: That would be really good too and I appreciate that. The last thing, there's a lot of work on access to parks and increasing the access to parks. I think that's really, really good. I know that the mayor pro tem has an audit looking at increasing access to the cultural facilities, same kind of emphasis. [9:55:41 AM] That are being managed and supervised within the park department. And I think that that emphasis on access to the cultural opportunities is real important as well. >> I'd like to add, when we talk about access, we do spend a lot of time on the built environment, but one thing we have been working on that just hasn't made it to the top 10 list as being super important is that we're talking about what are the barriers that are nonphysical? You know, is it the access to understanding how you can apply for financial aid? Is it the information that we're distributing? Is it in the right language and is it in the right format? So we've been working very closely with the equity office and other team members on the equity action team to improve those sorts of things that are also considered barriers to access? >> Mayor Adler: Great. Thank you. Wonderful report. Thank you. Before we go on to homelessness, Jimmy? >> Flannigan: Thank you. Nice to see y'all. >> Good to see you too. >> Flannigan: I have a lot of questions. I'll try to be quick. [9:56:45 AM] One of my pet peeves as you know in your presentation on slide nine you cut off my entire district in the inset maps. You put all of south Austin, that was cool, but please try not to do that. When I will look through the parks website, I found it so that when we went through this process in 2010, there was a long range master plan in 2010? >> There was, but if there's a redirect button -- >> Flannigan: I found the current one too. I'm just curious is there an analysis of how we did compared to that plan in 2010? >> Like how much did we get accomplished from 2010? >> Flannigan: I didn't go and ride through the 2010 plan, but is there like a one page that says here's what we planned in 2010, here's how much we got done? >> We did not do that, but what we did do, we know probably not it as scientific as sort of a list with checks, but we do know we accomplished about 70% of what we intended to set out and accomplish from 2010. What we didn't accomplish was reevaluated and added to the list if it was still something that we intended [9:57:46 AM] to carry forward. I will say maybe we should have done a summary in the plan talking about what we had accomplished, and I'm sorry that we didn't do that. >> Flannigan: City manager, I think that might be a practice we wanted to start doing. >> I think that's a good U.S. >> Flannigan: Like planning sits on a shelf. But if we're doing a lot of it. It might be helpful for the community. >> I will say that one of the nice things about this planning process, I'll be honest, technology is such that we have better tools and spatial master planning. So -- but I wanted to say that I think it's a great suggestion. >> Councilmember, I would like to commit to putting together a -- some sort of summary that says what we did complete. I think that's important for not only the council, but for the community to understand what happened. >> Flannigan: I think that would be valuable. The statistic of acres per thousand people, what appears to be a core statistic of how you measure our parks department or our parks access. It is very different than walkability. [9:58:46 AM] And I've found a couple of what appear to be conflicting statistics between the plan and the presentation on that point. It says that 65% of the population is within walking distance of a park. The slides say 51% of the city is in deficient areas. Is that a land area versus access difference? >> Right. So the access is measured -- sorry. The access is measured based on that walking network within the city. And then when we did some of the analysis it includes the city and etj so the numbers are a little bit different. >> Flannigan: It would be really good to know when the analysis includes the etj. >> Sure. We made the note -- >> Flannigan: Intervally different. >> Right. And we do have -- so Kim talked about the 26 planning areas. We do have the stats by planning area. We do didn't include them in this presentation but we will have them in the [9:59:48 AM] appendix. >> Flannigan: I would separate out limited purpose as well because we don't spend our tax dollars in those areas so they are in the city but they're not a fair assessment of our parks system. >> Right. >> Flannigan: I think that's an important distinction to make, whenever that's done. I see in the report there is a map that color codes the the parkland deficient areas. I saw PDFs but those are unwieldly, depending a mobile device can't really use them. >> That's the intent. >> Flannigan: Cool. That would be helpful. >> Right. >> Flannigan: I do think it would be a good conversation to think about what -- I saw in the report there's a page about other non-pard parks. I think that some of that is captured in what I'm seeing in the maps, although it slows me down. I haven't been able to zoom all the way in. Some of the ones, as the mayor pointed identity, Travis county parks, there's [10:00:49 AM] a few of those that exist in the west planning area that maybe are not getting noted appropriately. I would double-check that. One of the types of park open space that we have in the community is internal to apartment complexes. How are we considering the access of those folks when they have amenities -- you know, there's three Mund people, 400 apartment units, whatever it is, I've got apartment complexes on 620 that have a pool, dog park and a trail but they're not -- I see those areas marked as parkland deficient even though those residents have access to green space and open space. >> Go ahead. >> I think we focus mostly on public access. >> Flannigan: Sure. >> So if something is gated off or you're not able to access it from the surrounding community, then we're saying that it's -- that it wouldn't be considered -- >> Well, yes, except we did -- hoas I think are a little bit different. So we actually, when we had a meeting in your district, [10:01:50 AM] we went and visited -- I'm trying to remember which one, near hunter's chase, and it was -- so it does -- if there is a park and it has recreational amenities and it's truly like an hoa park, I think that's different than what you might have in an apartment complex. So that does count toward the deficiency. Obviously if this park is serving this area we do count that. We look at recreational easements. I think it's an part, not a science. >> Flannigan: Totally. >> But we do try our best, especially as we get to the periphery of our city, we see more hoas. >> Flannigan: Yeah. I see a lot of the hoa parks. There's quite a number in my district that are still open to the public, there's no Gates [overlapping speakers] >> Great example. >> Flannigan: River place is a more challenging example since they are charging for that. That's a challenge. >> Right. >> Flannigan: How are we considering golf courses? [10:02:51 AM] >> In terms of deficiency? >> Flannigan: Yeah. >> Well, they are considered sort of -- a green space accessible, and so we do include them. We are working to try to create more pedestrian sort of access, like Hancock golf course is a great example where we are a walking trail around the periphery of the golf course. I will say we went to the pedestrian advisory committee or council, as well as the bicycle advisory council, and we did hear a desire, maybe not necessarily formalized, but for more sort of access through spaces like that as a part of mobility. We do count it towards -- as part of our -- what we offer the community in terms of parkland. >> Flannigan: What about private golf courses? I should have been more specific. >> No because I don't think anyone can just walk up and use -- >> Flannigan: Maybe we should have a off-line conversation on that. I'd do a block part behind [10:03:54 AM] balcony in my district, it was definitely treated that way. I can see deficient areas in the map where the houses back up to the government course. I think a more interesting analysis of that might be useful. >> Okay. >> Flannigan: Page 100 of the report, great part about the entrances issue. I love that. I'd love to see more work on solving the walkability just by creating the entrances. That's a really good point. I just see that in there. The walkability, is there any element of this that includes a short transit ride? >> Can you be -- like, in terms of public capital metro transit? >> Flannigan: Correct. I don't know you've ever been given this direction. I'm more free thinking if parkland deficiency maybe should include if you are at five minute to a bus stop distance from a park? >> Very preliminarily, rob spillar, before he went on his trip, he and I spoke about how can we do an [10:04:56 AM] analysis, who would be an appropriate contractor for exactly that concept. It's very preliminary so we don't have any information, nor do I have a plan but something that we're thinking about. >> Flannigan: You guys always seem to have the thought in my head halfway done by the time I bring it up. That's great. Last point more to my colleagues, my concerns about fiscal constraint. The last four pages, I think, pages 177 to 181, talk about funding. I have had challenges with planning processes before, and of course the community wants more parks, and of course they want more amenities. I just am not sure how we're gonna pay for it. And so the plan doesn't super talk about prioritization or how we'll make those hard decisions or how staff might recommend the council make those harder decisions. More so than anything else, those are the decisions that are gonna be before us so I want to be thoughtful of of that. >> We think that's a fair [10:05:57 AM] point. We just -- the funding issue is such a big one that we really -- we wouldn't be able to do it justice within this plan. We simply needed to understand what the community's goals were and then take a second step to understand how we can get there. You'll see that we have an implementation table that we're still -- you know, to be totally honest we're still working on the implementation plan. We want to get the goals established and figure out how we can do that and you'll see that we've identified each strategy or, you know, particular goal, whether it's development, master planning acquisition, as well as potential funding strategies. So we are trying to align our goals with strategies. >> Flannigan: One suggestion for that, as it's up to staff to consider, but I think one of the metrics that I don't see in the plan and maybe it's buried in there is one way to increase the percent of the population walking distance from a park is to have more housing walking distance from a park. So I don't know that we really did that analysis in other projects the council [10:06:57 AM] is working on right now, but I think that's an important detail. >> Fair enough. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> Alter: Thank you. I wanted to touch on two items that I didn't hear you talk about. I imagine they're in the plan but I was wondering if you could speak to them. I have two teenagers and depending on your teenager there are not a lot of opportunities within the parks. We talked about young kids. We talked about seniors. Can you speak a little bit about programming or infrastructure that might speak to teenagers? >> So I think, councilmember, you bring up a point that the parks and recreation department has struggled with for many years, right? That we're really great at youth programming, kids that are 12 and under, and we're still working to increase our abilities to provide programming for teens. And so when we talk about that expansion of [10:09:03 AM] >> So we have, you know, public art in our parks almost every day, thanks to that program. We have a very specific example about a new type of sort of facility that is sort of creative community center, which allow -- is a -- and we provide a lot of detail about what that would entail. It is a space that would allow for sort of rehearsal space, performance space, maker space that could be added to existing facilities or sort of a stand alone facility. We intend to work with economic development on their create a space bond to take a look at that. We do have specific examples of how we're doing that now and we have ideas about how we can use our -- we have such a wealth of assets in terms of land and facilities. Oftentimes it's simply a matter of the staffing we need to expand hours of facilities so that we can provide some of those amenities. Any other -- >> Yeah. Just -- you mentioned popups. I think that is something [10:10:03 AM] the plan talks a lot about, people wanting flexible pop-up activities they can do which includes arts and culture, including the strategies as well. >> I also would agree with you that we don't need to confine cultural and arts to cultural centers. Those things can happen in any of our recreation centers, and so it's a matter of having programming that will be -- outreach programming that can go from maybe a base site into multiple recreation centers to be able to -- so one of our programs that we have right now, totally cool, totally art, which happens to be a teen program, but, anyway, it is specifically an outreach program to all of our recreation centers to be able to bring culture and arts from a base camp to every recreation center. >> Alter: Well, I would love to work with whomever is working on thinking about that stuff. You know, it's -- there's some opportunities to do some things very flexibly if you can just get a little bit of electricity running in certain places. [10:11:03 AM] >> Right. >> Alter: You don't have to have fancy stuff. It can be 2x4s put together to be the platform. I think we often think we need a stage and we need the other but there's a lot of opportunity in these spaces, and given our weather there's some opportunities they don't have in Chicago, and it can be, you know, as simple as putting a piano -- you can put a piano out for months on end and have someone responsible for covering it. There are different things that you can do that -- in our community, given how creative it is, would allow for some of that creativity energy to take place in our parks as well. >> We couldn't agree more. Thank you for pointing that out. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else on this? Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Let's have the briefing on the homeless initiatives and -- colleagues, I'll remind you I've asked the manager to put this as a regular item on all of our work sessions [10:12:05 AM] going forward. So that we're gonna get a regular briefing on this and where we are. I guess that has it, like, every two weeks. We also discussed how the staff might be able to report back to the community on a weekly basis as well is maybe on off-weeks it could be just a short memo providing an update but I think that would be helpful too. >> Presentation is loaded. Rodney Gonzalez, assistant city manager. Before we get into the presentation I just wanted to frame some recent initiatives, events and updates that have got enus of course through today. You may recall on October 14 the staff had released an update to mayor and council regarding the homelessness initiatives up to that point, and most importantly we had delineated a working [10:13:06 AM] group of different departments broken out into five key priority areas of cleanup and storage, public safety, housing, homelessness, services and delivery and communications. And most importantly we had assigned priority area leads to each of those areas, and each of those individuals are here today. Important is that we are continuing to meet on a routine basis to discuss all matters regarding homelessness, to talk about strategies, to talk about implementation, talk about new things that we can be doing, and most importantly collaborating on the efforts that we are all making towards the city's number 1 priority initiative. On October 15, the priority area leads were here at council work session to provide various updates to council. It was about a three hour work session. A lot of good information that was shared not only with the council but with the public. And on October 17, council approved some changes to the camping, lying, sitting [10:14:07 AM] ordinances. As a follow-up, yesterday, October 28, in accordance with the council ordinance, staff performed outreach to individuals around the arch, namely within the boundary that was prescribed in the ordinance, which is 11th street to the north, fourth street to the south, 35th -- or 35 to the east and brazos to the west. Today is a follow-up to our compliment. We are here with echo and homeless strategy office to provide an over to council. Matt, the executive director is going to provide an overview of the endorsed action plan, the strategies that related to the homeless response system, what it is, how it's working, what's on the horizon. Lori Harris, our homeless strategy offer, is going to provide council some information on the guided path pilot project, which we believe is a very good project jumped way, as well [10:15:07 AM] as an encampment strategy that we have planned and recommendations of various things we plan to do before the end of the year. The following question and answers regarding the presentation, we'll provide a quick overview of the outreach performed yesterday. Once again we have each our priority area leads here for any questions that council may have of them. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Matt, executive director for echo. >> Good morning. Thanks for having me here. So council adopted the echo action plan and the system components are up on the screen now, involve outreach and shelter, housing and support services, addressing disparities, effective system response and community commitment. I think it's important to recognize that these -- all of these elements will work to address any homelessness -- ending homelessness in Austin here [10:16:07 AM] if done together and if they're resourced effectively. So very quickly, just want to provide an overview of the echo leadership organizational chart. Just to give you a sense of the lines of business that echo is involved in and how we support the homeless response system here in Austin. So we've done some reorganizing at the top to make sure that we have been able to highlight some of the data-driven response that we need here in Austin as a community when addressing homelessness. We have added a vice president of quality assurance, in the process of hiring for that position to oversee our homeless management information system and research and evaluation departments at echo. Then we also see -- tying back to the action plan, strong need for the strategic planning and partnership aspect of the work as this is a community-wide response and not a response that's just reflective of one organization, and so that [10:17:08 AM] sort of put an emphasis on that position to be able to do some outreach to the community members. Not that we think should be part of our homeless response system that might not currently be, and to continue to engage all the great organizations that have been at the table and continue to lead the homeless response system here in Austin, Travis county. So a quick overview of those departments and how they coordinate with action plan and areas of coordination. As you can imagine as an organization, everyone is touching pieces of the action plan in all the five phases. But I wanted to call out more specifically where those areas of focus are within the various departments. So our continual care and community partnerships, as you can see, really focused on -- I'll go into more detail on those specific departments later in the presentation. But very focused on system effectiveness and addressing disparities. [10:18:08 AM] Our coordinated entry system has pretty significant housing and support services component from a referral perspective. And outreach and shelter. Community housing is the housing and support services piece of the action plan is their main area of focus. Our his system looks at system effectiveness overall, so all the data that's going into our homeless management information system is being spit out into our research and evaluation department to take a look at and compare that to outcomes and best practices across the country. As you can see, the research and evaluation piece really takes a look at all five pillars of the action plan and I think is probably some of the work that's being done there is really important to understand the scope of the resources needed to end homelessness here in Austin. Just at the bottom there you can see we're about to start hopefully here in the next month or two the pay for [10:19:09 AM] success project. That project is not a stand alone department. It will be -- it will be integrated into the various departments here, and we're pushing hopefully to start that project in the next -- before the new year. So I want to talk a little bit about echo's role. Oh, quickly, just some data points to hit on for the homeless response system. Since August 19, to present, today, 223 households have had their homelessness experience resolved via rapid rehousing and permanent supportive rehousing. August 19 to present, 216 households were able to resolve their homeless situation through other [10:20:11 AM] routes, either through diversion or self-resolution with help from case management and the support services they get in the community. So that's a good indication of the scope of the work being performed currently and also to mention the great work being done by the service provider community here in Austin, echo obviously didn't house any of those folks or provide them services on their own. So it's very important that that integrated approach that we'll talk about as we go through the presentation -- >> Mayor Adler: What was the number and time period? >> Sure. From August 19 to present, 223 households via either rapid rehousing or permanent supportive housing, so those two -- that's a housing intervention provided through the continual care funds. Also, from August 19 to today, 216 households via other routes that aren't -- that weren't bringing them into our homeless response system. So you look at diversion or self-resolution through help with their case manager, just the support services they were able to get via coordinated assessment and light touch after that, they [10:21:11 AM] were able to resolve their homeless situation. So just a quick overview now of echo's role as a coc lead agency and what it means to be the collaborative applicant for continual care funds. So coc is continuum of care, and echo has been designated the lead agency and the collaborative applicant, which means that we are responsible for coordinating the federal application for dollars that come into Austin and Travis county. We do that with our service partners. We have various stakeholders that receive funding, different types of funding through our coc. And they all complete applications at the end of the time -- at the end of the year, and then echo evaluates and scores those applications and creates what's called a consolidated application back to H.U.D. So h.u.d.'s tasked cocs and actually mandates the [10:22:11 AM] continuum care agency to the commitment of ending homelessness, the idea is that it's larger than just the federal dollars and service providers coordinating the federal funds, provide funding efforts for nonprofit providers and state and local governments to quickly rehouse homeless people so that people experiencing homelessness are not lagging in the system for extended periods of time. And promoting access and utilization of mainstream programs, essentially what we're looking at is making sure we right-size the right type of housing intervention to the person experiencing homelessness or the household experiencing homelessness, and we're tasked with ensuring that to the best of our ability we can get people into the right intervention to help resolve their homelessness situation. So we have -- we have what's called -- echo is governed through our coc lead agency, [10:23:13 AM] monikerred by membership council. They are considered the coc board, and they're -- they help prepare and coordinate and score the collaborative application that's come in or the separate applications. I apologize. And echo is responsible for creating the collaborative application. We're also responsible for evaluating the outcomes of the awarded programs through our research and evaluation component. We do that in various ways. All sort of using the H.U.D. Metrics. That can change year to year. Fiscal year 2018, to give you an idea of the scope of the work, the coc was awarded $6.8 million for austin/travis county. We also received funding for the youth homelessness demonstration program, and if you know that is the yhdp funds. So they've been added to the 2019 coc funding to increase the funding to 10.5 million. [10:24:15 AM] That is a request that's in. We have yet to be awarded. We should find out our total award sometime in January or February, we believe. So our responsibility as the coc lead agency, so the continuum of care lead agency responsibilities include compliance to H.U.D. Regs and fiscal compliance to the regulations set out by H.U.D. In terms of eligible expenses and program standards. The -- we're also designated to carry out the planning and system operation activities. So the coordinated entry system, the setup, the prioritization, those are all done in conjunction of course with our -- the service provider community here in Austin Travis county. But echo is responsible for a governance charter related to that work. [10:25:16 AM] We're also responsible for coordinating a local competition, which is called the nofa, notice of funding availability competition. Those funds are granted to providers in our community. Providers can apply for funds for what's considered -- what's called a bonus project outside of the current allocation. And we can go into that. I'm happy to answer questions about that later on. We manage the annual H.U.D. Application, help to coordinate other funding opportunities, and we do like I said project and system monitoring of our coc federal dollars. We coordinate the point and time count, and it's mandated that we consult with our emergency solutions grant recipients, and so those funds are funneled through the state to the cities and county. We have -- are mandated to establish a coordinated entry system, which we've done, and develop written standards for various housing types, like rapid [10:26:17 AM] rehousing and permanent supportive housing. So just to quickly -- quick overview of the various departments at echo. So our continuum of care coc partnerships department, it manages the nofa and interfaces with the membership council, which is mentioned before. So they're charged with completing the collaborative application every year, which is about a four-month process from start to finish. And working with our community partners on establishing standards. The rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing standards that were mentioned before. So that programs are run similarly across -- if you're funding a rapid rehousing program you have a good idea about what you'll get for that money and that funding and we have a good idea about what the joints are associated with that work. If you're going to fund or there's permanent supportive housing happening in your community, that those programs are standardized and you have a good idea about the outcomes associated with just work per financial dollar [10:27:18 AM] commitmented to that service type. Right now that department has been focused on trying to really -- that area of focus will be the collaboration with the action plan. We'll come out of that department in terms of how to facilitate the city funds, helping to line up with the federal dollars that might line up with any state funds or county funds that come in to people experiencing homelessness, to the work that's happening on that front. Right now, currently, it's operating -- we have a great, you know, wonderful program director and staff there that do a great job of setting out standards and creating standards for the projects, and we're working -- I think we have some build out to do around our ability to monitor and to continue to improve upon best practices in the various program types. [10:28:19 AM] Our coordinated entry system is a robust coordinated entry system. You've seen its ability to be dynamic in realtime with the pilot that's happening right now and our ability to create a by name list for that pilot, manage that list and help sort of cross-check those folks that are experiencing homelessness outside of the arch with our coordinated entry system, see who is in, who has a resource attached, who might have case management attached already, and be able to work off that list to help those people resolve their homeless situation with service providers. Our coordinated entry system comes from several -- doing this work in several different communities. Our system is really well established, very well thought out, and runs exceptionally well. Right now I think the issue is, you know, we have 5,000 -- five to 7,000 people on that list so it's really a resource issue right now in terms of being able to get people off the street through that list and [10:29:21 AM] through the homeless response system here. And just as a -- you know, anecdotally, I think it's important to acknowledge that the coordinated entry system system was set up by H.U.D. Because of their recognition that there are scarce resources in these communities. So there was a need to create a coordinated process by which folks access those resources, and I think that that piece is important to recognize, that there was an expected list to happen, and I think that communities that are doing this really well attack that list in different ways and can resource that list in different ways. And the hope here is that we Tony refine our coordinated entry process here in Austin and continue to look to improve based on some best practices we have seen and we continue to resource it effectively and bring in more resources that aren't mandated to use that coordinated entry system so that we can leverage the work we've done to create a coordinated system and the [10:30:21 AM] efficiencies around that in order to reduce some perceived I think, waste in the community around duplicative processes. So our community housing partnerships, this is a really important aspect of the work. This department interfaces with private property managers and landlords in the community to provide access to people experiencing homelessness through the housing -- or rental assistance dollars that come through our homeless response it will system. They work closely with private property managers on eligibility criteria. So helping to relax tenant selection criteria and background checks and other things that can be barriers to our folks accessing some of the units in the community. They work closely with the private property managers to ensure that rents are paid on time, from the -- you know, the rental assistance is paid on time, the tenant portion of rent is paid on time. They liaison with our supportive service community [10:31:21 AM] and providers, case managers, clinicians, in order to make sure that the tenant understands the lease, the occupancy requirements of the unit, and helps to mitigate any potential issues that come up in the apartment units. This is one of the things that's happening here in Austin is that we have a lead agency that's taken on some of this work. We don't do all of the landlord outreach and engagement for the folks experiencing homelessness in this community and one of the things you've seen nationally start to happen is that that work starts to consolidate with one organization or one or two organizations because the idea that multiple organizations are reaching out to our community and explaining the programs in different ways is one of the things that's not a particularly east use of the resource, and so I think one area, what's on the horizon [10:32:21 AM] when looking at this department, is to sort of determine what path we're going to head down as a community in terms of standardizing that work. So our homeless management information system, his, is a requirement to receive H.U.D. Funds, to have an hmis set up. Our his system is also one of the best that I've seen in the country. It does a great job of being able to adapt and bring in different data points that are -- that people are looking for, various service providers are looking for, or, you know, that we've -- with the pilot we're doing outside of the arch, we were able to create a template within our his system very quickly, within a day, we were able to go in and electronically get the data points that the serve providers were looking for [10:33:22 AM] in order to measure success and to give an idea about what the -- who the people were that are experiencing homelessness outside of the arch. So we were able to build that into a database, run reports off of that, run reports off of that template, and provide updates on very specific metrics that people were looking for as it relates to that geographic area. In the future, I think what we're looking for is -- in our his system is to get more people involved in using his as the primary platform for documenting on people experiencing homelessness in their agencies. One of the things that many hmis systems have struggled with is how to merge health care data with some of the housing and case management and clinical case management data that's happening outside of the hospital systems or outside of the clinics. Health care and criminal justice information is stored separately, obviously in separate databases for hipaa reasons, but we're not pushing that data into his the way I think we could. We could do that a little [10:34:22 AM] more effectively so that the -- run the hospitallists that's in front of someone at the emergency room can have access to hmis, see this person might be connected to a case manager with caritas or integral care and be able to appropriately create a discharge plan that's more focused and helpful to the person experiencing homelessness rather than not having access and not understanding all the supports that that person may or may not be connected to. So we're working on that with our his provider on how we can merge some of the electronic health record information with our his system information. For our research and evaluation department, right now mainly the main database that they're working out of is his. And they're pulling reports out of his and, you know, evaluating effectiveness of programs. So if you have two separate rapid rehousing programs for instance set up in his, we [10:35:24 AM] can pull reports based on each program and then look at whether or not the case management to client ratios are the same or different. So if one program has a 30 to one ratio, one program has a 20 to one ratio, how does that impact the ability to serve that -- the people in that program. Are the outcomes the same or different? Is that program benefiting by enrolling more folks? Are we reaching more people? Are we providing a less effective service to 30 folks and not helping to resolve their homeless situation? Is a better number 25 or 20. It's sort of looking at the projects, like, in a silo and then looking at them more broadly across the system response to understand their effectiveness. In the future I think the research and evaluation is gonna be playing a major component and a large role in the pay for success project that's about to [10:36:24 AM] start and also in the merging of the data sets between the electronic health records and trying to work with the health care system, work with the criminal justice system more effectively to show that providing housing to folks experiencing [10:41:39 AM] >> That survey is much lengthier, it's a longer conversation. You get more intimate with the person in terms of where their background is, where they were add, where they're headed and we wanted to make that process much faster, much quicker so that we can capture the right information that we needed as quickly as possible. And so with the provider community, they helped to craft what that short survey and assessment looked like. That then created our by name list for every individual who would be included in the guide to path project. Only those individuals surveyed over that day perfected a part of the project. After that, after we concluded those surveys in that two-day period, we came back together and validated that by name list. Thanks to the coordination of echo and utilizing his, we then set, okay, this person has the right touch with the system or this system might already have a case manager and we kind of validated all of the names to say okay these are the folks we are actually going to make sure whatever is necessary, however long it takes, those are the folks that we're going to make [10:42:40 AM] sure are going to get housed through this project. Individuals during that two day period were immediately offered any open slots for emergency shelter. The current shelter providers were very generous and gracious and waved their policies that they currently have that would hinder those entrances. For instance the arch was able to waive if somebody had to exit their facility due to some behavior issues or other issues that broke policy, they said that they would waive this so that person can come inside. And Salvation Army did the same thing, if somebody timed out past their 60 days, that person could come back in if-- I believe with the Salvation Army they have a 60 day time limit and you can't return for another 60 to 90 days so they watched that policy for the pilot [10:43:40 AM] program. The pop-up navigation center you've been heroic about at the Faulk library was popped up inside of the arch for immediate case management and navigation to mainstream services along with coordinated entry and kind of doing that longer [indiscernible] For anybody that wasn't part of the guided path pilot first snapshot. The results for this first phase, 99 individuals were identified and surveyed. Initially last week we reported 81 but there was a lag in the data entry, and as of yesterday we know for sure that there were 99 that were surveyed and now are part of the guided path pilot project. 13 of those individuals out of the 99 we have found out they were already in shelter so they have been exited out of shelter for the day. So at a certain period of time shelters say, okay, we need to clean up, we need to -- you can return at a certain period of time so those folks then exited and just stayed outside of the arch, waiting to be able to go back into shelter. Additionally, out of those [10:44:43 AM] 99 individuals, 22 people that were offered shelter that evening stayed there at the shelter at least one night after being engaged over that two-day period. The current phase that's currently underway is service engagement. We've been in this phase since last week and we'll be continuing through this weekend until all 99 individuals have been resolved with their housing crisis. So at service engagement, what happens is pretty much we go through a by name list and make immediate referrals to people who, one, are willing to accept but even if they're not willing to accept we say we're gonna match this person with appropriate resources based on the snapshot we took during that two-day period and also based upon the data that is in his. We are also making available through the city contracts, again, the generosity and goodwill of the partners to make this a priority over their own priorities I think [10:45:44 AM] is significant. So making those case management slots available, shelter bed slots available, diversion, and also really importantly is the referrals to substance abuse treatment slots and mental health treatment slots. That is a tremendous need in our community. I believe that Texas is ranked 49th or 50th when it comes to mental health funding. And so with that at the intersection of the lack of affordable housing, that's where you're coming into what you see in the unsheltered population. And so as a result, as of yesterday, and I have one updated number for this morning, four people have been housed out of the 99. Two -- it says one on your slide . But I just got an update this morning from integral care, two people have been reunited with their family and so no longer are experiencing homelessness. Three people were accepted [10:46:45 AM] respite at 15th street. And 74 of the 99 people surveyed are currently enrolled or pending enrollment into appropriate programs that lead them to permanent housing. We do have a gap as of right now. 24 people are not matched with programs for enrollment. As we continue to, again, kind of match people with resources we find out, oh, okay, so, like, yesterday when we were doing the by name list we found out we are dealing with an individual who had a chronicity around diabetes, over a certain age but he was matched with a provider that wasn't with elder care and so then we moved it over to an elder care resource. So as we're kind of moving in and as case management and the navigators are talking with individuals, they find out, okay, what are the actual resources and supportive services that you need to get you on a path to ending your housing crisis and so that may change. So we may have assigned somebody to care that, end up saying, okay, no, [10:47:48 AM] thisperson actually needs to go to dac, psh through the arch. So that's a constant movement. So but as of right now, 24 are not matched with programs for enrollment. As of yesterday there's a commitment by providers to see if they can open up any more additional slots. So as we're speaking today, they are meeting right now to go through that list and see what other additional slots for those 24 people we might be able to open up. The next phase of the guide to path pilot project, which is a critical one, is going to go built out in the next few weeks and that has to do with sustainment and accountability. And so that means much more increased outreach activity, very thoughtful, very strategic in the times that outreach is out there to continue to ask, how did you end up here, why are you here outside of the arch, and what can we do to help you resolve your housing crisis? [10:48:48 AM] Increased police monitoring in in encampment strategy that has worked in other communities, having increased police activity, not to enforce but rather to just be there as a support to those who are also -- who are seeking shelter and also in support of the outreach is going to be important. And then the increased cleaning of the areas and then what I would like to be able to do is also create a perceived impact assessment. So we will do pretty much like an informal assessment of the neighbors around the arch, the individuals found outside the arch, the folks that are inside salvation Army and the arch, and just get a kind of quick kind of informal viewpoint of what do you think has happened outsidest arch? Has this made a difference? And what difference to you has it made? And so that is gonna be a part of that third phase for the pilot project. [10:49:51 AM] My initial assessment of the pilot and a more thorough assessment will be done as the pilot continues and as we come to a conclusion of that second phase and into the third, is that -- and this is anecdotal, but every individual that was engaged shared that they want housing or -- and services but not everyone wanted emergency shelter. That was based upon our current unused and available shelter spots. I do know that the arch has been extremely generous with making additional space available, but at the same time that space that we continue to offer those individuals are not being used. Based upon just this pilot, there seems to be an overenrollment in rapid rehousing and lack of permanent supportive spots. What that says -- because [10:50:54 AM] there not available affordable housing units along with case management slots, what they do is take -- they take the most chronic person and say, okay, we don't have a psh unit for you so we're going to put you in a rapid rehousing, and rapid rehousing is only temporary and it's very limited and it does not have always the same intensive case management that someone of psh needs. So we're enrolling people in available rapid rehousing. And use folks are not always successful. And so they end up back into unsheltered situation. And so what you'll -- and, again, without me looking at the data and having some really thoughtful conversations with that, that puts us in a lot of risk that our rapid rehousing programs are not being successful. But it is the right thing to do because if we don't have a permanent supportive housing available meeting somebody with those deep needs leaves them vulnerable [10:51:54 AM] to die on the streets. We would rather use rapid rehousing because that's the only available resource that we have so we're going to put them in that but that's not the appropriate reservoirs. What I believe the system is hoping to do is when psh does become available they'll roll people off of rapid rehousing into psh. The challenge is, we still aren't getting the psh in this community. Which means that people are stuck in the rapid rehousing from those who actually need psh and then the folks who actually need rapid rehousing are now clogging up your system in the middle. And so when you see when someone says, oh, I've been in coordinated entry for three to five years and when you look at maybe the [indiscernible] They're not chronic but they could become chronic because they've been waiting object list so long and we're creating chronicity because we're not having throughput because we don't have the psh for the right individuals and we are utilizing rapid rehousing for psh which means everybody who needs rapid rehousing isn't getting it and in addition to that is [10:52:55 AM] the lack of diversion or -- not lack of diversion, a more robust diversion where people shouldn't be enrolled. There's a lot of folks who should not be enrolled in coordinated entry because there's ways we can do diversion, which I appreciate aph, who recently did a training with our community providers this past week with nehh, national alliance to end homelessness, how to create a community wide, system wide diversion program. Matt you probably have a lot to say about what I just said. >> I do. I'll save some of it. I want to mention this is not a unique scenario so the right-sizing of resources to people experiencing homelessness, this is -- this happens across the country in almost every community. There is not enough permanent supportive housing in any community fighting to end homelessness on behalf of people experiencing homelessness in their community. There is one thing that's unique I would say about [10:53:55 AM] abundance's situation, and that is that we -- outside of the building the integral care just built, 50 units of permanent supportive housing there with what's called project-based rental assistance at the terrace at oak springs from the housing authority of the city of Austin and with H.U.D. Vash volunteerers, veteran vouchers also, that's the only permanent supportive housing in this community in central Texas. That's 50 units. Just to gif you an idea of the scale, in Denver metro, just Denver alone there were 3,000 units of site based permanent supportive housing in just the city of Denver. So there is a gap in that model here that all our permanent supportive housing and the resources are what's called tenant based rental assistance, who are relying on the private property management community to come to the table with units for us to be able to house our most vulnerable folks. A lot of times that partnership, while we're very appreciative of those partnerships and they exist [10:54:56 AM] in -- and they are strong in many ways, we're relying on folks who aren't involved as heavily in that tenant's treatment or care coordination in order to stand up a very pivotal part of that person's -- ending that person's homelessness and that's providing the actual space. So in permanent supportive housing units like with the terrace at oak springs, which you'll see as that opens, you have a property management company and on-site services that are working in conjunction to keep people housed and to help folks not have to relocate, and we have a real gap in that model here in Austin as compared to other communities across the country. >> Thanks for that, Matt. And, again, that was just my assessment just based upon us bringing the crisis response system just to this location. So, again, I'm only basing what I'm saying based upon the guided path project and based upon some ancillary [10:55:56 AM] conversations and discussions I've had with the provider community and echo. But I think a greater kind of dive into what the data actually says is important to have a system that's nimble, that can change resources based upon the data that the population exists within his. So based upon that, I -- the assessment is that, you know, of course we said it already, that new psh slots are going to be needed for us to really be successful in this project. So we're going to be thinking through a solution towards that. Also my initial assessment, the inflow outside of the arch, the other systems are contributing to that. So one of the questions -- well, let me give you an example. And so this was based upon a conversation from an individual who ended up at the arch. The story may not be all the way valid, and it's hard to make it valid, but that person was recently released [10:56:58 AM] from a hospital, still had bandages and ooze and puss coming out of his side, was very lethargic and we brought him in immediately and he was discharged in the middle of the night after gallbladder surgery, discharged and put right outside the arch. Additionally, and you guys may have already known this but this was new information as we were doing the snapshot and I was having conversation with individuals outside of the arch is that there's an Austin transition center where parolees from across the state must come to Austin to register and then, additionally it's my understanding that they have to stay in Austin. So you're wondering where the inflow is coming from. The inflow is coming from many systems who say here's the arch, come here and get help. And so a part of a system for other communities that are really trying to tackle this issue is something [10:58:00 AM] around prevention. And prevention is not really a crisis response system responsibility. Prevention is a responsibility community-wide, where we start addressing systems that influence the housing -- the homeless crisis response system. So that is health. That is corrections. That is other areas where we see the inflow coming into our community. And so I think that's a larger conversation that I think needs to be had, and I know internally at the city staff level there's been some conversations around prevention and how do we start instigating those conversations. The will of the providers, again, to make this a priority outside their usual services is being made but continuous pressure to serve without resources may negate that goodwill. And what I mean by that, is that, you know, we have asked folks who have separate board of directors, have separate strategies, have separate goals, and [10:59:00 AM] they had somebody next on their list of who they were gonna serve and how they were gonna serve them and through the guided path pilot we set, ec, can we get ahead of you and instead you work with our 99 people outside? And so I think that says a lot about the provider community. We're willing to make our priority their priority. But at the same time, what we are doing is it conflicts with the efforts of having a coordinated systems that community-wide to address not just what's happening outside the arch but community-wide. And we want to make sure that as we're moving people into housing and receiving services, that we provide a more equitable way of doing that through that centralized intake system that Matt spoke about with the coordinated entry system. So the guided path [indiscernible] Is our test of how we could potentially [11:00:00 AM] make this more of a strategy city-wide when it comes specifically to encampments, and so, again, the housing affordability gap that is happening is widening, not just here, but nationally. And how do we provide shelter for homeless and lower-income residents is something that, again, most cities are beginning to grapple with and some are find something success. Others are continuing to find I've said this before that any successful plan specific to encampments must include appropriate housing options to the presence of encampments in the community can be resolved over time of. Without there being an appropriate landing spot for individuals that are unsheltered, we're never going to move the needle and the unsheltered population in the city of Austin. So again, the immediate housing units are keys to success. Motels is something that I [11:01:04 AM] have brought up before. I know Matt has talked about motels. The reason we talk about motels is motels are being talked about and utilize understand other communities as an easy way to convert to affordable permanent supportive housing units because those structures are already in place. When we're talking about psa's, we're talking about sros. We don't need two bedroom units, we need sro's, one bedroom, and motels can be easily converted to that. For that strategy, any motel that would be purchased or anything like a motel that would be purchased would be initially used as bridge housing and slowly converted to hsa's. Senior certain standards that hud looks at that this is a unit, but here is a psh unit. So the hotel rooms may need some modifications to get to that criteria. So then we can then call -- when we know we're placing [11:02:05 AM] somebody into a motel into bridge housing, and recollection bridge housing means you already have case management and you already had a unit identified, you're just waiting to get to that unit. And so anybody that we take from an encampment strategy we would say we're going to put you into bridge housing knowing that you're going to be converted into a psh unit as we begin to slowly transition those motels. One of the cautions I have -- and as Matt said, communities are grappling with this issue of how do we resolve the gap of permanent supportive housing and how do we also resolve the ongoing needs of those who don't need permanent supportive housing. And also our list would then coordinate entry. We talked about the 7 or 8,000. There is still a significant amount of individuals that are on there who need [11:03:07 AM] permanent supportive housing. So while we create this encampment strategy, which in our world we call a side door because it's not working within the system that was created. If we create this encampment strategy then we may be can balancizing the resources of -- resources. So we may have people waiting for years to get the permanent supportive housing. So we would need to discuss what that would look like if we decided to prioritize an encampment strategy. One thing is if we would do a one for one. If we housed somebody through the encampment strategy we also dedicate one resource to someone coming off the coordinated entry list so we could be as fair and equitable as football and utilizing any rapid units that we Mike available through this potential equipment strategy [11:04:11 AM] strategy. In less than two months in this position I do have some recommendations. These are very preliminary. I think that as time goes on, Matt and I both will probably have a more robust and clear path of some real strategies and how we can maximize the city's investment to leverage opportunities with the federal dollars that are coming in. But based upon just my immediate assessment of some of the things that I've been working on meant that the city -- that the city staff has been working on and council, is I would encourage us to formalize an interagency working group which that means that any departments that currently have contracts with homeless providers, that has said okay, you must utilize his. And from my understanding most of our contracts have required for providers to utilize his. It's important for that group to get together and that would through aph, [11:05:14 AM] nhcp, dak, my office and ems, for us to begin to meet monthly through the end of the year for us to begin to review the programming results and investments based upon the data we have in his. So we can see what the outcomes are. If we're getting the outcomes that we're seeking and if we're getting our money's worth. I think that's pretty much what you guys have been asking is where is our money going and are we getting what we expected in terms of return on investment. And again, that standard that I would ask for that working group to have is to track and compare the outcomes achieved presence S against the hud coc standards. Because I think of the things that's important to acknowledge is hud does score higher the coc application that Matt talked about when local Dolores are completely aligned with hud dollars. Hud wants us to maximize our dollars and we want to maximize our dollars. So hud is saying let's get in line, and the way you get [11:06:14 AM] in line or align those two is through the lead agency. My second recommendation is to review and evaluate city investments to endorse with Austin's action plan. The city council approved a budget item to establish performance criteria. I am recommending that the city contract with an experienced national expert to review and evaluate city of Austin investments and homelessness tox assess those outcomes that match the intentions of the contracts across the board. So that review will endeavor ways to align city of Austin investments with not only the echo plan, but to maximize potential federal funding and to maximize the outcomes that the city of Austin is seeking. The final report would be presented to council during the first quarter of 2020 and what we would ask this consultant to do is actually look at our total investments, look at every [11:07:17 AM] contract, see what the outcomes are. Are those outcomes leading to what we are actually seeking and then looking at the action plan that we have adopted and saying okay, this contract leads to outreach in shelter, this contract leads to system effectiveness. This contract isn't doing anything. So here is how I would repurpose or how I would recommend repurposing it. Recommendation three, procure properties in order to implement a successful encampment strategy. This would include continuing monitoring of city data on outcomes of health, safety and sanitation needs of unsheltered populations. Our staff is already doing a fantastic job on monitoring that and I just want to make sure that I said that out loud that we will continue to do that as city staff. Additionally the steadfast commitment for the city of Austin to continue to partner with echo and other interested, experienced parties to identify potential properties that result in quickly building a pipeline of low barrier affordable units as quickly [11:08:20 AM] as possible. Additionally, I know that there was, mayor and councilmembers, that there was during the veterans surge you guys did a landlord recruitment campaign. I know that there is a landlord incentive program that currently exists at echo, but I would recommended for there to be a campaign to recruit landlords for them to get into the landlord incentive program that would benefit the whole homeless response system, not just the encampment strategy. The encampment strategy would be one of the benefactors, but an entire campaign around why housing this population that we're talking about benefits all of society, but also provides some incentives and some value to those landlords that are working with -- that would potentially be working with our system. In preparation of more permanent supportive housing units coming online, again, we have the units, but the case management is as [11:09:21 AM] important because we want people to not just get housed, but stay housed. So an increase in case management training, intense active case management that would include trauma informed case management, housing first and trauma reduction to help them stay housed, I think it would give an opportunity for current staff at our community providers to potentially level up so if they've been working at a certain tier and if we give them some training around intensive case management around permanent supportive housing, it may give them opportunity to level up to be a psh case manager that would increase I'm assuming their salary and their capacity to do this work. >> I want to mention quickly, sorry to jump in, but echo did just receive an award from JP Morgan chase to create a more robust landlord incentive program. That announcement will be tomorrow with the apartment [11:10:22 AM] association there and echo hand in hand with JP Morgan chase with the idea that we will start to more formal -- more formally create these partnerships that will help create more units to come online in the next couple of years. >> I knew that, Matt, that's why I Teed it up for you. [Laughter]. My last recommendation is this is not an easy path, it's not a short path, but you're on the path. Stay on the path. Stay committed, stay resilient. That is how we're going to come through to really seeing the impact that our community wants to see and that you all want to see around this very complex issue. And so I'm hoping that with these recommended steps that we can be more effective with our investments, be able to report to you more effectively and other [11:11:23 AM] stakeholders about what your investments are buying. And be able to hold the programs and partners that we work with accountable. And then reallocate investments to gain better results and ultimately to reduce homelessness and the costs that are associated with it. So I appreciate your wisdom and your thoughts and your reactions to what Matt and I have shared today. >> I'm sure there aren't any questions. [Laughter]. Approximate . >> Thank you, Laurie and Matt. I also want to thank council for your guidance and support throughout all this process. Thanks, city management at all levels, not just the city manager, but deputy city manager and assistant city managers. It truly has been all hands on deck. Thank the city departments, department directors, assistant directors and staff and community providers. We wanted to provide this update on these recent really good efforts underway not just about the city, -- by the city, our homelessness strategy officers, our community providers, our lead coc, [11:12:24 AM] echo K that the point, mayor and council, we'll open it up to questions that you may have. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I usually don't. I'm going to start this time. Then I'll pass it around and then come back because I have lots of questions as I'm sure a lot of people do. Let me begin with the last recommendation you made is to stay on the path. I understand that the definition of ending homelessness, reaching effect of zero is that you're able to house people at the same rate that you're able to move people out of the system. My question is this: Is it a realistic expectation that we can end homelessness in Austin? >> Yes. And I think that really -- what it comes down to is the prioritization that ending homelessness in this community is our community's priority. And there are -- there's [11:13:24 AM] competing priorities as there are for all of you for a lot of reasons. I wouldn't be in this work if I didn't think ending homelessness was possible and I firmly believe that with the right commitments and the right -- the continued work of great service providers here in alignment and resources that we can do that, yes. >> And I would add to that, mayor, I think a lot of folks have used this word, the moral imperative. Not only can we, but should we? And the answer is yes. These are residents of our community that deserve no less than to be sheltered. And it's incumbent upon all of us collectively, not just within the city organization, but throughout the community, to make this our goal to effectively end homelessness in Austin. >> Mayor Adler: And I'd just state parenthetically that I'm proud to be part of a council that identified ending homelessness in our community as our collective [11:14:25 AM] number one priority and we did that a year and a half ago as we moved into this area. You've talked about you're doing kind of an evaluation of the system to figure out where we're backing up and where we need the dollars spent and where we need to fill gaps so that we can in fact create the system that takes people off the street and houses them and gets them back into stabilized lives. And you've talked about some of the things that are happening. The permanent supportive housing opportunity seems to be something you seed we're way off on -- you said we're way off on, and my understanding is what you said is we don't have a lot of owned permanent supportive housing and that what we've been doing for permanent supportive housing has been using the rental market. We've been working with landlords and making units available using the veterans vouchers when they're available, using rental [11:15:26 AM] subsidies when those aren't available. But there's a renewed focus or effort in trying to get permanent supportive housing that we have. We had some units that were made available to us I guess in the rental kind of market on Riverside drive that's 100 units that we didn't have before. My understanding is that there are people trying to get the permanent supportive housing units at the wrath gabeer center. We need the community and other people's help. It's physically there to be able to get line. Then the media is reporting that there are associations potentially with properties such as hotels. I'm not going to ask you to give us any details on real estate transactions, but is that kind of activity happening? >> Yeah. I mean, to the best of my knowledge. I'll let the assistant city manager answer also yes, I believe that that type of activity is occurring. [11:16:26 AM] I think what's really important about the recognition of permanent supportive housing as a need, it is also -- it takes the deepest commitments from not only the service provider community, but from the various funding -- areas for funding. It is the most expensive type of resource that can you provide. You know, we're talking about a long-term rental subsidy plus support services that are meant to serve people with very vulnerable states. I think that commitment we'd be looking towards the various institutions to help sort of stand up some of that work. I think the health care system, the criminal justice system, those are going to be important partners as we move forward in this. Those partners are working nationally with service providers to get the care for those individuals that they're serving in their institutions out into community where it's less expensive to serve that [11:17:28 AM] population, and more effective for that -- for the well-being and the health of the community. So the short answer is yes, that those things are happening. And I think we need more of those things happening. The pay for success project will be one way that we're able to demonstrate in the hill country system and in Austin, -- health care system and in Austin, and I hope we can continue to build projects like that. >> That's affirmative from our office as with well. One thing I want to mention is that of course we don't want to talk about real estate transactions, but we certainly can talk about the financing source. It was made available from council action from last year to expand the waller creek tirz. So it is our understanding that is a future source for funding properties. Thank you for expanding the waller creek tirz. >> Mayor Adler: To that end we're not in this alone and the lift that you're talking about is a lift that even if we don't delay deploy all our resources is [11:18:29 AM] not something we can do completely ourselves. I think it's important that we use this opportunity to make an appeal to the broader community to help us. And we have some people in community that are stepping up in grand ways that I think we need to celebrate. You mentioned chase tomorrow. The apartment association who was one of the lead people in working with landlords when we did the veterans stepping up again here again was invisible. It was a little over a year ago that Deena and vj Patel came to me and in the industry of working with motels and offered their assistance to help facilitate that and I got that information to echo. I want to thank them. There are a lot of people in the community that are stepping up and I would encourage others on do that too. Now is the time for our community to really come [11:19:31 AM] together. While we do have some money from $30 million in the waller creek tif, we're going to be able to leverage that in a lot more places if we're not doing that alone if we have partners that are stepping up with us in that. I think that's a really important invitation to make to the community. Did you want to say something? >> Mayor, you're absolutely right. As Matt said, permanent supportive housing is our most effective way and it goes a very long way in communities moving the needle on homelessness. And that does take a public-private partnership. So while the city will do its efforts, the expectation and the conversation is leaning towards Howie match our public dollars with private dollars. So again, when you think about permanent supportive housing you need that property management and you need that case services involved. So those commitments we are looking for the private sector to be engaged and [11:20:31 AM] match the city's commitment. >> Mayor Adler: I appreciate there are efforts moving forward with the landlord recruitment campaign and you mentioned that. And we need to move forward on that. Just a reminder again associated with that, when we were successful in using a similar model with veterans, because we know what works, we just have to scale it -- the private community step forward and establish the risk fund that was used to help make it easier for landlords to make properties open for us and I'm sure that's something that gets reestablished as part of this as well. And people could help and participate in that -- in that effort as well. Going through the recommendations here real fast, that was the -- number four stay the path, because we can in fact help end homelessness in this community. The procurement of the properties is happening. I mean, it sounds like if we talk about the number of beds we could be adding hundreds of new beds that -- [11:21:32 AM] and units before this year is over that did not exist a month ago. Is that the kind of thing that we are potentially looking at? >> Yes, it is. >> Okay. And then the next recommendation you had was to review and evaluate the city's investments to in line. That makes perfect sense to me. I imagine that is something you could do on your own, but if you need council action to do that, great, sounds like a very wise use of money. When you're creating your interagency working group, which also makes sense to me too, I assume you will invite the state to participate in interagency discussions. I hope that you would invite the state to be at the table. You talked about the intersection that state has with the challenge that we have and just articulate some of those real specifically. To help with the Austin [11:22:33 AM] transition effort, we've heard about this before where there are folks that are transitioning out of incarceration in our city. It would be really helpful if the state would continue its support for people that have paid that debt but might need in a new community for them opportunities to be able to really stabilize their lives. I understand we have a similar situation with respect to foster care that a lot of children move out of foster care at 18, and at that point in some instances the support just stops for them. I understand there are components of the community that we have in our city that are homeless. Is that true? >> Aging out of the foster care system at 18, yeah. There are two main predictors if you look nationally for how people end up in the homeless response system and having touched the foster care system is one of those [11:23:34 AM] predictors for sure. >> One of -- >> Mayor Adler: One of those two. So we could use additional state help with helping to manage the system that the state has with respect to foster care. Obviously you mentioned mental health, and mental health funding in this state. You said you thought it was like 49th. I don't know the number. But I know on the streets and on the ground we need really significant help with respect to mental health support and treatment as well as dealing with the hospital release issue that you talked about. I have a couple of questions that are topical with respect to what's happening in the media. We've seen here recently someone came in and made another one of these social media videos with a canful of needles and we don't know whether those needles actually came from that place or. No we just have a social media clip of a [11:24:37 AM] container with needles. There was a report two weeks ago from staff and we had a public work staff, we had public health staff, we had pard, and everyone said that there was no evidence at that point that we have an increase levels of needles or feces or that kind of stuff in our community. I know a KXAN article or piece that came out today, I think, saying that that still is the case. Is that still the case in our city? >> Mayor, that still is the case and as I mentioned at the beginning of this, we do have our priority area leads that are here to answer any other questions outside of the briefing that you just had. We can certainly go through questions related to the briefing and then open up questions of our priority area leads. But we are here to affirm that that is still the case. >> Mayor Adler: Let's hold off then the priority lead questions and the questions related to that. Final questions and then I'll pass it to my colleagues with respect to the arch downtown. [11:25:40 AM] I think that one of the reasons that council asked for initial attention with respect to the arch was almost proof of concept to the community so the community could see that if we put resources against it and the attention against it it, we can help people even in some of the most challenged parts of our city and not disburse people that are experiencing homelessness, but actually house them, actually put them a path to be able to stabilize their path. It already looks like it's moving is people into housing. Do you have a feel at all for what the timeline would be for the community on this. That timeline question is number one and the second question, manager, is whether we can set something up so that there could be kind of a weekly report that is reporting meaningful numbers so that the [11:26:43 AM] community can see what's happening over time and see that either these folks are being successful or not so we know whether we're doing meaningful work or not. >> So my mantra and I don't know if everybody in the provider community always agrees with me, but I always say however long it takes with whatever it takes. >> Mayor Adler: In fact, I wrote that down when you said that. >> That is because I want the proof of concept to be there. Housing first does work. It is a national best practice. It is what hud has adopted. It is what the usich, which is the interagency council for the U.S. Government has adopted. And that is something that has been proven here in this community and we should stay steadfast to that. It is important that we see that in realtime action outside of the arch. There are a lot of factors to what's happening outside of the arch. Again, the inflow, we haven't been able to stop [11:27:44 AM] the inflow. So there's new folks that are coming in everyday outside of the arch because of those systems that are contributing to that. But again, without a place for folks to land and again, we're utilizing inappropriate resources, we're using rapid rehousing instead of psh. We need more psh, it is going to be a series of weeks before you start to see those individuals. And we can give you progress reports. Our goal is around the progress reports and the numbers. Our goal is not the optics. I have said before there's a difference between not seeing the homeless and ending homelessness and the goal and the will of the provider community and my office and echo is on ending homelessness, not on not seeing the homelessness. So those are where our efforts are, so we're not really focused on what the optics are. The optics will just organically happen on its own, but we are focused on those 99 and we will be able to provide you progress [11:28:46 AM] reports around those 99 individuals. >> I think it's important to mention that when Lori talks about the optics, as stated previously in the presentation from August 19th to present, we've housed around 450 households. So that's four times the amount of folks who are outside of the afternoon and the impact that is real and necessary and we understand that the system can end homelessness in a certain area. But that work has been done four times over in the last three months in this community already. And so that is an important thing to remember while we're looking at the arch and the pilot program. >> Mayor Adler: I think that's an important thing to say and I think it's important that in these weekly reports, every other week here, the off week by [11:29:47 AM] perhaps a memo or something like that, so the community can continue to follow that, but we also have to -- as we do that, what organically happens is there will be things that people can see or they will see numbers as we are focused on that 99 that we're actually housing -- we can see that we -- just by looking at the numbers as you report them back that we're able to do that. I think that's important to do because we have some people in the community right now that are with us, that want to be with us, that want to see us end homelessness in our city, but they need to know that is something that we can do and part of our work while we do it is letting people see that while we're doing that. I think that will bring more and more people to be part of this. It will bring more and more people there community to help, more and more people to put their shoulder to that stone and to help us take care of everyday in our -- everybody in our [11:30:49 AM] city. So being able to demonstrate that will be important. Okay. I'm going share that with others on the council. Ann and then Pio. >> Kitchen: Thank you. First off let me just say that I'm very excited to hear the -- to hear what you're telling us today. I think y'all have done a lot of very good work in a short amount of time and I want you to know it's recognized and appreciated. And I certainly recognize and understand how difficult it is. So I want to say thank you. And I feel confident we're on a path and we have the expertise we need and that you will tell us as we need additional expertise and -- not expertise, but resources that you all may need. So I just have a couple of questions on three different [11:31:50 AM] areas. So the first area I want to ask about is sort of a bigger picture area. And that has to do I think -- I think, Lori, that you mentioned in your recommendations the moving forward with -- I forget how you talked about it. But moving forward with an analysis to come back in the first part of 2020. I'm sorry, I don't have that right in front of me. >> Recommendation 2. >> Kitchen: Yes, the recommendation you're talking about. My question is at the end of that process do you think that -- do you think that that will help us lead into having what we might be calling a dashboard at some point? So I'd love for you to speak to that because that will help us at some point, really understanding what we're measuring. [11:32:51 AM] So can you speak to that for a minute? >> Yes, absolutely. And you warmed my heart saying dashboard. Because I've been talking about dashboards a little bit, right? So I think there's a way that we could absolutely after that 2020 initial report start looking at, you know, how is it that we want to spend our money and where are we investing it and where are we at with that progress with the various %- @objectives? And so I think with recommendation 1 is this is going to be my attempt to try do it at a very small level, which is a few of us, and kind of informally make sure we're having the conversations that we're not duplicating services, duplicating resources, and our services are complimenting each other. So we need to have someone who has done with some other communities drill down in that and I think a part of that is again this person would look at our investment, say are we matching to the action plan. [11:33:52 AM] So the dashboard I think would talk about city funding applied to the echo action plan and give us the progress report of us helping to reach what we is set out to do last year. Around then I would also say that -- and probably it's offensive that I say a grownup system. Are you offended? So I always say when we have a grownup system, there's a great -- when I say this, please, sir don't ask us to do this yet because we're not ready for it. But in forecasting and futuring as we kind of grow up into this housing first is there are actual online live dashboard reports around the people who have been housed. So instead of me asking Matt and asking integral care and asking everybody what are your numbers, there's an actual online dashboard. Nashville has one. It's fantastic. It was puts together by a university. And it tells realtime the number of people who are in shelter, the number of people who are homeless, the number of people who have [11:34:52 AM] been housed. I can't wait for our community to have that because that's one tool where people can see realtime work that our providers and the city of Austin is doing. So I mention that publicly, echo, because I'm hoping we can do that together. >> Yeah, absolutely. That's a function of the 'homeless management information system. You can watch in realtime as the service providers are entering information at his, the identified information, aggregate data, but it's a possible thing and it currently can be built out in our system and the system that we have. I think it's a more real -- it's more real and closer than you think. >> Kitchen: Thank you. I have just go more short questions. The second is a different area and that goes to the need for permanent supportive housing. I just want to ask and may [11:35:52 AM] not be something that y'all answer now, but maybe want to speak to next time, but inch, we were fortunate in our community to pass a 250-million-dollar bond for housing. And some of those dollars were contemplated for permanent supportive housing. I don't remember what we looked at in terms of how much, but I'm -- can I assume that you all are working with our nhcd folks on accelerating the use of those dollars or accessing those dollars or whatever we need to do with that bond money to make sure that we get more psh resources as soon as we can? >> Absolutely. And we've got our housing priority area leads here who can answer that question following the briefing. And you're absolutely right. The city dollars, and more importantly, of course, we've got tax credits available that we can put towards this effort as well as other programs. But at the conclusion of of [11:36:53 AM] course the briefing and questions and answers, that might be a question that we bring our housing priority leads up here to speak to. >> Kitchen: Okay. I would like to just touch on that. And my last of three questions is -- goes back to the guided path pilot, which by the way, I just want to say thank you again. It really -- I'm very heartened by what I'm hearing in terms of that approach and I understand the complexities of it, but it sounds like to me you guys really know what you're doing and you and the service providers are really going down that path. So I appreciate that. So my question is -- and it's a question again for the future, I think, is understanding that it will take as long as it does with whatever resource it does. I would like to get an idea of -- I guess my request is at the appropriate time if you will bring to us your [11:37:55 AM] request for its resources that are needed to take that program to scale and that you give us an idea as soon as you reasonably can on what you think will be necessary to take it to scale. So I think it's something that will be in important for us throughout the community and I think beginning this work around the arch is critical and you're going to learn so much with work around the arch. But I know it's going to take additional resources to bring it to scale throughout community and also you have -- you have questions about what that means, what does bring it to scale mean? So all of those kinds of things I would ask you to give us -- as soon as you have some idea of that, even if you haven't completely formulated how you think we should proceed, that would be helpful information to have. >> Councilmember, let me touch on one thing that [11:38:57 AM] relates to what you're describing and then conversations around other real estate transactions. Even though after this Thursday we only have two council meetings left this year, I am hearing loud and clear that I don't want to delay any future action that council may need to take regarding additional next steps. So I will not hesitate to talk about calling a special called meeting to make sure that we can act on that as soon as possible. Ditched thank you very much. Okay. That's all. >> Renteria: Thank you for that report. Laurie, I was kind of alarmed when you mentioned that -- I used to be on the halfway house board for parolees and we used to get funding from the state. Are you getting funding when you have these parolees get assigned to the -- >> No. My understanding is that there is -- well, I know for sure that there is no follow-up funding for those folks that are being [11:39:58 AM] discharged and dropped off essentially outside of the arch. >> Renteria: Mayor, I'm really alarmed at that because I served on a halfway house for almost eight years and we were always getting funded from the state whenever they released a parolee, especially to a halfway house. That was the tradition. When we lost a contract they were giving us clients that had full-blown AIDS that we couldn't handle and we said we didn't take those clients, that they were going to close us and sure enough they closed us up and we had all these beds, about 43 beds for parolees and we were getting funded by the state by taking in these people that were being released. It's very alarming that they're doing this now without providing any support to the city. And especially to the city of Austin where it sounds like the majority are coming down here that are having to report and that is very alarming to me. And I think it's -- it's [11:40:58 AM] sad, you know, that the state is doing that to us. >> Councilmember, if I may, so if there are funds in the community that goes to those halfway houses, it may be that they're at capacity. So again, it's about the amount of inflow. And now they're at capacity so then they flow out to the streets. You know, there has been a lot of research about school to prison to homelessness pipeline that's real. And there are communities, states have really begun to tackle corrections to homelessness issue. And it's a very -- and there's been a couple of case studies that I believe in the northeast part of the country where corrections actually provided funds for supportive housing for those who were released. And were able to utilize corrections dollars to do that to complement any of the local dollars or state dollars. But it's a real thing that's happening across our country, no the just here in [11:41:59 AM] our community. And so I just want to honor the fact that if the state is providing dollars it may not be enough or the halfway houses may be at capacity or there may not be enough providers around the halfway house, but the school to prison to homelessness pipeline is here. >> Renteria: Yes. And the thing is that, you know, even though when they were releasing them to us, to our halfway house, we were working funding and enough funding to help these people get back on their feet and to find a job. And it didn't seem like that's what they're doing here at the echo. They're releasing them there and then something is wrong here. And I hope we can find out what's going on. >> Mayor Adler: Kathie and then Delia. >> Garza: Mine is kind of related to this. Do you mind if I follow up [11:43:00 AM] on that question? Thank you, councilmember tovo. Yeah, you mentioned -- you said that all parolees in the state are released in Austin? >> I think there's probably others who might be able to speak a little more clearly on this. My understanding from what I know -- again, this is very preliminary, is -- I think it's from state or federal. I don't know where it is. Anybody who is released in the state of Texas needs to come to Austin to get certified or checked in to the Austin recovery -- I'm sorry, I don't know what it's called. And so my understanding is once they are checked in that they can't leave the area until a certain period of time. I don't know if anybody else is in the room that can speak more specifically about it. Matt, do you have any more information about it? Even when I was out during those few days outside the arch, there were a few people who said that's where they were coming from and [11:44:00 AM] they actually wanted to go home, but couldn't. >> Garza: And I want to be -- I guess in asking that question I want to be clear that I have no question of that in and of itself. The impact that they face and the components of the criminal justice system. I do have a problem if the state is not providing appropriate resources to help as Pio stated to help people get back on their feet. So I'd be interested in understanding exactly what the state does provide and possibly maybe adding that to our legislative agenda of things that we ask our state leaders to lobby for to help folks get back on their feet. And then I just wanted to add thank you for these recommendations that you have provided. I think this is the exact expertise we were looking [11:45:01 AM] for in this extremely difficult and challenging conversation we've been having. And both of you are relatively new and I'm so grateful that both of you are here. I think it has added a great amount of expertise to this conversation and I think Austin is very lucky to have the two of you. And of course, our city staff doing such a great job as well. Last question is the recommendations in here, I don't know if you asked this, mayor, but I think you did. Do you need additional direction for any of these? This is all stuff you think you can do without additional direction from council, is that right? >> Councilmember, no. We want to get feedback on this is the direction we're going. If there were any tweaks that we wanted to hear from council. But as I stated earlier, if there were specific actions council needed to take I'm not going to hesitate to make sure that we can act on those as soon as possible. But the short answer is no. >> Garza: Great, thank you [11:46:01 AM] you. >> Tovo: Thank you. I echo my thanks for all the hard work that our leaders here at the table are providing as well as our departmental staff and the many, many providers who are participating in the effort, especially the encampment response strategy. I have lots and lots of questions, but I'll narrow it down and then hopefully have some time to ask some of the more specific ones outside of this setting. With regard to the guided path project, on page 14 you -- with regard to the individuals, the 75 who have been identified and are either enrolled or spending enrollment into appropriate programs, can you give us some examples of what some of those programs are? >> Sure. So that could be it's called vss plus here, so that's through caritas, so that could mean that somebody who is just looking for employment with some needed services to get them on the path towards housing is kind [11:47:03 AM] of a lower need. Others would be -- I believe that dac has provided several spots for permanent supportive housing. They would first be placed with the arch, enrolled in the arch, and they would then be assigned a case manager through the arch. And then work towards a housing solution plan. So it also includes respite slots, it also includes mental health treatment slots. Sobering center I believe also provided some slots. And then whenever somebody is provided a spot or I call them slots, a slot in any one of those programs, it's always attached to some type of case management. So when you're enrolled you are enrolled in a program and somebody is going to now be attached to you as you move through the process of concluding your housing crisis. >> Tovo: And by sobering center, I assume you meant either for that evening or connected to some type of longer term program because we don't provide housing at [11:48:04 AM] the sobering center. >> Again, you have to excuse me, five weeks in, I don't know all the agencies as intimately as I wish I could. So I am kind of misspeaking a little bit when it comes to that, but I do know there were locations -- I don't know -- >> Tovo: That's okay. >> Maybe you can remind me of the placement. >> Tovo: Great, thank you. So what are the -- do you have a sense of what the time frames are for the enrollment? Some are pending enrollment. I mean, some it sounds like there might be slots immediately available, some may might be waiting for a slot to open up but they're in the queue. >> So pending enrollment means that they have a spot, but we still need to go and they may have moved away from the arch arrest they may not have been out there when we're kind of refining somebody. Or they're reluctant still. But we're saying this is still your enrollment. We want you to be a part of this program. So there's ongoing engagement with those folks. So when we say someone is enrolled, that means that [11:49:05 AM] program has all the information that they need to be able to say okay, this is our client. The other word I said is that they're -- pending means that they're just waiting to get all the information from that client and get the client's acceptance into the program. >> Tovo: That's great. That really is huge that you were able to find with the collaboration, with the providers, so many -- so many spots so quick with such a short amount of time. That's really huge. >> And it says a lot of -- I can't say enough about the provider community, the fact of their generosity and their will, making this a priority and pretty much us jumping their priorities for this is really exceptional and we have several people in the room. We have Greg from the arch and Darla from integral care who have just been heroic in their -- in their leadership and the heavy lift towards this. So you guys have all the right elements to move this [11:50:05 AM] forward in a successful way. >> Yeah. I just want to second that also, and caritas not in the room today, been an integral member in that group. >> Tovo: So when -- during the pilot program a few Summers ago that was similar in nature, there weren't new resources allocated to it as I gather that was part of why it wasn't as kind of sustainable change. I want to, I guess, echo what councilmember kitchen said in terms of, you know, as soon as you have a sense of what the resource need is before making sure that all of those currently outside the arch, but in the other areas that are surrounding within that kind of arch overlay, as soon as you have some sense of what the additional resource need might be, that would be really helpful to have. >> Yeah. And I think we've already started to identify that through the pilot with the 24 folks who aren't matched to programs. We obviously have that 24 [11:51:07 AM] person service need gap. And I think more appropriately to Lori's comments before is that we are using resources right now that we normally wouldn't use, say, a rapid rehousing resource for someone who should have a permanent supportive housing resource because that resource doesn't exist in our community. So not only is there a gap in actually getting the number of resources to the population, but there's also a gap in the type of resource to be used that needs to be implemented in that scenario. And I think we'll be able to provide both a gap analysis around both of those populations for you. >> I would add to that, councilmember, is that, you know, through the second recommendation the tipping point is going to be permanent supportive housing. So I can already tell you without any formal recommendation or report or any formal gap analysis, permanent supportive housing is going to be the tipping point for this community. >> Yeah. I would just say that obviously I would second that and I know there are [11:52:07 AM] more questions, but I would also just mention we know that gap need for psh in our community based on our coordinated entry list we can say firmly that if we had this many permanent supportive housing units we would have no more chronic homelessness here in Austin as it currently stands. So that information does exist, but it is a large number. >> Tovo: Do you have a figure for how many of the individuals who you've been speaking with outside the arch were already in the coordinated entry system? Have been through coordinated assessment? >> Yeah. I mean, I can get you the exact number. It's in an email that's on my phone right now. I would say I've heard as many as 90% of the folks have had assessments that are outside of the arch. So it's not a willingness to engage in the system. >> I would also mention that -- I changed 75 to 74 because one of the folks we were able to reunite with family. [11:53:08 AM] So 75 of the 99, some of the 74 were already enrolled in programs so they were enrolled in programs, but still didn't have that permanent spot to land in yet. And so that is also part of the population that we're talking about. >> Tovo: I think that would be really important information to have. I think it's very important for the community to understand that some of the individuals outside the arch have been through coordinated assessment and are waiting that permanent solution to their housing crisis. And that really requires, as many people today have said, the more participation from our private partners. So when you say that some of those individuals were enrolled in programs, are they enrolled now in different programs or the same programs, but with a more housing focused path? >> Yes. And knowing that we are going to be tracking the outcomes of those. So there's a little bit of pressure on the providers as we're kind of talking about this. And knowing that we're expecting to see the results, whether they're good, bad or ugly, we want [11:54:08 AM] to see what the results are. And the intention is even after these folks are housed we're still going to follow them because we want them to stay house and want them to continue to be able stable. Even if all 99 come into a place of stability, six months, a year after that, we want to be able to show the continued success or the barriers to keeping them housed. >> Yeah. And I want to add that that's the benefit of our his system that currently exists is we've actually created a program within his that we'll be able to track these folks and their success in housing and through the various programs and I'll be able to run that report for you in 2030 if necessary, you know, that far down the line. >> Tovo: Thanks. As I mentioned, I have a lot of questions. Some of them I think I'll leave for now, but one that I do want to talk about in this setting is the hotel/motel, which I think sounds like a terrific idea and I'm very supportive and I want to acknowledge that the waller creek conservancy actually when they started meeting with our offices to [11:55:09 AM] talk about extending that tif in the time period for that, they actually raised this as a suggestion that it would throw off additional money and that could be used for homelessness. And I just want to appreciate them for that. I think that's going to be really critical funding. So I'm very supportive of hotel- motels, but I think I really would like to kind of come back around to the question of whether health south would be a temporary solution in this conversation. And what the difference -- what differences you might see between that facility, which was operational as of a couple of years ago, as a rehab facility, and a hotel in terms of the infrastructure support that it provides, understanding that it needs some repairs. And I know that staff are evaluating the cost of those. But in terms of the infrastructure that that would afford in the building. >> So I will only speak -- I will speak to the idea that [11:56:11 AM] from -- from the hotel perspective what we end up with is we're able to convert those audience to permanent supportive housing over time -- units to permanent supportive housing over time. And you know, I think that I'm not -- I know health south is going to take some work. To be honest with you, I'm not familiar with the entire scope of the health south, the work that needs to be done to bring that into -- for use either in an emergency shelter situation or bridge housing situation or from a permanent supportive housing. I think that right now what we're looking for is sustainable long-term solutions to impact people's situation on the street now. And from a hotel perspective, what we're able to do is -- what we would be able to do and what other communities have done is get people inside immediately, get them assessed for need. If their desire is because housing -- a big part of housing first is your ability to choose where you stay and how you access the [11:57:12 AM] homeless response stomach. So if their desire is to stay at the hospital, that's fine with them, they enjoy the space and community about that, we are able to create permanent supportive housing out of that model and that's neither better nor worse. I'm not comparing the two, just to state that from a sustainability scenario, it is what is attractive about the hotel-motel acquisition. Now, that being said, not every community has the type of resource like health south and their community and how that resource could be leveraged to support people experiencing homelessness here. So there's no real community to point to to say they've done this similarly and this is how it worked. I think that's probably one of the complexities to that situation. >> Tovo: So it sounds like then the two things that would be different are the potential costs of repairing [11:58:12 AM] and then -- but the bigger point that you're mentioning is the long-term sustainability of that option when you're looking at hotels, you're looking for something that could also serve as permanent supportive housing. And I think that -- I would concur that health south won't be that longer term option. Again, I think it should still continue to be in the mix as a shorter term option if in your assessments, your finding, that there aren't enough places for individuals experiencing homelessness to be in the short-term. >> Thank you, councilmember. We view it as an asset as well. Just to let you know the other thing that we're contemplating is the need for storage and perhaps maybe the parking garage might serve as a storage facility. So we're beginning to explore that conversation because we know ultimately that the development will take some time and so what are those interim uses that we can use with that asset? >> Tovo: Thank you. >> Mayor adler:jimmy and then Alison. >> Flannigan: Thank you. Thanks to my colleague, many of the questions I wrote down have already been [11:59:12 AM] addressed so I can be much briefer than I thought I was gonna be. Dashboard especially was a big thing I had circled on my sheet. I know my destruct is really doing for that type of access to data so it's not exciting to hear that that is maybe closer than we thought. Of course the sooner the better on that. You know, councilmember Renteria, your story about the -- the halfway house really strikes me as this long tale impacts of crisis that the state has ignored. For the aides crisis to have been used in those years as a way to undermine public service to folks coming out of incarceration, it's difficult to wrap my head around that. And I really hope that we can be thinking as a state on how we do this. I find it shocking that there is any service provided in the state of Texas where only one city is the place where that service is provided. That seems mind boggling, [12:00:13 PM] that the state would not have provided similar services in Dallas and Houston at the very least, just as the size of the state, and maybe that could be part of our advocacy to our state representatives. The -- Laurie, something you said that I really appreciated is a focus on return on investment. Some of the things that I hear from my constituents, and it's often a concern of myself, is that the dollars that we're spending are maximized to their greatest opportunity. It's one of my concerns with the health south conversation, is that the money we would invest to repair it would not end up being the best long-term use of those dollars, but it's good to know that you all are considering that in other ways, like storage, which I hadn't thought of before, which might be a fair use of a parking garage or other facilities. But especially the coordination through echo, which I think is gonna be really important, so that the city itself is not contributing to the fracturing of a system, that we're leveraging, fully maximizing the federal dollars that are coming [12:01:15 PM] through that agency and considering it at a regional level. You know, my district, as I often talk about, goes into Williamson county and I don't think Williamson county has an echo. They participate in what they call the balance of state, which is probably not the best option for a county growing so rapidly as Williamson county so I think -- where my office is through cap cog leading some conversations about this issue and that's come up and we'll continue that work as a regional level, there are other cities in our region experiencing homelessness at kind of unexpected scale that you don't really hear about as much as you hear about Austin. But my question for you is, on the altruism of our community, I've given numerous talks to different groups that have asked me, what do they do? Where do they go help? I had one group I was speaking to where one of the people stood up and said, well, give me all your old shoes and I'll go hand them out to the people under the [12:02:16 PM] overpass and I had to talk to him about how that's probably not the best use of your time and resources and they probably don't even fit the people you're handing the shoes to. So but his question was, well, what do we do? What do they do? >> So I've -- it's a great question. I provided -- I've sort of come to an answer that I feel comfortable giving through a lot of questioning along that line. Because it's a complicated question with some complex answers. I think one of the things people need to start to do is really stand up and have difficult conversations in their group. So with their families, in their faith-based communities, at their jobs, with their friends, about the stigma associated with people experiencing homelessness. And being willing to have a conversation that can destigmatize that work and hypotheticallynize people in humanize the experiences. [12:03:20 PM] The political sized work certainly in Austin is at an all-time high, I imagine, I guess. I've been here three months. It certainly feels like it's spiking at this time. And I think the reason for that is because there is not -- there has not been a lot of gray area. This community hasn't really -- they were working to come together on some gray, some basic agreements and some understanding that people from both sides of the -- you know, wherever you are in politics, wherever you are in your ideas around homelessness, like that -- bringing people closer together so that the service providers and the systems that are at work can continue to work so that we're not answering questions, you know, no offense to council, about ordinances, about our governor's statements that are unhelpful. Take the focus away from the work that's being done, from the 450 people housed since [12:04:22 PM] August 19. That work is paramount to this issue, and all of the discussion around that work, we just need time and the ability to resource that work effectively. And we'll see a greater impact. And I think -- so my request in short is get involved, get involved locally where you can. The shoe donation is important. The -- you know, those sorts of things had a happen on a local level so that you can be -- and attach yourself to the larger homeless response system is important, but also be willing to stand up in your community and say this isn't right and I believe that housing is a human right and access to quality health care are human rights and I'm willing to have that difficult discussion with someone that tells me that these people experiencing homelessness in our streets are there because they're addicted to drugs or -- and they want to be there and they want this type of lifestyle in these camps. And that information is false and that narrative is [12:05:22 PM] damaging. >> Woot-woot. [ Laughter ] >> I've been asked that question a lot. >> So, one, if people are so moved that they want to give something, in my long -- and I think you guys know my history around disaster recovery response and international development. The best thing you can do is give money, give funding. And we have a lot of good community providers that provide our community who is doing this really difficult work and those investments from the private sector and from individuals is absolutely needed. So I know one of the things that our website is working on is to try and drive people, if they want to give through money and want to be a part is that way. So we're going to be listing the various providers and just sharing how they can be able to give or to donate. Advocacy is hard to measure in dollars, right? [12:06:22 PM] And what Matt is talking about is if somebody really wants to be a part of transformancial change around this very complex issue is to build your knowledge and awareness and become an advocate for this issue. Because advocacy doesn't get funded, and advocacy gets disvalued but it goes the longest and the length of it. So, again, I would -- I appreciate what Matt said. I also -- and from my experience, I believe there's a point where helping hurts. So there's a lot of good-hearted people who feel like they're doing a good thing by handing out items that they believe that somebody might need, but without you knowing that person and understanding their narrative and their is story, you may actually be harming rather than hurting them. And we have a large provider community who is working very hard to build those relationships and understanding of what that person actually needs. [12:07:24 PM] And so I'm just trying to figure out what that would actually look like, but I just want to articulate that there is a point when helping hurts, when you feel like you're doing something good, but without really knowing that person, again, their narrative and their story and their path ahead, you could be hurting. So advocacy and direct dollars is the best way for, I believe, someone could help. I would say say really quick, I want to make sure when I mention the Austin transition center, those are anecdotal information that I received from those that we were serving outside. The next time I come to a work session I will rove more detailed information about what this is and the process that a patrollee has to take, whether they're from Austin or outside of Austin, so I can make sure that we clear up that and have a very clear understanding of that. >> Mayor Adler: To that end, even if there are other locations around the state -- and I think there might be -- the point that you're making I think is still really valid, that we have people who are here because they have to be [12:08:24 PM] here, whether there are other places around the state or not, but then they're here and they have to wait while they're here or they've been brought here like a magnet with no resources to be able to help facilitate their lives at that point. So I think the point that you made is still a really valid one. >> Yeah. Thank you, Laurie, Matt. All valid points. One thing I want to remind council and the public is that your question is not new. The five prongs of the action plan that Matt had talked about earlier, one of the prongs is community commitment. And within that community commitment there are strategies, such as creating an options menu for the public to be involved in solutions, to create an electronic platform for volunteers to support the work, create communication strategy that encourages people to give to food and service organizations. So what we've got to do is staff is effectuate those strategies with echo so that way we can be very clear in that response when that question comes up as to what the community can do. [12:09:25 PM] So to Laurie's point earlier, we have to stay the path. The path is the action plan. One of the action plan prongs is community commitment, so we need to effectuate those strategies. >> Mayor Adler: The topic leads, we can raise that point too as well. >> Flannigan: Y'all are doing some great work. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Alison. >> So I also have been hearing a lot about what the community can do, and I think that we need to be careful to not let perfection prevent us from getting that information out. I have not yet heard it being up on the city's website for homelessness, what you can do, and at the very least we can have up there the list of organizations that are doing great things and people can go donate. There are groups that have volunteer opportunities. It doesn't have to be perfect to be helpful, so I think we ought to be moving forward with that because it's something that we hear a lot from the community. I wanted to follow up a little bit on, Matt, your comments about the demographics and some frustration of that being [12:10:26 PM] misused. Can you provide -- I'm not sure if you can find on the whole community, but to the extent that you can provide some demographic information and the overlapping needs that some of the population are experiencing homelessness have, could you -- can you expound on that? Because I think there's a lot of misconceptions, and I'm frankly a little bit concerned. I think the parol conversation is an important one and one we have to explore but I think it's ripe for politicalization and I want to make sure we're not walking away saying this is a huge part of our homeless population. I don't believe that it is. It may be a small piece and we may need to address it and make sure the state is providing resources appropriately, but I don't want people to walk away and think that's what's going on and that's what's driving. We have a lot of new folks from Austin who are experiencing homelessness and I think some additional demographic data would be really helpful. >> Sure. So without it in front of [12:11:27 PM] me, there are some pieces to the demographic data I've memorized because they're so startling. One piece to that data is that, you know, the black -- African-American population here in Austin is 8% of the total population but makes up 35% of people experiencing homelessness and 42% of the people incarcerated in this county and city. I think worth mentioning here, just because I feel remiss to not mention it, is that homelessness as it exists nationally and we're looking at demographics, I mean, it's very clear that it's a symptom of racism in our country and we need to keep that at the forefront of our discussion and our minds. When controlling for poverty in this country, if you're black or brown, you're 85% more likely to have experienced homelessness than you are if you're white. And I think that's an important statistic that we need to remember. Those folks are represented disproportionately in [12:12:27 PM] Austin's system, in our his, in our coordinated entry system, and that's important. Now, to dig into some other factors associated with the demographics and people experiencing homelessness here, 2% of our population as of when I did the lbj forum, which was in, oh, gosh -- >> Mayor Adler: August. >> Was that 2019 or 2018? I'm sorry. In August 2019, 2% of the total population in our coordinated entry system, that's 2% of about 7500 people reported on only having a substance use disorder. That was their primary and that was it. More than 80% reported having a physical health condition. So we're talking about access to quality affordable health-care as a driver for people experiencing homelessness. Whether that's an expected medical bill, whether that's, you know, just access to that -- you're on the fringe of being able to [12:13:27 PM] afford your place and you need to go in for a primary care checkup that costs you hundreds of dollars and all of a sudden you can't make your rent. With families it's exacerbated from that perspective. So I think it's really important that the cooccurring nature of that. And then when people are experiencing homelessness and they have a serious medical condition that they don't have access to appropriate medical care, a lot of folks, you know, that ends in people using substances on many occasions for a pain -- from a pain perspective, and also, I think, you know, it leads to exacerbated mental health symptoms, as we've talked about the lack of access and funding associated with mental health care. We have some agencies that do incredible work around this. I want to be clear. We have a homeless health care team here in Austin that does great work. And we have people providing mental health care here. It's just not enough. And so that number, that 2% number, I think, goes a long [12:14:29 PM] way to talk about that -- the myth or the understanding or the feeling in the community that people are homeless -- experiencing homelessness because of a substance use condition as opposed to most of the other factors. The systemic and structural factors that lead to homelessness, which is why homelessness is such a complex issue to solve. And I -- echo has a lot of information, a lot of reports on our website that you can access. We did an equity -- there's an equity report released in February, I believe, of 2019 that details a lot of the inequities in our system and sort of talks a little bit about that. Then of course we have the data from our point in time count and some other data points that you can pull from there that talk about conditions and physical mental health. >> Alter: So if someone wanted to know about how many are families, how many are individuals, how many are veterans, how many are youth -- >> Yes. [12:15:30 PM] >> Alter: All that information would be on the echo? >> Yeah you could look at the echo website for that. I will say there is a piece of education that has to happen around what the point in time count means, and just that's a snapshot of people -- of people experiencing homelessness on one night in January where we could actually physically count those folks and have them fill out a survey so I think that's important to recognize that, yes, there's a number on the website. It means something. H.U.D. Requires us to do that. But that's not the only data point associated with people experiencing homelessness. >> Alter: Thank you. I think whatever we can do to get out that data, I think, would be really helpful in dispelling some of the myths that are out there. I wanted to dig a little bit into a comment that Laurie made about the folks that you were working with on the engagement strategy. You noted that they were willing to engage in the system. You also mentioned that many of them were already part of the continuum of care process. But they don't want to go into emergency shelter. [12:16:31 PM] We've been talking about that for a while, and one of the reasons we're doing encampment strategies in part is to address some of those experiences that they may have had with the emergency shelter and obviously we are working to renovate and change procedures at the arch itself. Is that -- so they're willing to enter into the system but they don't want to be at the emergency shelter. What portion of that population is expressing that? >> Out of the -- so I don't know the exact number. Again, it was just anecdotal, but that's consistent nationally around all the unsheltered population. Entering a shelter -- and also many -- and when I was out there with Greg two weeks ago and we were trying to get people to come ins, --come inside, they were, like, what do I get when I [12:17:32 PM] get inside? Before you would get a shower, shelter and meals. Now you get a case manager and path to housing. That's new. It's almost like we were doing a commercial out there. Like, come in, it's changed. And here is why. So it's now the unsheltered population is understanding that, okay, the arch is now positioned differently. Arch is one of many shelters that we have in our community, and so right- positioning each shelter to be the same as what the arch is doing is going to be another significant tipping point to getting the unsheltered population into shelter. But it has also been -- national statistics have shown that nutrients who have made significant strides on getting people housed are actually housing people from the streets much faster than they're housing people from shelter. And they were taking, I think, the top 20 continuums of care in the country and just looking at the reduction of shelter spaces versus the number of people that are being housed and [12:18:34 PM] they were actually housing more people from the streets than they were from the shelter. So, you know, based upon what I'm seeing here from the guided path, as I'm just having, again, one-on-one conversations with individuals, they are just, like, you know, it's just easier for me to be out here. This is where my friends are at, my community is, I feel safer out here, sometimes even safer than a shelter for whatever their reasons are. Or maybe it's because they still have addiction issues and they want to be able to self-medicate. So there's many reasons why people are choosing to stay unsheltered and wait for housing until they move through that process. >> Alter: Thank you. And I'm not sure which of you, but can one of you please speak to what the role of the county is and what the royal of central health ought to be. We've spoken a little bit about the state and their role, but throughout this conversation the county and central health have been fairly absent beyond being [12:19:35 PM] part of the pay for success project. I think traditionally these are not city issues. These are county roles, the ones that you're saying are causing and contributing the most beyond the housing portion to the problems. So what is their role? What could their role and how do we improve it? >> So I think you're right to point to the pay for success project as a way that they are participating in this current system, in the homeless response system. The county also does provide some funding to echo, and I don't have that exact dollar amount in front of me, but for it to stand up our operations. I will say I think the role of central health and of the county as far as the future role -- we're looking at sort of the what's-next scenario, is to start to take a hard look at the costs associated with the [12:20:35 PM] care they provide to people experiencing homelessness and to say it's more cost effective for the taxpayer and for people -- and it's -- let me just preface this talk about money and people's lives by saying that I don't think this should be a cost saving scenario, while we're getting people inside and into housing. But we've gotten to the place where we have to provide a financial -- or show you a financial benefit in some cases, which I think I'd love to kind of pivot after that as a stick point here. But I'm going to answer the question more effectively if I talk about it financially. I think, you know, the health-care systems and the criminal justice system would be smart to engage more effectively and meaningfully with the homeless response system, and if you look at returns to incarceration, what we [12:21:37 PM] might consider low-level criminal offenses or since the ordinance change we're seeing less of the criminalization of homelessness of course, but that process by which people are ticketed or brought into the system by just living in their space, I think it would be wise of those systems to look at how they could support those people outside of their four walls, I suppose, and take a more broad look at providing services and paying for the supportive services that are already being provided by the good service providers behind us and in the community and helping to get those services out to those people so that we're not seeing a retouching of the criminal justice and health-care systems over and over again. So I think there's a lot of proof -- now, at this point in Austin's getting the pay for success project off the ground, there's a lot of proof of concept around that nationally now. We're now -- we've gotten [12:22:39 PM] projects off the ground, huge projects off the ground that show cost savings measures and community health benefits around those institutions getting involved in paying for housing. >> Alter: So if somebody wanted to advocate with respect to this issue and you want to take a longer view of the prevention and not just dealing with the symptoms or treatment, having to talk a lot about with the ordinance and other stuff since June, really focusing in on the prevention aspects and bringing in the county and central health and state and not just the city into the conversation would produce the most change if we want to end homelessness? Is that -- >> Yes. I mean, I would say if you looked and you were able to talk to each person experiencing homelessness in our community right now, I would almost promise you that 98% plus of those people have touched one of the two systems we're talking about. >> Alter: I would just suggest that -- I don't [12:23:40 PM] really feel like pay for for the county but as we're having conversations with the county over lots of other things and central health as we talk to board members and we're doing that, I think really stepping up our game and expressing a need for assistance and for the help I think would be an important step because I think all of us agree that we want to get at the roots of the issue and those systems are not in our control at a large level. >> Councilmember, if I may, in response I would, you know, echo echo and I would also say that I think that the county and central health -- is central health participating in pay for success? >> Yes. >> So I think part of the reason why is there was already a built vehicle for them to just insert [12:24:40 PM] themselves into. So while we're looking at prevention and looking at the systems and those various ways that they can help and support is what vehicle can we create for them to be inserted into? So what initiative? What big audacioused. >> What goal do we have as a community, this is where our investment is, this is where we need your investment, which is why I think pay for success was kind of that built model and people insert where had they felt best they could be of support. If we could maybe duplicate similar initiatives or goals, I think that's one way we could make sure those folks are at the tab, so we can all have a shared understanding and a shared goal and a shared vision around this very complex issue. So athank you for saying that. >> Alter: I degree with that -- I agree with that goal but just as we have a responsibility to govern in this community, so do they, and we shouldn't necessarily have to hand it to them on a platter. They should be at the table [12:25:40 PM] engaging with us on a regular basis to find the solutions, and we will have to do the other way in absence of that, but I think we could do more together. >> Kitchen: Can I just say two seconds? You did THA with Delia a minute ago, to mention the recuperative care program. That's all I'm going to say, the recuperative care program is something that central health has invested in. I don't know if you've had a chance to see that yet. >> Mayor Adler: Okay a. Natasha. >> Harper-madison: Matt, I'd like to -- well shall everybody, I'd like to say thank you for your time and thank you for the presentation, but something that has been occurring since, like, you said this is highly politically charged and I'm hesitant to say it because I don't want people to be more concerned for me than they need to be, but the amount of racial slurs that are being used to describe me currently are [12:26:40 PM] really troubling. And I really appreciate that you said the words, that this is a systemic issue and that it's an issue that disproportionately affects black and brown people. So when I say segregation and racism and equity and lack thereof and white supremacy, I'm not race baiting. I'm talking about the underlying issues and I think it's very important that people who don't look like me say those words out loud. That way I'm not on an island all alone out here. So thank you for that. Then I also have some other questions. Much like my colleague councilmember Flannigan, a lot of my questions were answered by my other colleagues asking. So councilmember alter touched on it, how to sort of inform people participate in this process, you know, [12:27:40 PM] the altruistic component. I think it would be very helpful because, you know, echo is a separate entity from the city, I think it would be helpful for us to have a list of resources, including, you know, journals and data and, you know, information on our site as well and maybe a list of organizations that people can contribute to. I know -- rightfully so, folks are often hesitant to make financial contributions to organizations. They want to feel like it's a trusted resource. So I think maybe offering them -- like, giving our seal of approval for a list of organizations that they can Tennessee contribute to --financially contribute to might be helpful. Then is there a way outside of making a financial contribution to a particular organization, is there a mechanism that we have to accept philanthropic dollars [12:28:41 PM] as a municipality? I guess that's more for acm. >> Sure. Absolutely. And, yeah, two things. It's my understanding that we actually can do that currently, I believe, but most recently you may recall that city council adopted a resolution for us to create a local government corporation, and so we're in the process of creating that ljc, which would be the primary vehicle for receiving those dollars. >> Harper- madison: Is there a time line there that people can anticipate being able to utilize that new mechanism? >> I'd have to check with staff as to the current progress for that. >> Harper-madison: Okay. I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Reentry work, you touched on this as well. I think while we're listing organization that's people can contribute to and, you know, some of the things that folks really need to take into consideration, I appreciate that you pointed it out, mayor, that, you know, the transition from being incarcerated to reentry, you know, there's a lot of work that needs to happen in that space and there's a lot of folks who really get caught up in [12:29:43 PM] between. And so I just -- I want to be as supportive as possible. I want to make certain that our office is as supportive as possible as we're making sure to address that need. I'm very, very interested and curious about what the practical application looks like of converting hotel/motel to permanent supportive housing. So just wanted to put that out there, that I'd love to remain in the loop and see what that looks like and how we can be supportive. >> Of course. >> Harper-madison: Oh. And I can't remember the name of it. There was a pbs special. It was a three-part special. One of the specials -- or one of the -- in the series was about housing. I'm going to remember the name of it and I'm going to recommend it, but I think something that folks can do to sort of educate themselves about the roots of inequity and housing is really go back to, you know -- I mean, even [12:30:44 PM] prered-lining, really go back to the roots of it. I'd like very much for us to as a municipality and as organization that's do this work, really talk more about how this all started so folks don't feel like somehow abruptly we as a society landed here. You know, just really talking about the roots of it all I think would be very helpful for policymakers and just generally speaking so people feel more informed would be helpful. Lastly, the pay for success program, is there parameters around eligibility or anybody can participate in the program? >> So, yeah, there's an eligible bucket of people experiencing homelessness now, and that has to do with their involvement in the criminal justice system and the health-care systems together. So that overlap on that piece. And there's a -- currently an eligibility list, I believe of around 3,000 folks who meet that criteria of eligibility, and of [12:31:45 PM] course the program itself is for 250. So there's an example of yet another -- a gap. But I think the hope is that through the pay for success initiative we'll find -- we'll be able to demonstrate outcomes associated with payment triggers and savings triggers that would then allow for those institutions to feel like -- more comfortable with making a larger investment. >> Harper-madison: Lastly, along those same lines, this is something that I'd like to point out to folks often. You can give people things. You can give me money. You can give me a house. But if I don't understand how money works, then you're not setting me up for success. If I don't understand how to maintain home ownership you're not setting me up for success. I just wonder if there are some systems in place built in to sort of help people with that financial literacy and savings and some of the other paths to economic mobility. >> Yeah. So our -- I'll just speak, you know, quickly because I [12:32:46 PM] think the service provider community would be a better group to be able to give you more information about it, but I'll say for sure we have service providers that provide vocational support to everyone that comes into their programs and there's obviously, you know, from a budgeting perspective and financial literacy support there within the case management programs and some organization that's actually call out the vocational and departments that have specific vocational resources with them. It's been identified through the service provider community as an area that is -- obviously it's important to people. Once they get out of their homeless situation and have that resolved with a roof over their head, the supportive services provided through these organizations is paramount to their success moving forward. And the availability of vocational resources and services to that population [12:33:48 PM] is crucial, and it exists here in Austin and so really well established. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. I want to bring attention to the line you wrote in the report that every individual that was engaged as you're talking to people shared that they wanted housing and services. And I think that's real significant and cuts across some of the meanings that we hear in the community, that every person engaged wanted housing and services. We recognize that not everybody wants the shelter, the emergency shelter, temporary. They want a home space. I think it's significant that you said that nationally we're housing more people from the streets than we are from shelters, and that would be consistent with what we did when we housed the veterans in our community. Because we took people directly from the street [12:34:48 PM] into homes when we dealt with the veterans. I mention that because the media is now reporting that the governor has announced that on Monday he is giving fliers to people under bridges and overpasses today, that on Monday he's going to clear out those people from under overpasses. That's the report. We haven't gotten anything I think from the governor at this point so we don't know any of the details of that or what that means. It's being reported that people are going to be referred to the arch and to front steps and to the Salvation Army for these people to be able to move to and to get them phone numbers. I'm not going to ask you now, but, manager, I would like you and your staff to look at this and see proactively what we do -- the news today is so [12:35:51 PM] optimistic and so targeted and so programmatic and so data-driven to put us on a path to actually end homelessness in this city. I hope what is happening here next week is not just an effort to move people or to hide people or to create an unrealistic expectation that these facilities that we're talking about now and that you have been spending time with are actually beginning to do that. I don't know what happens. The media also reports that the governor may be also involving himself in long-term solutions with faith-based organizations or other people in town and we need to have more information on that because if the governor is actually getting involved in helping to provide real housing opportunities for people, then we want to do everything we can to encourage that and to support that. [12:36:54 PM] But obviously I have real significant concerns on this media report we've gotten without having heard anything from the governor to follow that up. Before we bring people -- did you want to say something? >> No. I just wanted to conclude. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Ann, did you want to say something? >> Kitchen: I was just waiting for nhcd comes up. That's all. >> Mayor Adler: We'll call up the staff point leads. Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: Just on that point, mayor, I think it's -- it's so -- it's such an important piece of information that we've housed 450 people in just about two months, and if the governor wants to help, he could, with so many resources, double that effort. And certainly that would have it so that there were way, way fewer folks under overpasses if they helped us double our efforts, where [12:37:54 PM] we're able to house 900 people in two months instead of 450 people in two months. But my understanding is that it's harder to do that work of housing people when they're getting moved around and it's hard to follow up with those folks. Do y'all want to speak at all to how the ordinance changes can make it legal for you to sleep outside in some places make it easier for you to actually find folks and to help them? >> Yes. Like in -- I'll speak to that first. I think for sure the -- there has been -- the ordinance changes and people's ability to be in one place and settled in that spot has allowed for the service provider community to better engage with those -- with the people experiencing homelessness and it's allowed for them to better engage with the larger homeless response system. One of the challenges I think when you're looking at accessing health care and primary health care, if [12:38:55 PM] you're not sure where you're going to sleep that night or if you're even able to stay in the place that you've bedded down for that night and you have -- you get moved around consistently with no access to transportation, it makes it duffel to keep those types of appointments. I can say anecdotally with echo working hard to provide hard numbers on this, for sure people are accessing clinics more. We're seeing a no-show rate droop drop in some of those areas, in some of the clinics I've spoken to where people are making their appointments more consistently because their case managers know where to find them and they can transport them to those appointments. We're finding that people are more easily -- I think we're going to look at -- when we start to look at the days to housing number, that's a metric that a lot of systems look at from -- referral to that real to getting that person in housing, I think with the ordinance changes you're going to find that that number of days has shrunk and is smaller because [12:39:55 PM] people can access the resource and -- more easily and the case managers can follow up with those folks. I don't have that data in front of me. That's anecdotal, but that's my opinion on that. >> Casar: As far as we know we're getting people into housing faster, people are showing up to their appointments more often, we've housed hundreds of people in just a couple of months, and we're redoubling those efforts to buy even more beds and more rooms to do even more work. So I join the mayor and others in saying that if the governor wants to participate in that work, that would be great. But that if simply what happens is folks that are sleeping and not bothering anybody and aren't in anybody's way under a bridge somewhere just get moved, that person doesn't magically disappear. They're going to be in a field somewhere. They're going to be in a creek somewhere. They're going to be in someone's neighborhood. They don't -- that doesn't solve homelessness. [12:40:55 PM] The work that y'all are doing is the solution to that, and I hope that rather than just threatening folks with rest or just moving people from here to there that he engages on some of the engages in some of the issues raised Tate. >> If you took something happening with the guided path program and you said last week we were going to assess everybody in front of the arch and there were 99 folks there on a Friday night and then they were all moved somewhere else on early Friday morning and then you asked us to continue to engage those folks while they were somewhere else across the city, you can imagine that would be a lot more difficult and their access to those resources wouldn't be -- we wouldn't have access as readily to those resources and we wouldn't have found and given resources to those folks already because we wouldn't have been able to find them. >> Casar: I think it's been a really hard challenge, obviously, these last few months, but instead of running from the problem or scaring the problem from one place to another, actually engaging it and finally doing something about it is [12:41:58 PM] what you guys have been doing, and I appreciate that work. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Thank you, mayor, council. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you, guys. >> They're new to the Austin community, but they are not new to the solution surrounding homelessness so we value their expertise and their experience and the time and the work that they've done over a short few months. And so thank you both. Mayor and council, with that I think I tracked three questions. One related to public safety, in particular Austin police department. The other related to public health and then to housing. I think the first two were with regard to an affirmation of whether or not there still does not exist a public health or public safety crisis, and so I'm going to ask representatives from public safety to come up to the front. And then councilmember kitchen had a question with regard to housing. >> Mayor Adler: So the question -- it's more than just the police, I think, although maybe they could answer it. It's are we seeing needles? So I think the people that spoken to that before were [12:42:58 PM] parks and Austin public health and I want to know if we're seeing a change in condition, if the data indicates that at all. If you're bringing up public safety, I would like public safety to speak to aggressive behavior or belligerence. I want to know what we can be doing in our downtown area to make sure that we're enforcing laws against aggressive confrontation, if there's anything else that, you know, within the ordinance scheme we have, if there's anything else that we can be doing to help public enforcement. Because I'm seeing that also on social media. >> Absolutely. >> Kitchen: Could we hear from nhcd first? I didn't hear what you said when I was out. Are we going to hear from them first? >> Mayor Adler: I think he just called up the police to speak about the public safety issue, the needles and that kind of -- >> We have Troy here and [indiscernible] From Austin public health as well as Kim Mcneeley from parks and recreation department. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Good morning, mayor, [12:43:59 PM] council, or I guess afternoon at this point. Before I answer that one particular question, I did want to say that we have been working in partnership to work with our partners to end homelessness, and I think that is a commitment that we have shown in our agency. I also want to reiterate that homelessness in itself is not a crime. And we address behaviors. As your question, you mentioned specifically, in reference to the ordinance, I believe the ordinance says it was passed in reference to aggressive confrontation is clear. We do have laws -- or ordinances as well as those in the penal code that can address those behaviors. >> Mayor Adler: So is there any additional support -- what we're hearing anecdotally is that there's an increase of aggressive confrontation happening in downtown in particular. [12:44:59 PM] Is there any other resources or anything else that we can bring to bear? Is that true, do you think? >> I believe -- >> Mayor Adler: Is there anything else we could be doing to help with that. >> I believe anecdotally that information is there. I do believe that we are addressing those calls as we have in the past. I believe that at any time that we have a staffing plan in place. I believe the council has addressed that. And we are working on those particular issues. So at this point I'm sure that as we move forth we may have additional requests, but at this time, with the new ordinance that just went into effect yesterday, that gave us additional tools. We will evaluate that in the near future. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. If you need anything more, let us know. Come back on that. >> Absolutely. >> Mayor Adler: What about is there any evidence -- any data to indicate that crime is going up, personal or [12:46:04 PM] violent crime? Is there more needles? Is there more feces? That was the question. >> In relation to, as chief Manley pointed out, I believe within the last few weeks, overly violent crime is down in the city. Property crime is up. I don't believe we can attribute any of the increases or decreases to specifically homelessness. So we will continue to monitor those trends and address them as needed. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. What about the other departments? Needles and -- Kimberly Mcneeley, parks and recreation. My staff is reporting that there's been no change from the original statement that I made that we're not seeing an increase in needle usage. I do want to make one point, though, that we seem to make the assumption that the needle usage is for elicit drugs or for something that's negative. But to the point that the group here before said that [12:47:05 PM] when there's physical -- or physical illness, that some of the individuals are actually using those needles for diabetic, because they're diabetic and for reasons that are medically necessary. So I just wanted to make that point and that's something our team has recently been able to verify, that it's not just about elicit drugs. >> Casar: Thank you for making that point. >> I know the last question from last session was with regard to communicable diseases and Stephanie Hayden was here to talk about that and it may be that we're just lacking the right person from public health at this time but we have not heard any increase or anything like that with regard to communicable disease. >> [Off mic] >> Oh, okay. Great. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Good morning. >> Mayor Adler: Good morning. >> Good afternoon. Stephanie Hayden, Austin public health. There has not been a change since we met a few weeks ago. The data does not support [12:48:06 PM] that. And so we are looking into other efforts to scale up some of our current efforts and potentially partnering with the community paramedics to do some flu shuts and additional health aid. So those are some things internally that better working on to just increase and provide some additional efforts. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. How are we doing on cleanups and that kind of stuff and are we seeing additional activity? >> Good afternoon, Ken snipes, Austin resource recovery. Good to meet with you all. Cleanup is -- we've made some changes recently to some of the practices that have been going on. Things are going well. We haven't noticed an uptick in needles or anything of that nature. We made a specific point to get out and kind of look and surveil the areas and see what we could find and there wasn't anything significant that we could point to. [12:49:07 PM] Recently the manager's office established several taskings and one of those tasks is the homeless encampment and clean-up and storage. And I'm going to be heading up that charge for that particular effort, and needles and sharps are one of the focuses for that. So some of the things that we have done is -- include expanding or increasing the frequency at which we're collecting the bag in support of the violet bag program. As of last Thursday, October 24, we decided to actually double the frequency of collection for that program. So now the bag is gonna be collected twice a week. That will occur on both Tuesdays and Fridays going forward. And also we're establishing a inspection element, and I think that's really important in this work. I've done this work for quite a long time now, and an inspection element is [12:50:07 PM] vital to get ahead of some of the issues before they become complaints from citizens and the public. And it also allows us to coordinate our activities across the city to better leverage our resources and to create a daily work plan that crews would have as they go out. We created a few new tools as well. One of those tools includes a heat map and also a calendar. And what those two things will do as well is allow us to understand what's happening when. Those items -- for example, the heat map is updated based on 311 calls, so what we would do is use that to dispatch support to whatever the area is that might be needed. So that pretty much sums up what's happening with clean-up. >> Mayor Adler: I think it might be helpful if -- manager, if that kind of information could also headache it on to the [12:51:09 PM] dashboard so that the public can see where clean-up is -- has happened and where it's anticipated to be and where those kinds of things -- so the public knows what is happening, assuming that the governor doesn't fence off all our underpasses on Monday. >> Tovo: Mayor, if I may, I had pulled an item from the work session agenda that I think directly relates to what we're talking about with regard to Austin resource recovery so with your permission I think it would be time efficient if I just asked the questions I have. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Tovo: This is the item, interlocal agreement with txdot to place trash receptacles in the state right-of-way under overpasses and under bridges and I wondered if you could just say a few words about which areas would be contemplated and whether that interlocal will be part of the backup for Thursday or whether you're still working -- I know we're negotiating, we're authorizing. What we'd be voting on on Thursday is to negotiate and [12:52:11 PM] execute a contract but if there is a contract it would be helpful to see it in the backup and have additional information about what locations are gonna be covered. As I understood the brief backup information we had, it's -- the sites would be at least initially those that are the violet bag program. >> That's correct, can be. Rich Mendoza, director of public works. So public works is engaging with txdot to develop this multiuse to engage trash containers and we are using the data from the violet bag pilot. We've identified four locations that we're going to propose to the txdot to 183 at olden road, 290 and Cameron road, I-35 and Cesar Chavez, and the 290/71. So this is normal procedure [12:53:11 PM] for placement of any type of structures or amenities underneath a controlled access freeway. From here then txdot has to take that application and get approval from the federal what I administration. That will take about 30 days. We are going to leave the language such that we can continue to conduct the violet bag program and explore if there's any other sites that are gonna be appropriate for the addition of these containers. From what I believe, these containers will greatly facilitate Austin resource recovery's ability to service these areas in terms of litter. >> Tovo: Thank you. So it's starting with four but will the interlocal be flexible enough to add sites? >> That is our plan, is to make it flexible enough to be able to adapt to other sites as the -- that need arises. >> Tovo: I'm sorry. As the what? >> As the need arises based on the data from the violet bag program. >> Tovo: Would you mind [12:54:12 PM] reminding me how many sites the city took on from txdot when txdot declined to continue to provide services. >> Certainly. We have a total of 61 sites throughout the city. Just as a reminder these were those location where's a city road actually intersects underneath a state-controlled access elevated highway. We took those over this past April, started operations in may. And what we've done recently, we are -- based on our experience in adapting to some of the more problematic sites, beginning in October, for those locations I just stated, we're going to be placing those containers, we're going to actually double the contractor clean-ups at those areas as well. So you should see a marked difference in the environment for those areas, at least from our perspective, beginning next month. And then the trash containers will follow. >> Tovo: Well, thanks very much. >> Certainly. [12:55:12 PM] >> Tovo: And I would rather have seen txdot continue to be a participant in those clean-ups, but I preserve the way that our departments are rising to that new challenge and providing the resources necessary to make it happen. So thank you. >> Mayor, council, at this time I'll call up Rosie truelove and Rebecca -- >> Kitchen: Mayor, I had one quick question. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Kitchen: I think I know the answer but double-check. So I did have a -- a neighbor ask me where they should report if they have noticed sharps and needles in a particular area. This is a neighbor that was being helpful by leaving helping clean up an area but didn't want to clean up these would. I told him 311 but now I'm wondering should it be the homeless hot line that we should have that reported to or -- if you could help me understand where I should [12:56:13 PM] tell people to report that to. >> I would suggest 311. >> Kitchen: Okay. >> That would be the method that we would use to collect all of the data coming in for those types of calls. >> Kitchen: That would then go to you? >> Correct. >> Kitchen: All right. Thank you. >> Thank you, I'll call up Rosie truelove and Rebecca giello to answer questions with regard to housing and permanent supportive housing. >> Tovo: Mayor, quick question, I noticed in the flyer being distributed throughout the city yesterday that people are actually being urged to call 311 rather than the homeless hotline and I wanted you to have a moment to address whether that's the protocol we should suggest to people or 211, actually, I think it was suggesting 211 as well. >> 211? Sorry about that. You know one thing with regard to the hotline is we're still fleshing out exactly what we want to use it for. 311 of course is -- so many of our residents are so familiar with that as, like, immediate service need and of course they track the service requests, et cetera. [12:57:13 PM] So let us look at that flyer and see why we might have listed 211 versus through 11 -- >> Tovo:I may be remembering it wrong. What I noted it wasn't the homeless hot line. It was one of those two entities. Thank you. That may be the best plan moving forward. I just wanted to clarify. >> Thank you. >> Tovo: Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. I'm sorry, what? You want to ask your question you? >> Kitchen: Yes. I just wanted to ask you guys to speak to -- you know, we talked earlier about the need for additional permanent supportive housing and I know we have some funding available through the housing bonds, 250 million housing bond. So I just wanted to understand if y'all had an approach at this point to accelerating dollars for permanent supportive housing or just how you were going about using those dollars for permanent supportive housing. >> So I know we'll bridge [12:58:14 PM] our comments together since we may both be thinking on different fronts as to what the neighborhood housing and community development is doing, Rosie truelove, deputy, I'm the designated lead for the homelessness interdepartmental group. So the answer is -- so it's always helpful to think of the permanent supportive housing issue as a three-pronged approach, neighborhood housing and community development is the capital. And then obviously the other two are the rental subsidies served through a sustained approach with vouchers, and then that final piece is services. So those services are often coming from multiple agencies as well. But Austin public health serves as an infusion of the services dollars. And so the key component and contribution of the general obligation bonds and also through the housing trust fund is to create as many units as possible that are deeply subsidized. And when we say that, we're talking about units that are [12:59:15 PM] subsidized for households that are making for a family of 430% and below, which is roughly $28,000 a area, and and less. So we are doing that through mechanisms of the general obligation bonds and then as you remember, council had approved an additional one-time funds in the housing trust fund of roughly seven million dollars. Five million of those dollars have been infused into our rental housing development assistance program and those dollars are helping us buy-down additional units as well. We envision this data and this crucial data point as being on the dashboard that all of you collectively are indicating will be helpful. We have the units that certainly energy our affordable housing inventory. We actually contract with echo to track those that are permanent supportive housing permanent because of that triaged effect and the [1:00:15 PM] triaged need to report out outlo.. >> We are talking with our partners on how we can incentivize creation of more and recognizing that the need is so intense. So while I don't have anything specific to say, it is something that we are actively working on and we're looking at our evaluation criteria, our scoring criteria at development assistance to see if there are ways to incentivize the creation of those affordable units. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. I know that you all are coordinating with a lot of folks with all of your housing so I appreciate that. I just wanted to make sure that we were -- just wanted to understand how we were aligning what we're doing with the piece that you all work on with the needs that we're identifying through the activities of the homeless strategy office. >> Absolutely. >> A final comment is we do [1:01:18 PM] concur with the homeless strategy officer's recommendation to look along the lines of all of the service providers and the dollars being put forward on services. We do believe looking at that can streamline services dollars so we can also effectively create the psh, permanent supportive housing, with the services dollars' component also being looked at as well. >> Kitchen: Okay, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Anything else? Natasha? >> Harper-madison: I found the documentary I was making reference to, if you haven't seen it. It's called "Race, the power of an illusion." It's a three-part series. Part one is the difference between us. Part two is the story we tell. But the one that's really important and I think would be really impactful during the course of this dialogue just to give a frame of reference of how we got here as a people, as a republic, it's called the house we live in. And I'll share that on my Facebook page also for folks who are looking to check that out. >> Mayor Adler: In just a [1:02:19 PM] second I'm going to call up the other two pulled items. So if somebody is out there, maybe that will mean we don't have to come back. And then I would just say -- let me get to you in a second. The first part of most of our time today was spent on what had actually takes to end homelessness in our city. And I'm really encouraged that there is a real path and it's doing things that we know work because a lot of them we've done here. It's important that we've taken a lot of people off our streets in the last two months and that's using the resources that were presently available. It's exciting to hear that we have plans to get several hundred new housing opportunities here in the next month and a half before the year is over and we need to expand those numbers. This isn't going to. [1:03:21 PM] Austin Texas ought to be a city that stands up and says we did not hide those among us without housing. We housed those without housing. In addition to that long-term work that's being handled, it is crucial that we are demonstrating in an optic optically visible way the work that we are doing. It's important that people see results in areas we target like the arch. It's important that people see a list of 99 people that goes down. It's important that people see that. It's important that we're making STAAR we don't have more needles or more feces. And as we continue to see that we need to let the public know. And as we move more and more people off the streets, that's how you have less and less of that. And it's the only way to have less and less of that. [1:04:21 PM] If all we're doing is moving people around and hiding those people, none of those numbers go down. In fact, we know that overall the numbers will continue to go up. I want to thank everybody in these teams that are working. I appreciate the weekly reports that we're going to get. I would like to get your recommendation is what we to deal with what may be happening on Monday so that we preserve as much as we can of the success and good work. And certainly if the governor's office wants to engage on real solutions, then we need to make sure that we embrace any such opportunity that comes our way. Pio? >> Renteria: Mayor, I want to also thank Kimberly from parks and rec for bringing up the fact that people that are diabetic has to take injections twice a day, in the morning and one in the afternoon. And even I had to give injections to one of my [1:05:22 PM] sister-in-law's dog when they left for a week, hi to give him a shot every morning and one in the afternoon because he also was diabetic and hi to give him insulin shots. So don't panic throughout if you see needles because there are people throughout. And like it was mentioned earlier, people do get sick, they go to the hospital and they get unexpected bills and they have to pay it, they become homeless. But that don't mean that they have to -- they can stop taking their insulin shots. Don't just assume just because you see a needle out there that it was a drug deal because there are people that have illness and diabetic people need to take insulin shots twice a day. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Do you want to close? >> I was just going to thank council for their support and their guidance. You know, and of course, all levels of staff from city [1:06:23 PM] management throughout the the entire organization in our community, service providers as well. It truly is all hands on deck to tackle the issues surrounding homelessness, but I do believe, mayor, to your point, that we can effectively end homelessness in Austin. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. All right. Let's do the two items that are left to be pulled and then we can -- then we're done, we don't have anything else. And do we have -- we have two things on executive session. All right. Number two was pulled by the mayor pro tem, Austin energy. >> Yes. I wasn't able to be at the Austin energy meeting. If there was any concern from my colleagues on item [1:07:30 PM] 2 Austin energy would be able to approve those without council action. And my concern is that I feel like we'll be given less information and I guess have less oversight on Austin energy. And I think councilmember alter brought up an instance if I was told by my staff correctly, where it was important for council to be in the discussion. So on one hand I wanted to understand if there are any concerns, but then as specifically what I heard was the reason for this change is that it would impact the timeline. So I'm trying to understand what is current timeline and what would the timeline be if this item is approved. >> I'm Debbie Kimberly, vice-president of energy solutions and incorporate communications. Currently the timeline, I'll [1:08:31 PM] address the latter part of your question first, mayor pro tem. The average timeline from the time a commercial customer applied for a rebate and they received payment and gone through the approval process is seven months. For a multi-family complex it's six months. And what we've seen is that that extended timeline causes what otherwise would be viable projects to dropout or not to even pursue a project. This past year we only spent about 60 percent of our multi-family budget because of those long timelines. We don't plan to reduce the information we provide council, we actually plan to increase the information we provide council. So what we do every month is any project that has -- be there there are specific timelines and guidelines in terms of qualifying for a project. And I'm happy to say that right now we have 16 active [1:09:31 PM] multi-family projects that are being worked and we have 51 leads. A lot of these property owners are out of state and when they see a six-month timeline they won't pursue it, they'll drop out of all those leads. We know that a number will drop out. It was a long time. Especially with the larger projects that we're trying to get in the pipeline from time they apply to installing multiple measures and apartment complexes that may number 200 units. So we're trying to cut that amount of time in half. R. So instead of four to six months, we would try to make it two months, no more than three months. There by creating a broader reach for our programs and getting to especially more of those disadvantaged population populations. We will provide a fact sheet as we do now for every project over count limit, which is $61,000 that provides the kw savings, the kwh savings and in the case of multi-family projects what their rents are for [1:10:33 PM] studio through four bedroom apartments. >> Garza: For the interest of time, I'm sorry, so it's six months. >> Six months. >> Garza: And what is the change that -- now it would change to two to three months. >> Not going to commission or council approval. There are two or three months out of the year where council doesn't meet and by the time that you go to the electric utility commission, the our management commission and then get council approval before you can undertake the measures and then pay the rebate, that's what is adding that amount of time. So -- >> Garza: Do you have the numbers of -- do you have report -- do you have data that shows people that have actually dropped out of the program? >> We do are from our contractors. We contractors specifically ask for this and said that they've had leads that haven't materialized because it's gone on so long because these properties change hands with some regularlarity. So they've actually asked for this. We engage contractors. [1:11:36 PM] And so they at the eur and RNC say it would be a godsend because it would be in the pine line. >> Garza: That wasn't what I took from the euc's. It's my understanding from the meeting the comment was -- >> The gentleman that spoke against it ultimately changed his view and supported it. And his boss came to the rmc and stated it would be a godsend. What we did at the euc as well is in addition to providing the fact sheets that we provide, we'll also provide a pipeline. So we'll show how many leads, we're building that now and it will be posted every month to our website. How many leads do we have some how many have gone through inspection? Where do they stand in the process? And you will still see that information, it will justing after the fact and getting the timeline in half. >> Garza: Can you before Thursday provide the data of the people that dropped out of the program -- >> Sure. If we have it available. The hardest thing we have is a contractor will say I've got these leads, but they [1:12:37 PM] haven't been tracking it, only they've said it's hard to get to this market because of the circumstances we see in Austin. >> Garza: What I'm concerned about is setting any precedent of our boards and commissions process because it takes a long time to go through the boards and commissions hose prose and then come to council. There's a purpose for that. So I'm just -- it's not a question. So that's one of my main concerns is I'm concerned about people coming and saying it just takes long to have to go through this process so let's just let our departments do this and make these decisions. And last question for me is if this is an opportunity to get better data, I think that's a great opportunity. I don't know if changing this is something that needs to be done to get better data, but we have asked in [1:13:39 PM] the past for data by district and been told that like it's hard to get or Austin energy is incredibly hard to get from Austin energy. So if this does pass, I do not think I will support it. I hope that we can get better data because the whole purpose of the process is for transparency. Councilmembers are required to -- are expected to know about all these different programs and the fact that programs come on our agenda helps educate us on what is available, and these items on the agenda keep these programs in our mind and understanding all the great things that our city is doing. So I'm just concerned about it not coming orangeade not having opportunity to talk about it and talk about the good work that we're doing. >> I think that your comments are very well taken and thank you for that. One of the things that I could suggest is that we report on this at the ae eoc [1:14:42 PM] committee has a committee of the whole. I would be happy to do that. We've reported on our website. There are quarterly reports that we publish and we'd be happy to send those to the staff or send those out more actively because it will show projects and rebates undertaken by district as well as projects that fall outside the city of Austin. And like you, I share and am a huge advocate for transparency because when we share that data it acts to provide leads to customers who will provide uptick for our programs. We recently sent out a targeted mailing within all of your district and outside the city of Austin, and that's what generated the 51 leads that I just mentioned. So we're cautiously optimistic that given the support you've provided and the retention of a third-party who can go out and represent us as well that we'll be able to go deeper and broader. [1:15:45 PM] >> Garza: And I think it was in fact because of a conversation we had in this room and at the commission level that created that push for that extra promotion of it. So that is an example of my concern with this not coming before council at the council level. But I appreciate you being here to answer those questions. >> Thank you. >> Alter: I just wanted to clarify, this will still come to council, but come to council on an annual basis to vote on. So we could try this for a year and if we didn't think it was working, then we could go back to the old way and we would have some data then to show that we were able to get more projects into the pipeline changing it. >> That's correct. >> Alter: I would second the request to make sure that we are having that recording and that we're -- reporting and that we're seeing those, whether it's at the work session or at the utility commission oversight. I'm willing to give this a [1:16:46 PM] try and see -- one area is I would like to see us spending more money on this, and so should those projects materialize and should we get to the point that we get to our authorization, I want to make sure that we're coming back and seeing that and if you can maybe create as part of one of your dashboards kind of where we are at in spending that so that folks know that there's money available and that gets repeated, I know that would also be helpful to see what else we need to be doing to make this project successful and be able to have those conversations over the course of the year if we're not on track to reaching that broader goal. >> That's our objective as well. Thank you. >> Garza: I forgot something. Thank you for that comment, councilmember alter, because we discussed a possible amendment to item 2 that we would get a report back in. [1:17:47 PM] We always say let's try this and see what happens and then it is off our radar and we're not going back and reassessing it because we have 5,000 other things that we're dealing with. So we may present an amendment that does that -- make sure that it does come back to council, ask for the data of where we were, where we are, how this system improved the number and the amount of people we were able to - - that were able to benefit from the program. >> Mayor Adler: I like the idea of having it move forward with that reporting requirement. That makes sense to me. Let's move on to the next -- >> Alter: In the interest of time, do we need an amendment to do that? >> Thank depend depends on how much you want that codified, but that's certainly the direction and we're happy to follow through with that. >> Garza: Our city attorney is saying yes. [1:18:50 PM] >> Mayor Adler: Jimmy. >> Flannigan: This zoning case has a co on it that changes the height by five feet. Unfortunately it was submitted by the applicant so we can't be changing it, but I want to note that this is another example of a bad co. That's all I have to say. >> Tovo: But just to emphasize it was the applicant's request. >> Mayor Adler: I didn't hear what you said, I'm sorry. >> Flannigan: So the co being included in this zoning case was part of the applicant's application so we can't be changing it ourselves in determination of the laws of notices mean, but it's only a five foot difference. They're going from 60 to 55, which I don't even think is a noticeable difference and it's backed up to an apartment complex, yada, yada, yada. >> Mayor Adler: Just to give notice of a couple of things -- >> Alter: I had a comment that's in my district if I could just comment on that. I appreciate you raising this issue and I know this [1:19:51 PM] is something that you care deeply about. If that's something that you care about perhaps we could let staff know so they don't have to to stay here for four and a half hours to hear that so they could plan accordingly. You have every right to bring it up and I appreciate that, but I just think that would be helpful. >> Mayor Adler: I want to remind people we have a 3:00 hard stop on Thursday so we're not going to go past that. I would also point out that item number 9, the audit plan issue is going to be withdrawn. Staff is withdrawing that. We have some meet and confer issues associated with that. Kathie. >> Tovo: I have two other announcements that are pertinent in some respects to the conversation we just had and also just are timely. As all of us know the city-county sobering city opened up just about a year ago. And tomorrow evening the sobering center is celebrating its one year anniversary and fund-raiser. I invite you all to attend as well as members of the [1:20:52 PM] public. That will take place at the sobering center which is at 1213 Sabine street from 5:30 to 7:00 tomorrow. And actually one of the board members, Dr. Strawkowski, out of Dallas, he and his band are going to be performing. It's an interesting time if you haven't seen the sobering center or if you want to come and celebrate it and help its long-term financial sustainability by contributing, it's a great opportunity to do so. Secondly, I wanted to also mention that this week is also the settlement home -- the settlement home garage sale, which is their big fund-raiser and they typically raise more than a million dollars to support the programs that they have and those include a residential treatment program as well as a foster adoption services and program. They've been operating in our community for more than 100 years and I think provide really tremendous service to the youth who are, and the youth and families with whom they interact so. [1:21:53 PM] So two great things going on this week. >> Mayor Adler: Great. Okay, with that said then, council will now go into closed session to take up two items. Pursuant to 551.071 of the government code we'll discuss legal matters related to E 3 and E 4, Smith versus city of Austin. E 1 an E 2 have been withdrawn. Hearing no objection here at 1:22, we're going into executive session. I'll come out at the end of executive session and adjourn the meeting, but there will be no further discussion or deliberation. [1:22:50 PM] (Executive Session) >>Mayor Adler: We are out of closed session. In closed session we discussed legal matters related to items E3 and E4 and with that. Here at 3:16 p.m. our meeting is adjourned. [3:16:45 PM]